Memory for information about nuclear power: A test of the selective recall hypothesis

The impact of attitudes on memory: An affair to remember.

“…The following contextual aspects of the experiment were also coded: (a) setting for exposure to stimulus information (laboratory; class; other or unknown); (b) setting for memory measurement (laboratory; class; other or unknown); (c) social setting (alone, with or without experimenter; with other participants; unknown or mixed); (d) set for responding to stimulus information (intentional learning, i.e., learn or memorize; less intentional, i.e., give opinions or attitudes, judge for argument effectiveness, give other judgments; unclear, unknown, or mixed); and (e) activation of attitudes during exposure to stimulus information (high; medium; low; mixed or no basis for judgment). Activation was coded by the following rules: high if a premeasure of attitude was administered just before the presentation of the stimuli or if the attitude was especially salient in the cover story (e.g., Love & Greenwald, 1978); medium if the experimental instructions mentioned an interest in participants' attitudes (e.g., Furnham & Proctor, 1990); and low if attitudes or agreement was not mentioned or if a distracting or misleading set was imposed (e.g., Levine & Murphy, 1943).…”

“…These doubts were compounded by Freedman and Sears’s (1965) questioning of support for another important attitudinal selectivity hypothesis: selective exposure to information. Yet, despite this discouraging environment, experiments on attitude memory continued to be published in psychological journals (e.g., Furnham & Proctor, 1990; Hymes, 1986; Read & Rosson, 1982), albeit with decreasing frequency.…”