Invoking Subordinate Attitude Change through Counterattitudinal Advocacy: An Experiment in Persuasion.

This study showed that counterattitudinal advocacy CAA, a persuasive technique often employed in academic circles, may be useful for affecting attitude change in an Air Force organizational setting. The counterattitudinal process in this experiment included a pretest questionnaire to determine attitudes of 120 enlisted members assigned to a Tactical Fighter Wing maintenance complex. Participants reporting the most negative responses on the topics of retention and overtime were selected as experiment subjects. The remainder of the participants served as a control group for both topics. Subjects were asked to make video taped statements supporting the Air Force position on one of these topics level 1 or were asked simply to agree to encode such a message level 2. Level two participants completed only a written statement. All participants then completed a posttest questionnaire to determine if attitudes had changed within the experimental group. Results supported the hypothesis that CAA would bring about attitude change while attitudes of the control group remained constant.