Forgetting as an Impression Management Strategy in the Forced-Compliance Situation

Abstract

Summary One of the major contentions of the self-perception analysis of the forced compliance situation is that individuals are unaware of their pre-experimental attitudes and come to see their final attitudes, passively inferred from self-observation of counterattitudinal behavior, as being identical with their original ones. In a study testing this proposition, Bem and McConnell found that Ss showed a large recall error for initial attitudes following counterattitudinal behavior. The present experiment offers an alternative impression management interpretation of this “recall error” phenomenon. Male and female undergraduates (N = 49) pretested by experimenter A were then induced to write a counterattitudinal essay by either experimenter A or experimenter B and were subsequently asked to provide their true attitudes regarding the critical issue and to recall their initial attitudes by either A or B. Thus, ABA, AAB, and ABB conditions were created. As predicted by impression management theory, Ss in the ABB condition manifested the greatest amount of “forgetting.”