Abstract
Three intensities of guilt about not volunteering to the civil guard were aroused by distributing appropriate leaflets among three groups (30 students per group) of 12th graders. A fourth group of 30 12th graders served as a control and did not receive any leaflet. All four groups could choose to devote different amounts of their time for serving in the civil guard or to refuse to volunteer at all. It was found that the moderate guilt-arousing leaflet was more effective than the low and high guilt-arousing leaflets in motivating the students to volunteer for the civil guard. The results were interpreted as supporting Janis’s model, which predicted a curvilinear relationship between the intensity of guilt and the amount of change in attitude or behavior.
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This paper is sponsored by James M. Dabbs, Jr., who takes full editorial responsibility for its contents.
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Yinon, Y., Bizman, A., Cohen, S. et al. Effects of guilt-arousal communications on volunteering to the civil guard: A field experiment. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 7, 493–494 (1976). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337260
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03337260