The Stanford Experiment - 1959
Leon Festinger and James Carlsmith

Would you lie for a dollar?

In this classic experiment conducted at Stanford University, men were recruited to participate in an unknown study. The men assigned the monotonous and boring task of sorting spools. The experimenter would then convince each subject to lie to waiting potential female subjects about how much fun sorting spools was, and that they should help. The men were paid either $1 or $20 to convince these females that this boring, monotonous task was in fact exciting! (Festinger and Carlsmith, 1959) . Most behavioral theories (i.e. reinforcement theories) would predict that the more a male participant was paid to lie to the female subject, the more that male subject would come to like the actual boring task (after all, yes the work was boring, but they were getting paid $20 to recruit unsuspecting help, right?).