Dissonance and Importance: Attitude Change Effects of Personal Relevance and Race of the Beneficiary of a Counterattitudinal Advocacy

Abstract

The authors asked or instructed White college students to write an essay advocating a large tuition hike to increase scholarships for either students in general or Black students (yielding low or high racial symbolism, respectively) that would take effect in the near or far future (yielding high or low personal relevance, respectively). Especially when high-choice participants wrote highly compliant (i.e., unqualified) essays, attitude change was greater when the advocacy had either high (vs. low) personal relevance or high (vs. low) racial symbolism. Yet there was no attitude change when both symbolism and relevance were high. They may increase dissonance by making the dissonant elements more important and numerous. The coupling of relevance and symbolism, however, may link the attitude so strongly to personal values and self-concept that attitude change becomes untenable as a mode of dissonance reduction.

Keywords:

• attitude change
• cognitive dissonance
• prejudice