Social influence constrained by the heritability of attitudes

• This study concerned heritable attitudes and attitude change within groups.
• This study used novel attitudes and heritability estimates.
• Heritable attitudes changed less after discussion.
• Attitude heritability constrained social influence and attitude change within groups.

Previous work by Tesser (1993) and Bourgeois (2002) found that heritable attitudes are more resistant to social influence and attitude change. The present study sought to replicate and extend previous work by utilizing attitudes and heritability estimates not previously used in studies examining the effect of heritable attitudes on social influence processes. It was hypothesized that attitudes with higher heritability estimates would change less after group discussion relative to attitudes with lower heritability estimates. As predicted, highly heritable attitudes did show greater resistance to social influence in the context of group discussion. The present findings add further support to the notion that attitude heritability is an important element of attitude change and extend previous work through the study of novel attitudes and heritability estimates.