According to the theory of cognitive dissonance, we want to maintain consistency between our attitudes and behaviors because inconsistency between attitudes and behaviors makes us uncomfortable (Festinger, 1957). Cognitive dissonance can arise in many different situations, one of which involves effort justification. Basically, when you experience inconsistency between effort and outcome, the cognitive dissonance motivates you to change your attitude toward the outcome, as a way to justify your suffering.
This makes me think of my involvement with theater in high school. At my high school, every year, the senior class puts on a big senior musical, and the director, who is brought in from an outside theater, picks a junior to be the student assistant director. My junior year, I was chosen to be the student assistant director, and I was so excited! The director warned me that I would have to put in blood, sweat, and tears, but that my reward would come senior year because if I showed my dedication to him during junior year, he would give me the lead in the senior musical my senior year.
Well, I definitely put in blood, sweat, and tears. I spent every night of the fall semester of my junior year in my school's auditorium doing whatever the director asked of me. He wanted coffee? I got it. He wanted to to talk about how awful his high school experience was? I commiserated with him. He needed an understudy? I stood in for whoever was not at practice that evening. Looking back, the amount of work I put in was pretty ridiculous. I actually ended up getting really sick, and while trying to mix medicines to get better faster (and to get back to rehearsals sooner), I created a certain street drug in my bloodstream and had to go to the emergency room, where I was harassed by a doctor who did not believe my unfortunate medication-mixing experience and thought I was actually on drugs.
Anyway, the musical came to an end, and while I was proud of the work I had put in, I was ready to receive my reward senior year. But senior year rolled around, try-outs came, and I had an awful audition. My call-back was just embarrassing, and so I guess it should have come as no surprise that I did not get the lead in my senior musical. This made me really angry for a long time. I had put in the blood, sweat, and tears the director had asked of me, but the outcome was not what I had been promised and not at all what I had expected.
I found myself experiencing inconsistency between effort and outcome, and had no clue what to do, which really frustrated me. But because of cognitive dissonance, I had the motivation to change my attitude to reduce the inconsistency and to justify my suffering. I began to look at my work on the senior musical during my junior year as a learning experience--one of those "if it doesn't kill you, it only makes you stronger" experiences, in which I learned about the cut-throat nature of the theater business. I figured I had to have that experience sooner or later, and I actually found myself becoming thankful for all that I had gone through junior year during my work on the senior musical.
Basically, I experienced cognitive dissonance at its finest. The inconsistency between the work I put in and the unsatisfying outcome I received motivated me to change my attitude to the point where I ended up enjoying what I had suffered for. After all, I had to justify six months of late nights and hard work, not to mention my trip to the emergency room. To this day, I still think positively about my work as the student assistant director for the senior musical.
Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.
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I had this same problem of my behaviors were not able to match up with my initial attitudes, such that they ultimately changed. Freshman year of high school I got really involved with soccer. I took soccer P.E. both semesters, even though I didn't need the credit, I played on a recreational team in the fall, and I played for the school in the spring. I put an absurd number of hours in to the sport, and I was expected to be on the varsity team come spring. However, despite my efforts, I could never run a fast enough mile to make it on to varsity. I was really disappointed in myself because I really looked up to that level of skill and thought I deserved, so whereas my attitudes were set on really desiring varsity, my behaviors were not matching up. So rather than change my behaviors, which were beyond my control, I changed my attitudes toward the team and actually came to really favor the junior varsity over the varsity. I saw that the jv girls were much nicer and that I got more game time than I would have on varsity. Thus, my inability to change my behaviors to fit my attitudes led to my attitudes changing to diminish the dissonance.
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