A Psychophysical Investigation of the Influence of Attitude on the Judgement of Social Stimuli

The often reported finding that a person's attitude on an issue can be a potent influence on judgements relating to that issue is discussed with reference to three theories of social judgement—assimilation contrast, adaptation-level, and variable perspective. It is pointed out that the study of social judgement has been dominated by the measurement technique of equal-appearing intervals, and that this domination has led to a potentially biased and restricted view of judgemental processes. In an attempt to remove such restriction an investigation is reported which extends the study of social judgement by utilizing some of the newer techniques of psychophysical scaling. A sample of students judged 18 statements with respect to statement favourability toward the church. Four scales—partition (equal-appearing intervals), confusion (based on the method of successive categories), magnitude estimation and ratio estimation—were derived from the judgemental data. When the subjects were divided into five groups on the basis of their own religious attitudes it was found that the more favourable the attitude of subjects towards the church (1) the higher are their ratings of statements expressing favourable opinions about the church and (2) the lower their ratings of statements expressing neutral or unfavourable opinions about the church. Although some differences between the partition, confusion, magnitude estimation and ratio estimation scales were found concerning the extent of these two effects, the general pattern for all four scales was similar. It is concluded that the adaptation-level and variable perspective theories are inadequate to account for the results. The third, assimilation contrast theory, is seen to fit the pattern of results reasonably well.