Compare methods

	Free-Choice Dissonance Paradigm	Induced Compliance Paradigm
Field	Social Psychology	Social Psychology
Family	Process / pipeline	Process / pipeline
Year of origin	1956	1959
Originator	Jack Brehm	Leon Festinger & James Carlsmith
Type	Experimental paradigm for post-decisional dissonance	Experimental paradigm for cognitive dissonance
Seminal source	Brehm, J. W. (1956). Postdecision changes in the desirability of alternatives. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 52(3), 384-389.	Festinger, L., & Carlsmith, J. M. (1959). Cognitive consequences of forced compliance. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 58(2), 203-210.
Aliases	Free-Choice Paradigm, Post-Decisional Dissonance Paradigm, Spreading of Alternatives Paradigm	Forced Compliance Paradigm, Counter-attitudinal Advocacy Paradigm, Festinger-Carlsmith Paradigm
Related	3	3
Summary	The free-choice paradigm, introduced by Jack Brehm in 1956, measures post-decisional dissonance through the phenomenon of spreading of alternatives. Participants first rate the desirability of a set of items, then choose between two options that they had rated as roughly equally attractive, and finally re-rate all the items. Because the chosen option has some unattractive features and the rejected option has some attractive ones, a difficult choice between similar alternatives creates dissonance; participants reduce it by enhancing their evaluation of the chosen option and devaluing the rejected one. This 'spreading' of the two alternatives' desirability after the decision is the paradigm's signature measure and a key demonstration that choices not only reflect preferences but also shape them. The paradigm became a standard tool for studying decision-induced attitude change, alongside the induced compliance procedure.	The induced (forced) compliance paradigm, introduced by Festinger and Carlsmith in 1959, is the classic experimental test of cognitive dissonance theory. Participants are led to perform a counter-attitudinal act -- typically telling another person that a boring task was enjoyable -- under either low or high justification (in the original, paid one dollar versus twenty dollars). Dissonance theory predicts the counterintuitive result that those paid less change their private attitudes more, coming to actually believe the task was enjoyable, because a small incentive provides insufficient external justification for the lie, leaving them to reduce the resulting discomfort by aligning their attitude with their behavior. Festinger and Carlsmith found exactly this inverse relationship between incentive and attitude change, providing striking support for dissonance theory and overturning reinforcement-based predictions that larger rewards produce more attitude change.