Source: Peter Mende-Siedlecki & Jay Van Bavel—New York University

A host of research in psychology suggests that feelings of psychological arousal may be relatively ambiguous, and under certain circumstances, can lead us to make inaccurate conclusions about our own mental states. Much of this work flows from seminal research conducted by Stanley Schacter and and Jerome Singer. If someone experiences arousal and does not have an obvious, appropriate explanation, they may attempt to explain their arousal in terms of other aspects of the situation or social context.

For example, in one classic study, participants were told they were receiving a drug called “Suproxin,” in an attempt to test their vision.¹ In reality, they received shots of epinephrine, which typically increases feelings of psychological arousal. While some participants were told that the drug would have side effects similar to epinephrine, others were not informed of the side effects, others were misinformed, and others received a placebo with no arousing side effects. Participants then interacted with a confederate, who was either behaving in a euphoric or an angry manner. The authors observed that participants who had no explanation for their feelings of arousal (e.g., the uninformed condition) were most susceptible to the confederates. In other words, these participants took on the confederates’ emotion (either euphoria or anger) most strongly. 

A subsequent study generalized this effect to the domain of interpersonal attraction in a natural setting.² Researchers had male participants meet an attractive female experimenter by walking across either a high, narrow suspension bridge (high arousal), or a lower, more stable bridge (low arousal). After the participants completed a questionnaire in which they were asked to describe an ambiguous picture, the experimenter provided them with her phone number, which they were instructed to call if they had any further questions. Notably, the men who walked across the arousing suspension bridge provided descriptions with more sexual content, and they were more likely to call the experimenter after the study. The authors concluded that these men misattributed their psychological arousal arising from the bridge-crossing to the interaction with the female experimenter, and subsequently interpreted their arousal as a sign of attraction towards her.

Zanna and Cooper (1974)³ applied these principles to the study of cognitive dissonance. They predicted that people who experience cognitive dissonance, but are able to attribute their psychological arousal towards some other, external influence, would be less likely to change their attitudes about a topic, compared to people who lack a source of external explanation. This work follows in the tradition of earlier research on cognitive dissonance by Leon Festinger in 1962, suggesting that dissonance itself is a psychologically arousing phenomenon, which can be experienced as discomfort or tension.⁴