Benjamin Franklin effect, "Brain Death" & the "cognitive dissonance" theory

Sci-art: Benjamin Franklin effect & cognitive dissonance: your brain shuts down when U feel Ur ideology is threatened http://t.co/soT1jYQNX2
— CATHERINE COSTE (@cathcoste) June 14, 2014

Students … signed up for a two-hour experiment called “Measures of Performance” as a requirement to pass a class. Researchers divided them into two groups. One was told they would receive $1 (about $8 in today’s money). The other group was told they would receive $20 (about $150 in today’s money). The scientists then explained that the students would be helping improve the research department by evaluating a new experiment. They were then led into a room where they had to use one hand to place wooden spools into a tray and remove them over and over again. A half hour later, the task changed to turning square pegs clockwise on a flat board one-quarter spin at a time for half an hour. All the while, an experimenter watched and scribbled. It was one hour of torturous tedium, with a guy watching and taking notes. After the hour was up, the researcher asked the student if he could do the school a favor on his way out by telling the next student scheduled to perform the tasks, who was waiting outside, that the experiment was fun and interesting. Finally, after lying, people in both groups — one with one dollar in their pocket and one with twenty dollars — filled out a survey in which they were asked their true feelings about the study.

Something extraordinary and baffling had happened: The students who were paid $20 lied to their peers but reported in the survey, as expected, that they’d just endured two hours of mind-numbing tedium. But those who were only paid a dollar completely internalized the lie, reporting even in the survey that they found the task stimulating. The first group, the researchers concluded, were able to justify both the tedium and the lie with the dollar amount of their compensation, but the second group, having been paid hardly anything, had no external justification and instead had to assuage their mental unease by convincing themselves that it was all inherently worth it. McRaney extends the insight to the broader question of volunteerism:

This is why volunteering feels good and unpaid interns work so hard. Without an obvious outside reward you create an internal one. That’s the cycle of cognitive dissonance; a painful confusion about who you are gets resolved by seeing the world in a more satisfying way." (Source)

Now, it is practice time: ever tried to ask a transplant surgeon what he thinks of the ethics of brain death diagnosis? On several occasions, I did this little experiment: I said to (obviously underpaid and overworked) transplant coordination teams that they had to tell a lie to donor families: a brain-dead patient is a *dying* person; not a cadaver or a mere reservoir of organs (object). I can tell you one thing: their reaction was pretty violent. I had to run for my life. Really. Now, try the same thing on a transplant surgeon. He will try to discuss with you but won't go for your jugular. I mean, most of the time. So, from my own end, I'd say this theory is pretty much accurate. Yeah.