2006 Anes Analysis Report

Dolores Albarracín and Wei Wang Department of Psychology University of Florida History presents abundant examples that people who strongly advocate and defend a given attitudinal position often change this position, becoming “converted” to points of view that are opposite to the ones they initially held. One reason for such changes is the degree to which individuals perceive that they can defend their attitudes from attack. Ironically, this trait can make them vulnerable to attitude change (Albarracín, 2002). Presumably, people who are confident that their attitudes will survive future challenges are more willing to examine evidence that both supports and contradicts their prior attitudes. In contrast, people who doubt their defensive ability may prefer proattitudinal information over materials that challenge their prior perspectives (see also Byrne, 1961; Olson & Zanna, 1982b; for related views in other domains, see Tesser, 2001). Although denial may in many ways be relatively a primitive defense mechanism, avoiding counter-attitudinal information may preserve the attitudes of people who doubt their defensive abilities. In contrast, individuals who believe that they will effectively self-defend may willingly receive counter-attitudinal information that succeeds in changing their prior attitudes. The present research was concerned with two questions. First, we are interested in determining whether citizens’ variations in defensive confidence predict polarization of their political attitudes over time. Exposure to counter-attitudinal information may in turn produce change in a direction opposite to the initial attitudes. Although this sequence of events was demonstrated by Albarracin and Mitchell (2004) in the laboratory, it had never been demonstrated in a political context. The ANES Pilot Study presented an ideal framework for this test. During the proposal stage of the ANES Pilot Study, we proposed several items to measure defensive confidence as well as several items measuring exposure and attention to partisan information. Of the proposed items, only one could be included to measure defensive confidence, and none to measure exposure to and attention to partisan information. Despite this limitation, interesting results were obtained.