AbstractIt is argued that the standard manipulation of free choice in a forced compliance situation has fostered confusion between the two different types of choices offered to subjects, namely commitment or non‐commitment to compliance with the experimenter and choice of counter‐attitudinal activity per se. From a theoretical viewpoint, the two choices have very different implications. The former is a prerequisite to dissonance arousal; the latter may bring about consonant cognitions which reduce the dissonance ratio. Two experiments which separated these two choices confirmed the above predictions, derived from a radical conception of the dissonance theory (Beauvois and Joule, 1981, 1994). The results are inconsistent with the reinterpretation of dissonance effects in self‐perception