When Strangers Disagree: Expressive Response Styles and Attitude Change

In an experiment involving students at a small liberal arts college, 26 dyads who either strongly agreed or strongly disagreed on an important value (eg, death penalty attitudes) performed a cooperative task that allowed discovery of their agreement or disagreement. Expressive response styles of the individuals, as well as impressions of their partners, attitude change, & the dyad's unitary or divided approach to the task were observed & coded. As predicted, it was found that disagreeing dyads showed significantly more variability than agreeing dyads in the use of negative response styles & a greater frequency of negative dominant responses. Partner impressions were favorable in both conditions, but disagreeing dyads rated their partners as less open-minded, suggesting awareness of the value difference. Although the task did not require consensus on the value issue, disagreeing dyads evidenced significantly more depolarization of attitude from pre- to posttest. Findings have implications for the development of nonthreatening ways to mitigate strong value differences. 17 References. Adapted from the source document.