In a between-subjects experiment, both attitude statements and instructions were biased in a 3 × 3 factorial design. There was no main effect of biasing instructions and no interaction between instructions and attitude statements, however, there was a main effect of biasing attitude statements. Mean scores of subjects responding to the balanced format were mote favorable to the issue of socialized medicine than subjects responding to the all-positive and all-negative formats. Possible explanations for these results include reactance to the all-positive format and acquiescence to the all-negative format by moderately conservative subjects or balancing by subjects when presented with all-positive or all-negative formats.
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