Between a Rock and a Hard Place: Self-Concept Regulating and Communicative Properties of Distancing Behaviors

This study investigated 2 properties of distancing behaviors - a class of deliberate and inadvertent behaviors that insulate persons from the consequences of negative self-discrepant behavior and signal that they should not be associated with that behavior. In Phase 1, high-choice Ss in a multiple audience variation of the induced compliance paradigm who read counterattitudinal essays on affirmative action in the presence of a Black woman did not show typical dissonance-induced attitude change. Phase 2 found that this absence of attitude change was significantly related to the extent to which Ss distanced themselves from their essays before reading them

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