Effects of commitment and certainty upon interest in supporting information.

A field experiment was conducted to test hypotheses derived from a theory concerning interest in information about the relative merits of alternative actions. After college men stated a position on an issue, they indicated their interest in reading articles favoring each side of the issue and also rated how certain they were their position was best. Some were told their position would be publicized, others that it would be kept completely private. In accordance with the hypotheses, when they were publicly committed to a position, the less certain they were it was the best position the more they preferred information supporting the position; when they were not committed, the more certain they were the more they preferred supporting information (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)