Attitude change as a function of felt competence and threat to attitudinal freedom

Abstract

An experiment was performed with 141 male college students to test the effects of two variables on the generation of negative attitude change. About one half of the subjects were led to believe that they were competent to deal with a certain issue; the others were led to believe that they were relatively incompetent. The competence variable was cross-cut by a two-level manipulation of threat to attitudinal freedom. Among competent subjects the high threat communication produced a significant negative change, whereas the low threat communication produced a negligible positive change. For relatively incompetent subjects there was an average positive change, and the threat variable had no significant effect.