Counterattitudinal Information Research Articles

Attitudinal Entailment and Resistance to Change

Summary An examination has been made of the relationship between resistance to attitude change and attitudinal entailment, which is the extent to which a particular attitude is related to other attitudes and beliefs. Male and female college students (n = 144) estimated either entailment, psycho-logic (the unique series of syllogisms necessary for an attitudinal conclusion), or neither of these two concerning three hypothetical people with opinions on different issues. The Ss then did or did not (change manipulation) estimate how these people would react to counterattitudinal information. The rating scales completed at the end of the experiment showed that increasing entailment increased resistance to change both concerning predictions about the hypothetical people and, more importantly, concerning the Ss' own attitudes. Increasing psycho-logic or neither entailment nor psychologic did not increase resistance to change (all p's < .05). This pattern held for all three issues (hypothetical people). These res...