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Abstract
This study was designed to examine the effect of self-esteem (high and low), perceived choices
(high and low) and priming (with the neutral, relevant and irrelevant words to the counter-attitude
behavior) on cognitive dissonance. Participants were 120 Chulalongkorn University undergraduate
students of 2008 academic year who were classified as having high or low self-esteem and reported
negative attitudes toward the topic “Whether the policy of Chulalongkorn University is decrease
foundation to poor students”. They were random assigned to 1 of 2 experiment condition
to write the counter-attitude essay. And then they were random assigned again to 1 of 3 experiment
condition to prime with some words and rated the attitudinal scales. Finally, participants
were asked to rate perceived choices toward writing the essay.
From this research, the results show significant interactions between self-esteem with
perceived choices and priming (p < .05) on attitude changed. Perceived high choices and priming
with the relevant words leads to change attitude for those high self esteem than low self esteem.
And Perceived high choices and priming with the irrelevant words leads to greater attitude changed
for those low self esteem than high self esteem. Moreover, we found main effect of perceived
choice (p < .01) on attitude changed when participants were primed with neutral words. Participants
who perceived high choice changed their attitude more than perceived high choice.
Keyword :
Self esteem, Priming, Cognitive dissonance, Attitude
