The Effects of Discrepant or Congruent Behavior and Reward upon Attitude and Task Attractiveness

Abstract

Two hundred German secondary school students were promised different monetary rewards for performing either attitude-discrepant or attitude-congruent behavior. After the performance they made ratings of their attitude toward the attitude-object and evaluated the attractiveness of the behavior. After attitude-congruent behavior, attitude change towards the performed behavior was stronger with decreasing amount of reward. This result supports self-perception theory and contradicts incentive theory. On the other hand, the task was evaluated as more attractive the more the amount of reward increased. After attitude-discrepant behavior, there was a dissonance effect if the Ss were insufficiently rewarded, and an incentive effect if the reward was sufficient or oversufficient. This result cannot be explained by any of the theories in question, but it is in accordance with recent theoretical propositions by Gerard, Conolley, and Wilhelmy.