It was hypothesized that attitude change following a Counterattitudinal behavior which produces important positive consequences would be inversely related to the amount of responsibility which could be attributed to the individual for the action. Female subjects delivered an extremely positive evaluation to a rather dull confederate during an impression formation task. The evaluation was delivered under choice (high responsibility) or no-choice '(low responsibility) conditions, and subjects expected either future interaction (high importance) or no future interaction (low importance) with the confederate. Subsequent ratings of the confederate revealed that subjects became more positive toward her only in the no-choice-future-interaction condition; ratings in the other experimental conditions did not differ from control group ratings. Additionally, subjects in both no-choice conditions desired to meet the confederate more than subjects in the choice conditions. The results are interpreted in terms of a process of rationalization designed to increase personal responsibility for important beneficial actions. Implications for dissonance theory and self-perception theory are discussed.Explaining the processes underlying attitude change following Counterattitudinal behavior has emerged as an intriguing puzzle with important practical applications. Recent work has clearly delineated two clusters of variables which appear crucial to an understanding of the dynamics of forced compliance attitude change-variables relating to the attribution of responsiblity for a Counter-
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