ABSTRACT
Certainly the numerous laboratory experiments we have examined have a plethora of implications for the worlds of buying and selling, politics, religion and psychotherapy. In fact, it is probably a short leap from the laboratory to the matter of dissonance reduction in naturally occurring settings. The leap seems short because the experimental research has shown that behavior, and opinions in particular, of a political or religious nature can be influenced substantially by the dissonance process. Unless naturally occurring conditions are unsuitable, in the sense of not meeting assumptions for application of the theory, there is every reason to think that dissonance phenomena should be readily observable in any context. The only real difficulty with carrying the theory into the applied or naturalistic realm has to do with the question of confounding of variables, which can be averted in the laboratory.
