CHANGE-OF-MEANING EFFECTS IN CONFORMITY AND DISSENT - OBSERVING CONSTRUAL PROCESSES OVER TIME

Three studies investigated change-of-meaning processes following decisions to conform or dissent. Study 1 demonstrated that conformity decisions relative to a group standard, but not agreement decisions relative to a purely informational standard, caused changes in Ss' construal of a stimulus story. Studies 2 and 3 extended these findings to a real-world stimulus story-an actual newspaper account of a police shooting incident-and showed that postconformity change-of-meaning effects were maintained over a 1-week test period and in fact increased over time for female subjects. Study 3 also showed that change-of-meaning effects could be captured by open-ended narrative measures as well as by scaled measures of situational construal. Discussion focused on the theoretical and practical implications of postconformity change of meaning.