Thinking is not my idea of fun. I like tasks that require little thinking once I've learned them. I usually end up deliberating about issues even when they do not affect me personally. Inconsistent thoughts cause tension which drives the person to change his attitudes so that consistency is restored. People tend to attribute their successes to their own personal qualities, and attribute their failures to external causes.
People tend to see relations between things that are actually unrelated.
The perceived similarity between helper and victim increases helping behavior. Festinger and Carlsmith persuaded students who had participated in boring study to lie to another student and say that the task was very interesting. A control group performed the boring task without trying to convince another student it was interesting. All three groups then rated how interesting and enjoyable the task was. The groups did not differ in how interesting they rated the task.