Students changed Holocaust beliefs from a denialist account but not from a perpetrator’s confession

Evidence

RESULTS The “September mean’”’ score among the students who just got Hoess’s confession was 59.8. After reading his confession, their scores remained virtually unchanged, 60.4. By contrast, the students who read just Christophersen’s account dropped from 56.9 to 48.9 (p < .001). And those who read both accounts believed Christophersen; their mean dropped from 58.0 to 50.7 The Christophersen article thus proved as persuasive as before. — Bob Altemeyer, The Authoritarian Specter, 3189

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies what the experiment’s outcome measure — the ‘September mean’ belief score — actually tracks.