Teaching Activity Manuscript for APA Style
Students are instructed to find as many errors as possible
throughout the manuscript. For each error located, students are
required to report the page number in the manuscript where the
error can be found, a description of the error, and the page number
in the APA manual where the correct information can be found.
Student Attitudes
3
Running head: STUDENT ATTITUDES
Student Attitudes Concerning Abortion, Euthanasia, and the Death Penalty
Ima Student
Student Attitudes
Abstract
Abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty are controversial issues in our society, with people’s
attitudes varying widely. The controversial nature of these issues is reflected in their frequent
discussion in newspapers, magazines, and television shows. In fact, these issues provoke heated
discussion amongst even the most amiable of individuals. The current study assessed political
attitudes of undergraduates and the importance of both gender and NFC level on these attitudes.
Euthanasia and death penalty attitudes were assessed with questions concerning the participant’s
attitude (1 =“very unfavorable” to 7 = “very favorable”) and the strength of their attitude (1 =
“not very strong” to 7= “very strong”). Abortion attitudes were assessed using these two
questions, as well as, the degree of participant agreement with circumstantial statements. NFC
was assessed in a previously held session. Gender differences on abortion attitudes were
expected and found, while gender differences on the death penalty were found but not expected.
The expected trend that high NFC students would hold more consistent attitudes across the three
issues (e.g. being “pro-life” on all three) was not found.
4
Student Attitudes
5
Student Attitudes Concerning Abortion, Euthanasia, and the Death Penalty
Issues such as abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty have consistently been
controversial in our society. As a result, people’s attitudes concerning these issues vary widely
and for a variety of reasons. The current study was designed to examine both gender differences
as well as differences in low versus high NFC university students on attitudes concerning
abortion, euthanasia, and the death penalty.
Past studies investigating gender differences in abortion attitudes have produced mixed
results. While many have found no sex differences (e.g., Ho & Penney, 1992; Bailey, 1993),
others have found interesting differences. For example, Finlay (1981) finds that males’ abortion
attitudes have simpler structures while females’ broader attitudes towards abortion include such
things as sex-role conventionality, the value of children in their life plans, and their general as
well as sexual conventionality. Smith (1973) found that women are more positive or permissive
in their abortion attitudes than are men. Research by Barnartt and Harris (1982) found that sexrole ideology for males became significantly more important from the years 1974 to 1977, while
female abortion attitudes were based on ideological positions in both 1974 and 1977. It has been
suggested that male and female abortion attitudes need to be assessed separately and across
different circumstances in order to thoroughly investigate the idea of gender differences in
abortion attitudes (Finlay, 1981). We attempted to accomplish this by comparing male and
female attitudes on the acceptability of abortion under different circumstances (see Appendix A),
and hypothesized that gender differences would be apparent.
Cacioppo and Petty (1982) introduced a scale used to assess the Need for Cognition
(NFC) or the “tendency of an individual to engage in and enjoy thinking”. Since its introduction,
the NFC scale has been used to reveal some interesting findings. For example, Petty and
Haugtvedt (1992) found that the attitudes of individuals high in NFC were more resistant to
Student Attitudes
6
change than the beliefs formed by low NFC individuals. They also found that low NFC
individuals were more likely to reject an initial message solely on the basis of subsequent
negative cues; in such a situation, high NFC individuals were likely to deliberate and struggle
with subsequent, inconsistent information (Haugtvedt & Petty, 1992). Cacioppo and Petty (1986)
found that attitudes that were formed or changed with much cognitive effort were more
predictive of future behavior. Petty and Cacioppo also found that NFC was weakly and
negatively related to being close-minded and positively correlated with general intelligence.
They did not find evidence that NFC varied as a function of subject gender. D’Agostino and
Fincher-Kiefer (1992) found evidence that high and low subjects differ in the informationprocessing strategies used in social judgment; in general, NFC can be seen as a major individual
difference in the cognitive domain. For example, Verplanken, Hazenberg, and Palenewen (1992)
have found that high NFC individuals desire more information and expend more effort in
searching for information when making a decision. It has also been suggested that high NFC
individuals (those who enjoy effortful cognitive work) are more likely to think about issuerelated information when forming attitudes (Leone, 1994).
The current study was conducted to test the hypothesis that high NFC students would
hold more consistent attitudes across these issues (e.g. being “pro-life” in all three situations). In
addition, we expected to find gender differences on abortion attitudes. We did not expect to find
gender differences in the other attitudes assessed.
Method
Participants
Participants were students at a large midwestern university (n=188) with range of ages.
Of these students, 72 had participated in pre-testing sessions and had completed questionnaires
assessing, among other concepts, NFC. NFC was assessed using Cacioppo and Petty’s scale
Student Attitudes
7
(1982 ; see Appendix B). Data involving NFC therefore includes only 72 participants: 33 male
and 39 girl participants.
Procedure and Materials
Participants were recruited either by telephone or by means of a voluntary sign-up board
to attend a study assessing political attitudes of university students. Potential participants were
told that they would complete questionnaires on controversial opinions in a private setting. Upon
arrival, students were asked take a seat among other students. Each student was given an
informed consent to read and sign (see Appendix A), and a name tag to record their names on
and place on their shirts. The participants were also told that the questions involved
controversial issues such as Abortion, Euthanasia, the Death Penalty, Welfare Reform, and
Condom Distribution in the schools. Questionnaires were completed in small, mixed-sex groups.
The student attitudes of primary concern in this study were those on Abortion, Euthanasia, and
the Death Penalty. After completing the questionnaires each participant was asked to reveal
his/her own attitude about the controversial issues and to describe why they had that attitude. An
open forum followed, in which, if there were disagreements in the attitudes of participants, they
were discussed. In addition, the researcher mentioned the idea of consistency or clustering across
attitudes, and participants were asked to examine whether their own attitudes were consistent.
Another group discussion followed detailing a number of issues, and participants were allowed to
alter their original attitude measures in any way. Participants were dismissed.
Attitudes on Abortion.
Attitudes on abortion were assessed in part using five scaled questions concerning the
degree to which participants agreed with statements concerning the acceptability of abortion such
as “abortion is acceptable only in the case of rape” or “abortion is acceptable only during the first
three months of the pregnancy”. Possible rankings ranged from 1 (“strongly disagree”) to 7 (
Student Attitudes
8
“strongly agree”). (See Appendix A). A scaled question was used to assess the strength of the
participant’s attitudes toward abortion ( 1 = “not very strong” to 7 = “very strong”), and
participants answered two open-ended questions: “What are your main reasons for your attitude
about the right to die?” and “What do you think influenced your attitude about the right to die?”.
Attitudes on Euthanasia.
Attitudes on Euthanasia involved a scaled question concerning the participant’s attitude
about the right to die (1 = “very unfavorable” to 7 = “very favorable”), a scaled question
concerning the strength of their attitude ( 1 = “not very strong” to 7 = “very strong”), and the two
open-ended questions assessing the reasons for the attitude as well as the sources of influence on
that attitude.
Attitudes on the Death Penalty.
Attitudes on the death penalty were assessed using the same format as the euthanasia
questions: a scaled rating of how much they favored the death penalty, a scaled rating of the
strength of their attitude concerning the death penalty, an open-ended question assessing the main
reasons for their attitude, and an open-ended question assessing the influences on that attitude.
Results
The abortion attitude consists of the percentage of students with a given mean response to
the five questions concerning the acceptability of abortion in certain situations. The euthanasia
and death penalty attitudes are the percentages of students listing a designated overall rating
scale.
In regard to the death penalty, significant differences are observed (t (186) = 3.66) with males
having a more favorable attitude toward the death penalty (M = 5.60) than girls (M = 4.68).
Moreover, a significantly stronger attitude toward the death penalty is found with males (M =
5.80) than with females (M = 4.92).
Student Attitudes
9
In order to investigate gender differences on abortion attitudes, each of the five individual
questions used to assess the acceptability of abortion were analyzed (see Table 2). A significant
sex difference is found when subjects responded to the statement “abortion is acceptable only if it
serves the function of saving the mother’s health”(t(186) = 2.10; p < .04), with males agreeing
more strongly (M = 4.43) than females (M= 3.73). Males also agree significantly more strongly
(t(186) = 3.38; p <.001) with the statement “abortion for girls under the age of 18 is acceptable
only with parental consent” (M = 4.18 for males, M = 3.03 for females).1
Although the correlations among the three attitudes and level of NFC did not reach
significance, the high NFC individuals do have stronger correlations across the attitudes
suggesting that there is more clustering of attitudes among high NFC individuals than for low
NFC individuals (see Figure 1).
Discussion
It is interesting to note from the responses that student attitudes range widely on the
abortion issue, but the majority of students have favorable attitudes toward both the death penalty
and euthanasia. Perhaps this is because man, particularly those young in age, perceives the issue
of abortion to be more relevant to themselves than either euthanasia or the death penalty at their
current stage of life. Perhaps if the death penalty and euthanasia were analyzed across different
circumstances as was abortion, the attitudes would vary more widely. For example, it would be
interesting to analyze death penalty attitudes across different crimes and to analyze euthanasia
attitudes across the different possibilities of who makes the choice to euthanize. It could also
prove useful to distinguish between active and passive euthanasia. Since our study did not
discriminate between the two forms of euthanasia, we cannot be sure of which form the
1
Participants were allowed to change their responses after the public discussion, which may have led to unknown
shifts in opinion, and influenced the current study’s findings.
Student Attitudes
10
respondents had in mind when answering the euthanasia questions. As Ho and Penney (1992)
emphasize, people perceive a moral difference between passive and active euthanasia. They
found that attitudes toward abortion related significantly to attitudes toward active but not
passive euthanasia; it seems logical that the individuals perceived the two issues to be similar in
that both involve the active termination of life. If one considers passive euthanasia to be simply
“letting nature take its course”, then the perceived similarity between it and abortion could be
drastically reduced. In regard to our finding that males have a stronger and more favorable
attitude toward the death penalty, it could be that perceived moral differences between active and
passive euthanasia are mediated by gender; this possibility needs to be examined in future
investigations.
It is uncertain why males agreed more than females did with the statements “abortion is
acceptable only if it serves the function of saving the mother’s health” and “abortion for girls
under the age of 18 is acceptable only with parental consent”. Possibly, since women are more
directly effected by the decision to abort, they prefer to maintain control over that decision. No
significant gender differences were found for any of the other three statements; further
investigation into the realm of gender differences on abortion attitudes seems warranted.
The idea that high NFC individuals would possess stronger correlations across the three
issues due to overall philosophical similarity of the issues was supported by this study, but not to
the level of significance. An issue of which may influence the consistency of attitudes moreso
than NFC is political liberalism and conservatism. Whereas, Verplanken, Hazenberg, and
Palenewen (1992) found that NFC relates to effort placed in making a decision, these authors did
not investigate the political activities of high NFC persons. Other authors have found a negative
correlation between NFC and “closed-mindedness” or a lack of tolerance which is sometimes
used related to conservativism.
Student Attitudes
11
Liberals tend to be in favor of abortion and euthanasia but opposed to the death penalty;
possibly this difference is the personal choice involved in abortion and euthanasia, but it may
also be that liberals feel the death penalty is ineffective and may even promote violence. Stet and
Leik’s (1993) research found that those tending to be pro-life are more apt than those tending to
be pro-choice to be politically conservative, and this research found that those who are more prolife show a strong relationship among attitudes having to do with politics and social issues in
general. Stets and Leik have suggested that those tending toward a pro-life stance (e.g. political
conservatives) reflect more unidimensionality in thought and may have a basic, underlying
ideology when interpreting various attitude stimuli, an attribute which is not characteristic of a
high NFC individual. Perhaps a single underlying theoretical view may be more due to pro-lifers
as religious conservatives, rather than pro-lifers as high NFC individuals. Future research on
attitude consistency should take both NFC and political ideology, as well as the interactions
between the two, into account.
In conclusion, whatever ones personal attitudes and beliefs, man must learn to get along
with fellow man. It became evident during the course of the current study that students have
well-formed and strong opinions regarding these attitudes. In fact, the open forum discussions
often progressed from discussion of attitudes to personal attacks and name-calling. On several
instances, participants left the study during these discussions. It became evident, therefore, that
mankind must accept one another’s attitudes even if the attitudes expressed are, in themselves,
inconsistent.
Student Attitudes
References
Bailey, W.T. (1993). College Student’s Attitudes Toward Abortion. Journal of Social
Behavior and Personality, 132(1), 77-86.
Barnartt, S.N., & Harris, R.J. (1982). Recent changes in predictors of abortion attitudes.
Sociology and Social Research, 66(3), 320-334.
Cacioppo, J.T. & Petty, R.E. (1982). The need for cognition. Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology, 42, 116-131.
Haugtvedt, C.P. & Petty, R.E. (1992). Personality and persuasion: need for cognition
moderates the persistence and resistance of attitude changes . Journal of Personality and Social
Psychology, 63(2), 308-319 .
Ho, R. & Penney, R.K. (1992). Euthanasia and abortion: personality correlates for the
decision to terminate life. Journal of Social Psychology, 132(1), 77-86.
Leone, C. (1994). Opportunity for thought and differences in the need for cognition: a
personality by situation analysis of self-generated attitude change. Personality and Individual
Differences, 17(4), 571-574 .
Petty, R.E. & Cacioppo, J.T. (1986). Communication and persuasion: central and
peripheral routes to attitude change. New York: Springer-Verlag.
Smith, E. (1973). A follow-up study of women who request abortion. American Journal
of Orthopsychiatry, 43, 574-585.
Stets, E., & Leik, R.K. (1993). Attitudes about abortion and varying attitude structures.
Social Science Research, 22, 265-282.
Verplanken, B., Hazenberg, P.T., & Palenewen, G.R. (1992). Need for cognition and
external information search effort. Journal of Research in Personality, 26, 128-136.
12
Student Attitudes
Appendix A
1
2
3
4
Strongly
Disagree
5
6
7
Strongly
Agree
(1) Abortion is acceptable only in the case of rape.
(2) Abortion is acceptable only during the first three months of the pregnancy.
(3) Abortion is acceptable only in the case of incest.
(4) Abortion is acceptable only if it serves the function of saving the mother’s health.
(5) Abortion for girls under the age of 18 is acceptable only with parental consent.
13
Student Attitudes
Appendix B
Questions Used to Assess Need for Cognition Level
A
B
C
D
E
F
Strongly
Disagree
G
Strongly
Agree
(1) I really enjoy a task that involves coming up with new solutions to problems.
(2) I would prefer a task that is intellectual, difficult, and important to one that is somewhat
important but does not require much thought.
(3) Learning new ways to think doesn’t excite me much.
(4) The idea of relying on thought to make my way to the top does not appeal to me.
(5) I only think as hard as I have to.
(6) I like tasks that require little thought once I’ve learned them.
(7) I prefer to think about small, daily projects rather than long-term ones.
(8) I would rather do something that requires little thought than something that is sure to
challenge my thinking abilities.
(9) I find little satisfaction in deliberating hard and for long hours.
(10) I don't like to have the responsibility of handling a situation that requires a lot of thinking.
14
Student Attitudes
15
Table 1
Response Percentages to Questions Assessing Abortion, Euthanasia, and Death Penalty Attitudes
__________________________________________________________________
Mean
Overall
Overall
_Abortion
Death Penalty
Euthanasia_____
Rating
%
Rating
%
Rating
%
<1 or 1
4.3
1
5.3
1
4.8
>1 to 2
12.5
2
5.3
2
4.8
>2 to 3
21.0
3
6.4
3
6.4
>3 to 4
17.9
4
15.4
4
9.6
>4 to 5
20.0
5
16.5
5
15.4
>5 to 6
18.4
6
23.4
6
26.6
>6 to 7
5.9
7
27.7
7
32.4
________________________________________________________________________
Note:
<1 or 1 = strongly disagree or very unfavorable
>3 to 4 = neutral
>6 to 7 = strongly agree or very favorable
Student Attitudes
Table 2
Response Percentages to the Five Questions Assessing the Acceptability of Abortion ----Males
and Females Combined
_______________________________________________________________________
Rating
Rape 1st 3 months Incest Health
only
only
only only
Parental OK
only____
1
27.1
28.2
31.9
22.3
33.5
2
12.8
8.5
10.6
11.7
8.5
3
8.0
6.4
8.0
7.4
9.6
4
8.5
14.4
12.8
9.6
9.6
5
15.4
6.9
13.3
14.4
8.5
6
11.2
12.8
10.1
12.2
9.6
7
17.0
21.8
12.2
22.3
19.7
________________________________________________________________________
Note:
1 = strongly disagree
7 = strongly agree
16
Student Attitudes
0.16
0.14
0.12
0.1
Low NFC
0.08
High NFC
0.06
0.04
0.02
0
Abortion & Death
Penalty
Abortion &
Euthanasia
Death Penalty &
Euthanasia
Figure 1. Correlations among abortion, euthanasia, and death penalty attitudes for high versus
low NFC students.
17