Numerical support,information processing and attitude change

In two experiments we studied the prediction that majority support induces stronger convergent processing than minority support for a persuasive message, the more so when recipients are explicitly forced to pay attention to the source's point of view; this in turn affects the amount of attitude change on related issues. Convergent processing is the systematic elaboration on the sources position, but with a stronger focus on verification and justification rather than falsification. In Experiment 1 it was found that numerical support is related to information processing as predicted: The greater the support, the more convergent the processing. Experiment 2 replicated this result, and furthermore confirmed our expectations regarding attitude change: The more convergent processing occurs, the less subjects change their attitude on related issues.     

Casualties of war and sunk costs: Implications for attitude change and persuasion

The purpose of the present research was to gain greater insight into how people's support for an ongoing war might be influenced by providing information about recent casualties of war. On intuitive grounds, one might expect that such information might often decrease support for the war, especially when the war in question is relatively unpopular. However, research and theory on the “sunk cost effect” suggests, somewhat paradoxically, that highlighting such losses could actually increase, not decrease, support for the war, as driven by the goal to avoid wasting valuable resources. Across two experiments (one focusing on the war in Iraq, another focusing on the war in Afghanistan), we found that the effects of the war casualty information on attitudes were moderated by a recent use and activation of the relevant “don't waste” goal, which had been previously primed in a non-political context. The implications of our findings for theory and research on attitude change, as well as the judgment and decision making area, are discussed.     

The role of vivid information in fear appeals and attitude change

Fear-arousing persuasive communications frequently incorporate so many types of information that the results can be difficult to interpret. R. Nisbett and L. Ross' (1980, Human inference: Strategies and shortcomings of social judgment, Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall) analysis of informational vividness offers an attractive conceptual framework that identifies and predicts the effects of several types of information that have been confounded with other variables in fear appeal studies. Thus, the first purpose of this factorial experiment was to investigate the persuasive impact of three types of vivid information frequently used in fear appeals: emotional interest, concreteness, and proximity. It was predicted that vivid information would be more persuasive than pallid information. The results disclosed that emotionally interesting information was highly effective in changing intentions to seek protection from the depicted health threat. Also, the impact of information of high emotional interest and greater temporal and spatial proximity was enhanced with the passage of time, but information of low emotional interest and proximity diminished over time. Additional findings indicated that concrete, specific information was memorable and affected beliefs. The data rejected the hypothesis that memorial availability mediated the effects of vivid information. Implications for designing and strengthening fear appeals were discussed.     

Aging and susceptibility to attitude change

Two hypotheses about the relation between age and susceptibility to attitude change were tested. The impressionable years hypothesis proposes that individuals are highly susceptible to attitude change during late adolescence and early adulthood and that susceptibility drops precipitously immediately thereafter and remains low throughout the rest of the life cycle. The increasing persistence hypothesis proposes that people become gradually more resistant to change throughout their lives. Structural equation models were applied to data from the 1956-1960, 1972-1976, and 1980 National Election Panel Studies in order to estimate the stability of political attitudes and unreliability in measures of them. The results support the impressionable years hypothesis and disconfirm the increasing persistence hypothesis. A decrease in the over-time consistency of attitude reports among 66- to 83-year-olds was found to be due to increased random measurement error in their reports, not to increased attitude change.     

Locus of control and voluntary heart-rate change.

Investigated the effects of locus of control on voluntary control of heart-rate change. The 32 subjects were randomly assigned to one of two heart-rate change groups: Increase or decrease. The groups were counterbalanced for locus of control and sex. No heart-rate feedback was provided to subjects, and all subjects performed the appropriate task for two sessions. Results indicated that during the initial session, internals were better able to increase their heart-rates than externals; the externals were better able to decrease their heart-rates internals. This association, however, diminished to nonsignificance in the second session.     

Openness to attitude change as a function of temporal perspective

Three studies investigated the impact of temporal perspective on people's dominant social goals and explored the implications of these goals for openness to attitude change. Participants who perceived time as limited expressed social preferences in accordance with emotion-regulation goals (Study 1), were more prone to modify their attitude to bring it into line with the attitude of an anticipated social partner (Study 2), and were more likely to go along with peer consensus opinion on a campus issue (Study 3) than were participants who perceived time as expansive. These studies demonstrate that perception of time plays a vital role in motivating social goals within the persuasion context.     

Internalization of conflict and attitude change

In a 2 × 2 × 2 design, eighty smokers were exposed to an anti-smoking appeal attributed either to an expert source (superior status) or a minority source (inferior status). Subjects were either allowed or not to smoke during the experiment. In addition subjects had to memorize part of the appeal and a recall task either followed after reading the appeal (completed task) or not (uncompleted task). The results show that the expert source produces more attitude change than the minority when the tension induced by the source is weakened (either by the opportunity to smoke or task completion). In contrast the minority has more impact when subjects are not able to smoke or when the task is not completed, which is to say when the conflict has been internalized. An explanation of these effects is offered in terms of the more defensive forms of resistance involved with respect to sources of superior status compared to more assertive forms with respect to minorities.     

The paradoxical effect of a juvenile code change in Virginia

The impact of a new state juvenile code on the processing of youth through one court locale was examined using an interrupted time-series design. The intent of the new code was to limit penetration of youth into the juvenile justice system. This locale, however, showed an increased number of youth going through to court despite no increase in the number of youth arrested. The importance of this paradoxical effect for local juvenile justice planners and court officials is discussed briefly. This paper is based on research that was presented at the annual meeting of the American Psychological Association, Montreal, Quebec, 1980.     

Salience of initial attitude,magnitude of incentive,and attitude change in a forced compliance paradigm

To examine the application of interpersonal simulation findings to cognitive dissonance and incentive theories of attitude change in the forced compliance paradigm, 60 Ss were paid 50 cents or $2.50 to write counterattitudinal essays with salient or nonsalient initial attitudes. Findings showed that the larger incentive yielded greater change for salient pretest attitudes but that the smaller incentive led to more change of nonsalient pretest attitudes. Measures of error in attitude recall and a correlational analysis between pretest, posttest, and recalled attitudes were also consistent with Bem's (1967) hypothesis of isomorphism between the attributions of Ss and observers. It is proposed that remaining simulation data reported in the cognitive dissonance/self-perception controversy may identify additional parameters of attitude changes in forced compliance experiments.     

Psychopathology subtypes and symptom correlates among former prisoners of war

Psychopathology and symptom patterns were studied in 60 former prisoners-of-war (POWs) by administering standardized tests including the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory (MMPI), an adjustment problem checklist, and a structured clinical interview. Most POWs showed marked psychological impairment, but modal profile analysis identified two prototypic MMPI patterns, which differed in pervasiveness and type of psychopathology. Profile subtypes were defined by unique clusters of clinical symptoms and differed in confinement stress severity. The typology of symptoms argues against a homogeneous conceptualization of stress-induced disorders and suggests the need for definition of the severity and subtype of stress phenomena and individual difference factors in responding to trauma.     

Understanding implicit and explicit attitude change: a systems of reasoning analysis

There is considerable controversy about how to conceptualize implicit and explicit attitudes, reflecting substantial speculation about the mechanisms involved in implicit and explicit attitude formation and change. To investigate this issue, the current work examines the processes by which new attitudes are formed and changed and how these attitudes predict behavior. Five experiments support a systems of reasoning approach to implicit and explicit attitude change. Specifically, explicit attitudes were shaped in a manner consistent with fast-changing processes, were affected by explicit processing goals, and uniquely predicted more deliberate behavioral intentions. Conversely, implicit attitudes reflected an associative system characterized by a slower process of repeated pairings between an attitude object and related evaluations, were unaffected by explicit processing goals, uniquely predicted spontaneous behaviors, and were exclusively affected by associative information about the attitude object that was not available for higher order cognition.     

Self-generated attitude change: A person by situation analysis of attitude polarization and attenuation

The potential moderating effects of differences in the need for cognition on the attitude polarization process were explored. Based on putative schematabased differences in information processing, it was predicted that an increased opportunity for thought would result in (a) more attitude polarization for low need for cognition persons than for high need for cognition persons and (b) more attitude attenuation for high need for cognition persons than for low need for cognition persons. Participants completed the Need for Cognition scale and were given either little or ample time to think about issues toward which they previously held moderate attitudes. Attitudes were reassessed following thought about the issues. The results were consistent with the predicted moderating effects of individual differences in the need for cognition on thought-induced attitude polarization. Implications of and alternative explanations for the findings are discussed.     

Adolescent correlates of occupational stability and change

Using Super's Career Pattern Study data, this study investigated the high-school age correlates of occupational stability and change among 148 men between the ages of 25 to 35. Only high-school grades were positively, though weakly, associated with both occupational stability and the degree of vocational progress that resulted from changing fields. In contrast to previous, shorter-term prediction studies, the lack of consistent relationships between high-school age correlates and adult occupational stability and change was probably due to the overriding effects of intervening events and experiences occurring between the high-school years and adulthood.