Hazing and Cognitive Dissonance

eeeeeeeeeehhhhhhhhhhhh......

this is a stretch. in order to use this as an example of cognitive dissonance in the sense described (i value the group more after being hazed and humiliated because of cognitive dissonance - ie. i am increasing the value of the accomplishment to make the investment seem worthwhile) you have to deal with all the expectations, real or otherwise, that exist about the group.

first - is it still likely that i will get laid more often by being a member of this group?

well, the hazing didn't necessarily change that. i probably thought that was the case before, which is why i pledged and put up with the hazing as it was happening. so the group membership was valued highly before, and is still valued highly. if, instead, it is disproven that i will get laid more often, and if, in fact, the other group that got simply a mint for their pledge, and where everyone who pledged was accepted, got laid more often, i think i'll (rather quickly) conclude that membership in my fraternity was absolutely NOT worth the investment, and will resent myself and other members for the experience.

this seems logical, and calling it dissonance seems wrong.

but assuming that i do in fact get laid more often...
the difference might be that the hazing makes the membership feel more valuable because i was able to withstand something that others were not. some other pledges may have run away. this makes me "better" than them. therefore i have simply gained pride by surviving an ordeal that others could not. i have paid my dues. this makes the membership more "valuable" in the tangible sense that i know others can not/would not survive the initiation process.

what's the difference here between the sense one gets from working hard in academia (or any other discipline) in general?

i think probably nothing.

there will always be people who don't have to work hard but inherit lots of money and perhaps make lots of money easily from that inherited money. does that mean that it's "cognitive dissonance" at work for me to feel pride in working hard at my job and accomplishing the tasks put before me in trade for a payment i choose to accept, even if that payment is relatively miniscule compared to that received by the lazy legacy admittant with the trust fund?

(free therapy being less effective than paid therapy - you're probably ACTUALLY making the therapy more effective by paying. this again is not necessarily cognitive dissonance. it's behaviorally interesting, but fairly easily explainable by the fact that if anything is free, you know you can get it again with minimal investment later, so the importance of utilizing it immediately is lessened)

regardless of the apparent incontrovertibility of the concept (e.g. if i do get into the group, i will be more likely to CALCULATE that i am getting laid more often than others outside the group, and more than I would have outside of the group, as a result of that membership), the examples provided are lacking.

(interesting discussion towards the end regarding the overestimation of the importance of "the person" rather than "the context", especially after the previous discussion regarding evolutionary psychology and the overriding importance of genetics in determining personality and behavior, rather than the social factors at play. perhaps not a very deeply interesting comparison)

http://oyc.yale.edu/psychology/psyc-110/lecture-16