The Use of the Forced Compliance Paradigm in Modifying Sex Role Attitudes and Its Relation to Feedback, Sex Role Orientation and Perceptual Differentiation

A study sought to determine whether use of the forced compliance paradigm could be used in teacher education classrooms to influence teachers' tendency to perpetuate sex role stereotypes. Two hundred college students were randomly placed in 1 of 3 experimental groups. All students completed the Attitudes Towards Women Scale as a pretest, posttest, and post-posttest; the Personality Attributes Questionnaire measuring sex role orientations; and the Group Embedded Figures Test, measuring perceptual differentiations. At 1-week intervals, two groups wrote three short essays that espoused non-sexist positions. One group received feedback on their essays. While the three groups were similar in their initial attitudes towards women, their sex role orientations, and their perceptual differentiations, subjects in the two groups which wrote essays reflected a significantly more liberal attitude toward women than subjects who did not write essays. This attitude change was not maintained on the post-posttest. Those who wrote essays but did not receive feedback were significantly more liberal than the control group, an attitude that persisted on the post-posttest. In this study, feedback did not promote attitude change. Counterattitudinal advocacy is one means of reducing sex role stereotypes in the teacher education classroom. Further research should explore the longevity of this attitude change and its relation to feedback and individual differences. (Author/LP)