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Dissonance and self-perception analyses of "forced compliance": when two theories make competing predictions.

Dissonance theory and self-perception theory offer radically different explanations of the observed phenomena in the "forced-compliance" situation. The present study was designed to test the relative predictive merits of these two theories. Using a typical dissonance paradigm, the extremity of the initial attitude and justification for commitment to a discrepant act were manipulated. Results strongly supported the dissonance explanation that increasing the extremity of the initial attitude would enhance subsequent attitude change. Other dissonance predictions were supported as well, while the self-perception predictions received little support. The conclusion was reached that the dissonance analysis is more appropriate for explaining the effects of incentive and attitudediscrepancy manipulations in the forced-compliance paradigm. Also, another study was proposed to further test the relative merits of the competing predictions offered by the two theories. In a recent article on the salience of premanipulation attitudes, Bern and McConnell (1970) interpreted their data as supporting self-perception theory. They acknowledged, however, that their results were not inconsistent with a dissonance theory interpretation and concluded that it seems unlikely that a "crucial" experiment for discriminating between dissonance and self-perception theory will ever be executed since the two theories appear to make identical empirical predictions. However, it is precisely the role of the initial attitudes, which is the focus of the present study, that does suggest a possible "crucial" experiment. The two theories clearly disagree over the effect of the extremity of initial attitude on attitude change that occurs following discrepant behavior in the "forcedcompliance" situation. The dissonance-self-perception controversy