Physiological arousal, dissonance, and attitude change: Evidence for a dissonance-arousal link and a "Don't remind me" effect.

Two experiments, with 80 undergraduates, replicated and extended research by R. T. Croyle and J. Cooper (see record 1984-11595-001) indicating that cognitive dissonance involves physiological arousal. In Exp I, Ss wrote counterattitudinal essays under conditions of high or low choice and, to assess arousal effects owing to effort, with or without a list of arguments provided by the experimenter. In high-choice conditions only and regardless of effort, Ss showed both arousal (heightened galvanic skin response) and attitude change. Arousal, however, did not decline following attitude change. The more effortful task (no arguments provided) produced increased arousal but not greater attitude change. In Exp II, the opportunity to change one's attitude following a freely chosen counterattitudinal essay was manipulated. As in Exp I, arousal increased following the essay but did not decline following a postessay attitude change opportunity. When Ss were not given an attitude change opportunity, however, arousal did decline. It is suggested that if dissonance is a drive state, drive reduction typically may be accomplished through gradual cognitive change or forgetting. (47 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Misattribution of dissonance and behaviour-consistent attitude change.

Examined the prediction that people who have misattributed dissonance arousal to an external source may come to question the appropriateness of this attribution and may then be motivated to alter their attitudes. This was tested by having an experimenter discredit the plausibility of an external source after misattribution had presumably occurred. 80 female undergraduates participated in the study, with 16 of these Ss serving as controls. 64 Ss were given a pill described as having either unpleasant side effects or no side effects and then were committed to write counterattitudinal essays under high-choice conditions. Some Ss were then told that a mistake had been made and that they had actually been given the other form of the pill. As predicted, Ss who had initially been led to believe that the pill had aversive side effects but were later told that it did not manifested behavior-consistent attitude change. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissonance and humor: Evidence for the undifferentiated nature of dissonance arousal.

33 undergraduates were committed to performing a counterattitudinal behavior under conditions of high or low choice. Thereafter, the order of presentation of two potential sources of arousal was manipulated. Some Ss first watched and rated a cartoon and then completed a posttreatment attitude measure. Other Ss first completed the attitude measure and then viewed the cartoon. It was thought that the presentation of the attitude measure first would lead Ss to attribute any arousal they might be experiencing to their counterattitudinal behavior and hence to change their attitudes. Analogously, presentation of the cartoon first was predicted to foster an interpretation of any arousal as a humorous reaction to the cartoon. The attitude and humor ratings of high-choice Ss were more affected by the order manipulation than the ratings of low-choice Ss. It is suggested that the arousal created by an induced compliance manipulation may be a general and undifferentiated state that can be attributed to any plausible source. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social facilitation of marijuana intoxication: Impact of social set and pharmacological activity.

Conducted 2 experiments with a total of 120 males (mean age = 23 yr.) to determine to what extent marihuana intoxication is the result of drug effects, expectancy, social setting, or an interaction of these factors. In Exp. I, Ss 1st swallowed a placebo pill and then smoked either 2 placebo cigarettes or two marihuana cigarettes containing a total of l5 mg. D9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). The cigarettes were smoked in a setting designed to either facilitate intoxication ("up night") or interfere with it ("down night") through manipulation of S's expectancy and through modeling. Results indicate that the amount of marihuana smoked impaired cognitive functioning and was rated as more intoxicating than the placebo. Manipulations of setting and belief had no effect. In Exp. II, Ss smoked 2 cigarettes containing either placebo, 7.5 mg. THC, or l5 mg. THC. Ss who smoked placebo cigarettes 1st swallowed a pill containing either 10 or 25 mg. librium (chlordiazepoxide). Ss who smoked cigarettes containing THC received placebo pills. Smoking was done in either "up night" or "down night" contexts. Results suggest that social setting and belief interact with smaller doses of marihuana but not with large doses nor with placebo. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The roles of self-esteem and self-consciousness in the Wortman-Brehm model of reactance and learned helplessness.

Studied the conditions under which failure would enhance or inhibit subsequent task performance. Based on the theory of C. B. Wortman and J. W. Brehm (1975), it was expected that small amounts of failure would produce reactance (manifested by improved performance at a subsequent task); large amounts would lead to learned helplessness (i.e., impaired later performance). It was further expected that individual differences in self-esteem and private self-consciousness would serve as moderator variables for the effects. In Exp I, 78 college students were exposed to either a small amount or no failure before working on an anagrams task. As predicted, Ss high in self-consciousness, who showed greater reactance arousal in attitude change studies, performed better on the anagrams task than Ss low in self-consciousness in the small-failure condition, but not in the no-failure condition. In Exp II, 119 Ss were pretreated with either a small amount of failure, an extended amount of failure, or no failure before working on the task. A significant Self-Esteem by Helplessness Training interaction emerged. Low self-esteem Ss (low SEs) performed marginally better than did high SEs in the small-failure condition but significantly worse than high SEs in the extended-failure condition. Questionnaire data from Exp II were consistent with the notion that enhanced performance reflected reactance, whereas impaired performance signified helplessness. (20 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Self-persuasion and self-presentation as mediators of anticipatory attitude change.

Three experiments with 197 undergraduates determined when anticipatory attitude change occurs via self-persuasion or self-presentation and identified the implications for attitude persistence of a shift by either process. In Exp I, Ss' thoughts and attitudes were assessed while they expected either a counterattitudinal or a proattitudinal message. Ss generated thoughts and reported attitudes consistent with the direction of the anticipated message, even though their responses were anonymous. In the final 2 experiments, the publicness of Ss' attitudes was varied to examine the impact of self-presentational concerns on thoughts and attitudes. In Exp II, Ss in the private condition spontaneously generated more thoughts relevant to the anticipated counterattitudinal message than did Ss in the public condition. In Exp III, some Ss were told that the anticipated counterattitudinal message was not forthcoming. When the message was canceled in the public condition, Ss failed to show an anticipatory shift in attitude; in the private condition, however, anticipatory attitude change was obtained. It is concluded that when self-presentation concerns are manifest, temporary changes in attitude occur in response to these concerns. In contrast, when pressures to self-present are low, anticipatory changes reflect genuine shifts in attitude resulting from an active consideration of the merits of the counterattitudinal position. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Role of self-presentation and choice in cognitive dissonance under forced compliance: Necessary or sufficient causes?

In 3 experiments, 114 undergraduates performed counterattitudinal behaviors under choice or no-choice conditions in which the behaviors were public or private and anonymous. Results indicate that self-presentation and choice should be considered as sufficient but not necessary causes of cognitive dissonance. In the absence of self-presentation (private condition), manipulations of perceived choice affected attitude change. In the absence of choice, self-presentation produced attitude change. Supplementary findings suggest that the effects of choice and self-presentation on dissonance were additive and that attitude change was maintained across different audiences among Ss who believed the 2 audiences to be unrelated. The implication that neither choice nor self-presentation is necessary for the occurrence of attitude change suggests a view of cognitive dissonance as multiply determined. (15 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modifying shyness-related social behavior through symptom misattribution.

An experimental misattribution paradigm proved to be a significant intervention treatment of altering social participation among 14 dispositionally shy undergraduate women. When specific arousal symptoms previously associated with their social anxiety were misattributed to a nonpsychological source (high-frequency noise), Ss behaved as if they were not shy. Their verbal fluency and interactional assertiveness resembled that of 16 not-shy Ss given the same treatment. Moreover, their scores on these measures were significantly elevated from the low levels recorded by 15 shy controls who had been led to expect shyness-irrelevant "side effects" from their exposure to noise. A male partner (a confederate) accurately perceived whether or not Ss in the 2 control groups were shy, but he misjudged as "not shy" the shy Ss in the misattribution group. The greater enjoyment of the interaction by those in this latter group, despite high-frequency noise bombardment, was also reflected in their stronger preference for further affiliation than that shown by either comparison group. The continuously monitored heart rate data provide grounds for speculation as to the relationship of physiological arousal and behavior. However, a paradoxical placebo finding emerged when it appeared that not-shy Ss in this same misattribution condition experienced a higher level of arousal, and this anxiety-like arousal was associated with preferences for nonaffiliation. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive dissonance in an intergroup context.

42 student members of a campus group supporting Ronald Reagan in the 1980 presidential election participated in a study of the effects of group membership on dissonance reduction. In a 2?×?2 factorial design, half of the Ss were asked to write arguments contrary to their attitudes, whereas the other half were required to write such arguments. Half of the Ss were then asked to advocate a position that was counter to the attitude that defined their membership in the group. The other half produced arguments that were counter to attitudes relevant to but not definitional of group membership. It was predicted that attitude change would be used as a way to reduce dissonance only by those Ss who freely wrote arguments counter to nondefinitional attitudes. Attitude change was not possible, however, for Ss who freely produced arguments counter to a definitional attitude; these Ss were expected to misattribute their arousal to the existence of a competing out-group and to reduce their dissonance by derogating that group. Results supported these predictions. The importance of group membership in affecting attitude change is discussed. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dissonance arousal: Physiological evidence.

Two studies examined whether cognitive dissonance is accompanied by physiological arousal. In Exp I, a standard induced-compliance paradigm was replicated and found to produce the expected pattern of attitude change in 30 male undergraduates. In Exp II, physiological recordings were obtained from 30 additional male undergraduates within the same paradigm. Ss who wrote counterattitudinal essays under high-choice conditions displayed significantly more nonspecific skin conductance responses than other Ss, but they did not change their attitudes. Results support dissonance as an arousal process. Results also indicate that the Ss misattributed their arousal to the physiological recording device. Findings are discussed in terms of dissonance theory, misattribution phenomena, and social psychophysiological research methods. (38 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conformity and counterattitudinal behavior: The effect of social support on attitude change.

Tested dissonance and attribution theory predictions regarding the effect of social support on attitude change due to counterattitudinal advocacy in 4 studies. Social support among 67 college students who were given course credit was manipulated in a counterattitudinal essay-writing situation by the compliance or noncompliance of a confederate. Contrary to predictions, Ss showed a more positive attitude toward the counterattitudinal issue after the confederate's compliance rather than noncompliance, regardless of choice. Exp II manipulated social support and severity of consequences under consistently high choice with 47 paid male university students. Data support dissonance and attribution predictions under high consequences and replicate the findings of Exp I under low consequences. Exp III, conducted with 53 paid high school students, varied social support and choice under high consequences and showed that noncompliance led to more change than compliance under high choice and the reverse effect under low choice. Exp IV manipulated social support among 67 paid female university students and the confederate's stated attitude in a 2-factor design (under consistently high choice and high consequences), resulting in main effects for both factors. Ss changed more under noncompliance than compliance and with an attitudinally dissimilar rather than similar confederate. Results suggest a functional equivalence of social support as social reward and the financial rewards used in previous studies. (17 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modification of placebo effects by means of drugs: Effects of aspirin and placebos on self-rated moods.

Describes a model experiment which measured changes in self-rated mood in 4 treatment groups with 20 male undergraduates each. Ss in each group received either aspirin or lactose, plus a placebo liquid described to Ss as being either a "tranquilizer" or an "energizer." Aspirin had no significant main effect on mood, but did cause significant changes in the placebo effects, adding dimensions of friendly intoxication to the tranquilizer effect and of asocial sobriety to the energizer effect. These results, plus analogous results in other studies, argue that Ss' expectancies concerning treatment effects should be manipulated in any study of potentially psychoactive drugs. (28 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Resolving the relationships between placebos, misattribution, and insomnia: An individual-differences perspective.

Hypothesized that insomniacs who are more attentive to internal bodily processes would be more apt to yield a reverse placebo effect (i.e., go to sleep faster when given an "arousal" placebo and vice versa), whereas those attentive to external stimuli would be more likely to be directly influenced by the suggested effects of the placebo. 30 insomniac college students completed trait measures of private body consciousness, private self-consciousness, and self-esteem. Ss were given placebos to take before bedtime and were told that the capsules had arousing or relaxing side effects. As predicted, Ss with high private body consciousness exhibited a stronger reverse placebo effect than did Ss low on this dimension. Subsequent analyses revealed that this effect was entirely attributable to the low- rather than to the high-self-esteem Ss. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Attitude change and justification for compliance.

"This experiment has tentatively illustrated some of the processes involved in creating and reducing psychological dissonance and the implications of such dissonance for attitude change in compliance situations. It was hypothesized that increased justification for taking an opinion position discrepant from one's private opinion would lead to decreased dissonance and therefore decreased attitude change toward the discrepant position. Ss were asked to write an essay taking a stand opposite to their initial opinion on a given issue. One group of Ss was then given a number of reasons for compliance with the request (high justification condition). For another group (low justification condition) Ss were given no detailed justification for writing the essay. Attitude change was determined from a postexperimental questionnaire… . Attitude change tended to be greater where manipulated (and perceived) justification was least." From Psyc Abstracts 36:01:1GD76C. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Autonomic arousal, interpersonal climate, and orality.

Electrodermal responses in 34 male undergraduates who gave at least 4 oral-dependent Rorschach responses or no more than 2 such responses were assessed both before and after Ss had either a warm, friendly interaction or a cold, unfriendly interaction with a confederate. Following a 10-min interaction, there was a significant 3-way interaction (Period?×?Condition?×?Orality) in tonic conductance. Analysis produced one simple effect: Highly oral Ss responded differentially to warm or cold treatment by the confederate. Three groups—nonorals in either condition and orals in the cold condition—increased in physiological arousal over time. Only the highly oral Ss interacting with the warm confederate showed no such increase in arousal, presumably because the presence of a friendly other person inhibits physiological activation. (25 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conceptual ability, response interference, and arousal in withdrawn and active schizophrenics.

Conducted 2 studies to assess 225 female schizophrenics' conceptual organization under conditions of low and high arousal and low and high response interference. Ss were classified as either active or withdrawn on Venables's Activity-Withdrawal scale. Arousal was manipulated by having Ss maintain grip pressure on a dynamometer. Besides revealing less ability of schizophrenics to benefit from increases in conceptual organization of input, results reveal important differences between active and withdrawn schizophrenics. In addition to conceptual organization deficiencies, withdrawns exhibited response interference problems under standard conditions and showed trends indicating further deterioration of both conceptual organization and response interference with increased arousal. In contrast, actives showed neither severe response interference nor increased deterioration with increased arousal. One aspect of actives' performance improved with heightened arousal, suggesting that these Ss function normally at a suboptimal level of arousal. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Neurochemical and behavioral factors in the development of tolerance to anorectics.

Four tests, with 60 male Sprague-Dawley rats, investigated tolerance and cross-tolerance among several anorectic drugs. In the 1st test, Ss given milk shortly after intraperitoneal injection of 3 mg/kg dextroamphetamine sulfate (controls) developed tolerance to amphetamine anorexia, but Ss given milk when amphetamine's anorectic effects had worn off (experimental Ss) did not develop tolerance in spite of equal drug exposure. In the 2nd test, controls were tolerant to 2 mg/kg apomorphine HCL, a drug with a neurochemical action related to amphetamine. No tolerance to 2 mg/kg apomorphine was shown by experimental Ss. Both groups were tolerant to 1.25 mg/kg apomorphine. The final test replicated part of the 1st test, demonstrating that the control group was tolerant to amphetamine but the experimental group was not. In addition, neither group was tolerant to anorexia produced by 5 mg/kg fenfluramine, a drug whose action is neurochemically different from amphetamine and apomorphine. It appears that both learning and specific neurochemical mechanisms are involved in the development of tolerance to anorectic drugs. (41 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Freedom of choice and behavioral change.

Used a 3?×?2 (Treatment?×?Population) factorial design with repeated measures (pretest/posttest) to evaluate the effects of perceived freedom of choice on behavior change in a therapy analog study. 90 Ss were assigned to 3 groups that varied in the amount of perceived choice given to Ss in determining the type of training procedure used for speed-reading enhancement. Experimental conditions were crossed with 2 populations of Ss to examine 2 levels of perceived freedom. Half of the Ss were psychology undergraduates required to participate in psychology experiments, and the remaining half were volunteers. The main dependent variable was the amount of change in reading rate. A marginally significant increase in reading speed was obtained by volunteers in comparison to psychology student participants. Ss who perceived that they were given a choice in training procedures improved significantly more in reading speed than Ss who lost the freedom of choice. No changes in reading comprehension were noted. Findings are discussed in terms of the relationship between freedom of choice and performance in a behavior change program. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Motivational biases in causal attributions of arousal.

Two studies hypothesized that the desire to seek ambiguity as to the cause of a particular state of arousal will increase if either that arousal state or its source is potentially threatening to self-esteem. In Exp I, 22 high- and 21 low-sex-guilt male undergraduates (as determined by the Mosher Forced Choice Sex Guilt Inventory) were shown either an arousing erotic movie or a nonarousing movie; in Exp II, 28 high- and 28 low-guilt females were led to believe that they were very aroused by pictures of nude men. Ambiguity was introduced into both situations by means of a bogus, nonthreatening, alternative arousal source (a placebo). Results indicate that high-guilt Ss were actively involved in the process of determining which source was arousing them. More importantly, this involvement appeared to be motivated by ego-defensiveness. In both experiments, when high-guilt Ss were confronted by an erotic stimulus, they chose to attribute arousal to the bogus source—and thus create ambiguity as to the actual cause and nature of their arousal—more than did low-guilt Ss. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relationship between levels of arousal and responsiveness among schizophrenic and normal subjects.

Hypothesized that tonic arousal level, as measured by the basal skin resistance level, would be an important parameter influencing psychophysiological responsiveness to discrete stimuli. 32 schizophrenic Ss and 32 normal Ss were divided into subgroups on the basis of their resting skin resistance levels. Ss were then given 30 mild, discrete auditory stimuli, and their psychogalvanic responsiveness was assessed. The parameter of tonic arousal level accounted for the majority of variability, while psychiatric status was a negligible factor. In general, Ss manifesting high tonic arousal responded more rapidly, with more GSRs to discrete tone stimuli, with more nonspecific GSRs, and with greater amplitude of change than did Ss with low tonic arousal. Results of other studies are discussed within the framework of these findings, and it is suggested that controlling for this parameter may serve to reduce heterogenity of results in future research. (46 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)