User:Jordneu03/Social judgment theory

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(Bilee Dyer: EDITING)Social Judgment Theory is a persuasion theory developed by psychologist Muzafer Sherif and his colleagues in the 1960s. The theory is rooted in the idea that people have pre-existing attitudes or anchor points on various issues, and when they encounter persuasive messages, they judge those messages based on their initial attitudes. Social Judgement Theory depends on the individual's position on the certain issue, depending on the three elements of social judgement theory, followed by their anchor, alternatives and ego-involvement. The theory has three factors that create different positions that an individual can have on a specific issue. Social Judgement Theory is the way opinions and thoughts are formed on specific issues or beliefs. It is used to explain the reasoning behind how and why people have different reactions and responses towards information or any specific issue. This theory improves how people communication with one another.

The three factors an individual has toward a specific issue is broken up into 3 different latitudes: rejection, acceptance and non-commitment. The latitude of acceptance refers to the range of positions or messages that an individual finds acceptable or favorable. Rejection represents the range of positions or messages that an individual finds unacceptable or unfavorable. Lastly, The latitude of non-commitment lies between the latitudes of acceptance and rejection. This is the range of positions that an individual either accepts or rejects outright. This attitude can be imagined as a spectrum of different opinions that one accepts, ranging from rejection on one end and acceptance on the other end.

Social judgement theory also has another side that contains Assimilation and Contrast. Assimilation is when a persuasive message falls within an individual's latitude of acceptance, they are more likely to assimilate the message and adjust their attitude closer to the presented position. If a message falls outside the latitude of acceptance but within the latitude of rejection, individuals are more likely to contrast the message and move their attitude further away from the presented position which is known as contrast.

A recent study by Melike Acar uses SJT to evaluate Turkish teachers’ social judgments on students with special needs being excluded and included in primary schools. This study's main purpose was to research teachers' decisions and justifications related to students with autism and how some teachers struggle to include students with special needs. This study discusses the difficulties in having relations with children in both mainstream and special needs schools. One can see the perspectives of teachers regarding the exclusion of students with different needs. The study goes into depth about how social judgment theory affects both exclusive and inclusive special needs schools. The results concluded that teachers with more training on inclusion had a more positive acceptance than teachers who had not had the training when it came to games. However, when it came to school projects, those who had not had the inclusion training were more accepting than those who had the training. These findings revealed that the context of exclusion has a significant effect on whether the teachers judged typically developing students' exclusion of their peers with ASD as acceptable. Fifty-four teachers participated in the study. Based on the understanding of latitudes, individuals might adjust their messages strategically to be more persuasive. For instance, they might frame their message to fall within the latitude of acceptance of their target audience.

Social Judgment Theory has practical implications in fields such as advertising, politics, and interpersonal communication. It highlights the importance of understanding the audience's existing attitudes and crafting persuasive messages that align with their latitudes of acceptance.

Another study from 2021 by Yao Song, Ameersing Luximon, and Yan Luximon  studied the effects of different human-robot faces and whether or not people trust them. Experiments showed that big eyes, medium vertical and horizontal eye position, and medium horizontal mouth position all helped to increase trustworthiness. To be able to receive a latitude of acceptance from the social judgment theory of people, they experimented with people’s reactions to different facial features on robots. (END OF EDITS)

Another study conducted by Agbolagh and Zamani examined SJT in simulations and its connections to balance theory. Results indicate that in a given group of people, opinions will tend to either cluster or form consensus or bipartite consensus when beliefs begin to form into two groups in a community. Interactions among those within a group remain largely positive, while those between groups are negative. Findings suggest once the bounded confidence model was adapted to include negative responses, those with like-minded opinions had a higher likelihood of persuading. Findings of this study indicate that opinions changed to align with the average view of trusted individuals among participants.

An Ohio State University tested the study participants' moral judgment of characters in media through the lens of SJT. The study findings indicate that during interactions between heroes and villains, people morally disengage from the violence committed by the hero because they know the villain to be morally worse. Because of their past experiences in observing heroes in media, people are inclined to believe that the hero is acting in a way that is less immoral because of their preconceived notions of who a hero is. A reason for this may indicate that the hero committed violence to stop the villain. This moral disengagement occurs between the boundaries of their latitudes of rejection and acceptance.