When Social Support Fails

Abstract

An extension of the motivational assumptions of the heuristic model and the elaboration likelihood model of attitude change to counter attitudinal advocacy was tested. In a series of studies on the role of social support in attitude change following counter attitudinal advocacy, Stroebe and Diehl (1981) demonstrated that social support reduced attitude change only under conditions favorable to the arousal of dissonance. Under low choice or minimal consequences, social support was associated with an increase in attitude change. The present article suggests an interpretation of these findings in terms of motivational influences on levels of processing: Subjects engage in the cognitive effort of self-justification only when motivated to do so because of responsibility for a negative act. In the absence of such responsibility, subjects use the behavior of others (i.e., social support) merely as a cue for their opinion judgment. This was tested in an experiment that manipulated attitude similarity between subject and confederate in addition to social support and severity of consequences. A three-factor interaction on attitude change was obtained that was consistent with the differential processing hypothesis. Whereas under severe consequences attitude change was in line with dissonance predictions, a pattern of change consistent with balance theory was observed under minimal consequences. Implications of these findings for dissonance and conformity research are discussed.