The beginnings of social judgment theory can be traced to early experiments on attitude and persuasion in social psychology, but it was first given its foundations with the work of Muzafer Sherif and Carl Hovland in 1961. Sherif and Hovland explored social judgment theory further in their 1961 book, Social judgment: Assimilation and contrast effects in communication and attitude.
Social judgment theory claims that there are …show more content…
All of these are the underlying purpose of communication. It also applies to civic engagement since it can change how someone looks at different things, and it can make one’s perspective on community service better or worse. Persuasion is important in social judgment theory because people can be persuaded to change their judgement in certain situations. For example, if someone was asked to do the Big Event and they refused not understanding fully what it was, according to the social judgment theory they could listen to a speech by someone from the Big Event staff, learn things they did not know, and be persuaded to change their mind. The act of persuasion is the main focus in this theory. If someone can persuade someone to change their judgement, that is a success in social judgement theory. SJT relates to civic engagement since people will have different attitudes toward it. These attitudes can be based on the persons anchor point or ego involvement, also their attitudes can be based on whether the issue is in the latitude of acceptance, rejection, or