A Fulcrum Model of Opinion Formation and Change

Abstract

This study was designed to test the power of an additive versus a weighted average model of impression formation in predicting the subject's evaluation of a stimulus object on the basis of the subject's prior evaluation of separate pieces of information used to describe the stimulus object. Two hundred ten subjects were randomly placed in one of fourteen experimental groups. The general design of the study was a 2 x 7 factorial involving two orders of presentation of stimulus material and seven levels of affective information. With regard to levels of affective information, the subject received either one, two or three pie~es of information about the stimulus object each piece varying in affective importance to the subject, i.e., High affective importance Medium, low or the combinations High-Medium, High-low, Medium-low or HighMedium-low. With regard to order of presentation of stimulus material, subjects received their information in a manner such that the addition of each successive piece of information had less affective importance: e.g., High-Medium-low, High-Medium, High-low, Medium-low, High alone, Medium alone and low alone or the subjects received their information in such a manner that the addition of each successive piece of information had more affective importance e.g., low-Medium-High, Medium-High, low-High, Low-Medium, High alone, Medium alone or low alone. On the basis of each subject's evaluation of each piece of information alone, predicted scores were calculated for the subject's obtained evaluation of the stimulus object on the basis of Fishbein's summation model, and Izzet~s Fulcrum model (an averaging model). vi Resul~s indicated that the predicted scores derived from the Fulcrum (averaging) model correlated to a significantly greater extent with the obtained evaluation of the stimulus object than those scores derived from Fishbein' s summation model. Also, there was no main effect for order of presentation of stimulus information and no interaction between order of presentation and levels of information, however, there was a significant main effect due to amount of information presented. The main effect due to amount of information presented supported the Fulcrum model at the .E< .001 level, i.e., describing a stimulus object with two or more pieces of information varying in affect and importance but all having the same sign (positive) results in a ~ favorable impression of the stimulus object than what would have been obtained had the stimulus object been described by only one piece of information namely, that piece which has the highest affect x importance rating of the two piece combination. The conclusion drawn from this finding was that as a result of obtaining one piece of information about the stimulus object having high affect and importance, t.he subject develops a generalized expectation that the stimulus object will be high on all traits or characteristics and that as a result of being given a second piece of infonnation about the stimulus object which does not measure up to the subject's expectations, the adaptation level of the subject concerning future expectations about the stimulus object drops hence the av~raging effect.

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