Role playing, issue importance, and attitude change

Keywords:
social behavior, social psychology, role, playing, issue, importance, attitude, change, cognitive, dissonance, incentive, social, judgment, theories, passive, exposure
Abstract
Based on their different conceptualizations of the processes evoked by role playing and issue importance in the induction of attitude change, cognitive dissonance, incentive, and social judgment theories make competing predictions on the relative effectiveness of role playing and passive exposure as a function of issue importance. The experiment utilized a 3 x 2 design having control, passive-exposure, and role-playing conditions with low and high levels of issue importance. Planned comparisons of means in the cells expected to register maximal and minimal changes in attitudes under each theory provided little support for the dissonance position and fairly credible, though somewhat overlapping, evidence for incentive and social judgment theories. Other comparisons indicated that improvised role playing produced more change than did passive exposure only for the high-importance issue.
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Published
1981-08-01
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Articles
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