Attitude change as a function of the inducement for espousing a proattitudinal communication

Subjects read a proattitudinal communication five times in order to try to convince others of the position. They received either no pay or $7.50 for doing so. Paid subjects demonstrated significant attitude change, relative to no pay subjects, away from the position in the communication. The results were predicted using both a “change in perceived locus of causality process” and a “self-perception process”, and were contrasted with seemingly discrepant results from an earlier study by Kiesler and Sakumura. The apparent difference is mostly likely due to the fact that the induction in the present study was belief-relevant, whereas it was belief-irrelevant in the Kiesler and Sakumura study.