Somewhere in the Mind

“To balance a message with views of thy self, and place it on a scale in the mind…”

IT IS EXACTLY 10AM. You’ve been waiting more than an hour for a seminar that was supposed to begin at 8. Then the first speaker comes. He is wearing an odd coat made up of tweeds and tattered wools. He begins speaking… then he finishes his talk with the statement, “Students today don’t know how to think, read, and write!” Would you agree with him? Come to think of it…

If there is one universal truth in the world, that is, people judge the messages they receive. How do I know? Social Judgment Theory tells me so. Once people receive messages, they weigh its content based on their own opinion. If their opinion is the opposite of the message, it falls in the Latitude of Rejection. Meanwhile, if their opinion shares the same views of the message, it falls under Latitude of Acceptance. Or what if they don’t bother to care? Well, that would fall under the Latitude of Non-Commitment, or the Neutral Latitude.


“Social Judgment theory has relative simplicity in that it is a fairly simple study. It can be tested and proved false in that an individual can test the theory through reflecting on statements, which evoke various opinions. The theoretical propositions within the theory are consistent with one another. Social Judgment theory generates new hypotheses, expanding the range of knowledge, and it also has organizing power through organizing our existing knowledge about attitudes in our mind,” that is according to a reliable site.

Is this theory reliable? Well, base the answer on that question upon its Proponents namely: Muzafer Sherif, Carolyn Sherif, & Carl Hovland. Their theory can be judged through different views. Ontologically, this theory is deterministic -- that an individual’s behavior can be predicted. In an axiological view, the theory is value-neutral -- that the theoretical propositions are objective and not biased.

Furthermore, Social Judgment theory proposes the idea that persuasion is a two-step process. The first step involves individuals hearing or reading a message and immediately evaluating where the message falls within their own position. The second step involves individuals adjusting their particular attitude either toward or away from the message they heard.

Now the question: Would you agree with the statement that the speaker said?

If you “Yes,” then you might be a teacher who gets nothing but nuisance from students. Hence if you say “No,” then you might be a student yourself (or perhaps a teacher who finds something good about students) and find the statement as mere stereotyping. The logic there is simple: Somewhere in your mind, you balanced the message with the views of your self!