Abstract
This article investigated the effects of perceived consensus on attitude change under forced compliance, testing the assumption that high perceived consensus maintains positive self-view against self-threat. While it is known that those who experience cognitive dissonance change their attitudes, those who can restore their positive self-view (e.g. through self-affirmation, self-evaluation maintenance strategies) show less attitude change. Given these findings, we recognized the degree of attitude change as an indicator of whether one restores his/her positive self-view or not. Participants were asked to write a counter-attitudinal essay. Afterward, their perceived attitude consensus was manipulated by providing them (or not) with information inducing consensus. Pre/post measurements of their attitudes were taken before and after the experiment. Those who were provided high consensus information showed significantly less attitude change, and this effect was pronounced when the information was related to dissonance than unrelated. These results imply that high perceived consensus functions to maintain positive self-view against self-threat, although these effects differed by the relevance of the information to the threats.
