A prankster who goes by the pseudonym of "Laszlo Thoth," one of the "scientist haters" who participated in an educational prank on a horde of Juggalos in San Francisco recently, shares this Guide to Cognitive Dissonance Theory for Insane Clown Posse fans. "It's actually a pretty good layperson's introduction to cognitive dissonance theory," he says, "with examples that most people (including juggalos) can relate to."

Update: The person who submitted this to me to post on Boing Boing doesn't have much more of a sense of humor than the Insane Clown Posse band members who confronted and threatened the Noisebridge folks at the ICP show. "Laszlo Thoth" has removed the linked-to content from Google Docs because he was offended at my re-use of the term "scientist haters" below, a reference to the ridiculous put-down the pranksters received in person from ICP. He requested that I omit the phrase, and submitted a rewrite of my blog post he'd rather see me publish, and I declined. For funny people making fun of a funny song from a funny band, I'm dismayed at the total lack of humor. Apologies for the dead link.

Perhaps the most successful use of cognitive dissonance in the history of advertising is the AOL free-hours campaign delivered on CD-ROM. The incentive to try AOL is provided in the form of a free trial period. People who try the service go through a set-up process, where they define unique e-mail addresses, screen names, and passwords, investing time and energy to get it all to work. The greater the time and energy invested during this trial period, the greater the expiration. Since the compensation to engage in this activity was minimal, the way most people alleviate the dissonance is to have positive feelings about the service – which leads to paid subscriptions.

The interesting aspect is the Point of Minimum Justification. Until that point is reached, a higher incentive has a positive effect on both behaviour and attitude, in the AOL example, leading to paid subscriptions. Beyond the point, eg. by increasing the free time or paying more, the behaviour is still influenced, but the attidude decreases. If AOL would offer a month of free internet, the target audience would just use the service for a month, and then drop it. They know there are better alternatives, but hey, as long as its free!

In the Dilbert example, by paying more to the employee, he might work more (behaviour) but stop rationalizing (attidude) – he just does it for the money.

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