Zimbardo, P. G., Cohen, A. R., Weisenberg, M., Dworkin, L., & Firestone, I. (1966). Control of pain motivation by cognitive dissonance. Science, 151(3707), 217-219.

Responses by humans to painful electric shocks are significantly modified at subjective, behavioral, and physiological levels by verbal manipulations of degree of choice and justification for further exposure to the aversive stimuli. Pain perception, learning, and galvanic skin resistance are altered under these conditions of “cognitive dissonance,” as they are by reductions in voltage intensity. …

Jost, J. T., Pelham, B. W., Sheldon, O., & Ni Sullivan, B. (2003). Social inequality and the reduction of ideological dissonance on behalf of the system: …

According to system justification theory, people are motivated to preserve the belief that existing social arrangements are fair, legitimate, justifiable, and necessary. The strongest form of this hypothesis, which draws on the logic of cognitive dissonance theory, holds that people who are most disadvantaged by the status quo would have the greatest psychological need to …

Zanna, M. P., & Cooper, J. (1974). Dissonance and the pill: An attribution approach to studying the arousal properties of dissonance. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29(5), 703-709.

Tested the notion that dissonance has arousal properties in a 2 * 3 design with 77 male college freshmen. 3 groups of Ss were induced to write counterattitudinal essays under either high- or low-choice conditions. Group 1 was led to believe that a pill, which they had just taken in the context of a separate …