A physiological effect of cognitive dissonance under stress and deprivation.

Abstract

An experiment and a partial replication were conducted to relate the change of motivation due to dissonance reduction and commitment to physiological changes. The experimental technique was based on food deprivation studies by Brehm which showed that already deprived individuals who committed themselves to further fasting under conditions of low reward decreased their self-estimates of hunger, while the reverse was true for those given high rewards. The data suggest that a person who has convinced himself that he is not so hungry tends to respond physiologically as if he were not hungry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2006 APA, all rights reserved)