ABSTRACT
P eople often are resistant to attitude change. College students enjoy drink-ing despite attempts by parents and university offi cials to curb their habits, Democrats fi nd little merit in Republicans’ views (and vice versa), Pepsi drinkers continue to prefer Pepsi even after receiving countless advertisements promoting Coke, and depressed individuals often are unconvinced by their therapists’ efforts to change their views of themselves. Perhaps due to the pervasiveness of resistance in everyday life, some attitudes researchers over the years have moved from the traditional focus on eliciting successful attitude change to the explicit study of resistance to such change. A vast majority of the research conducted in this area has focused on the study of resistance to persuasion-that is, the act or process of defending one’s attitude against persuasive attack (for reviews, see Knowles & Linn, 2004). This chapter will review some of the established fi ndings from this resistance research and then describe a new metacognitive framework for understanding resistance.
