Misattribution of Arousal and Cognitive Dissonance

1. Participant Recruitment

1. Conduct a power analysis and recruit a sufficient number of participants and obtain informed consent from the participants.

2. Data Collection

1. Meet the participant in a common room outside of the testing room to explain the (alleged) purpose of the experiment.
   1. Describe to the participant that they’ve been "asked to come here today to participate in an experiment on memory processes " and that they will be given a drug in order to investigate its effects on short-term memory. Assure the participant that the drug is perfectly safe.
   2. Explain that the participant will complete two memory tasks—one prior to taking the drug, and one after its “total absorption.”
2. Take the participant into the testing room and explain that they will now perform the first memory task on the computer.
3. Start the task and leave the room. In this task, the participant should see 12 nonsense words on the computer screen, each displayed for a few seconds. After all 12 words have been displayed, the participant should be prompted to recall as many words as they can. Following this, the participant should be prompted to call the experimenter back into the running room.
4. Upon re-entering the room, instantiate the “drug side effect manipulation,” giving the participant a pill capsule and a glass of water.
   1. The capsule is, in reality, a placebo—containing powdered milk.
5. To manipulate the potential side effect of the pill, blind to condition, give the participant one of three drug consent forms to sign.
   1. Randomize the order of the condition-to-participant assignment ahead of time.
   2. In the arousal condition, the drug consent form should state: “This M.C. S771 capsule contains chemical elements that are more soluble than other parts of the compound. In this form of the drug these elements may produce a reaction of tenseness prior to the total absorption of the drug, 5 min after ingestion. This side effect will disappear within 30 min.”
   3. In the relaxation condition, the drug consent form should be identical, except that "tenseness" should be replaced with "relaxation."
   4. In the no-information condition, the drug consent form should only state that "the total absorption time of the drug is 30 min" and that "there are no side effects."
6. Allow the participant to sign the consent form and ingest their pill capsule.
7. Explain that the study requires 30 min to pass before the second memory task, and that the lab has another study going on, not related to memory but about opinion research, that the participant is invited to participate in.
8. Initiate the “dissonance manipulation” (two conditions: “high choice” and “low choice”), by varying the degree of decision freedom the participant has to write an essay that diverges from their own attitudes.
   1. In the “high-choice” (e.g., high dissonance) condition, the experimenter should say, "I will leave it entirely up to you to decide if you would like to participate in it, but I would be very grateful if you would.”
   2.  In the “low-choice” (e.g., low dissonance) condition, the experimenter should simply say, "During this wait, I am going to ask you to do a small task for this opinion research experiment."
9. In both conditions, explain the task as follows: “The issue of whether inflammatory speakers should be allowed to speak on a college campus often becomes a problem. The Ivy League Administrators Association is trying to formulate a standard policy on whether or not, and in what circumstances, inflammatory speakers should be allowed to speak on campus. Past experience has indicated that one of the best ways to understand what the relevant arguments are on both sides of any issue is to ask people to write essays favoring one side of the issue. Therefore, what we would like you to do is to write the strongest, the most forceful essay that you can taking the position that inflammatory speakers should be banned from college campuses.” (NOTE: Change the language depending on the university.)
   1. In the “high-choice” condition, go further and secure the participant’s verbal consent, adding after compliance, "Remember, you are under no obligation." (In the original study, all of the subjects agreed to write the essay.)
10. Give the participant 10 min to complete their essay.
11. Subsequently, collect the dependent measures.
    1. First, ask the participant to indicate how they feel "right now" on a 31-point scale with endpoints labeled calm (1) and tense (31).
    2. Next, ask the participant to describe their present feeling "about the adoption of a ban against inflammatory speakers on campus" on a 31-point scale with endpoints labeled strongly opposed (1) and strongly in favor (31).
    3. Finally, to assess the effectiveness of the decision-freedom manipulation, ask participants to indicate "how free [they] felt to decline to participate in this Ivy League Administrators research project" on a 31-point scale with endpoints labeled not free at all (1) and extremely free (31).
12. As a means of obtaining some baseline regarding these dependent measures, a separate group of control subjects were recruited in an identical way as the experimental subjects but were not exposed to the experimental procedures (e.g., neither the “drug side-effect manipulation,” nor the “dissonance manipulation”). Instead, these control subjects merely indicated their opinions on the measures described in points 7 through 9 above.
13. After the participant completes these questions, give them a full debriefing concerning the purpose and procedures of the study, with special emphasis placed on the fact that the ingested capsule was, in reality, a placebo.

3. Data Analysis

1. After running all participants, compare the amount of agreement with the proposal to adopt a ban against inflammatory speakers on campus as a function of both the degree of dissonance experienced and the side effects ascribed to the pill, via a 2 (dissonance: high choice vs. low choice) x 3 (side effects: arousal, none, relaxation) ANOVA.
2. Moreover, as a manipulation check, also compare participants self-reports of tension as a function of dissonance condition and side effects condition, via a 2 x 3 ANOVA.