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Those paid only $1 for their lie (and hence needed to reduce their dissonance about what they had told their peer) rated the task as relatively enjoyable.V This process can be seen in numerous areas of everyday life. People who freely choose an occupation that offers low pay for difficult work (think of schoolteachers) or uncertain rewards in a field where talent is no guarantee of success (think of artists, musicians, novelists) feel compelled to justify or rationalize their choice. Although they may continue to grumble about the low pay or the life of uncertainty, they also tell us how much they love their work and how fulfilling it is, and why other careers would have been unsatisfactory. Many people have noted a parallel in the experience of parenting. Raising a child inevitably involves difficult moments and continuing challenges—sleep deprivation, pronounced menu restriction, endless chauffeuring, and later, as John Updike put it, “the odorous, clamorous throng of dermatological disasters” who come to woo one’s daughters. But parents very often say that raising a child is the most gratifying experience of their lives. Might the very price parents pay to raise a child be one of the reasons they say it’s so rewarding? A dissonance theorist would certainly think so. Support for the idea comes from the fact that in previous eras, when children were thought of as valuable contributors to a family’s economic well-being, relations between parents and children were less affectionate than they are today. As one of Tom’s former students, Richard Eibach of the University of Waterloo, put it, “Children’s emotional value began to be culturally idealized just as their economic value to families declined.”23 That trend, of course, is just what dissonance theory would predict.
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Thomas Gilovich (The Wisest One in the Room: How You Can Benefit from Social Psychology's Most Powerful Insights)