THE EFFECT OF INTEGRATIVE COMPLEXITY ON THE SYSTEMATIC DESIGN OF A PERSUASIVE COMMUNICATION FOR CHANGING ATTITUDES OF PRESERVICE ELEMENTARY TEACHERS TOWARD ENERGY CONSERVATIO

Purpose. (1) To determine what effects integrative complexity had on the degree of attitude change as a result of presenting subjects with a specific persuasive communication designed to match their cognitive style of information processing. (2) To determine if a consistency approach, is warranted in designing communications to change attitudes. (3) To determine if an adaptation of Shrigley's theoretical science example was effective in changing attitudes of preservice teachers toward the teaching of energy conservation.;Rationale. Harvey's integrative complexity, Wood's consistency approach and an adaptation of Shrigley's theoretical example were mapped onto Hovland's persuasive communication framework to answer the question, "who says what to whom with what effect?".;From Harvey's work, it was predicted that a nonintegrated treatment would be insufficient information to cause an attitude change in concrete differentiators because of their segmented cognitive structure. However, this communication should be sufficient to change the attitudes of highly abstract thinkers and highly concrete thinkers. In order to change the attitudes of concrete differentiators, the relationship between the content and the evaluation would need to be explicitly stated.;Procedure. One hundred eighty Pennsylvania State University Science Education 458 students participated in this study. They were first administered the Divine Fate Control subscale of the Conceptual System Tests to determine their level of integrative complexity and the Attitude Toward Energy Conservation Scale to obtain a pretest score on their attitude toward energy conservation.;The students were then block randomized by their integrative complexity scores to the integrated treatment group, where they listened to a 13:40 minute videotape on the importance of teaching energy conservation in the elementary school with the relationship between attitude toward energy conservation in general and feelings toward the importance of teaching energy conservation in the elementary school explicitly stated; the nonintegrated treatment, where they listened to a 13:25 minute videotape solely on the importance of teaching energy conservation in the elementary school; or the control group, where they listened to a 13:18 minute videotape unrelated to the importance of teaching energy conservation in the elementary school. Each group was then readministered the Attitude Toward Energy Conservation Scale to identify any gain in positive attitude immediately following the treatment and three weeks later.;Results. A 3 x 3 analysis of variance on all variables followed by a complex multiple comparison among means were calculated to determine if any gain in attitude could be attributed to the individual difference of integrative complexity, if the treatments made any difference overall, and if one treatment designed using the consistency approach was more effective than the other in changing attitudes. The results indicate no significant difference between mean difference scores when compared with the individual difference variable. However, there was a significant gain in positive attitude for the subjects who listened to either treatment condition immediately following the presentation of the persuasive communication and three weeks later but not for the control group.;Conclusions. (1) Attitudes toward energy conservation can be changed with as little as a thirteen minute persuasive communication. (2) Positively changed attitudes can be maintained for a period of three following the treatment. (3) Wood's instructional consistency approach may not be a significant factor in affective learning.