Tested the proposition that successful dissonance reduction tends to be irreversible by presenting consonant information just before or just after a dissonance-arousing situation. 71 kindergarteners were forbidden from playing with an attractive toy, by a mild or severe threat. Orthogonally, they were given a social consensus justification for obedience, either before or after the temptation period or never. Without the consensual justification, mild-threat Ss derogated the forbidden toy more than severe-threat Ss (the standard dissonance result). If the justification came before the temptation, mild-threat Ss did not derogate the toy, but when justification followed temptation, derogation was as high as with no justification. Results support the irreversibility hypothesis. (25 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved)