Chapter 1 The Development of Social Judgment Theory

Abstract

Publisher Summary This chapter introduces social judgment theory (SJT). It focuses upon the conceptual structure of the framework and traces its development from the roots in Brunswik's probabilistic functionalism to its present form. SJT is a general framework for the study of human judgment. It is a metatheory which gives direction to research on judgment. SJT is the result of a systematic application of Brunswik's probabilistic functionalism to the problem of human judgment in social situations. Brunswik's theory of perception is also called “cue theory.”According to such a theory, a person does not have access to any direct information about the objects in the environment. Instead, perception is seen as an indirect process, mediated by a set of proximal cues. In accordance with this view, SJT defines judgment as a process which involves the integration of information from a set of cues into a judgment about some distal state of affairs. The lens model illustrates an important methodological principle in SJT: the Principle of Parallel Concepts. This principle states that the cognitive system and the task system must be described in terms of the same kinds of concepts.