CHAPTER 4 - Social Judgment Theory

Abstract

This chapter discusses the social judgment theory. Social judgment theory is a variation of information processing theory. The theory began with the studies of message perception reported by Sherif and Hovland (1961), who found that receivers do not react neutrally to messages, rather they judge messages as being acceptable or not. This judgment is highly predictable from the discrepancy between message value and the attitude of the receiver. If the discrepancy between message and attitude is small, then the receiver judges the message to be acceptable. However, if the discrepancy is large, then the receiver will judge the message to be biased or distorted and not acceptable. This phenomenon is described in terms of latitudes of acceptance and latitudes of rejection. The latitude of acceptance is centered about the attitude value of the perceiver and represents a region of small message-attitude discrepancy. On either side of the latitude of acceptance, there is a latitude of rejection that contains messages that are highly discrepant in one direction or the other.