Published online by Cambridge University Press: 29 September 2022
The train rocked back and forth as it carried me on my journey to school. I was riding a New York City subway, making my way to class at the City College of New York. I was dimly aware of the D-train stopping and starting again on a trip that I had made hundreds of times before. This time, however, I found myself not at CCNY but in midtown Manhattan, well past the college. The culprit: an article in a social psychology journal on cognitive dissonance. The authors tried to persuade me that people who expend a high degree of unpleasant effort to join a fictitious club actually like that club better than people who do not expend effort. Although the prediction seemed altogether impossible, it fit so nicely with the theory that generated it. How fascinating, how exciting, how relevant! And so, a boy from the Bronx jettisoned his would-be career as a mathematics major and became a social psychologist – or at least a social psychology wannabe.
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