Testing the self-perception explanation of dissonance phenomena: On the salience of premanipulation attitudes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology

A controversy has arisen over the "interpersonal simulations " used by Bern to support his contention that his self-perception theory accounts for cognitive dissonance phenomena. Specifically, the critics challenge the implication of his analysis that the premanipulation attitudes of subjects in dissonance experi-ments are not salient in their postmanipulation phenomenology. The present in-vestigation answers this challenge by demonstrating that subjects in a typical forced-compliance experiment are not only unable to recall their premanipula-tion attitudes correctly, but they actually perceive their postmanipulation atti-tudes to be identical to their premanipulation attitudes. Accordingly, they do not perceive any attitude "change. " The epistemological aspects of the inter-personal simulation methodology are also discussed. Individuals come to "know " their own attitudes and other internal states partially by inferring them from observations of their own overt behavior and the circumstances in whic