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The Effects Of Readership Selectivity On The Reading Of Controversial Material Dealing With The Reader's Personal Prejudices : A Test Of The Theory Of Cognitive Dissonance, John Marshall Tucker

Master's Theses

The purpose of this thesis is to test the theory of cognitive dissonance as it relates to a reader's selectivity in reading controversial material involving his personal prejudices or attitudes. Festinger states that forced or accidental exposure to new information which tends to increase dissonance will frequently result in misinterpretation and misperception of the new information by the individual thus exposed in an effort to avoid a dissonance increase. Therefore, cognitive dissonance theory would predict that a person's prejudiced attitude would negatively effect his reading comprehension on material which was disharmonious with his attitude. The dissonance situation examined here is …