The influence of role playing on opinion change.

IN MANY everyday situations, people are induced to play social roles in which they express ideas that are not necessarily in (accord with their private convictions. That certain types of role-playing experiences can facilitate changes in personal opinions has been suggested by various impressionistic observations (e.g., Myers [8]). In recent years, psychodramatic techniques which involve role playing have been developed for use in adult education programs, leadership training, employee counseling, and psychotherapy (1, 5, 6, 7, 9). The usual procedure consists of having persons in a group play specified roles in a simulated Me situation. One of the main values of this role-playing device, according to its proponents, is that it has a corrective influence on various beliefs and attitudes which underlie chronic difficulties in human relations (cf. Maier [6]). As yet little is known about the conditions under which role playing leads to actual changes in personal opinions. The present experiment was designed to investigate the effects of one type of demand that is frequently made upon a person when he is induced to play a social role, namely, the requirement that he overtly verbalize to others various opinions which may not correspond to his inner convictions. As a preliminary step in exploring the effects of role playing, one of the present authors interviewed a group of collegiate debaters who, as members of an organized team, repeatedly were required to play a role in which they publicly expressed views that did not correspond to their personal opinions. Most of the debaters reported that they frequently ended up by accepting the conclusions which