Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 18, 2001, Page 126
perspective, such results should not occur. Also relevant is a study by Gleicher and Petty
(1992), who found that a manipulation of moderate fear lowered careful message
processing provided that the message contained an early, prominent peripheral cue (a
strong summary recommendation by the expert source). More interesting, however, when
this cue was absent, the fearful participants processed the message as carefully as low-fear
participants. In short, the study by Gleicher and Petty, as well as that of Baron et al.
(1994), suggests that fearful individuals can be induced to process carefully under certain
key conditions contrary to the physiological perspective.
It is premature, however, to completely discount the physiological perspective. First, both
attention allocation and physiological mechanisms may influence information processing. For
example, it is possible that a moderate level of emotional arousal only partially depletes
attentional capacity. If so, under moderate arousal there may be enough residual capacity
to process necessary tasks, but the individual may be more reluctant to do so because this
processing would now require using a greater percentage of remaining available capacity.
This should entail greater psychological effort and therefore may be resisted unless
motivation is quite high or other cognitive shortcuts are unavailable. Gleicher and Petty‘s
(1992) results may reflect such a dynamic. Moderate fear led to a greater reliance on
available peripheral cues (indicating a motivational reluctance), but when peripheral cues
were absent, careful processing was possible.
However, if one assumes that emotion depletes capacity it follows that if emotion becomes
extreme enough, it may so deplete total capacity that even well motivated processing may
suffer. One recent study by Meijnders (1998) reported such data. Fear was created by
varying the explicitness of information regarding the substantial dangers of global warming
(e.g., starvation, flooding), and then the (nonstudent) participants reacted to a message
relevant to that problem (regarding an energy-efficient light bulb). Meijinders found that
moderate levels of (integral) fear increased participants‘ sensitivity to message quality
differences (replicating Baron et al., 1994) but that at very high levels of fear, such careful
processing was not apparent (i.e., both high- and low-quality messages produced equivalent
amounts of persuasion). These results suggest that even when people are motivated to
process carefully, superficial message processing may occur if fear levels are intense
enough. This may be even more likely in cases of intense indoctrination in which other
Low Fear High Fear
High Quality Message
Low Quality Message
Persuasion
7.5
7.2
7.4
6.1
Figure 3. Persuasion scores as a function of fear and message quality: Fear heightens careful message
processing. Note. From “Negative emotion and message processing,” by R. S. Baron, H. Logan, J. Lilly,
M. Inman, and M. Brennan, 1994, Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 30, p.192, Copyright 1994
by Academic Press. Adapted with permission.

Cultic Studies Journal, Vol. 18, 2001, Page 127
sources of cognitive debilitation (in addition to fear) are commonly present. Clearly, this is
a topic that requires more research attention.
Interactive Dynamics During Consolidation
Fear, arousal, and dissonance. Returning to the discussion of interactive dynamics, a
common feature of intense indoctrination is that indoctrinees are enticed into making a
variety of costly behavioral decisions regarding the group. For example, it is common to
have indoctrinees make public statements that espouse group doctrine. Such statements
are also often self-critical. Thus, for example, American prisoners of war in Korea were
pressured to make written and then newsreel confessions of supposed misdeeds (Schein et
al., 1961). These procedures, of course, correspond closely to the well-known cognitive
dissonance induced-compliance procedure. In the same vein, dissonance mechanisms fit
nicely with the frequent use of escalated commitment (e.g., Schwartz, 1970) as an
indoctrination feature. Even more relevant to this discussion of interactive dynamics,
however, are data indicating that dissonance mechanisms may be enhanced by the fear,
arousal, and confusion that characterize indoctrination.
Dissonance theory assumes that people change their attitudes after expressing propaganda
because they feel unpleasant arousal. In accord with this notion, several researchers have
shown that irrelevant sources of arousal can heighten dissonance reactions. Thane Pittman
(1975), for example, threatened some students with electric shock just before having them
write an essay favoring raising tuition. In one condition, he had a confederate state that this
essay writing was causing him to feel aroused. Presumably, individuals hearing this
statement were more likely to interpret any fear-induced arousal they experienced as
feelings of dissonance. As predicted, these frightened participants were more persuaded by
their essay than were nonfrightened participants. Similarly, Cooper, Zanna, and Taves
(1978) found that dissonance effects were enhanced by amphetamine-produced arousal,
whereas Fazio and Martin (reported in Fazio &Cooper, 1983) found similar effects using
exercise-induced arousal. In short, there is good reason to assume that the fear and arousal
generated by intense indoctrination will often be rechanneled and experienced as
dissonance.
Attentional capacity and perception of choice. One argument against applying
dissonance and self-perception views to indoctrination is that the mechanisms described by
these theories are presumably unlikely to affect attitudes if individuals feel they had little
choice about their initial compliance. For instance, a person could make sense out of
donating all of his or her worldly possessions to the People‘s Temple by deciding that act
was coerced by such forces as peer pressure, fear of humiliation, or threats to family
members. However, in many settings in which coercion exists, that coercion may be
ignored, deemphasized, or forgotten by the indoctrinee, particularly if his or her attentional
capacity is impaired and coercive pressures are psychological rather than physical or
material.
As most cognitive dissonance researchers are well aware, a variety of subtle social and
situational forces can reliably elicit dissonant behavior from individuals while generally
preserving the perception of free choice among most respondents. In these settings, it
takes a particularly perceptive and attentive individual to detect the subtle forces that
provoked the behavior. In accord with this view, Stalder and Baron (1998) reported that
individuals who had sophisticated and complex attributional styles did not show standard
dissonance-produced attitude change in an induced compliance (essay writing) study (see
Figure 4). One extrapolation from the Stalder and Baron results is that when attentional
capacity is impaired, the ability to avoid or reduce dissonance by making an (accurate)
external attribution for one‘s actions will be compromised. If so, when capacity is reduced, it
is likely that even moderately coercive pressures may be overlooked, leaving the individual