The open-mindedness of the counterattitudinal role player

Abstract

Subjects first expressed their own position on whether college education should be general (liberal arts) or specialized (career preparatory), then were led to expect that they would write essays supporting one or the other of these positions, next judged the validity of a standard set of statements representing both views, and last again expressed their opinions on the issue. Validity judgments indicated that subjects tended strongly to accept arguments supporting their own position and reject opposing ones when expecting to defend their own position, but accepted nearly equal numbers of arguments on both sides when expecting to advocate the opposing position. Final opinion judgments were influenced in the direction of the assigned position even though the role playing task was not performed. It was concluded that the effectiveness of role playing in inducing opinion change may be due in large part to its success in getting subjects to evaluate information opposing their own position in unbiased fashion.