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Black Mountain College (1933–57) is famous for the creative artists who taught and studied there. But behind its celebrated alumni was a modernist institution, whose liberal arts curriculum entwined modernist aesthetics with progressive principles developed from John Dewey. Under John Andrew Rice's pioneering leadership, Black Mountain College began to work out a democratic pedagogy of creative experience quite different from most other US institutions of Higher Education. Modernist principles of method informed the entire teaching situation and the relations between students and staff, rather than just being studied inside discrete textual objects.

Data from the National Election Studies were examined in an effort to isolate cognitive dissonance of two kinds' of dissonance arising from a behavioral commitment in the form of voting, & dissonance arising from inconsistencies associated with having supported the losing candidate. Feeling thermometer ratings of the two principal presidential candidates obtained before & immediately after six elections (1972, 1980, 1984, 1988, 1992, & 1996) were analyzed. Regression estimates supported a dissonance reduction explanation of observed attitude changes. Voters, as compared to nonvoters, tended to increase the evaluative distance between candidates after an election, whereas supporters of the losing candidate were more likely than supporters of the winning candidate to decrease such evaluative distances. An additional examination of voters yielded results consistent with dissonance theory: After the election, respondents reporting favorable evaluations of both candidates (a difficult choice) tended to spread comparative candidate evaluations compared to respondents who were favorable toward only one candidate (an easy choice). The results both support & cast doubt on prior studies. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 45 References. Adapted from the source document.