A popular, systems-oriented approach for examining human judgment in particular ecological settings is social judgment theory. The integration of several environmental stimuli or sources of perceptual information is thought to be the process through which judgments are formed (Johnson, 2018). Individuals’ opinions should be accepted or modified if they are incorrect, depending on how their points of view are on a particular subject.
Social Judgment Theory is a psychological theory that explains how individuals evaluate and form attitudes towards social issues and information. It can be more or less difficult to alter an individual’s originally formed opinion, depending on how diverse their viewpoints are on a certain topic. Sherif, the psychologist who developed the theory argues that, in certain ways, humans have deeply ingrained pre-existing ideas that may or may not hold (Niedenthal & Showers, 2020). According to social judgment theory, people will modify their behavior to accept new information after establishing that a new message falls within the acceptable range. If the message is in line with people’s theologies, it is simple for them to become more convinced of it.
Conversely, people are much less likely to completely change their opinions if the information they hear is as opposed to what they already know. People occasionally may be more drawn to the message’s opposing side. The source from which a message originates plays an important role in whether or not it is acknowledged. The capacity for influence is limited by the lack of interpersonal relationships (Bhatia et al., 2019). The social judgment theory is a very effective method for explaining how persuasion works. In addition, it is regularly abused by politicians and marketers to win over supporters or regions. The prior convictions have a greater impact on one’s judgment than the soundness or rationality of the notion itself.
One real-life situation that can be used to highlight social judgment theory is a parent who had to be escorted from the pitch following a bad call in a basket ball game I had attended. Everyone who engages in and helps out at these tournaments is a community member, including a boy, who served as the game’s referee. All participants who sign up may compete since there are no auditions. The competition is more concerned with children playing collaboratively than with high-level competition. That boy who refereed the basketball playoff games for female students in grades 3-6 in one close match that went into overtime, called a foul on a player. The daughter’s father, complaining about calls all game, snapped at the boy, resulting in his eviction from the field. The parent was escorted from the court by a paid adult supervisor after being informed that his conduct was improper and that the tournament could proceed. Most parents act this way at youth sports events and this has resulted to a decrease in the officials and referees available in youth sports.
How parents act affects how their sports-playing children react while in a game. The social judgment theory supports the claim that parents’ actions are motivated by their egos.. The parent in this situation has a problem with the referee because the child is being penalized for a foul. Anything affecting his daughter’s play is of utmost importance to him since he wants his child to be in the game. It is believed that when a father becomes more egotistical about a problem, his tolernce for rejections and other people’s latitudes for acceptance and non-commitment decline.
Due to how important the game is to him, there seems to be a good chance that he has already given the subject much thought. He has already established what he believes to be the right perspective, and developed his self-concepts around it, a clear demonstration of the social judgment theory. He is convinced that what he knows is the truth and thinks everything else is false (Griffin et al., 2022). Therefore, according to the social judgment theory, the father is an example of an ego-centered person who believes in terms of finely defined categories of judgment.
The emphasis on competition and winning has displaced the original goal of youth sports, which was to promote development. As a response, the dad becomes upset when the referee points out his daughter for a foul. Even though fewer student-athletes play sports after high school, social judgment theory has led many parents to see sports as a means of gaining admittance and college sponsorships. They wind up devoting so much time and resources to supporting their child’s athletic endeavors that they lose focus by becoming unduly invested in the result of a game. In this instance, because things did not proceed as expected, the father became agitated and was kicked out of the game due to is utterance.
The dad who yelled at the referee undoubtedly thought he was protecting his daughter, but the outburst neither helped his daughter nor impacted the match’s outcome. It only accomplished to embarrass and distracts his daughter, destroying a teachable opportunity to overcome frustration. This theory contends that since change cannot happen within the spectrum of rejection, people must reach a consensus in the sections where they can agree (Griffin et al., 2022). The greatest method to understand these leeways is through communication and careful study of our recipients and how people must function within them to succeed. These latitudes may be of acceptance or non-commitment. In general, the social judgement theory is helpful for understanding how individuals interpret judgments and for studying the wide range of attitudes and behaviors that people exhibit. It serves as a tool for comprehending how people absorb information and draw conclusions in social situations and explains how people choose new ideas and how their ingrained beliefs and values influence those decisions.
References
Bhatia, S., Richie, R., & Zou, W. (2019). Distributed semantic representations for modeling human judgment. Current Opinion in Behavioral Sciences, 29, 31–36. Web.
Griffin, E., Ledbetter, A., Sparks, G., Cooper, K. R., & Hill, T. E. (2022). A first look at communication theory, 11th ed, ‎McGraw Hill.
Johnson, M. (2018). Conclusion: A theory of social judgement. Nursing Power and Social Judgement, 174–193. Web.