Meinungsänderung durch eigenes Handeln Die Rückwirkung einstellungskonträrer Agitation

Zusammenfassung Zur Klärung der Frage, ob und unter welchen Umständen einstellungskonträre Agitation auf den Agitator zurückwirkt, wurden Gruppen- und Einzelversuche durchgeführt. Als Versuchspersonen dienten insgesamt 409 männliche und weibliche Oberschüler und Studenten. In allen Versuchen mußten die Versuchspersonen Reden erfinden und halten. Die Messung der Meinungsänderung und einiger hypothetischer Variablen wurde mit Fragebogen vorgenommen, zum Teil wurden nach den Versuchen Interviews durchgeführt.Wir erhielten folgende Hauptergebnisse: Erfinden und Vortragen von Argumenten für einen zudiktierten Standpunkt führen, unabhängig voneinander und von der im Vortrag enthaltenen Argumentation, zu einer Meinungsänderung. Ihre Richtung und ihr Ausmaß sind außerdem abhängig vom Verhältnis der zudiktierten Stellungnahme zu anderen, bereits vorhandenen psychischen Inhalten — starke Verankerung der ursprünglichen Meinung führt zur Meinungsänderung im Gegensinne der Agitation (Bumerang-Effekt) — sowie vom Grad der Willentlichkeit der Handlung: bereits die Entscheidung, einen einstellungskonträren Standpunkt nach außen zu vertreten, kann zu einer Meinungsänderung führen. Das Lernen der Argumente, die Bewertung der eigenen Leistung, des Versuchs und Versuchsleiters sowie Eigenschaften eines Themas für sich erweisen sich nicht als alleinige Bedingungen der Meinungsänderung.Diese und andere, weniger wichtige Ergebnisse werden diskutiert. Die Theorie der kognitiven Dissonanz wird als beste einheitliche Erklärungsgrundlage der empirischen Befunde angesehen.

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Summary Experiments with groups and single persons were conducted to test the effect of persuasive behaviour on the communicator. 409 male and female high-school and university students served as subjects. In all experiments the subjects had to invent and verbalize speeches contradicting their own opinion. Opinion change and some hypothetical variables were measured by questionnaires, the sessions were partially followed by interviews.Main results: Inventing or speaking of arguments in favour of an appointed opinion lead, independently of each other and of the informational content of the arguments, to opinion change the direction and magnitude of which are, in addition, dependent on the relation of the argument to previously existent mental contents (if the original opinion is strongly anchored, the persuasive behaviour results in a boomerang effect), as well as the degree of volition of the subject's persuasive behaviour. (Already the decision to defend a point of view contrary to one's own may lead to opinion change). Learning of arguments and evaluation of own achievement, of the experiment and the experimenter as well as the qualities of a topic in itself cannot be shown to be the only conditions of opinion change.These and other, less important results are discussed; the theory of cognitive dissonance is considered the best uniform explanation of these empirical results.

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Diese Arbeit wurde von der philosophischen Fakultät der Ludwig Maximilians-Universität in München als Dissertation angenommen.Die referierten Versuche wurden durch das Yale Communication and Attitude Change Programme und die Gesellschaftder Freunde der Wirtschaftshochschule Mannheim e.V. finanziell gefördert. Der Verfasser dankt den genannten Institutionen für ihre Unterstützung.     

A new approach to the generation of visual stimuli for eye-movement research

An interactive, computer-controlled, visual stimulus generator is described, suitable for both psychophysical and neurophysiological experimentation on human subjects. The system core is a wide-screen electrostatic cathode-ray tube, which can be used both as a television monitor, to display standard video pictures, and as anx-y oscilloscope, so that a bright dot can be moved around the display by electrical signals. In addition, a third working mode is provided, according to which a time-compressed video picture of limited size (fast picture) plays the role that is typical of the spot in a standard oscilloscope. Through computer-assisted time compression, the frame period of the video signal is reduced to about one tenth of its standard value. The fast picture can accordingly be driven by even the fastest eye movements, and it can be displayed as a stabilized image, or, more generally, in the altered retinal feedback condition. Moreover, as compared with a standard video picture, the fast image can be “flashed” over much shorter time periods. Since a standard input video signal is used for both standard and fast video pictures, all the image processing facilities of commercial videographic systems can be fully exploited by the proposed device.     

Whatever Happened to Culturalism: From Horney to Lacan

The American Journal of Psychoanalysis -     

Modifications of the Poggendorff effect as a function of random dot textures between the verticals

In the present research, we investigated the modification of the strength of the Poggendortf illusion as a function of different densities ofrandom dot textures failing the space between the verticals. The results ofExperiment 1 show that the illusory effect is a nonlinear function ofthe texture parameterr, the ratio of black pixels to white and black pixels, with a minimum forr=0.5, approximately, and a maximum forr=0 andr=1. The results may be interpreted by an analytical model of perceptual space dynamics, in which the effect dependson the amount of interaction between points of different light intensity. A computer simulation performed by applying the analytical model to different values ofr shows a good agreement between the predictions and the experimental data. To test the hypothesis underlying the model, a second experiment was carried out to measure the magnitude of the expansion ofthe space between the verticals as a function of the parameterr. The results are consistent with the hypothesis of the model. The overall data are discussed in terms of their implications on various theories proposed for the Poggeadorff illusion.     

Beyond belief bias: Reasoning from conceptual structures by mental models manipulation

Mental models constitute an alternative to the rule-based systems in the explanation of human reasoning (Johnson-Laird, 1983). In this paper, we claim that the concept of believability generally used to categorize content and context effects is of little use within a semantic theory. Thus, we propose the use of categories that are directly extracted from subjective relations among concepts within the reasoning problem. We demonstrate that manipulations based on this kind of categorization produce predictable patterns of responses in reasoning problems. We present two experiments to test our predictions, using conditional and syllogistic reasoning problems, and in both cases, we demonstrate the influence of conceptual knowledge not only in natural contexts, but also in experimentally created artificial contexts.     

Affect as a mediator of attributional egotism

A three-stage model of the relationships among achievement outcomes, outcome-related affect, attribution, and emotion is tested in two studies. It is suggested that success and failure elicit positive and negative affective states due to prior conditioning. These affective states then lead to an attribution process that serves to defend and enhance self-esteem. Next, emotional labels are chosen that are consistent with the affective states and the attributions. Two studies were designed to test the proposed relationships among achievement outcomes, affective states, and attributions. In the first study, subjects received information indicating that they were strongly or mildly aroused as a result of receiving outcome feedback on an achievement task. The results indicated that low arousal reduced egotistical attributions to internal factors. In the second study, subjects either succeeded or failed on an achievement task. Half of the subjects were provided with an opportunity to misattribute the arousal elicited by their outcomes to an irrelevant source. Subjects in the misattribution condition made less egotistical attributions to external factors than subjects who were given no opportunity to misattribute their arousal. The results of both studies suggest that outcome-related affect mediates the relationship between outcomes and attributions in achievement situations.     

Epistemic needs and learned helplessness

This study assesses the impact of non-specific epistemic needs—the need for structure and the fear of invalidity—on expectancy of control and performance following unsolvable problems. Subjects answered a questionnaire tapping their non-specific epistemic needs and were exposed to either no feedback or failure in unsolvable problems. Then their expectancies of control and performance were assessed. The results showed that a high need for structure was associated with a transfer of the expectancy of uncontrollability and worse performance following failure. The results are discussed in terms of Kruglanski's lay epistemic theory.     

Zur Analyse des Bumerang-Effektes

Zusammenfassung In zwei Experimenten wurde mit Hilfe unterschiedlicher sozialer Attitüden und Werthaltungen jeweils die Hypothese geprüft, daß sich Einstellungen nach einstellungskonträrer Agitation in Richtung dieser Agitation oder aber nicht und in Gegenrichtung zur Agitation ändern, je nachdem ob sie weniger oder mehr in allgemeineren Werthaltungen verankert sind. Im Rahmen einer um die Konzeption der Verankerung erweiterten Theorie der kognitiven Dissonanz können damit besser als bisher sogenannte Bumerang-Effekte bei Änderungen von Attitüden erklärt werden.

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Summary In two experiments we tested the following hypothesis concerning social attitudes and value orientations: Attitudes will be changed after counter-attitudinal agitation in the direction of this agitation or in opposite direction depending on their degree of being anchored in general value orientations. With the theory of cognitive dissonance, supplemented by the conception of anchoring, we are now able to explain better than before the so-called boomerang-effects which appear with attitude changes.