Attitude Change
To first have a change in attitude you must judge how close or how far away your position is. The next step is shifting you position in response to the argument made. We adjust our attitude once we have judged it to be in our latitude of acceptance. If we judge that message to be in our latitude of rejection we will also adjust our attitude, but away from what we think the speaker is advocating. Sometimes an attitude change may be incidental. The boomerang effect is an attitude change in the opposite direction of what the message advocates. The listener is driven away from rather than drawn to an idea. A major implication of social judgment theory is that persuasion is difficult to accomplish. Successful persuasive messages are those that are targeted to the receiver’s latitude of acceptance and discrepant from the anchor position, so that the incoming information cannot be assimilated or contrasted. The receiver’s ego-involvement must also be taken into consideration. This suggests that even successful attempts at persuasion will yield small changes in attitude.
Read more about this topic: Social Judgment Theory
Famous quotes containing the words attitude and/or change:
“What is
there in being able
to say that one has dominated the stream in an attitude of
self-defense;
in proving that one has had the experience
of carrying a stick?”
—Marianne Moore (1887–1972)
“Indeed, I thought, slipping the silver into my purse ... what a change of temper a fixed income will bring about. No force in the world can take from me my five hundred pounds. Food, house and clothing are mine for ever. Therefore not merely do effort and labour cease, but also hatred and bitterness. I need not hate any man; he cannot hurt me. I need not flatter any man; he has nothing to give me.”
—Virginia Woolf (1882–1941)