Prior Expectations

Table 2

Percentage of Subjects Modifying Opinions Toward the USSR, by Prior Expectations

Issues

Desire

Unexpectedly better "

Changed favorably

40 f

No change

opinions, the unexpectedly worse group responded quite negatively, with 46 percent becoming more negative, and 23 percent more favorable.

The subjects' open-ended replies on the after questionnaire flesh out the results of these before-after measures. Some excerpts from the unexpectedly better group illustrate the subjects' reactions:

[1] A very silly effect, perhaps, but all of a sudden I realized that Russia's citizens are ordinary people.

[2] You know, here we are always cast in the good guy role. It (the broadcasts) helps you to step back and get a possible view others might take of us and their reasons.

[3] You begin to see that the Soviet Union is not a monster with atomic bombs in each hand; instead they're human, as concerned with human affairs as we are. [4] Through the dark and heavy mist, every once in a while I felt they really did seem to want world peace, at least those in control of the broadcasts, and as I look over the world situation as a whole, I can begin to see where this could be true.

Such replies are very similar to those we consistently get in interviews with actual American listeners to Radio Moscow's North American broadcasts. Frequent comments from the "real-life" audience are: "It makes you realize they are people just like us"; "You see that there are two sides to most of these international problems"; "You begin to see their side of the story too." 24

The open-ended responses also provide additional support for the theory entertained in this research-that the process involves a comparison of what the respondent heard with what he expected to hear: [1] I expected it to be one mass of making the U.S. look black and completely positive for the Russians. I thought I would hear more bad points than I did. I was surprised, they seemed so much like us. From the general idea we get in America we are told the Soviet Union is bad, so I assumed they would try to make us look bad too. They were fairly reasonable about it and it made me think maybe they really were trying to help us understand each other better. [2] You can't believe all they say, but they didn't hit us hard on the things I thought they would, like race riots, as if they really were trying not to make trouble.

[3] I thought they would try to persuade me. Instead they played music and frankly answered those questions from Americans. They seemed so sensible about it all-makes you realize they're honest people trying to help international affairs.

There are undoubtedly many sociological and psychological factors at work to account for why some subjects perceived what they had expected in the broadcasts and some did not.25 In our research so far, we have examined only one of these factors-dogmatism, with the more dogmatic individuals purportedly more resistant to opinion change and more prone to distort information to fit pre-existing opinions and beliefs. 26 There is some indication in these data that those individuals scoring high on the dogmatism scale perceived the broadcasts as they had expected them to be, while the low dogmatics found the broadcasts to be something different from what they had expected (t= 1.37, p <.15).27

DISCUSSION

This study obtained a measure not only of the specific point on an opinion measure which a subject indicated most exactly characterized his

own position, but also the range of his acceptance and rejection of other positions on the opinion measure. The results of this study are accentuated when this additional dimension is taken into account.

This rather exploratory experiment leaves many important variables uncontrolled, and the results are legitimately subject to diverse interpretations. Nevertheless, they suggest some fruitful directions for additional research. For one thing, disconfirmation of expectancy in the direction of hope or goals seems to suggest why some opinions change-a welcome contrast to the abundant evidence we have on why opinions do not change. The results also highlight the fact that political opinion change is a sociological as well as a psychological phenomenon. In this study, the entire social system of the audience must be considered for a full understanding of the impact of Radio Moscow's broadcasts. The broadcasts seem to have had an effect, not because of any particular skill in communication, but because conditions in our own society had led the audience to hold unrealistic negative images which, upon actual exposure, were clearly refuted for many of the listeners. According to the replies of the subjects in this study, the domestic mass media were among those aspects of our society which played an important role in determining their response to these foreign broadcasts. The domestic media came in for specific censure from individuals in the unexpectedly better group as a prime source of their unrealistic expectations. 28

Some implications for traditional issues in international political communication may also be found in these results. To cite but a few, there is the issue of the comparative effectiveness of political communications that deliberately attempt to persuade and "propagandize," in comparison with a relatively candid and straightforward presentation. 29 The results of this study suggest that national groups which expect biased political persuasion from a source in another nation, and get (or perceive) the communication in that form, tend to respond negatively; national groups which expect biased political persuasion from a source in another nation, and do not get (or perceive) the communication in that form, tend to respond positively. Since most people are taught to expect political "propaganda" from their nation's adversaries, this fact has obvious implications for developing effective political communications to the people of other nations.

Related to this point is the political import of overtly nonpolitical content in international political communications. Having expected overt political persuasion attempts, but confronted rather with concerts, accounts of everyday life in the Soviet union, and descriptions of Soviet social institutions, the subjects frequently cited this overtly nonpolitical content as prominent in the refutation of their expectations. Many other areas of relevance could be cited, such as the relation of expectancy confirmation to the frequently noted "boomerang" phenomenon, and the value of side effects in political communication.

In sum, these results strongly suggest the value of continuing to

examine the factor of confirmation/disconfirmation of expectations in assessing the effectiveness of international political communications.

NOTES

1. International political communication is considered here as the deliberate attempt by a communicator in one nation to further the political interests of that nation through the dissemination of messages to audiences in other nations by means of the mass media. 2. Don D. Smith, "America's Short-Wave Audience: Twenty-five Years Later," Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 33, 1969, pp. 537-545.

3. Floyd H. Allport and Mary M. Simpson, "Broadcasting to an Enemy Country: What Appeals Are Effective and Why," Journal of Social Psychology, Vol. 23, 1946, pp. 217-224. See W. Phillips Davison, International Political Communication, New York, Praeger, 1965; Eron M. Kirkpatrick, ed. Target: The world, New York, Macmillan, 1956; Internationales Handbuch für Rundfunk and Fernsehen, Hamburg, Hans-Bredow-Institut, 1960.

5. Smith, op. cit.

6.Ibid.

7. Don D. Smith, "Radio Moscow's North American Broadcasts: An exploratory Study," Journalism Quarterly, Vol. 42, 1965, pp. 643-645.

8. It is an assumption, of course, that at least one of the goals of the broadcasts is the creation of favorable opinions about the communicating nation.

9. See Robert P. Abelson et al., eds., Theories of Cognitive Consistency: A Sourcebook, Chicago, Rand McNally, 1968.

10. See Muzafer Sherif and Carl I. Hovland, Social Judgment, New Haven, Yale University Press, 1961.

11. Cf. J. Merrill Carlsmith and Elliot Aronson, "Some Hedonic Consequences of the Confirmation and Disconfirmation of Expectancies," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 66, 1963, pp. 151-156; Edward E. Sampson and Linda B. Sibley, “A Further Examination of the Confirmation or Nonconfirmation of Expectancies and Desires," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol, 2, 1965, pp. 133-137; Salvatore R. Maddi, "Affective Tone during Environmental Regularity and Change," Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, Vol. 62, 1961, pp. 338-345. Also see Harry Helson, Adaptation-Level Theory, New York, Harper, 1964. A recent study by Keisner indicates that negative affect as a consequence of strong expectancy disconfirmation is limited to public conditions; see Robert H. Keisner, "Affective Reactions to Expectancy Disconfirmations under Public and Private Conditions," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 11, 1969, pp. 17-24.

12. O. J. Harvey and William F. Clapp, "Hope, Expectancy, and Reactions to the Unexpected," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 2, 1965, pp. 45–52.

13. Harvey and Clapp, op. cit.; also see J. Scott Verinis, Jeffrey M. Brandsma, and Charles N. Cofer, "Discrepancy from Expectation in Relation to Affect and Motivation," Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol. 9, 1968, pp. 47-58, and David C. McClelland, et al., The Achievement Motive, New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1953.

14. For other treatments of the confirmation and disconfirmation of expectancies in real life situations see Robert T. Bower and Laure M. Sharp. "The Use of Art in International Communication: A Case Study," Public Opinion Quarterly, Vol. 20, 1956, pp. 221-228, and Kurt Lang and Gladys Lang, Politics and Television, Chicago, Quadrangle Books, 1968, pp. 43-48.

15. This taping took place between October 7, 1966 and December 15, 1966.

16. The before-after responses of this group were matched by social background data.

17. Generally, no more than 25 percent of a given evening's broadcast content dealt overtly with international political affairs.

18. All of the judges were students who had previously listened to Radio Moscow's North American broadcasts and who were familiar with the literature on opinion-attitude forma

in content, consisting of blatant propaganda and "fanatical" attempts to change their minds (the expectancy condition). Also pertinent here for a full understanding of the hypotheses of this study is the point, to be documented later, that the broadcasts to which the subjects listened were indeed biased and noticeably negative to the United States, and were perceived as such by these American subjects. With these characteristics in mind, the following hypotheses may be derived from the foregoing discussion: (1) Listeners perceiving these negative broadcasts to be relatively better than their negative expectations will respond positively to the broadcasts. (2) Listeners perceiving these negative broadcasts as confirming their negative expectations will respond negatively to the broadcasts. (3) Listeners perceiving these negative broadcasts to be relatively worse than their negative expectations will respond most negatively to the broadcasts.

RESEARCH DESIGN

The research design consists of an experimental panel of 122 university students and two control panels of 43 and 54 university students respectively. This excludes, from an original experimental panel of 151 students, those individuals who had ever listened to Radio Moscow's broadcasts before. It is perhaps indicative of the success of our own country's political socialization that, in the original panel of 151 subjects, only 11 had favorable expectations of Radio Moscow's broadcasts; these individual's are also excluded from this report. The experimental panel listened to Radio Moscow's North American broadcasts one and one-half hours each week for two and one-half months-a total of 15 hours exposure. The broadcasts were monitored, taped, and replayed to the students usually within one to three days of their actual transmission. 15 The subjects, all volunteers, submitted to a before-after questionnaire consisting of semantic differentials, opinion scales, and both structured and openended questions. The subjects were assigned a number at the beginning of the study, so that the before-after responses of each individual could be matched while protecting his anonymity.

As a control for any sensitizing effect to international news from other sources that might be created by participation in the study, control group I (CI) was fully informed about the research, and we attempted to instill a full sense of participation in these individuals. Subjects in control group II (CII) were unaware that they were a part of any larger study, and unaware that they would be queried again some two months later on the same issues. 16

Utilizing Radio Moscow's practice of three one-half hour program blocks, which are rebroadcast in rotating order throughout the same evening, and some of which are repeated on still another evening of the same week, the experimental panel was presented with tapes which exposed them to each type of program in the same proportion in which it appeared on live programing. This included the usual news and political