The importance of both judgemental scales and aspects of an attitudinal issue for dimensional salience

This study contributes to the accentuation theory of social judgement, which explains the judgement of attitude statements in terms of both the judge's attitude and the value connotations of the rating scale. It was hypothesized that subjects who were favourable towards two aspects of an issue (the value of work and interest in work) would give more polarized ratings to statements emphasizing a particular aspect when the rating scale used was specifically relevant to that aspect. It was also hypothesized that subjects who were more favourable towards one aspect of the issue than to the other would give more polarized ratings to statements emphasizing the more favoured aspect, irrespective of the specific relevance of the rating scale used. Both predictions were supported, and their relation to dimensional salience was discussed.