The reactive effect of pretesting in attitude change research: General or specific?

Abstract

In an earlier study it was found that a pretest containing positive statements counteracted the development of negative feelings toward a treatment. The present experiment sought both to replicate the earlier study and to answer an additional question: Is the biasing effect general or is it restricted to pretest content? Again, it appeared that a positive pretest acts as a device to counteract the development of negative sentiments. The effect size, small in the original experiment, was even smaller in the present experiment. Moreover, it was found that the sensitization effect operated only when the pretest and the posttest were identical. Using dissimilar pretest and posttest measures eliminated the biasing effect.