ABSTRACT: 66 undergraduates stated whether college education should be general or specialized, were led to expect that they would write essays supporting one or the other of these positions, judged the validity of a standard set of statements representing both views, and again expressed their opinions. Validity judgments indicate that Ss tended strongly to accept arguments supporting their own position and reject opposing ones when expecting to defend their own position, but accepted nearly equal numbers of arguments on both sides when expecting to advocate the opposing position. Final opinion judgments were influenced in the direction of the assigned position even though the role playing task was not performed. It is concluded that the effectiveness of role playing in inducing opinion change may be due in large part to its success in getting Ss to evaluate information opposing their own position in unbiased fashion.