THE EFFECTS OF ANTICIPATED DEBATE AND COMMITMENT ON THE POLARIZATION OF AUDIENCE OPINION

revived because of their renewed popularity in political campaigns. It is often assumed that the audience will move toward the side making the better showing, and that the debate format is therefore ideal for maximizing rational choice between two alternative positions or candidates. According to such a view, the net effect of a debate upon an audience would be some simple function of the difference in persuasive impact between the two debaters' presentations. The available evidence, however, indicates that such a rational model does not accurately describe the actual effect of a debate. Rather, under most circumstances, debates appear to strengthen existing opinions, regardless of the relative merits of the two debaters' presentations. For example, Katz and Feldman concluded, on the basis of an extensive review of research on the effects of the 1960 televised campaign debates, that they "resulted primarily in a strengthening of commitment to one's own party and candidate."1 This conclusion is consistent with the available laboratory studies, in which written debates tended to strengthen initial opinions (despite the fact that the one-sided presentations used in the debates each produced substantial opinion change