The effect of relations between evaluated entities on attitude change
Leon Mann · Australian Journal of Psychology · 1966
It was hypothesized that the nature of the relation linking two evaluated elements in a cognitive system affects the operation of the congruity principle. In a before-after design, groups of 5s evaluated writers and prose passages on semantic differential scales, Each group received different information which linked writers and passages. On the pretext of a memory test, writers and passages were re-evaluated. The knowledge that a writer wrote a passage (unit relation) produced more change toward congruity in evaluation of both writer and passage than the knowledge that he liked it (sentiment relation). Double or mixed relations (unit and sentiment relations together) exercised a pressure toward congruity which appeared to represent an intermediate value between the pressures exerted by unit and sentiment relations when they functioned separately.