Intrinsic dynamics of social judgment.

Abstract

Ss expressed their moment-to-moment feelings about a target on a computer screen. In the 1 st study, the target was a positive, negative, or mixed-valence acquaintance; in the 2nd study, the target was a liked versus disliked acquaintance who committed a positive versus negative act. Several dynamic measures were derived from the positioning of the cursor (sampled 10 times per second) over a 2min period. The dimension of the structure underlying the observed dynamics was also assessed. Both sets of measures varied meaningfully across targets (e.g., feelings changed at a relatively fast and unstable rate for mixed-valence targets) and were correlated with self-report measures (e.g., instability in rate of movement was associated with self-reported uncertainty in feelings). Discussion centers on the viability and usefulness of framing social judgment in terms of dynamical systems concepts and principles. Social judgment is a broad category, encompassing such distinct phenomena as causal attribution, impression formation, prejudice, and moral evaluation (cf. Eiser, 1990; Fiske & Taylor, 1991; Zebrowitz, 1990). Although each of these judgmental phenomena is associated with its own purported cognitive and emotional processes, collectively they share a critical assumption concerning stability and the basis for change in the output of their respective processes. The assumption is that once a judgment is formed, it is stable unless it is updated by new information or challenged by social influence. By implication, if a person experienced neither pressure nor new information, and if measurement error could be eliminated by directly accessing the contents of the person's mind, the person's summary judgment concerning a target would stand still and could be characterized as a single point on an appropriately labeled scale. Our aim in this article is to provide support for a different perspective on the nature of stability and change in social judgment. In particular, we suggest that under some conditions the output of social judgment is inherently dynamic rather than stable. The dynamics of judgment, moreover, are generated by internal mechanisms—specifically, the interaction of elements in the judgment system—and thus can occur in the absence of ex