The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group.

“In some contexts, for example, a person is likely to compute how hard she has worked to get something, and then use the output of that computation to infer how much she values it (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Bem, 1972; Gerard & Mathewsen, 1966).”

“Similarly, when humans put great effort into a task and the rewards are small, they may adjust the value they place on the reward to justify their effort, a phenomenon known as severity of initiation or justification of effort (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Gerard & Mathewson, 1966).”

“Therefore, the enhanced bonding and cooperation that we observed emerged from the experience of pain rather than from the experience of pain for the group (i.e., which would increase the symbolic value of group membership; Aronson & Mills, 1959; Olivola & Shafir, 2013).”

“…has long established that when we endure particular initiation rituals or experience discomfort to join, we are then more inclined to exaggerate the benefits of group membership and to intensify our sense of commitment as a means of establishing that we belong to the group (Aronson & Mills, 1959).”

“…difficult to join such communities—for example, by requiring a series of actions such as a greater number of clicks to gain membership—might increase the impact of “liking,” akin to research suggesting that effort can lead to greater liking (Aronson and Mills 1959; Norton, Mochon, and Ariely 2012).”

“…exciting (Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959), by measuring preferences toward appliances after obliging participants to choose between two attractive options to receive as a gift (Brehm, 1956), or by assessing interest in a study group after undergoing an uncomfortable initiation (Aronson & Mills, 1959).”

“Similarly, increased task difficulty can result in subjects rating the task itself as more interesting, meaningful and valuable (e.g. Aronson & Mills 1959; Gerard & Mathewson 1966; Rosenfeld et al. 1984).”

“Could they have wanted the cookie more, for example, because they had to go through more steps to get it (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Cooper, 1980)?”

“In one classic demonstration of this effect, Aronson and Mills (1959) found that people who undertook a “severe” initiation as part of joining a reading group rated the group more highly than people who had not done so.”

“Initiations can have many purposes, such as building commitment to the group (via dissonance reduction—see Aronson & Mills, 1959), teaching newcomers to depend on and obey full members, allowing full members who had similar initiations to seek their ‘revenge’, strengthening the group’s cohesion,…”

“…work is also clear from individuals’ enhanced evaluations for organizations and items after they have invested their own effort (e.g., Aronson and Mills 1959; Kim and Labroo 2011; Kivetz and Simonson 2002; Nielsen and Escalas 2010; Norton, Mochon, and Ariely 2012), especially in the context of…”

“For example, if a person experiences unpleasantness during their initiation into a group, that person will increase their liking of that group to justify this unpleasantness (Aronson and Mills, 1959); thus, the effort of joining the group is justified by valuing the membership higher, and consistency is restored.”

“…Carlsmith (1959) and Aronson and Carlsmith (1963) among many others), the free choice paradigm (e.g. Brehm (1963) and Egan et al. (2010)), effort-justification (Aronson and Mills (1959)), belief disconfirmation (Festinger et al. (1956)), and the Benjamin Franklin effect (Jecker and Landy (1969)).”

“…Luo b, Yun Xu a,*, Merrill Warkentin c, Choon Ling Sia d a School of Economic Information Engineering, Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, Chengdu, China b Anderson School of Management, University of New Mexico, USA c College of Business, Mississippi State University, USA d…”

“On the other hand, other previous literatures revealed that humans prefer conditioned rewards that are earned with greater effort [8].”

“The model notices that pain, in the context of community, forges social solidarity (Aronson & Mills, 1959 ).”

“People like to justify effort that they expend (Aronson & Mills, 1959), which might lead respondents to attribute behavior changes to the effects of a movie they had voluntarily seen (traveling a fair distance in some cases, for example, from St. Andrews).”

“To prevent its arousal, individuals may justify their effort by elaborating the important reasons for putting in the effort (Aronson & Mills, 1959).”

“The same mechanism of unconscious selfjustificatory reasoning is at play in other well-known effects, such as effort justification (Aronson and Mills 1959) and counterattitudinal essay writing.”

““Off-color” humor (e.g., scatological, sexual, and bigoted jokes) may also increase commitment to a group through a process akin to the “initiation” effect (Aronson & Mills, 1959).”

“In line with the principle of effort justification, when individuals invest high rather than low effort in a task, they will prefer its outcomes (e.g., Aronson and Mills 1959; Beatty and Smith 1987; Kivets and Simonson 2002).”

“In a study by Aronson and Mills (1959), participants who went through a severe (though not violent) initiation to join a group rated the group as more attractive than those who went through a mild initiation or no initiation at all.”

“Cognitive dissonance theory even explains this phenomenon as effort justification (see Aronson & Mills, 1959 ); employees will like what they have to work hard for.”

“For the sample scenario it will be assumed that the study which is being explained is the experiment on the effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group by Aronson and Mills (1959).”

“A classic example is the justification of effort effect where individuals appraise events more positively after there was an associated cost (Aronson & Mills, 1959; Festinger, 1957).”

“Most celebrated laboratory experiments in social psychology were produced around this period (e.g., Aronson & Mills, 1959; Darley & Latané, 1968; Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Milgram, 1963; Schachter & Singer, 1962), using a highly staged, emotion-provoking situation created in a research…”

“For example, those who suffer a severe initiation to join a new club are more attracted and committed to their new membership than those who experience a pedestrian initiation (Aronson & Mills, 1959).”

“Still others ascribe cost-induced commitment to “cognitive dissonance,” “effort justification,” or other non-rational mechanisms (Aronson and Mills, 1959; Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959).”

“A classic study by Gerard and Mathewson (1966), extending on an original paradigm by Aronson and Mills (1959), demonstrated how pain may be used to enhance the value of group membership.”

“Indeed, the fact that people would grow to like something they suffered through (Aronson & Mills, 1959) or submit to an authority’s commands even if it meant harming another person (Milgram, 1963) sparked broad interest because the findings were counterintuitive.”

“In each of the major “insufficient justification” paradigms (e.g., Festinger & Carlsmith, 1959; Aronson & Mills, 1959; Aronson & Carlsmith, 1963), for instance, the clear intent of the investigators, evident even in the way that they described their studies, was to convince readers that there was…”

“Thus when reading the experimental report provided by Festinger and Carlsmith (1959) and related experiments performed by Festinger’s students (e.g., Aronson and Mills, 1959), it is striking how much space is spent describing the elaborate experimental procedure, and how little attention is paid to…”

“…object or activity than severe threats (Aronson & Carlsmith, 1963), high effort produces more liking of what it is that one worked to achieve than low effort (Aronson & Mills, 1959), and low credible sources produce greater agreement than high credible sources (Cooper, Darley, & Henderson, 1974).”

“An often cited exception is Aronson and Mills’ (1959) classic study on group initiations, which demonstrated that the relative severity of initiation experiences influenced how positively individuals rated their group, with more severe experiences leading to increased liking. The level of severity was manipulated in A…”

“Stepping outside of common sense, consider the phenomenon of effort justification [Aronson and Mills 1959].”

“…preference for high over low status group members (Jost, Pelham, & Carvallo, 2002), decreased support for programs aimed at helping the disadvantaged (Wakslak, Jost, Tyler, & Chen, 2007), and a depressed sense of entitlement among members of disadvantaged groups (Blanton, George, & Crocker, 2001).”

“These are situations in which one’s efforts fail to produce a desired outcome or produce an outcome that fails to correspond to expectation (Aronson & Mills, 1959).”

“As a result, the consumer will not only expect to like but also actually like the product more and increase his or her expenditure.”

“Theoretically, harsh initiations arouse dissonance in individuals who engage in activities that violate conceptions of the self (Aronson & Mills, 1959).”

“They can attempt to justify their added effort (Aronson & Mills, 1959) by giving greater value to the outcome that follows greater effort than to the outcome that follows lesser effort.”

“See also Festinger, Riecken, and Schachter, 1956; Brehm, 1956; Gilovich, Medvec, and Chen, 1995; Aronson and Mills, 1959; Gerard and Mathewson, 1966.).”

“This pattern of results would appear to rule out an interpretation of the change in standard data in terms of some effort-justification effect (Aronson & Mills, 1959).”

“Numerous studies (Aronson and Mills, 1959; Cardozo, 1965; Deci and Ryan, 1985) concluded that if the job itself does not provide fulfillment of managers’ intrinsic needs to be competent and effective, then they are likely to feel less job satisfaction.”

“…needs (Lewin, 1935), persistence was explained as accessibility of information regarding unfinished tasks (Zeigarnik, 1927), reactance to obstacles (Wright & Brehm, 1989), an effort justification mechanism (Aronson & Mills, 1959), or a type of internal, controllable attribution (Weiner, 1985).”

“Many researchers have suggested or implied that hazing ordeals increase group solidarity, (e.g., Aronson & Mills, 1959), establish dominance over newcomers (e.g., Keating et al., 2005), or allow for the selection of committed members (e.g., Vigil, 1996).”

“Current Opinion in Psychology 2017, 18:73–78 such as fraternity pledges who suffered the most during ‘hazing’ rites becoming the most enthusiastic supporters of the Greek system [21].”

“For example, partners who believe that they did more of the work of relationship initiation may come to feel especially committed to their relationship, as would be predicted by a cognitive dissonance framework on justifying effort (e.g., Aronson & Mills, 1959).”