Distraction Hypothesis in Attitude Change: Effects of Effectiveness

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Abstract
A recent study by Festinger and Maccoby (1964) demonstrated that distraction raises the effectiveness of a communication. This effect may obtain because the distraction interferes with (subvocal) counter-arguing or because the distraction requires more effort to listen and thus arouses dissonance. The present experiment was designed to test these alternative hypotheses, Ss were exposed to 4 counter-attitudinal communications. Interference during the communication and credibility of the communicator were orthogonally manipulated. The distraction hypothesis predicted that high interference would increase communication effectiveness most under high credibility of the communicator. The effort hypothesis predicted that the greatest increase due to high interference would obtain when the communicator was low in credibilty. The results supported the distraction hypothesis. In addition, interference reduced communication effectiveness under low credibility. The implication of these results for the distraction hypothesis and the effort hypothesis was discussed.

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