THE RELATION BETWEEN THE PROCESS OF ATTITUDE CHANGE AND THE DEGREE OF ANXIETY
1974 Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 56-68
Details
1974 Volume 14 Issue 1 Pages 56-68
The purpose of this experiment is to testify the relation between the degree of anxiety and the process of attitude change on the bases of the 5 steps on attitude change proposed by Haraoka (1970).
In order to change the attitudes of the subjects, the persuasive communications were presented and then measuring by the GSR the extent to which the subjects aroused anxiety while being exposed to the communications.
The subjects were 69 college students. First, they were asked how many times they would like to be assigned reading and translation in the English class during one semester, and then their attiudes toward the importance of English in their life were measured. The subjects were then divided into three experimental groups, all of which were exposed to the same direction of persuasive commumication that “every student should be assigned at least once in every English class. ”
The peruasive communications were orientated in the same direction but differed among the three different groups in quantity and intensity. In order to measure the degree of their anxiety, we recorded the subjects' GSRs while they were receiving the persuasive communication. Finally they were asked to fill in the same questionaires as they had been given at first, by which we recorded how many times they would like to be assigned in the English class and measured their final attitudes toward the importance of English in their life.
The results of this study can be summarized as follows:
(1) Those who were exposed to the egoinvolved communication about the attiude object showed more attiude change and anxiety than those who were exposed to the noninvolved communication.
(2) Those whose GSRs were low at first, high in the middle, and low again in the end, making a ∩ curve while being exposed to the persuasive communication, showed significantly greater attitude change, than those whose GSRs were high at first and then gradually down with the time.
(3) The results of this experiment confirmed the hypothesis of 5 steps on attitude change process proposed by Haraoka.
