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The purpose of this paper to inquire into some of the criticisms of sociologist Karl Mannheim's sociology of knowledge, as advanced by American and German scholars, and thereby to outline the different conceptions of sociology underlying these criticisms. It will be argued that Mannheim's sociology of knowledge as a conception of social science unsuccessfully tried to overcome certain epistemological and methodological problems that are still relevant and unresolved in contemporary sociology, as is shown by the relationship between "dialectical" and neo-positivistic sociology. Mannheim's thesis that thought is existentially determined and is therefore limited in its validity has provoked much opposition. In Germany, Mannheim has been criticized mainly by the so-called critical or dialectical sociology deriving from the Hegel-Marx tradition. Representatives of this school have argued that Mannheim's non-evaluative conception of ideology is an example of false consciousness on his part. Mannheim used his concept as an instrument to provide a correct attribution of ideas to the social groups that bear them, regardless of whether they are characterized as liberal, conservative, fascist. Whereas scholar Karl Marx's conception of ideology always includes a critical consideration of the concrete social conditions of ideological consciousness, Mannheim's sociology of knowledge no longer concerns itself with historical and social reality.

The author reacts to the paper "The Effect of Effort on the Attractiveness of Rewarded and Unrewarded Stimuli," by E. Aronson. Some of the experiment's subjects performed an effortful task and others a relatively effortless one. Aronson tested a hypothesis derived from L. Festinger's theory of cognitive dissonance. The author claims that Aronson's findings with regard to the effortful condition did not coincide with his cognitive dissonance prediction. There was no change in the relative attractiveness of the two colors under study.