Effects of attitude change on components of attitude representations

Abstract

Current theories of attitude change through induced compliance emphasize the importance of personal responsibility and aversive arousal. The current research attempted to explicate cognitive dissonance and self-perception theory by examining the cognitive processes that occur when attitudes change through induced compliance. The current paper failed to demonstrate consistent changes in the attitude representation. Attitude Representation Theory (ART) posits that attitude representations are composed of five elements: exemplars, characteristics, actions, emotions, and subjective norms. Experiment 1 attempted to detect change in the action component when personal responsibility was emphasized in an induced compliance model. Experiment 2 attempted to detect change in the emotion component when aversive arousal was manipulated in an induced compliance model. The reported studies were the first to test whether the underlying attitude representation associated with the attitude object changes after attitude change through induced compliance. Possible explanations for the inconsistent results, and possibilities for future research are discussed.