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Two experiments were conducted to determine whether cognitive dissonance is accompanied by physiological arousal. In Experiment 1, a standard induced compliance paradigm was replicated and was found to produce the expected pattern of attitude change. In Experiment 2, physiological recordings were obtained within the same paradigm. Subjects who wrote counterattitudinal essays under high-choice conditions displayed significantly more nonspecific skin conductance responses than other subjects, but they did not change their attitudes. The results are interpreted as support for viewing dissonance as an arousal process. The results are also interpreted as indicating that the subjects misattributed their arousal to the physiological recording device. The significance of the findings for dissonance theory, misattribution phenomena, and social psychophysiological research methods is discussed.
Croyle et al. (Sat,) studied this question.