ANSWER TO THE EXPERIMENTAL QUESTION

THE MOST POSITIVE GROUP WAS THE GROUP OF YOUNG MEN PAID ONLY ONE DOLLAR TO "LIE."

(What? You sold your honor for only a dollar? No way you could do that! You really thought the experiment was OK.)

THE TWENTY DOLLAR GROUP WAS STATISTICALLY EQUIVALENT TO THE CONTROL GROUP WHO WENT HOME, DIDN'T LIE, AND DIDN'T GET PAID ANYTHING.

(You had a wonderful external justification for telling that pretty girl in the waiting room how interesting the experiment was. You were paid twenty dollars, which was a lot of money in the 1950s. And it was really as dull an experiment as it got.

By the way, would the results have been the same for female participants who would have been asked to lie to a handsome male student? We don't know. Festinger and Carlsmith only used male naive participants.)

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