COMM 300 - Social Judgment / Certainty Lecture
Title: Letter #2
- Recommended Theories
- Expectancy Violation Theory
- Constructivism: Cognitive complexity / Design Logics
- Social Judgment Theory
- Cognitive Dissonance Theory
- Elaboration Likelihood
- Acceptable Theories
- Uncertainty Reduction / Predicted Outcome Value
- System's Theory / Watzlawick
- Relational Dialectics
- Social Penetration Theory
- (Semiotics)
Title: Homework
- Remember: 3 exam questions by 3/5
- Typed
- Of at least two types -- see email
Title: Topics We'll Discuss Today
- Influence and persuasion
- Attitudes
- Social Judgment Theory
- Latitudes of Acceptance and Rejection
- Attitude Certainty
- Self-Certainty
Title: Social Influence
- Changing others
- Three ways we might influence others
- What they do
- What they think
- What they feel
- Is there also intra-personal influence?
Title: Social Influence
- Influence Attempts in Everyday Life
- May be subtle or crass
- Includes
- Identity negotiation
- Altercasting
- Be able to have your own examples for the exam
Title: Social Influence
- Examples of Influence Attempts in Everyday Life
- Getting your teacher to talk slower
- Getting your students to come to class on time
- Getting a businessman not to write you off as "a student"
- Getting your mother to send you money
Title: Social Influence
- More Examples of Influence Attempts in Everyday Life
- Getting your son/daughter to pay rent
- Getting someone to like you
- Helping someone feel better after a tragedy
- Getting someone to stop being mad at you
Title: Social Influence
- Influencing Others' Behavior
- Operant conditioning (Skinner)
- Change the reinforcement schedule
- Reward good behavior and/or punish bad behavior
Title: Social Influence
- Influencing Others' Behavior (Cont.)
- Threaten physical force
- "Give me your money or I'll kill you!"
- Threaten social force
- "Give me your money or I'll make fun of you at dinner!"
- Offer physical rewards
- Offer social rewards
Title: Social Influence
- Influencing Others' Behavior (cont.)
- Convince them to do it "for their own reasons"
- Ask them to do it for you as a favor
- Convince them it's in their best interest
- Change their reasons / change their attitude
Title: Social Influence
- Definition of an Attitude
- Attitude = one's evaluative orientation toward a person, thing, idea, etc.
- Do you like Shredded Wheat?
- Will you vote for Al Gore for president?
- Do you prefer lecture course or seminars?
- What's your favorite Friday evening activity?
- Is Seinfeld funny?
Title: Social Influence
- Persuasion
- Often studied as changing people's attitudes
- Goal is usually to change their behavior
- Attitude-behavior link too often is weak
- Communication focuses on noncoercive verbal influence
- Most real situations are partly coercive
- How would you define coercion? Voluntary?
- Think about choice within constraints
Title: Social Judgment Theory
- Key Concept: Latitudes
- Five levels of ratings of attitudinal statements
- 1. Most acceptable to me
- Call this point your Best Guess and denote by X
- 2. Acceptable to me
- Call the set of these your Latitude of Acceptance (LoA)
- 3. Whatever
- 4. Unacceptable to me
- Call the set of these your Latitude of Rejection (LoR)
- 5. Most unacceptable to me
Title: Social Judgment Theory
- Mental representation of attitudes
- Social Judgment Theory says
- Not just a single point: "This is where I am."
- Need to know range of acceptable options.
- Need to know what is objectionable
Title: Social Judgment Theory
- Implications for Influence
- Messages in LoA seen as closer to your X than they may be.
- Easy to nestle in with them
- Messages in LoR seen as farther from your X than they may be.
- No felt need to seriously consider these messages
Title: Social Judgment Theory
- Implications for Influence (cont.)
- Adjust our attitude according to where messages falls
- In LoA attitude moves toward message
- In LoR attitude moves away from message
- NOTE: This boomerang effect is seldom observed
- Cf Swann et al. -- Good EC project
Title: Social Judgment Theory
- Fazio, Zanna & Cooper 1977
- Used to integrate Cognitive Dissonance Theory and Self-Perception Theory
- Students whose behavior fit in their LoA moved X toward behavior.
- Students whose behavior fit in their LoR ALSO moved X toward behavior!
- Notes
- Less movement in LoR, but still this is "anti-boomerang"
- No change for LoR messages if students misattributed their arousal
- As you read the chapter on dissonance think about this experiment
Title: Social Judgment Theory
- Key Concept: Ego-Involvement
- How much does this attitude matter to you?
- How important is it to you that you be right?
- How much is your identity tied up in the concept?
- Think about how identity and attitudes go together.
- Sherif autokinetic experiment shows social convergence
- Cf Symbolic Convergence Theory
Title: Social Judgment Theory
- Key Concept: Certainty
- How does being certain affect your attitude latitudes?
- For today I'll assume certainty = short LoA
- According to Social Judgment Theory can only influence within LoA
- If that's true, high certainty people are less subject to influence.
Title: Social Judgment Theory
- Self-Judgment
- What if the attitude object is yourself?
- Self-Esteem is the attitude you have toward yourself.
- What about other self-judgments?
- What about neutral judgments?
- Prefer blues or reds?
- Quiet or rowdy?
Title: Self-Certainty
- Two main things you can be certain about
- Your worth as a person
- This is Self-Esteem Certainty
- It is evaluative, affective, motivational
- Who you are -- your traits and characteristics
- This is Self-Schema Certainty
- It is cognitive
- In real life these often overlap but we can distinguish between them
conceptually.
Title: Consequences of Self-Certainty
- Baumgardner 1990
- Those with low-self-esteem use longer ranges
- She used only positive and negative traits?
- How might the answer have been different if she use neutral traits?
- NOTE: How we ask the question influences the answer we get!
Title: Consequences of Self-Certainty
- Wright 1993
- Ranges are much longer for more neutral traits
- Ranges vary with self-esteem, but mostly for evaluative traits
- See overheads
- X vs range plot
- Lower, X, Middle by likability
- -------- = Low self-esteem
- - - - - - = High self-esteem
- Self-esteem measured by Rosenberg Self-Esteem scale (on your pink sheet)
Title: Self-Certainty and Self-Clarity
- The Campbell Self-Clarity Scale
- Sample items
- In general, I have a clear sense of who I am and what I am.
- My beliefs about myself often conflict with one another
- My beliefs about myself seem to change very frequently.
Title: Self-Certainty and Self-Clarity
- The Campbell Self-Clarity Scale (cont.)
- Some of you had this on one side of your pink sheet
- Findings
- Correlates 0.6 with Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale
- Correlates 0.25 with length of LoA ("range")
- Upshot: Related to LoA but not the same.
Title: Self-Esteem and Self-Esteem Stability
- Michael Kernis and colleagues
- Not all high self-esteem people are alike.
- Some have stable high self-esteem, others have unstable high self-esteem
- Those with unstable high self-esteem are more likely to respond with anger and
hostility to negative feedback
Title: Self-Esteem and Self-Esteem Stability
- Michael Kernis and colleagues
- What would you expect of low self-esteem people?
- Note that Kernis finds stability unrelated to level of self-esteem whereas
Campbell and Baumgardner had found stability went with high self-esteem.
Title: Self-Certainty and Self-Esteem Stability
- The Fear-Dare hypothesis
- Can we represent people's self feelings by probability distributions?
- Does the X say where I am now and the LoA tell where I can move?
- So wide LoA means instability
- Does what's possible, even if improbable, rule your emotional experience?
- Overhead: Popeye, Walter Mitty and Woody Allen
Title: References
- Those works referenced above and some key others ({} = Italics)
- Campbell, J. D. (1990). Self-esteem and clarity of the self-concept. {Journal of
Personality and Social Psychology}, {59}, 538-549.
- Swann, W. B., Pelham, B. W., & Chidester, T. R. (1988). Change through
paradox: Using self-verification to alter beliefs. {Journal of Personality and
Social Psychology}, {54}, 268-273.
- Baumgardner, A. H. (1990). To know oneself is to like oneself: Self-certainty
and self-affect. {Journal of Personality and Social Psychology}, {58},
1062-1072.
- Jones, S. C. (1973). Self- and interpersonal evaluations: Esteem theories versus
consistency theories. {Psychological Bulletin}, {79}, 185-199.
- Rhodewalt, F., & Agustsdottir, S. (1986). Effects of self-presentation on the
phenomenal self. {Journal of Personality and Social Psychology}, {50}, 47-55.
- Fazio, R. H., Zanna, M. P., & Cooper, J. (1977). Dissonance and
self-perception: An integrative view of each theory's proper domain of
application. {Journal of Experimental Social Psychology}, {13}, 464-479.