Dimensions of Meaning and Attitude Change

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Abstract
In a pretest-posttest control group design (Campbell & Stanley, 1963) with 2 experimental samples and a treated control sample, 132 Ss responded twice to a Sherif-Hovland instrument (Sherif & Hovland, 1961). The intervening treatments written by E appeared to be Xeroxed copies of newspaper articles: 1 represented primarily the evaluative (E) dimension of meaning (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957); 1 was a fusion of potency (P) and activity (A), i.e., dynamism (D). A control (C) article was irrelevant to the experimental issue, viz., censorship of movies. Posttest-pretest change scores were compared for the 3 samples by 15 t tests for independent samples (Walker & Lev, 1953). E and D were not significantly different because both changed on the 5 Sherif-Hovland measures in the same directions. Compared with C, however, E was quite effective; 4 of the 5 measures changed significantly; comparisons of D and C indicated that 2 of the 5 measures changed significantly. For this issue E was more effective than D, although more research is needed to clarify the effects of dimensions of meaning of communications on attitude change.

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