Attitude dissimulation and persuasion

Because people's true attitudes toward an object become more accessible immediately after indicating an attitude that they know to be false, we predicted that such attitude dissimulation might paradoxically cause the true attitude to have a stronger effect on subsequent judgments. In two experiments, participants were randomly assigned to express false, true, or no attitudes toward Albert Einstein. Next, in an ostensibly separate study, participants read a persuasive message describing Einstein's dislike for a particular technology and then rated their attitude toward this technology. As expected, results indicated that participants who had previously indicated false or true attitudes toward Einstein indicated more dislike for the technology than participants who had not previously expressed attitudes toward him. A second experiment replicated the effect of attitude dissimulation using a manipulation that was similar to that employed in cognitive dissonance experiments. Possible effects of falsely indicating “politically correct” attitudes are discussed