To further investigate Muzafer Sherif's Social Judgement Theory, I researched the book Attitude and Attitude Change. Mr. Sherif co-authored the book with his with Carolyn and Rager E. Nebergall. It is a 1965 text published by W.B. Saunders Company of Philadelphia and London. I concentrated my research on chapter 5: Assimilation-Contrast of Communication Relative to Person's Own Stand.
In chapter 5, the theoretical model developed by Sherif was extended to predict assimilation-contrast effects on a controversial issue--the 1960 presidential election. Included in this research are suggestions made by respondents concerning the roles of the properties of communication itself, the individual's involvement in his own stand, and the discrepency between the communication and the latitude of acceptance.
The results of this study show that each of these variables influences placement of communication. Furhtermore, under such conditions they interact strongly, producing results which differ from their influences taken singly.
Clear statements of extremely partisan arguments were not displaced significantly, regardless of a person's own stand on an issue. Significant variations in placement occurred for moderatley partisan and fence-straddling communications. In assessing the latter, as well as the Presidential debates on television, the lack of any conclusion or decision as to the outcome was a decisive factor of the communication that affected its displacement. Without a decision, the predominant trend was to assimilate the communication toward own positions in proportion to the discrepency between communication and a peron's own stand. This trend was less pronounced for highly involved persons.
For moderate communications, degree of ego-involvement proved crucial. Assimilation effects were found for less-involved persons, but for highly involved respondents, they were found only when their own stand (latitude of acceptance) extended close to the position of the communication. Conversely, the contrast effects that occurred involved highly committed persons in each instance. In all cases, discrepency between the communication and the individual's own stand was a significant factor.
Sherif draws many scholarly conclusions from his observation of people watching the televised debates of the 1960 Presidential election. One of these conclusions is that a person unconsciously relies on his degree of ego involvement to make decisions on which candidate "won" a certain debate.
To put things in perspective it is helpful to look at this idea in a more natural setting. Picture a jury in deliberating the fate of an accused rapist. Each member of the jury will make his or her judgement via their degree of ego involvement. If a member of the jury was raped herself, then she, at least theoretically, might be more willing to find the suspect guilty. If another member of the jury hasn't seen his brother in ten years because he is in prison on a highly contested rape charge, that juror might be more likely to aquit.
Social judgement theory is complex. It is all too east to get swept up in all of the scholarly terms and lose sight of the theory's main idea. Chapter five of Sherif's book is a great tool for the communication student studying social judgement. Not only does Sherif elaborate on some of the basic principals of the theory but he presents them via tangible examples.
Other Links:
Social Judgement theory attempts to explain how and why people make decisions in their lives. Leslie Baxter and Barbara Montgomery are responsible for authoring another theory that explains how people make decisions in their relationships.
It is called Relational Dialectics.
Check out Communication Theory: Aims and Scopes. It is an international journal that publishes high quality, original research into the theoretical development of communication from across a wide array of disciplines.
The University of Oregon Institute of Cognitive & Decision Sciences offers an assortment of social judgment scholars.
Go back to the Social Judgement Theory title page.
Go back to Matt Basinger's Front Door.
Check out Dr. Judith Lee's Communication Theory Pages.
This page was created by Matt Basinger and last modified on November 18, 1998.