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Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology1963, Vol. 66, No. 6, 584-588

ELLIOT ARONSONUniversity of Minnesota

]. MERRILL CARLSMI TH'Harvard University

If a person is induced to cease performing a desired act ion through the threatof punishm ent, he will experience dissonance. His cogn ition that he is notperforming the action is dissonant with his cognition that the action isdesirable. An effective way of reducing dissonance is by derogating theaction. The greater the threat of punishment the less the dissonancesincea severe threat is consonant with ceasing to perform the action. Thus, themilder the threat , the greater will be a person's tendency to derogate theaction. In a laboratory expe riment 22 preschool children stopped playingwith a desired toy in the face of either a mild or severe threat of punishment .The mild threat led to more derogat ion of the toy than the severe threat .

If a ruler, a parent, or a psychologist wishesto elicit or prevent the occurrence of a par-ticular response from a citizen, a child, ora pigeon, his problem is not a difficult one.All he must do is offer a salient reward orthreaten to inflict a salient punishment.Clearly, the more attractive the reward orthe more severe the punishment, the greaterthe likelihood that the organism will comply.Bu t such induced com pliance is an inefficientmethod of social control, for one must con-tinue to reward or to punish the response inorder to ensure c ontinued compliance. A muchmore effective technique would entail some-how getting the organism to enjoy (or abhor)the performance of the act.3 Such a tech-nique has been suggested by the theory ofcognitive dissonance (Festinger, 1957, 1961;Festinger & Aronson, 1960). According to thetheory, dissonance occurs when an individualsimultaneously holds two incompatible cog-nitions. Dissonance is assumed to be an un-pleasant drive state; thus, when an individualexperiences dissonance he attempts to reduceit by changing one or both of his cognitions,adding new cognitions, etc.

iThis research was supported by grants from theNational Science Found ation (NSF-G-16838 andNSF-G-22316) to Elliot Aronson. The experimentwas conducted while Merrill Carlsmith was on thetenure of an NSF fellowship. The authors wish tothank the staff of the Harvard Preschool for theirkind cooperation.2 Now at Yale University.3 See Kelman (1961) for an interesting discussionof this issue.

One situation which often arouses disso-nance involves the performance of an unpleas-ant or effortful task for little or no reason.That is, if a person finds himself doing some-thing which he does not like to do and is in-sufficiently rewarded, his cognition that heperformed an unpleasant task is dissonantwith his cognition that he received little orno compensation for it. He can reduce disso-nance in this situation by seeking some otherjustification for having performed the act.Previous research in this area has demon-strated that an effective way of justifying aninsufficiently rewarded action is by cognitivelymagnifying the attractiveness of the goal.*In one experiment, subjects wh o expended ahigh degree of effort to attain an unattractivegoal convinced themselves that the goal wa sindeed attractivewhereas subjects who ex-pended little effort saw the goal as it wasthat is, unattractive (Aronson & Mills, 1959).Theoretically, the opposite effect should occurfor punishment. That is, one should be ableto induce a strong distaste for a previouslydesired action by getting an individual tocease performing that action following a mildrather than a severe threat of punishment.Specifically, if a person is induced to ceasethe performance of a desired act by the threatof punishment, his cognition that the act is

* This is not to imply that this is the one meansof reducing dissonance in this kind of situation. Al-ternative methods of reducing dissonance in similarsituations have been investigated by Festinger an dCarlsmith (1959), Mills (19S8) , and Aronson (1961) .584

S E V E R I T Y O F THREAT 585desirable is dissonant with his cognition thathe is not performing it. A threat of severepunishment, in and of itself, provides amplecognitions consonant with ceasing the action.If a person ceases to perform a desired actionin the face of a mild threat howe ver, he lacksthese consonant cognitions and, therefore,must seek additional justification for not per-forming the desired act. One method of justi-fication is to convince himself that the de-sired act is no longer desirable. Thus, if a per-son is induced to cease performing a desiredaction by a threat of punishment, the milderthe threat the greater will be his tendency toderogate the action.

METHODThe g eneral procedure involved having yo ung chil-dren evaluate several toys, issuing either a mild or asevere threat of punishment for playing with onespecific toy, asking the children to re-evaluate thetoys at the close of the experiment . Through thistechnique we could compare the effect of a mildthreat with that of a severe threat on the attractive-ness of playing with the forbidden toy.The subjects were 22 children at the Harvard Pre-school, 11 girls and 11 boys, ranging in age from 3.8

to 4.6 years.5 The experimental room was a largeplayroom fam il iar to all subjects. It contained a one-way observat ion mirror and a low table on whichthe experimenter could display five toys. The toysused were a battery-powered tank, a steam shovel,a set of plastic gears, a battery-powered fire engine,and a set of dishes and pans. The toys were all at-tractive to the children, and an opportuni ty to playwith them was met with enthusiasm. Prior to thebeginning of the experiment, the experimenter spentseveral weeks at the nursery school playing with thechildren, so that all the children knew him well whenthe experiment began.The experimenter led each subject into the experi-mental room, closed the door, and showed the sub-ject the toys. He demonstrated ho w each toy worked,and allowed the subject to play with it briefly be-fore moving on to the next one. After the subjectwas familiar with all the toys, the experimenter sug-gested a "question game," following which the sub-ject would have a chance to play with the toys. Theexperimenter placed all the toys on the floor and sat5 An additional six children were run through part,but not all, of the experiment: two failed to com-plete the experiment because they moved from town;three were unable to make consistent rankings bythe method of paired comparisons, and so were dis-carded; one did not wish to continue with the ex-periment. Only data from those chi ldren who com-pleted all of the experiment are included in theanalysis.

on the opposite side of the low table from the sub-ject . Put t ing two of the toys on the table (for ex-ample, the steam shovel and the tank) he asked:Suppose you could either play with the steamshovel [picking it up] , or the tank [picking it up] .Which one would you rather play with?

After the subject had responded, the experimenterreplaced the two toys on the floor, put two otherson the table, and continued until the subject hadmade choices between all 10 pairs. By this procedure,a ranking was elicited, from the most preferred toy(1) to the least preferred toy (5). With children thisyoung, it was inevitable that there would be someinconsistencies in the paired comparisons. Three sub-jects gave judgments which were completely incon-sistent ; they were not run through the remainder ofthe experiment and their results were discarded. Ina few other cases, the reversal of one paired-com-parison judgment led to a t ie in the ranking of threeof the toys. In these cases, the three toys were placedon the table and the experimenter pestered the childuntil the tie was broken. Such cases were surprisinglyrare. The great majority of subjects were able torank the toys in a consistent manner.After the subject ranked the toys, the experimenterpicked up the second-ranked toy and placed it onthe table in the center of the room. He arranged theremaining toys on the floor , and said:

I have to leave now for a few minutes to do anerrand. But why don't you stay here and play withthese toys while I am g o n e ? I will be right back.You can play with this one [pointing], this one,and this one. But I don't want you to play withthe [indicating the second-ranked toy].At this point the experimental conditions were in-t roduced. In the Mild Threat condition, the experi-menter cont inued:I don't want you to play with the -. Ifyou played with it, I would be annoyed. But youcan play with all the others while I am gone, andI will be right back.

In the Strong Threat condition, the experimentercont inued:I don't want you to play with the -. Ifyou played with it, I would be very angry. Iwould have to take al l of my toys and go homeand never come back again. You can play with allthe others while I am gone, but if you played withthe , I would think you were just a baby.I will be right back.The experimenter then left the room, observed thesubject for 10 minutes throug h the one-way mirror,returned, and again allowed the subject to, playbriefly with all the toys, including the forbidden toy.After the subject had played with all the toys, theexperimenter suggested that they play the questiongame again, after which they would play togetherwith all the toys. The experimenter administered the

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586 ELLIOT A R O N S O N AND J. MERRILL CARLSMITHpaired-comparison proce dure exactly as before, andthen played with the subject for a short while.Each subject was tested in both conditions, with aperiod averaging 45 days separating the two condi-tions. The order in which the subjects were runthrough the two conditions wa s randomizedonehalf of the subjects were run in the Mild Threatcondition first and one half were run in the StrongThreat condition first. No subject played with theforbidden toy during the 10 minutes he was alonewith it. One or two subjects reached out a hand andtentatively touched the toy, but none went so far asto pick it up, much less operate it.The second-ranked toy was chosen as the crucial(forbidden) toy because this toy was very at t ract iveto the subject, thus creating appreciable dissonanceif he did not play with it; and this allowed the sub-ject the opportuni ty to change his ev aluat ion in eitherdirection.

RESULTS A N D DISCUSSIONOu r hypothesis wa s that a mild threat ofpunishment for playing with a desired toywould lead to a devaluation of that toy whilea severe threat would not. Th e dependentvariable in this experiment is the change in thesubject's relative ranking of the crucial toy,that is, the difference between its attractive-

ness before and after the threat was adminis-tered. The results are presented in Table 1which indicates the number of subjects in thetwo experimental conditions who decreasedtheir liking for the toy, increased their likingfor the toy, or did not change their liking forthe toy.6 In the Mild Threat condition, fo r8 of the 12 subjects whose prefere nceschanged at all, the crucial toy underwenta de-crease in attractiveness. In the Severe Threatcondition, however, none of the 14 subjectswho changed their evaluations of the toyshowed a decrease. To test the significanceof this difference, we computed a differencescore for each subject. His second ranking ofthe crucial toy in the Severe Threat condi-tion was subtracted from his second rankingof the crucial toy in the Mild Threat condi-tion. These difference scores yielded highlysignificant results (p < .003 by randomiza-tion test).Although the difference between the twoconditions is striking, a good deal of this dif-8 Since the same subject participated in both ex-perimental conditions, it should be pointed out thatthere were no systematic effects due to order oftesting.

TABLE 1CHANGE IN ATTRACTIVENESS OF FORBIDDEN TOY

Strength of

MildSevere

RatingIncrease

414Same

. 108Decrease

80

ference is due to the fact that, in the SevereThreat condition, the subjects actually cameto increase their liking for the crucial toy.This increase in attractiveness tends to intro-duce some ambiguity in the interpretation ofthe results. It must be determined -whetherthis increase wa s a function of the severethreat or of some other aspect of the experi-mental situation. A parsimonious and highlyplausible explanation for this result is thatthe actual baseline in the experiment was notzero change. That is, there may be somethingin the specific procedure which caused a con-stant increase in the attractiveness of the for-bidden toy, irrespective of the degree of threatimposed. Fo r example, it might be that bycalling attention to that toy, the experimenterhad enhanced its value either by mere em -phasis or by creating the impression that he,personally, wa s interested in that toy. More-over, by playing with the rem aining four toys,the subject may have become satiated withthem, thus increasing the relative attractive-ness of the crucial toy. It should be empha-sized that, if either of these processes oc-curred, their effect would have been identicalin both experimental conditions; thus, if sucha process took place, the tendency for the sub-jects to derogate the toy in the Mild Threatcondition occurred in spite of a general tend-ency for the toy to become more attractive.To determine whether either of these proc-esses did, in fact, occur, it was necessary torun a condition in which no threat was ad-ministered but in which the experimenter didsomething to call the subject's attention toone of the toys, and in which the subject wasprevented from playing with that toy. Thiswas accomplished in the following manner.Several weeks after the subjects had com-pleted both experimental conditions, the ex-perimenter randomly selected one half of the

SEVERITY O F THREAT 587subjects and ran each through an experi-mental procedure which was identical exceptfor one change: instead of forbidding the sub-ject to play with the second-ranked toy, theexperimenter merely picked it up and took itwith him when he left the room. It can beseen that this control condition establishes aproper baseline for the experiment. If, in thiscondition (N o Threat) , the subjects did notchange their rankings of the crucial toy in asystematic direction, then it would be clearthat the proper baseline wa s zero change. Thiswould mean that the positive shift which oc -curred in the Severe Threat condition was afunction of the severe threat. If, on the otherhand, the subjects in the No Threat condi-tion systematically increased their liking forthe crucial toy, this would indicate that theapparent increase in the Severe Threat condi-tion was not due to the severity of the threat.Rather, it would suggest that the increase wa sattributable to emphasis, satiation with theother toys, or some similar process which wascommon to both the Severe Threat and theMild Threat conditions. Th e results supportthe second interpretation. Of the 11 subjectsin the No Threa t condition , 7 increased the irevaluations of the toy, 4 did not change, andnone decreased. Th e results are virtuallyidentical with those in the Severe Threat con-dition and significantly different from thosein the Mild Threat condition. This indicatesthat in the Mild Threat condition, the trendtoward devaluation of the crucial toy oc-curred in spite of the general tendency tooverrate the toy.Th e results are consistent with the theoryof cognitive dissonance. In the Severe Threatcondition, an individual's cognition that hedid not play with an attractive toy was con-sonant with his cognition that he would havebeen severely punished if he had played withthe toy. There was no need for him to pro-vide further justification for his abstinence.However, when he refrained from playing withthe toy in the absence of a severe threat, heexperienced dissonance. Hi s cognition that hedid not play with the toy was dissonant withhis cognition that it was attractive. In orderto reduce dissonance, he derogated the toy.We have implied that through the mediumof dissonance reduction, a lasting change in

values could be evoked. Thus far we havedemonstrated that devaluation does occurwhere dissonance is aroused and does notoccur in the absence of dissonance. But justone mild threat, although arousing dissonanceand leading to devaluation, is a tiny fractionof a child's life. Accordingly, it would seemambitious indeed to expect this event to haveproduced a lasting distaste for the crucial toy.In order to achieve a more or less permanentdevaluation, consistently mild threats over anextended period of time would appear to beessential. Nevertheless, it would be of interestto examine the duration of this effect. Dataare available to test for duration differencesbetween the experimental conditions. Th ereader will recall that the same subjects par-ticipated in both experimental conditions. On ehalf of the subjects were run first in the SevereThreat condition, an d about 45 days later,were run in the Mild Threat condition; onehalf of the subjects were run in the reversesequence. Thus, it is possible to assess therelative duration of effects due to mild andsevere threats by comparing the rankingsmade by the subjects wh o were first run inthe Mild Threat condition with those of thesubjects who were first run in the SevereThreat condition. The child's premanipula-tion ranking of the toys duririg the secondexperimental session provides the necessarydata. Thus, it is possible to see where the for-bidden toy, originally ranked second, wasranked 45 days after the experimental ma-nipulation. A rank lower than second in thedissonance condition (Mild Threat) indicatesa long-lasing derogation of the toy. The re-sults are summarized in Table 2.In the Mild Threat condition, of the sixsubjects wh o changed at all, five showed adecrease after 45 days. In the Severe Threat

TABLE 2CHANGE m ATTRACTIVENESS OF FORBIDDEN TOY

Strength of

MildSevere

RatingIncrease13

Same56

Decrease52

Note.Forty-five days later.

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588 ELLIOT A R O N S O N AND J. MERRILL CARLSMITHcondition, two of the five subjects who changedshowed a decrease. These results represent atrend in the expected direction, although withan n of only 11, they do not reach an ac-ceptable level of significance.

It is interesting to note that the long-termeffect of a mild threat wa s very similar to theimmediate effect. When the threat wa s severe,however, this did not appear to be the case.In the Severe Threat condition, although 64%of the subjects initially increased their rank-ing of the forbidden toy, only 21 % rankedtheir toy higher after 45days, suggesting onlyan ephemeral effect.Hopefully, the effect demonstrated in thisexperiment may be generalizable beyond meretoy preferences; that is, mild rather thansevere threats of punishment may be an ef-fective means of inducing the formation of asystem of values in children. For example, theresults of this experiment suggest that if aparent were to administer a mild threat ofpunishment for aggressive behavior it mightinduce children to derogate aggressiveness.Thus, a mild threat might be more effectivethan a severe threat in tie ultimate reductionof aggressive behavior. This speculation isconsistent with data from research in childdevelopment which indicates a positive corre-lation between aggressiveness in children and

the severity of parental punishment for ag-gression (for example, Sears, Maccoby, &Levin, 1957; Sears, Whiting, Nowlis, & Sears,1953). R E F E R E N C E SA R O N S O N , E. The effect of effort on the attractive-ness of rewarded and unrewarded stimuli. /. ab-norm. soc. Psychol., 1961, 63, 375-380.A R O N S O N , E., & MILLS, J. The effect of severity ofinitiation on liking for a group. /. abnorm. soc.Psychol., 1959, 59, 177-181.FESTINGER, L. A theory oj cognitive dissonance.Stanford: S tanford U niver . Press, 19S7.FESTINGER, L. The cognitive consequences of insuffi-cient rewards. Amer. Psychologist, 1961, 16, 1-11.FESTINGER, L., & A R O N S O N , E. The arousal and re-duction of dissonance in social contexts. In D.Cartwright & A. Zander (Eds.), Group dynamics:Research and theory. Evanston, HI.: Row, Peter-son, 1960. Pp. 214-231.FESTINGER, L., & CARLSMITH, J. M. Cognitive conse-quences of forced compliance. /. abnorm. soc. Psy-chol., 1959, 58, 203-210.KELMAN, H. C. Processes of opinion change. Publ.Opin. Quart., 1961, 25, 57-78.Mnxs, J. Changes in mor al attitudes following temp-tation. /. Pen., 1958, 26, 517-531.SEARS, R. R., M A C C O B Y , E L E A N O R , E., & L E V T N , H.Patterns of child rearing. Evanston, LI . : Row,Peterson, 1957.S E A R S , R. R., WHITING, J. W. M., NOWLIS, V., &S E A R S , PAULINE. Some child-rearing antecedents ofaggression and dependency in young children.Genet. Psychol. Monogr., 1953, 47, 135-236.

(Received March 28, 1962)