Evidence for the role of justification

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320 HEALTH PSYCHOLOGY
behaviour and a state of cognitive dissonance to set this up. Totman’s model is illustrated
in Figure 13.2.
Evidence for the role of justification
Research has examined whether a need for justification does in fact relate to symptom
perception. Zimbardo (1969) evaluated the effects of post hoc justification on hunger
and thirst. Subjects were asked not to eat or drink for a length of time, and were divided
into two groups. Group one were offered money if they managed to abstain from eating
and drinking, providing these subjects with good justification for their behaviour. Group
two were simply asked not to eat or drink for a length of time, but were given no reason
or no incentive, and therefore had no justification. Having good justification for their
behaviour, group one were not in a state of dissonance; they were able to justify not
eating and still maintain a sense of being rational and in control. Group two had no
justification for their behaviour and were therefore in a state of high dissonance, as they
were performing a behaviour for very little reason. Therefore in order to resolve this
dissonance it was argued that group two needed to find a justification for their behaviour.
At the end of the period of abstinence all subjects were allowed to eat and drink as much
as they wished. The results showed that group two (those in high dissonance) ate and
drank less when free food was available to them than group one (those in low
dissonance).
The results were interpreted as follows. The subjects in group two, being in a state of
high dissonance, needed to find a justification for their behaviour and justified their
behaviour by believing ‘I didn’t eat because I was not hungry’. They therefore ate and
drank less when food was available. The subjects in group one, being in a state of low
dissonance, had no need to find a justification for their behaviour as they had a good
justification ‘I didn’t eat because I was paid not to’. They therefore ate more when the
Fig. 13-2 Totman’s cognitive dissonance theory of placebo effects
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