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Polarization of judgment and preference for judgmental labels
Author(s) -
Van Der Pligt Joop,
Van Dijk Jos A.
Publication year - 1979
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2420090302
Subject(s) - psychology , social psychology , rating scale , preference , trustworthiness , value (mathematics) , affect (linguistics) , developmental psychology , statistics , communication , mathematics
Studied how value connotations of the response language affect the relationship between judges' attitudes and polarization of judgment. Subjects (military conscripts, n = 105) rated 28 statements concerning drug use on 2 types of rating scales. Results indicate that subjects show more polarization on rating scales where their own evaluation of the statement is congruent with the value connotations of the scale labels. In a second experiment 82 subjects (male and female university students) were asked to rank adjectives in order of their suitability to characterize attitude statements. Results imply that value connotations also mediate the relationship between judges' attitude and preference for verbal labels in attributing adjectives to attitude statements. Subsequent analysis suggests that this preference for adjectives that are evaluatively congruent with own attitude, persists even when the adjectives are less correct from a descriptive point of view.