Inter-attitude centrality does not appear to reduce persuasion for political attitudes

Abstract

Are attitudes more resistant to change when they are more central to a belief system? Theories of inter-attitude structure and belief system dynamics both suggest that the answer is yes. We demonstrate how to combine belief system network methods with pretest-posttest experiments to empirically test this idea. We aimed to persuade US conservatives (Experiment 1 N = 890) and US liberals (Experiment 2 N = 1305, Experiment 3 N = 1293) using moral reframing persuasive strategies. Although we find that moral reframing was persuasive (9 of 12 attempts), there was no evidence that central attitudes were more difficult to change than peripheral attitudes. This was the case across all experiments, target attitudes and methods for assessing belief system structure. The results suggest that moral reframing persuades people, but that theories of inter-attitude structure and belief system dynamics both do not make accurate predictions in this situation.