Self-Relevant Scenarios as an Indirect Means of Attitude Change

Two experiments with college students are reported that examined the effects of imagining detailed scenarios depicting events happening to self. Experiment I established that students who read and imagined a scenario depicting their involvement in an automobile accident had elevated expectancies for the occurrence of an automobile accident, compared with control condition students. Experiment 2 extended the effects of imagined scenarios to include cognitions tangential to those directly depicted in the scenario. Subjects who imagined having automobile accidents were found, in a separate context minimizing demand characteristics, to be more favorably disposed toward legislation related to traffic safety (e.g., requiring motorists to wear seat belts). The results are discussed in relation to research on attitudes.