Social Judgment Theory - Attitude Change

Attitude Change

To first have a change in attitude you must judge how close or how far away your position is. The next step is shifting you position in response to the argument made. We adjust our attitude once we have judged it to be in our latitude of acceptance. If we judge that message to be in our latitude of rejection we will also adjust our attitude, but away from what we think the speaker is advocating. Sometimes an attitude change may be incidental. The boomerang effect is an attitude change in the opposite direction of what the message advocates. The listener is driven away from rather than drawn to an idea. A major implication of social judgment theory is that persuasion is difficult to accomplish. Successful persuasive messages are those that are targeted to the receiver’s latitude of acceptance and discrepant from the anchor position, so that the incoming information cannot be assimilated or contrasted. The receiver’s ego-involvement must also be taken into consideration. This suggests that even successful attempts at persuasion will yield small changes in attitude.