What does being initiated severely into a group do? The role of rewards
Kamau replicates the Aronson and Mills experiment on severe initiation and adds a role for rewards. Seventy participants underwent either a severe or a mild initiation, and about half then received an extrinsic reward for simply completing the task, in order to vary the amount of dissonance. Initiation severity and reward condition showed significant, noncrossing interactions. A reward led to higher group identity than none, which supports the group socialisation model of Levine and Moreland. A severe initiation did not lead to more group identity.
Kamau replicates the Aronson and Mills experiment on severe initiation and adds a role for rewards. Seventy participants underwent either a severe or a mild initiation, and about half then received an extrinsic reward for simply completing the task, in order to vary the amount of dissonance. Initiation severity and reward condition showed significant, noncrossing interactions. A reward led to higher group identity than none, which supports the group socialisation model of Levine and Moreland. A severe initiation did not lead to more group identity.
Written from the abstract as shown on the OpenAlex record, read 2026-11-04.
What our sources record
Recorded when this source was checked, figures included, with page references and quotation marks removed.
Kamau, C. (2013). What does being initiated severely into a group do? The role of rewards. International Journal of Psychology, 48(3), 399-406. doi:10.1080/00207594.2012.663957.