Cognitive Dissonance and Impression Management Explanations for Effort Justification

When individuals expend effort for a task that turns out to be boring or trivial they often justify their effort by enhancing the ratings of the task. The present experiment attempted to differentiate between two explanations for this process of effort justification: dissonance and impression management. Subjects completed either a simple (low effort) or difficult (high effort) number-circling task for an experimenter who was either friendly and pleasant (high attractiveness) or rude and unpleasant (low attractiveness). Contrary to impression management theory, and as predicted by cognitive dissonance theory, effort justification occurred only in the presence of the unattractive experimenter.