Date of Award

6-2011

Document Type

Open Access

Degree Name

Bachelor of Science

Department

Psychology

First Advisor

Daniel Burns

Second Advisor

Joshua Hart

Language

English

Keywords

cognitive dissonance, misinformation, inclusion, condition

Abstract

The current study was interested in examining the relationship between cognitive dissonance and susceptibility to misinformation. Participants were exposed to two emotional images; subsequently, they composed a counterattitudinal essay concerned with generating arguments in support of a tuition increase. Participants were either given a set of objective questions concerning the images or a set of misleading questions. All participants were then administered final questionnaires that contained both misleading and non-leading questions. This study hypothesized that participants in the dissonance-induced condition were likely to be more susceptible to the inclusion of misinformation during the final recall task. Findings indicated that participants in the dissonance-induced condition did not make more errors than those in the non-dissonance condition.

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