Conway and Ross Had Students Participate in a Useless Study

Conway and Ross had students participate in a useless study skills workshop for three weeks. At the end of the workshop the students' performance in their class work had not improved from what it had been at the start of the program. These students experienced a high level of dissonance. Conway and Ross found that participants reduced their dissonance by:

A) adjusting their self-concept downward so that failure in the program was consistent.
B) misremembering their original starting skill level as lower than it actually had been.
C) misremembering their instructors as being more warm and caring than they actually had been.
D) derogating their instructors, the program, and even the experimenters.