In a study published in PloS one researchers have handed out questionaires to assess the moral orientation of the participants. After filling out the survey, candidates were asked to defend their position. The trick was that while turning over the sheets the wording in the question changed to the opposite of the original statement.

 

Interestingly over 50% of the participants even argued for the opposite of their original attitude. PloS One

 

Of course, this calls into question the validity of such surveys, but also shows the flexibility of attitudes to some extent.

From the title, I thought this was a different discussion. I would have used the word "plasticity". Is this a new study? I've seen this done before, but have seen it making the rounds on facebook and tumblr recently.

It would seem to be very interesting to see exactly how the experiment was conducted. For instance, if I read the original argument and then saw the opposite on the other side I would want to check the wording of the original by turning back to the original statement. If that was not possible then the exact wording should state whether you are to defend a position whether you believe in it or not, or just to defend the position that you marked because you accordingly support it.

 

Maybe just one word placed differently, or a misunderstanding, and a person might fill in the data differently.