Answer to Question 1
Answer: Counterattitudinal advocacy involves publicly stating an attitude or opinion that is at odds with our private attitudes or opinions. When we advocate something we don't really believe, dissonance is aroused, and we are motivated to reduce it. When there is sufficient external justification (e.g., we had no choice) for our counterattitudinal advocacy, we have a good explanation for our behavior, and we need not change our private attitudes. When there is not sufficient external justification, we must find internal justification, and that typically takes the form of changing our private attitudes.
Answer to Question 2
Answer: It is threatening to our self-concepts as reasonable people to work hard in pursuit of a worthless goal. To invest effort for naught arouses dissonance, and we reduce our dissonance by convincing ourselves that our goal was worthwhile. We have no external justification for our effort, so we construct an internal justification by convincing ourselves that our effort was worth it. Thus, although sometimes we invest a considerable amount of effort in pursuit of things that are important to us, other times we convince ourselvesin the interest of reducing dissonance through self-justificationthat things for which we have suffered are importantafter the fact.
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Internal and external attributions
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Age-related cross-sectional changes on a variety of cognitive tasks. Note that although both ...