In 1959 Stanford Professors Leon Festinger and Merrill Carlsmith published the results of an experiment they conducted with 72 undergraduate students as subjects. Their paper, Cognitive consequences of forced compliance, appeared in The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. By 1959 Festinger’s work in Social and Cognitive Psychology had already revolutionized the field. Prior to Festinger both theoretical and experimental psychology were dominated by Behaviorists who insisted that both human and animal behavior was driven by positive and negative reinforcement of learned behaviors. First in his Social Comparison Theory, and later in his work on Cognitive Dissonance, Festinger established that much of human behavior could not be explained by simple mechanisms of reinforcement and instead that people constructed complex mental models to help them navigate the challenges of living in dynamic social environments.
In his seminal 1957 book introducing Cognitive Dissonance, Festinger explained that people suffer psychological discomfort when confronted with information that conflicts with their existing beliefs, and that while we might suppose “rational” people would seek additional information to determine the truth behind conflicting information, that was by no means the only or even the most often chosen response. Instead, they could seek out information to confirm their existing beliefs, avoid sources that voice alternatives and associate only with others that share their views. These strategies can lead to persistence of beliefs that have been objectively discredited and to social conflicts among groups that have hardened their beliefs around inconsistent views. This persistence of beliefs, particularly among fringe cultists and conspiracy theorists, is what most people associate with the term “Cognitive Dissonance” if they know it at all. It is easy to use the theory to “other” people with whom we disagree, itself an example of Cognitive Dissonance at work. We rarely recognize these sorts of compensating responses in our own thought, or think of them as part of the way normal rational people engage the world, although it is essential to organize our understanding of the world through some lens of fixed belief, and this makes us all susceptible to similar cognitive errors and biases.
Festinger and Carlsmith’s 1959 experiment explored a different source of psychological discomfort resulting from Cognitive Dissonance that arose when it was the person’s own actions that were in conflict with their beliefs. We all like to think of ourselves as rational – taking purposeful actions for well-founded reasons. Yet, for a variety of reasons, we all do things that cannot be reconciled with our beliefs, values and rational self-interest. Festinger and Carlsmith constructed an experiment where subjects were induced to act in ways they could not satisfactorily explain even to themselves, and uncovered a subconscious accounting system that reduced cognitive dissonance in these cases by reshaping what we remember and how we interact with our environment in ways that have profound but poorly understood consequences for ourselves as individuals and as a society.
Festinger and Carlsmith Dissonance Study
The experiment itself was fairly simple if somewhat odd. Each subject was asked to spend an hour at some mind numbingly boring task, turning knobs, filling and unfilling a rack of spools, all to no evident purpose. When they had finished, they were asked to rate the experience in terms of how interesting and rewarding they found it. However, that was only the setup for the experiment. As they prepared to leave each subject was asked, as a favor to the experimenters, to tell an incoming subject that they had enjoyed the task and found it worthwhile (generally contrary to what they had just said in their own assessment). Subjects who were asked to lie to an incoming subject were divided into two groups. One group was given a stipend of $20 for their continuing participation, the other only $1. A control group was not asked to speak to another subject. Some weeks later all participants were asked to repeat their assessment of the experiment. Behaviorist models predicted that the group paid $20 would form a favorable assessment by association and subsequently rate the experiment as more pleasurable when surveyed the second time, but the reverse was the case. Subjects paid $20 rated the experiment as even more tedious than they had originally, while those who only got a dollar were significantly more likely to report it was interesting and rewarding, bringing their own memory into agreement with what they told others. It was not simply that subjects were troubled by having lied, that was true of both groups. What Festinger and Carlsmith claimed was that the subjects that got $20 were happy to reconcile their lie with the explanation that they had been paid to do so. Indeed, that they were well compensated reinforced their belief that the task was tedious and they were lying about it. Conversely the $1 payment was not enough to justify lying for the subjects who received that reward and they had to reconcile their behavior by changing their memory to lessen the lie – they mentally balanced accounts by changing their perception of their own experience or by ascribing some unknown social or scientific value to the experiment.
The significance of this finding is not immediately evident, but if the terms are reframed as a voluntary sacrifice of an individual’s self-interest or values leading to increased support or attachment to an idea, cause or individual this can be seen as a key mechanism in our social lives, responsible in no small part for who we love and who and what we support. Commonplaces about love assert that it cannot be bought, that we love people who hurt us and dismiss people who are good to us. All of those follow from this experiment. When we accept or downplay physical or emotional abuse and neglect, we must mentally balance those decisions from an account that reinforces our attachment to the abuser. Conversely when we ourselves sacrifice money, time or our own preferences to bring joy or comfort to someone else we strengthen our emotional bond to that person. The subject of our kindness on the other hand may see our efforts as the subjects paid $20 viewed the money, as transactional payments to balance our undesirable presence.
On the surface, there is not a lot of love in Titus Andronicus, either the play or the character. Titus disregards the feelings of Tamora for her son, of Lavinia and Bassianus for each other. There is a lot of sacrifice though. Titus has given his life and 21 of his 25 sons to the cause of Rome. For Titus, the play makes clear, Rome is embodied in its institutions and culture, especially its literature and system of justice. When another son disobeys the new Emperor’s command and enables Bassianus to flee with Lavinia, Titus kills him out of hand, with apparently no regrets except that the son had brought dishonor on his family. Titus’ life of sacrifice has forged a commitment to Rome that transcends all other considerations.

Tamora has no attachment at all to Rome. She rejects the sacrifice of her son Alarbus to seal the peace and end the war (a sacrifice that reenacts the founding of Rome as described by Virgil). If she had accepted the sacrifice of her son under the calculus of Festinger and Carlsmith she would have begun the process of accepting Roman rule and institutions. Her violent rejection and determination to revenge instead drives the plot of the play.
Finally, Saturninus is a narcissist who has never sacrificed anything for anyone. He demands his “right” to the throne be accepted and threatens to overturn the institutions of Rome to get his way. He acts peremptorily in the matter of Bassianus’ death, condemning Titus’s sons without a trial or even a chance to tell their story. As an autocrat and narcissist, he shows the darkest side of Festinger and Carlsmith’s finding, the way abusive people can manipulate and establish loyalty not despite, but because of their self-centered behavior and world view.
It is measure of Shakespeare’s genius that in his first published play he could explore so thoroughly a psychological concept that would not be established for another 365 years. It is a testament to his identification of the key forces of political and social conflict that in doing so he wrote the most perceptive analysis of the current political situation in the United States, in which a committed institutionalist whose life has been shaped by sacrifice and service to the country and his sons, Joe Biden, contends with an entitled narcissist who expresses nothing but contempt for the country’s core institutions. Even more presciently, Shakespeare centers the conflict in Titus around a failure of moral education rooted in changing standards and media that has an equally deep resonance with our modern struggle to maintain social cohesion and a shared concept of truth in the face of social media and global disinformation.
Really fascinating connection. And so well said: "Even more presciently, Shakespeare centers the conflict in Titus around a failure of moral education rooted in changing standards and media that has an equally deep resonance with our modern struggle to maintain social cohesion and a shared concept of truth in the face of social media and global disinformation." 👏👏