Application of Social Judgment Theory
By: Matt Weikert
I perceive social judgment as the norms and attitudes of someone who is being influenced by a reference group. The reference group could be the culture that one lives in, friends, sports teams, gangs, family, etc. Any group that a person defines their identity with. The attitudes and beliefs are concrete and depending on the ego-involvement, or importance, of the issue it is placed in three zones that are set in the persons mind. To learn more about these zones go to Kellie's page.
Consider the movie Blade Runner. It was how humans had created a robot that was a replication of humans known as Replicants. They were smarter and stronger than a human and had supernatural powers. The humans deported the Replicants off the earth because they feared that the Replicants might develop their own thoughts and feelings causing them to go out of control because of how they are treated by the humans. The humans installed a safety device in the Replicants for this very reason. This safety device was a life span of only four years. The Replicants had to come back to earth in search of information on how to expand their life source. To keep the earth clear of Replicants there were Blade Runners whose sole purpose was to eliminate Replicants. The Blade Runners were very alert and destroyed any Replicant upon detection.
If you saw the movie you might have thought that the Blade Runners were doing good for the earth by destroying the Replicants. I am going to try to explain to you how I saw it the other way around by applying the social judgment theory to the Blade Runners.
I consider the Blade Runners a reference group. There is a speaker of high status, which is their boss, that is giving them orders to kill the Replicants. This makes the Blade Runners very dogmatic, or narrow minded, about the issue of killing the Replicants. Their mind is made up because a credible person instructed them what to do. The Blade Runners have never sat down with a Replicant and had a conversation with it about their needs. Instead they are programmed to kill. After seeing the movie I am convinced that the Blade Runners are on a one-track mind that is anchored on killing the Replicants. Their judgment of the Replicant is concrete due to the beliefs of the group and the influence of a person with high status. How the Blade Runners are influenced by the beliefs of their group and a credible personal is my interpretation of Social Judgment.
There is one interesting character in the movie that was a Blade Runner that changed his mind about the Replicants at the end of the movie. This characters name was Deckard. After Deckard had killed several Replicants through out the movie he found himself in a conflict with one particular Replicant, named Roy that ended up saving his life. Roy then communicated with Deckard that they only wanted a longer life span. This event had a huge effect on Deckard and changed his attitude about them.
By reducing the uncertainty that existed between Deckard and the Replicants, Roy was able to change Deckard's attitudes and beliefs implemented on him by his reference group, the Blade Runners.
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Because this page deals with uncertainty I have linked it to a site that has great information on the theory Uncertainty Reduction. It contains the eight axioms that explain uncertainty and a research, critique and application of uncertainty.
