The one-dollar lie
About this app
Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) as a scene with drawn people: an hour of spools and pegs, the apparent end, the request for $1 or $20, the statement “It’s fun” to a confederate and only then the measurement. A balance shows the dissonance, a sliding weight the attitude; plus the original data (control −0.45, $20 −0.05, $1 +1.35) and a model of payment.
With explain mode: an AI tutor walks you through the app, points out what matters in the scene and answers your questions.
The Festinger and Carlsmith experiment
In 1959 Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith had Stanford students sort spools and turn pegs for an hour. Then they were told the experiment was over. Only then came the real request: to tell the next participant, a confederate, that the task had been fun, for 1 dollar or 20 dollars. In an apparently unrelated survey the control group rated the task −0.45, the 20-dollar group −0.05 and the 1-dollar group +1.35 on a scale from −5 to +5. Festinger explained this with cognitive dissonance: whoever speaks against their own conviction without sufficient reason resolves the tension through their attitude.
What the app shows
A drawn scene leads through the five stations: the dull hour, the apparent end, the request with the money handed over, the statement to the confederate student and the interview in which the measurement finally happens. Next to it stands a balance: on the left the statement, on the right the payment as justification, plus a sliding weight for the attitude on the scale from −5 to +5. Below are the original data as bars and a model curve fitted to the two measured values.
Try it yourself
Step through the stations and watch when the balance tips and when the sliding weight moves. Compare the control group, 1 dollar and 20 dollars. With the slider you choose other amounts between 0.5 and 50 dollars in the model. A switch shows the prediction “more money, more effect”, which follows reinforcement logic and is contradicted by the data. The info panel lists criticism and newer replications.
Frequently asked questions
- What is cognitive dissonance?
- According to Leon Festinger (1957), cognitive dissonance is the unpleasant tension when two thoughts, or a thought and one’s own behaviour, do not fit together. People reduce it by changing one side, for example their attitude, or by adding justifications. The fewer external reasons there are for a behaviour, the stronger the adjustment.
- Why did the one-dollar participants like the task more?
- With 20 dollars participants had a sufficient reason for saying the task was fun. With 1 dollar that reason was missing. The tension between “dull” and “I said it was fun” was easiest to resolve by rating the task more positively afterwards: +1.35 compared with −0.05.
- Does the Festinger and Carlsmith finding still hold?
- Similar results were found many times, but the finding is debated. In 1967 Daryl Bem explained it without inner tension as self-perception. A large multilab replication with 4,898 people (Vaidis et al., 2024) found attitude change after writing against one’s own opinion, but not the expected difference between high and low choice.
- What can I try in this app?
- You go through the five stations of the experiment as a scene, switch between the control group, 1 dollar and 20 dollars, and see how the balance tips and the attitude rebalances. A slider shows further amounts in the model, a switch the refuted prediction “more money, more effect”.
Subject: Psychology
More from Psychology
- Asch lines: the majority is wrong on purpose
- The experimenter in the experiment
- Forgetting and review
- Perception lab
- Bystander effect: everyone waits, no one helps
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