The principal hypothesis was that selectivity of voluntary exposure to infor¬mation would increase with greater commitment. 138 undergraduates were tested in a simulated jury setting. Strength of commitment to an initial vote was varied. Five measures of exposure were taken: ratings and rankings of article titles, duration of exposure to a persuasive communication, and recall and recognition of its content. The results provided no support for the hypothesis on any of the five indices. Rather, the major effect of commitment was to depress interest in further relevant information unselectively. This reduction of interest was re¬vealed on each of the first four indices of exposure. The results were discussed in connection with previous tests of dissonance theory hypotheses concerning voluntary exposure to information.
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