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Environmental distraction and interpersonal judgements
Author(s) -
Siegel Judith M.,
Steele Claude M.
Publication year - 1980
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.2044-8260.1980.tb00923.x
Subject(s) - distraction , psychology , affect (linguistics) , social psychology , interpersonal communication , interpersonal interaction , cognitive psychology , communication
Two studies tested whether environmental distraction (primarily noise) would cause people to make ill‐considered judgements of others. The first study showed that distracted subjects made more extreme judgements of a target person and, while continuing to be extreme, changed those judgements across repeated administrations of the questionnaire. The possibility of future interaction with the target person did not affect this pattern of judgements. A second study replicated these findings and ruled out several possible artifactual explanations of the first study's results. The results of the studies are discussed in relation to several models of environmental effects, but seemed most consistent with the idea that distraction and noise interfere with information integration.