Recent research has demonstrated that primary drives such as hunger, thirst, and pain can be affected by inductions of dissonance. The purpose of the present experiment was to determine whether an acquired drive, desire for a cigarette, could be similarly modified. 26 Ss were divided into two equal groups of heavy smokers. One group of Ss was paid $1.50 for 6 hr. of deprivation whereas the other group was not. It was hypothesized that highly dissonant Ss would show less drive-relevant behavior than low-dissonant Ss after deprivation. The results, though generally in the predicted direction, were not significant.
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