| Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools. |
The Role of Defensive Confidence in Preference for Proattitudinal Information: How Believing That One Is Strong Can Sometimes Be a Defensive Weakness
University of Florida This series of studies identified individuals who chronically believe that they can successfully defend their attitudes from external attack and investigated the consequences of this individual difference for selective exposure to attitude-incongruent information and, ultimately, attitude change. Studies 1 and 2 validated a measure of defensive confidence as an individual difference that is unidimensional, distinct from other personality measures, reliable over a 2-week interval, and organized as a trait that generalizes across various personal and social issues. Studies 3 and 4 provided evidence that defensive confidence decreases preference for proattitudinal information, therefore inducing greater reception of counterattitudinal materials. Study 5 demonstrated that people who are high in defensive confidence are more likely to change their attitudes as a result of exposure to counterattitudinal information and examined the perceptions that mediate this important phenomenon.
Key Words: attitude strength resistance personality persuasion
Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 30, No. 12,
1565-1584 (2004) This article has been cited by other articles:
|
|||||||||||||||
