Insufficient justification

Insufficient justification is an effect studied in the discipline of social psychology. It states that people are more likely to engage in a behavior that contradicts the beliefs they hold personally when offered a smaller reward compared to a larger reward. The larger reward minimizes the cognitive dissonance generated by acting in contradiction to one's beliefs because it feels easier to justify. The theory of insufficient justification formally states that when extrinsic motivation is low, people are motivated to reduce cognitive dissonance by generating an intrinsic motivation to explain their behavior, and similarly more likely to decline a desired activity when presented with a mild threat versus a more serious threat. Insufficient justification occurs when the threat or reward is actually sufficient to get the person to engage in or to avoid a behavior, but the threat or reward is insufficient to allow the person to conclude that the situation caused the behavior.

The forbidden toy experiment

Elliot Aronson and J. Merrill Carlsmith hypothesized how people respond to punishment for doing something they enjoy. Humans comply with a very severe punishment, but it doesn't stop them from enjoying the activity and wanting to do it again. Thus, Aronson and Carlsmith thought that if they could convince the subjects that they did not like the activity that they previously enjoyed, they would be more likely to stop enjoying the activity. The experimenters would change their cognition in order to reduce dissonance. The researchers hypothesized that the opposite effect would occur for punishment.