Muzafer Sherif, a psychologist, developed social judgment theory in the early 1960s with the assistance of Carl I. Hovland and Carolyn W. Sherif. To explain apparent inconsistencies in attitude change research, Sherif and Hovland (n.d.) suggested a theory of social judgment. The theory delves into how people make decisions when persuaded to accept or reject a message based on their current attitudes toward that message or subject. According to the theory, attitude change is moderated by judgment and its consequences. When making a decision in any given situation, an individual will have several options.
When it comes to social judgment theory, there are three likelihoods (ranges): the scope of acceptance, the scope of rejection, and lastly the scope of non-commitment. When one discerns an idea and is more likely to contemplate it, that is referred to as the latitude of acceptance, or in theory, is referred to as the anchor. When an individual discerns the idea to be unbiased and is not likely to contemplate it, this is referred to as the latitude of rejection. When one discerns an idea and doesn’t consider it unbiased or within reason, that is called the latitude of non-commitment.
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The contentious demonstrations of kneeling during the national anthem have prompted everyone around the country to take a stand on the subject. Taking a knee may be considered an appropriate way to protest racism and discrimination against minorities by one person, but it may be considered disrespectful to the national anthem and all those who have served this country by another. Some people may be unconcerned about the protests in any case, or they may hold a variety of viewpoints on the topic.
The specifics of these latitudes have been studied in order to determine how to show the structure of the individual's attitude. The size of the previously mentioned latitudes corresponds to how active an individual is personally. An individual does not have prior knowledge, beliefs, or opinions about the information presented, and this will determine whether the message being persuaded is rejected or embraced by the listener. The importance of a problem or message in a person's life is defined by ego involvement. A wide range of rejection indicates a high level of ego involvement.
Assimilation occurs when the individual receiving the idea or message feels that the position is more similar to their own than it is. In assimilation, the listener seems to share the same beliefs as the individual delivering the message. The effect of contrast occurs when the individual receiving the message or concept assumes that the position is more distant from their own than it is. In comparison, the listener seems to hold opinions that vary from those of the sender. When the message and the role being convinced are explicit, the contrast and assimilation effects are reduced. This paper investigates social judgment theory, its propositions, and its implementation.
The position of the convinced message influences the listener's attitude change. According to Salazar (2017), studies have shown that understanding the application of these three latitudes improves the consistency of speakers' arguments in the production of social campaign messages, the protection of organizational credibility, the assessment of occupational knowledge, and the creation of reliable messages in the process of attitudinal change. The activity used in this study was designed to help researchers gain a deeper understanding of the social judgment principle while attempting to convince others to take a certain stance.
During the activity discussed in ‘Changing Resistant Audience Attitudes Using Social Judgment Theory’s ‘Anchor’ Point Perspectives’, each group was given cards that say, ‘latitude of acceptance’, ‘latitude of rejection’, and ‘latitude of non-commitment’. The instructor had given the students controversial issues on which to base their persuasive message. Students were required to write convincing messages opposing the latitude on their cards, so if the card said 'latitude of acceptance', you would try to convince the listener to take a 'latitude of rejection'. The teacher gave each group about 10 minutes to develop and present their convincing arguments to their peers. Every student in each group was also asked to provide their personal 'anchor' on the issue presented to them, demonstrating how it differed from their initial latitude on the cards. The overall activity was effective in assisting students in developing arguments and debating them in front of a diverse audience on a related topic/issue. Students gained a greater understanding of social judgment theory. It will help them practice not only convincing points but also being on the receiving end.
The social judgment model has been proven to be a resourceful and certified approach to certain situations, however, Brambilla (2014) suggested thinking about the communion dimension as including at least two distinct characteristics: sociability and morality. Being friendly to everyone to sustain healthy, affectionate, and productive relationships are referred to as sociability. Morality can be described as treating others in ways that we believe are correct and ethical to preserve trustworthy and respectful relationships. Participants in the experiment described in ‘On the Importance of Being Moral: The Distinctive Role of Morality in Social Judgement’ were asked to create a list of characteristics that would aid them in forming an opinion of another individual. The majority of participants chose morality-related traits over sociability or competence. These results corroborated previous studies indicating that most people valued trustworthiness above all other qualities. Because of how it correlates to the assessment of an individual's intentions as favorable or unfavorable, the findings endorse the notion that morality is essential within social judgment theory. Researchers suggested in their study on sociability, morality, and competence about the social judgment that seeing one person or a group of people as talented should have a variety of implications for social interactions and judgments rather than seeing them as powerful, assertive, or vigorous. Some suggested investigating more concrete ways in which people judge themselves and their personal understanding.
Criticizing someone's past would not directly result in a negative view of that person, however, it will persuade someone to have a negative opinion of that person. Instead of using the form of direct criticism towards someone, a person might benefit more if it just would be indirect. For example, instead of directly stating what someone did wrong in a situation, one could take an indirect approach by stating things that they could have done better and to try next time. That approach in a situation is known as a counterfactual argument, and according to Catellani (2014), those statements are mental stimuli about how a situation would have ended differently if one or more antecedents had been different.
In their study, ‘The Impact of Counterfactual Attacks on Social Judgement’, the researchers looked at counterfactual attacks and how their effects contribute to social judgments. Attack messages are cynical details about the initial attack's topic, specifically, actions. One might argue that attempting to criticize a person could result in a negative reaction towards the source of the original message rather than the objective. To prevent negative backlash, one might suggest giving both criticism and compliments at the same time. The study looked at the effectiveness of counterfactual assaults on morality in a political context. Politics was explicitly chosen for this study because it is naturally contentious, and political leaders are often judged based on their appearance and morality. Within this experiment, two experiments were conducted, and in both studies, participants (108 students) examined a fabricated interview between a political figure and a reporter. The reporter's final thought was transformed into a factual or counterfactual assault. The analysis also included a control group. The hypothesis was that the counterfactual attack would produce a similarly bad result as the factual attack and that this effect would be moderated so that it was assumed that the counterfactual was less likely to be biased than the factual. The findings revealed that after the counterfactual assault, judgment in general became more important.
After social judgment theory originated, social psychologists began to lean towards the processing in correlation to social judgments. In a recent study, the focus has moved more to the sense of firmer decisions made by individuals. The research confirmed that the psychological association of personality traits resulted in a layout in which those traits are separated. According to Costa-Lopes (2016), personality characteristics are better spatially represented when divided into two aspects: mental and social (good/bad). In a positive sense, the intellectual contained traits such as determination, intelligence, and motivation, while in a negative sense, it included traits such as idiotic, dumb, or foolish. On the positive side, the social included characteristics such as being heartfelt, soft, tolerable, and authentic, while on the negative side, it included attributes such as being untrustworthy, introverted, and cold.
One study chose to investigate hostility when it is caused by an incident unrelated to the current situation in which a person may find themselves. Anger is an emotion that people experience nearly every day, and most times it is always out of their control. Regardless of why people become angry, they must transform anger into a calmer emotion because it can interfere with other important things that are going on. Every individual is unique in terms of how they manage to regulate how their emotions affect other events. Individuals use a variety of techniques to channel their emotions, especially anger, and turn them into positive emotions.
A study was conducted to investigate how anger moves within a person and how knowledge is suppressed in a situation where the anger is from a previous situation. Researchers hypothesized that people who had a higher level of anger at the start of the study would be more biased toward social decisions after anger management. They reasoned that people who have a higher suppression of angry feelings will have less prejudice because they can isolate themselves from the stimuli. Participants read a story about a protagonist going about his daily activities. Five of the twenty sentences were often malicious but debatable acts. Following the reading of the narrative, participants were asked questions about their emotional well-being. Knowing that you are experiencing a particular emotion can reduce the severity of its effects on you. The questions contained general questions about the overall intent of the research, but the majority of participants had no idea what it was. When asked how they felt while reading the protagonist's story, the majority said they were furious. The introduction of anger was valid, and participants reported that background noise made them more irritable. According to Fiori (n.d.), the findings demonstrated that the consequences of indignation are applicable to social judgments. The greater the participants' awareness of frustration, the more they allowed the anger to impact an unrelated situation, which initially resulted in more prejudice in social judgments.
Everyone forms opinions, whether about a specific person, an idea, or a message. When people make decisions about people, it is most definitely not based on assumptions about how they appear, but rather on how they behave. Behaviors can be viewed in many different ways. For example, if a person chooses to go skydiving, does this imply that the person is 'adventurous' or 'crazy'? According to Maringer (2009), there is no prior evidence to justify why prime memory contributes to contrast in social judgments. Correction, described as someone who is conscious but will not use or remove it from impressions, is defined as someone who is aware but will not use or remove it from impressions. Another reason for contrasted judgments is that conscious individuals will most likely use the knowledge to weigh their behaviors.
Many researchers have studied the subject of credibility and how it contributes to social judgment over the years. A reputation is described as what you are recognized for and how others interpret you, and what they think of you. Some may accept that reputations are strongly linked to stereotypes. In high school, for example, a student can have a strong reputation for being a high achiever or valedictorian. Reputations and stereotypes can be good or poor, and they may as well be viewed positively or negatively. Mishina (2012) investigated organizational credibility and classified it into two categories: favorability about their character and favorability about their capacity. When assessing the prejudices of social judgment, it is critical to developing the two categories when addressing organizational credibility. In that you make decisions about a person or group based on their sociability, reputation is closely linked to social judgment.
So, in certain cases, social judgment theory is too nebulous to include a comprehensive account of convincing communications. The only essential elements of the convincing message are the advocating stance and the affirmation of the position it calls for. It makes no difference if the convincing idea is firm in its debates or has legitimate points. It all comes full circle back to the message's defense. Since a hypothesis can never be confirmed, social judgment theory may benefit from some current research. As new theories and psychologists/researchers take up this communication-based theory, case studies and experiments should continue.
Someone trying to convince a message may not be firm in their beliefs about the initial message, and they may conclude that they were effective in their persuasions simply because the recipient demonstrates full affirmation in agreement. Anything about the message transfer would be deceptive if the message's recipient was uncertain about what was being convinced. Aside from this viewpoint, we must remember that, when a person may have a predetermined place in their minds, they still have other ranges to consider: the latitudes of approval, the latitudes of rejection, and the latitudes of non-commitment. The person recovering the message is not required to comply with the person trying to convince them. It could be advantageous to reassure the receiver that their position on the issue is within the limits of the non-commitment latitude.
Since the early 1960s, social decision theory has been studied, investigated, challenged, and analyzed. Aside from a few experiments used to teach the idea, it hasn't received much attention in recent years. Overall, it is a useful theory to consider when you go through daily life experiences and find yourself in situations where you must make decisions. All are judges, and this objective philosophy provides certain criteria and definitions for making good or poor judgments. This idea, I believe, should be studied more thoroughly as culture changes and communication practices change over time. The majority of the research I reviewed focused on perceptions of individuals based on their appearance (body language, gender, age, attitudes, etc.), which was the most significant factor in deciding their social judgments.
As previously mentioned, we now have new communication methods. Since we communicate virtually, it is more difficult to make authentic decisions because we are hidden behind a mobile phone, laptop, game console, and so on. People do use these tools to make decisions, but they aren't as reliable as face-to-face interaction. Trying to convince someone via text message or social media news feed can be easier or more difficult. Many factors influence a person's current attitude toward the subject, their emotional state, and how insecure they are when addressing or debating controversies online. It would have been interesting to learn more about social decisions when they relate to social media or emerging technology.
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