Persuasion literature contains prevalent claims that attitude certainty fosters resistance to persuasion. The citations provided for such a relationship, however, fall short of examining the role of attitude certainty in resistance to persuasive attempts. Therefore, an experiment was designed to examine whether attitudes held with greater certainty are more resistant to change in the face of persuasive attacks. Subjects were assigned randomly to receive a high certainty induction (thinking about an attitude topic) or a low certainty induction (thinking about an unrelated topic) prior to measuring pretest attitudes. One week later, subjects were assigned randomly to receive or not to receive a persuasive message prior to measuring posttest attitudes. Contrary to previous research, this study found no evidence that attitude-relevant thought increased attitude certainty. Furthermore, this study found no evidence that attitude certainty moderated the degree to which attitudes changed in response to a persuasive message. However, the results provide some evidence of an inverse relationship between attitude certainty and the mere presence of attitude change. Limitations of the study, implications of the findings, and ideas for future research are discussed.
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