Social Judgment Theory - Development of SJT

Development of SJT

SJT arose from social psychology and was based on laboratory findings resulting from experiments. These experiments studied the mental assessment of physical objects, referred to at the time as psychophysical research. Subjects were asked to compare some aspect of an object, such as weight or color, to another, differing object. The researchers discovered that when a standard was provided for comparison, the participants categorized the objects relative to the aspects of the standard. For example, if a very heavy object was used as the standard in assessing weight, then the other objects would be judged to be relatively lighter than if a very light object was used as the standard. The standard is referred to as an "anchor". This work involving physical objects was applied to psychosocial work, in which a participant's limits of acceptability on social issues are studied. Social issues include areas such as religion and politics.