The Glorified Secretary

Toward the end of my junior year in high school, I had come to the decision to leave the high school band (marching and concert band).  After my injury the previous summer, I had to step down as section leader.  I was also unable to march the entire fall semester and unable to attend many of the practices we had for our spring concert competition, which mean that I was unable to participate with the band in our competitions for the entire year.  Throughout the year, going to band class became a chore because I was always on the sideline, hence my decision to not register for the class in my senior year.  However, by some magical force, my director persuaded me to stay in the band and become a student aide for the director. 

During that summer and the fall my senior year, I was dubbed the “band assistant”.  I was in charge of making over +1000 copies of our marching music and of our show designs, as well as putting together and stapling the packets with our show designs in order.  In addition, to making various copies, I took attendance, called parents when members did not show up for practice in the summer, filed/found music pieces and member documents, and I was one of the people who was in charge of using the bottle of spray paint to mark the members’ marching spots on our practice lot.  What is important to note about this situation, is that I was an assistant for a class that I really had no desire to be in (at least at the beginning).  In other words, my attitude towards this class was that it was not worth my time anymore. I wanted to march, but I couldn’t, so what was the point of staying in the class.  Yet, I did stay in the class and become a secretary, which is a far cry from marching on a football field.

This contrast between how I felt about this band class and deciding to remain in the class created the perfect condition for cognitive dissonance to arise. According to Festinger’s Cognitive Dissonance Theory (1957), inconsistencies between our attitudes and behaviors create unpleasant psychological and/or physiological tension that we are usually motivated to reduce by changing our attitudes.  Based on this theory, in my particular situation, I should have been motivated to change my attitude (i.e., I dislike this class) in order to justify my attitude-discrepant behavior. Put another way, because I willing decided to remain in band (despite my dislike for the class) without receiving a large incentive to do so, I had an insufficient justification for my behavior (Festinger, 1957).  Therefore, I should have been motivated to change my attitude to reduce my psychological tension that was caused by making a decision that I logically should not have made given my attitude about the matter. 

It will come as no surprise that I did in fact change my attitude about the band class. In order to justify my attitude-discrepant behavior, I convinced myself that I must really be attached to the “band family”, which wasn’t to difficult to do considering that I had spent five years in band.  I also came to love my position as band assistant because I realized that I had power and privileges that the other members did not have.  For example, even though I had to make a thousand copies by myself and lug them from the main building to the band hall, I was the only student who was allowed in the teachers’ copy room.  Furthermore, during the summer when we were marking sets, I was one of the few people who were worthy of wielding the can of spray paint.  Lastly, I was the only student allowed in the director’s office, which meant that no other student could enter unless the director or I were in there.  Given the various activities I was allowed to do that others were not, I obviously was special, and who doesn’t like feeling special, right?  

n = 674

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Festinger, L. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.