JOCRK.ZL 01” GIPERIMEST4L SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY 3, 221-229 (1967) Change in Attractiveness of Forbidden Toys as a Function of Severity of Threat .~LBERT PEPITONE, CLARK MCCAULEY, AND PEIRCE HAMMOND University of Pennsylvania l<oys were threatened with loss of a valuable (Severe threat) 01 has r:~luablr (Mild threat) gift if they played with the sccond- ranked of fivr attractive toys. -“\To boy was observed to play with the toy during the esprrimentcr’s absence. Rankings of the toys Iwforc and after the temptation period show that Mild subjects lower thr forbidden t,oy’s attractiveness (in line with the disso- nnncc lurdiction) and Severe suhjerts raise its attractiveness (not ~n~,dicttd by dissonance). Latency and duration of play with the critical toy after rrmoval of the llrohibition support, the interpret,a- tion that, internalization of the prohibition was greater for subjects mildly threatened. An alt,ernative to dissonance theory is proposed which can csplnin both the increase and the decrease of the for- Ijidden toy’s attractiveness. There is evidence that children who are prohibited from playing with an attractive toy by a mild threat of punishment delivered by the experi- menter devalue the toy more than do children who arc prohibited by a severe threat of punishment (Aronson and Carlsmith, 1963). This finding is given a dissonance interpretation. Thus, a child who desists on account of a severe threat feels fully justified in doing so, whereas a child who desists on the basis of a mild threat feels that there is insufficient justifica- tion for doing so. Theoretically, the mildly threatened child lowers the attractiveness of the forbidden toy in an attempt to resolve the incon- sistency between facing the attractive toy and not playing with it. The derivation relating the magnitude of punishment to the attractivc- ness of toys is of obvious theoretical and practical relevance to the problem of t,he internalization of parental and societal values. The Aron- son and Carlsmith findings suggest that, beyond the amount of threat necessary to restrain the child from performing certain actions, the desir- ability of these actions is inversely related to the degree of threat con- nected to them. If, for example, a parent wants to prevent his child from taking up cigarettes, he should threaten him with as mild a punishment as will restrain him from smoking. According to the dissonance interpreta- 221 0 1967 bs Academic Press Inc.