EFFECTS OF MAGNITUDE AND SCHEDULE OF REWARD FOR COUNTERATTITUDINAL ADVOCACY ON SUBSEQUENT ATTITUDE CHANGE.

This experiment was designed to remove certain methodological ambiguities and to test, in addition to the effect of different reward magnitudes, the effect of different schedules of reward for counterattitudinal advocacy on subsequent attitude change. Subjects, whose pretreatment attitude score reflected a favorable attitude toward marijuana, were induced to write arguments against marijuana for either a low or a high reward, dispensed under either a continuous or a variable ratio schedule of reinforcement. Differences between pre- and posttreatment attitude scores indicated that, in general, reward magnitude had little or no effect on attitude change; whereas the schedule of reward did affect attitude change significantly. Variable ratio reinforcement subjects evidenced more attitude change than the continuous reinforcement subjects. These findings suggested that the reinforcement schedule variable might be a more appropriate variable to study than the reward magnitude variable in evaluating the views of both dissonance and reward-conflict theories' regarding the effect of reward for counterattitudinal advocacy on attitude change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]