Influence of Authority on Attitude Change due to Vicarious Dissonance

Recent research has suggested that watching others behave in an inconsistent or inappropriate manner can cause dissonance, particularly when one identified with the person behaving inappropriately (Norton, Cooper, Monin, & Hogg, 2003). To examine the differences is vicarious dissonance on attitude change, undergraduate students (N = 123) participated in an experiment, which consisted of a pre and post 24-item dissonance-relevant test (Elliot & Devine, 1988), to measure affect change, the participate was asked to write about either a friend or teacher they respected most, a pre and post Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale (Aron, Aron, & Smollan, 1992) 7-point Likert scale used to measure perceived closeness between individuals and to serve as the manipulation of dissonance, a prewritten story that participates were asked to read about a person behaving inappropriately towards another student. Depending on which condition participates had to fill out the initials of either their most respected teacher or friend in the story causing the participate to read about their friend or teacher behaving in this inappropriate way. A factorial analysis of variance indicated that there was a significant difference when participates witnessed teachers behaving inconsistent rather than friends when reporting IOS scores ( F (1,118) = 12.967, p \u3c .0001)