Coming to Like What We Suffer For

Like I've said before, I'm a transfer student from Texas A&M. What you might not know is that I was a proud member of the Fighting Texas Aggie Cadet Corps, a hop and skip away from going to a military academy without the benefit of a tier 1 education. While I was in the Corps, I definitely experienced the effects of cognitive dissonance, a theory which states that when our actions and attitudes don't line up, we feel psychological tension just like hunger and are motivated to reduce it (Festinger, 1957). One of the ways to reduce cognitive dissonance, especially since our past behaviors can't be changed, is to adjust our attitudes to bring them in line with our behaviors thus resolving that tension. A study by Aronson and Mills (1959) supported that one way we do this is by effort justification, or changing our attitude to justify the effort we put into it. Therefore, we like what we suffer for no matter what the reality is.

While we were watching the video of the Marines being pinned with their gold wing pins, I remembered one of my experiences before. Obviously not as bad as having a pin being pins into my chest, but it involved some blood. Band members in the corps have to earn two sets of "brass" which we wear on our collars. Until we earn these brass, we wear two "AMU" brass on each collar which, among other things, clearing labels us as freshman, or fish in the Corps, not a good position to be in (our first names are actually changed to fish (with a lowercase f) and we have no first names until sophomore year). By earning the brass, we earn our place. Because we are in the band, "corps brass" (what the rest of the Corps wears) isn't as important as the "band lyre" which is actually what we will wear the rest of the four years. In way, the band has it worse because we have to earn both our place in the corps and in the band. We earn our lyres all first semester and they are given to us at the A&M vs. UT game on Thanksgiving. To earn our corps brass, we undergo a process called "Junior Hell Week" or "Junior Focus Week" for the parents.
Normally only the sophomores get on the fish's case about everything we do, and juniors only get upset when we do something really bad. During Junior Hell Week, they act like the sophomores, with the added bonus that when they make us do "corrective physical training" they don't have to do it with us like the sophomores. So not only do we do "corrective physical training" every weekday for at least an hour and a half (with a 2 hour Saturday session thrown in), but it's a harder work out than anything we've done before.
The instance in particular that I was reminded of was when we went to the park on campus (it's not hazing if they do it where other people can see, except no one is around to see at 5:30 in the morning). During the course of the workout, we did monkey bars over and over and over. So much that the skin on the more callous part of my palms torn back and left nice little flaps of skin for dirt to get caught under when we immediately went to do push-ups on ground afterward. I tried to wash them in the water fountain when we were given a water break, but we were too rushed to do much good. Plus then it was right back in the dirt. After our workout, we ran back to get into uniform for morning formation, but changing into class uniform from pt uniform takes enough time. I only had time to wash my hands with soap and stick bandages on. After breakfast, I cared for my hands as much as I could, but with all of the activity, they took a long time to heal.
The point in all of this, is at the time that it happened, I loved the Corps because I chose this for myself. I was putting so much into it and sacrificing so much for it, I had to really really like it justify my behavior because of cognitive dissonance. To this day, I say that the Corps wasn't that bad, and I'm glad I did it. But kinda like the people at Jonestown, I don't know what the Cause was. Sure I have some generic lessons I learned, but if you ask me why I did it, I probably would never tell you the same thing twice.
Sorry, for the long blog, but writing it has been soothing. I also gained 30 pounds almost immediately after leaving the corps because I had gotten quite used to eating whatever I wanted without any effect. My diet struggle while adjusting to the demands of Southwestern's academics is another cognitive dissonance story maybe for a test question like we had on the last test (wink at Dr. G.).
Tune in next week for some fascinating stories about obedience. :).

Aronson, E., & Mills, J. (1959). The effect of severity of initiation on liking for a group. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 59, 177-181.

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