The effect of improvisation, incentive, and word encoding on attitude change

Includes bibliographical references (pages 37-38)The present study expands the empirical support for a bias scanning interpretation of the counter-attitudinal literature. It was hypothesized that high improvisational subjects under a large incentive and high word encoding condition would change their attitude more in the counter attitudinal advocate than low improvisation subjects under a small incentive and low word encoding condition. Sixty-four undergraduates enrolled in introductory psychology courses at the California State University at Northridge served as subjects in order to fulfill an experimental participation requirement. In a 2 x 2 x 2 factorial design, (1) subjects were given 4 or 2 experimental units to write a counter-attitudinal essay, (2) subjects were given the opportunity to improvise or were prevented from improvising arguments to be used in their essays, and (3) subjects were told to encode high or low intense adjectives into the body of their essay. The results of the study support the Janis and King, and Elms and Janis study which demonstrated that the amount of improvisation and the amount of incentive are crucial variables in modifying attitudes. The results illustrate the importance of the bias scanning mechanism as a necessary construct to account for self-persuasion during a role-playing task