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Judgement of Attitude Statements as a Function of Judges' Attitudes and the Judgemental Dimension
Author(s) -
EISER J. RICHARD
Publication year - 1973
Publication title -
british journal of social and clinical psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.479
H-Index - 92
eISSN - 2044-8260
pISSN - 0007-1293
DOI - 10.1111/j.2044-8260.1973.tb00063.x
Subject(s) - thurstone scale , judgement , psychology , social psychology , dimension (graph theory) , value (mathematics) , statistics , developmental psychology , mathematics , law , political science , pure mathematics
Judges were required to rate 30 statements concerning drug use on each of five Thurstone‐type scales. On two of these scales the ‘pro‐drug’ extreme was labelled by a term with relatively negative value connotations, and on the other three scales by a term with relatively positive value connotations. The results supported the hypothesis that judges would tend to show a relatively high degree of polarization in their ratings along scales where their own position lay closer to the positively valued end of the scale, and a relatively low degree of polarization along scales where their own position lay closer to the negative end. These differences were independent of a tendency for some judges, irrespective of their own attitude, to give more extreme ratings than other judges on all five scales.