Dissonance Theory and Receptivity To Structural Perceptions of the Causes of Urban Crime

ECENT research has established a close relationship between perceptions of political reality and attitudes toward public policy.l This nexus is of crucial significance for advocates of policy change since policy attitudes may be altered more effectively through the path of perceptual change rather than through attempts to change the value premises upon which attitudes rest. Tacit recognition of the critical relationship between perception and policy position is manifest in the informational and educational emphasis frequently encountered in the arguments of those who advocate changes in the existing policies of the status quo. In recent foreign policy debates this tendency has probably been most pronounced in the efforts of opponents of the Vietnam War to increase public awareness of the magnitude and futility of the destruction engendered by American involvement in Southeast Asia.2 Within the realm of domestic policy, efforts to alter perceptions have long been present in the arguments of those urging fundamental alteration of public policies in the field of race relations. Perceptual evidence formed the core of the argument of the appellants in Brown v. Board of Education, whose brief emphasized the destructive effects of racial segregation on the selfimage of black children.3 More recently, those urging the adoption of public policies for the improvement of black life in America have sought to heighten white awareness of both the existence of racial discrimination and the circumscribing effect of that discrimination upon the black experience. Numerous writers such as Lee Rainwater, Grier and Cobb, and Kenneth Clark have produced compelling descriptions of the harsh limitations imposed upon blacks by white society,4 while others such as James Baldwin, Eldridge

Cognitive dissonance · Criminology · Epistemology · Perception · Receptivity · Self-perception theory · Sociology · Philosophy · Psychology · School Choice and Performance · Social Psychology