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Katherine Stanley

Dr. Langan

COMM – 301

31 0ctober 2021

Written Report: Social Judgement Theory

The Social Judgement Theory, of Mr. and Mrs. Sherif, explores and supports the

“Perception and evaluation of an idea by comparing it with current attitudes,” (p.172, Griffin,

Ledbetter, Sparks). This theory is made up of three ranges of latitudes that consist of what an

individual rejects, accepts, and is uncommitted to towards a particular topic. The moment that a

person hears a message, they subconsciously judge and think through where it should be placed

on the attitude scale embedded in their mind. In doing so, they compare the new information

with information that is already sorted out on their latitude ranges. In accumulating and building

upon beliefs over time, there is the creation of ego involvement regarding a topic, which makes it

challenging for an individual to be persuaded to think differently than where their ego

involvement lies on their latitude of attitudes. Ego-involvement is where an individual’s

motivation lies.

As explained in the text, “A First Look at Communication Theory”, people who are

“dogmatic” about a particular topic are more common than not. As people hold extreme

positions, their ego-involvement increases and there is little to no room for diversity. This is a

crucial component of Social Judgement Theory in better understanding an individual’s stance on

a topic and how to best persuade them to think differently. High ego involvement has been

proven in many accounts to be a large hurdle to jump over in trying to change an individual’s

beliefs and actions. An individual will act and speak in ways that reflect their ego-involvement
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towards a particular topic, thus shown in Steven Spielberg’s film when, “Against the advice of

his cabinet, the president pushes Congress to pass a constitutional amendment to abolish

slavery,” (p.173, Griffin, Ledbetter, Sparks). In efforts to get this amendment passed, Lincoln’s

men see a window of opportunity with the 39 democrats that leave the party. As the 39

democrats leave the party, they are now left with a wider latitude of noncommitment. Using this

to Lincoln’s advantage, he convinces those who have weaker ties and large latitudes of

noncommitment and passes the amendment by a two-vote margin (p.174, Griffin, Ledbetter,

Sparks). Lincoln’s approach to understanding the voters’ ego involvement was crucial for him to

pass the amendment. Understanding an individual’s ego involvement is critical in understanding

their actions and ways in which they may choose to live. People’s actions are largely impactful

as demonstrated in the voters whose low ego involvement allowed for the passing of a huge

turning point in American history. This is one of many instances that demonstrate one’s

motivation regarding their ego-involvement.

In an experiment performed with university students, there is research and data that

shows the tie between ego involvement and motivation. To gather this data, the researchers had

various students attend sessions individually to obtain data more accurately. The first session

started out with having the individual student place a blood pressure cuff on their arm while they

read an old issue of a magazine to be distracted. These cardiovascular measures from the blood

pressure cuff served as a baseline as the students then proceeded to complete a task that was

titled, “Concentration and Achievement Test for Students.” Through asking the students various

questions on a basis on both no ego involvement and high ego involvement, the study proved

that “…high ego involvement increased the performance‐related reactivity of systolic blood

pressure, diastolic blood pressure, heart rate, and also the number of unspecific skin conductance
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responses when task difficulty was unfixed ("do your best"). Ego involvement had no impact on

autonomic reactivity when task difficulty was easy due to a fixed low performance standard,”

(Gendolla, 2005). In investigating the overall relationship between mental effort and

performance, the researchers found that there is strong data proving that “The ego

involvement/unfixed difficulty condition showed the strong cardiovascular and electrodermal

reactivity…” (Gendolla, 2005). Thus, the experiment concludes that performance and

motivational intensity directly correlates to performance under ego-involvement. This

experiment addresses evidence that shows the difficulty in persuading someone to be more

motivated in completing a task that they don’t have any ego involvement towards. Ego

involvement is reflected upon one’s effort.

A large modern-day platform upon which ego involvement is commonly present is the

media. In 2011, a study was done that examined people’s intention and motivation in uploading

video content online and how ego involvement plays a crucial role in acknowledging one’s

attitude and behavior behind uploading the content. One of the hypotheses before the research

began suggested that “A higher level of ego-involvement will be associated with (a) more

positive attitude toward uploading video content online and (b) greater behavioral intention to

upload video content online,” (Park, Jung, Lee, 2011). In further support of this hypothesis, the

article touched on the fact that ego involvement is inevitably linked to one’s self-identification.

With this, one’s behavior and motivation in posting a video will reflect their ego involvement as

ego involvement has been proven through research to be, “…connected to an individual’s core

values and willingness to commit a given behavior,” (Park, Jung, Lee, 2011). At the end of the

study, the data displayed how ego involvement is significantly associated with intention. An

individual almost always will either subconsciously or unconsciously have ego involvement
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behind their action of posting a video. In further support of the hypothesis above the data

indicated the importance of, “…self-concept in committing a voluntary behavior, the uploading

behavior in the present study,” (Park, Jung, Lee, 2011). A person will ultimately post a video

with the intention of self-expression or with the goal of gaining something out of the post, thus

further demonstrating the role of ego involvement as the antecedent of attitude.

Another commonly identified source of ego-involvement affecting motivation is politics.

In research article, “Does Ability Contribute to Partisan Bia?”: Evaluating Scientific Research

about Political Topics,” Bergan addresses “The influence of goals unrelated to accuracy – such

as maintaining beliefs and attitudes consistent with one’s political identity – may undermine

objective processing, enabling people to construct defenses for their own predispositions,”

(Bergan, 2021). In introducing this question, Bergen claimed three reasons of importance in the

role of ability in evaluating partisan messages. These three reasons included: “…reasoning about

political arguments (Taber & Lodge, 2006), voting behavior (Weeks & Garrett, 2014), belief in

conspiracies (Enders & Smallpage, 2019), and perceptions of public opinion (Nir, 2011)”

(Bergan, 2021). With these three reasons among many other topics, individuals arrive at their

own conclusions that are consistent with their own predispositions. In supporting these

conclusions, individuals use biased reasoning that appears to be rational as they use valid rules or

evidence to then arrive at biased conclusions. Thus, maintaining beliefs and attitudes consistent

with one’s political identity does in fact undermine objective processing with evaluating

evidence to lead to conclusions regarding a particular topic.

Another commonly identified source of ego involvement along with Politics is within

health care. In a study completed in October of 2004, researchers assessed and gathered data to

explore how, “Critical care is one key environment in which nurses face judgement tasks in
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which their clinical decisions have important implications for patients,” (Thompson, 2011). The

decisions that nurses make throughout the entire global health care system are full of various

education backgrounds that subconsciously affect the decisions they make. Their motivations in

making critical decisions stem from their ego involvements. In efforts to stray away from ego

involvements creating potentially harmful bias in decisions made for a patients, researchers tried

various nurse educational interventions for changing knowledge and practice. These practices

were proven to be successful, and the results suggest, “…that it is possible to construct and

deconstruct the information use underpinning the judgements and decisions associated with

practice,” (Thompson, 2011). With this, it is still essential to understand one’s ego involvement

to better understand the motivation behind their actions and to potentially sway an individual

another direction. This study specifically fixated on the use of “conjoint analysis” within the

framework of the Social Judgement Theory in examining nurses’ use of clinical information is

specifically diagnosing hypovolemic shock in a series of stimulated cases. Ultimately, the results

concluded that nurses’ clinical information is not distributed equally, which reveals a problem

with varying judgement calls and decision making in urgent circumstances. This article further

demonstrates the importance of understanding one’s area of ego involvement as it is the root of

one’s motivation. For instance, a nurse with a Christian nursing degree in comparison to that of a

nurse from a secular university may have differing judgement calls even though the content of

the education may have been closely paralleled.

Each article addressed in this paper emphasizes how ego-involvement highlights one’s

motivation. Understanding one’s motivation is important as it will often correlate to their actions

and how they go about their relationships with others, tasks at work, how they vote, how much

effort they may put in, and in various other forms. The ways in which beliefs form collectively
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into the creation of ego involvement is inevitable in the world and is at constant work in

communication. Analyzing and understanding the relationship of ego involvement and

motivation is important to recognize and discover as they highlight an individual’s intentions,

bias’, and intensity based how densely packed or not one’s ego involvement is.
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Sources

Daniel E. Bergan (2021) Does Ability Contribute to Partisan Bias? Evaluating Scientific

Research about Political Topics, Communication Studies, 72:3, 303-

318, DOI: 10.1080/10510974.2021.1876124

Gendolla, G. H. E., & Richter, M. (2005). Ego involvement and effort: Cardiovascular,

electrodermal, and performance effects. Psychophysiology, 42(5), 595–603.

https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1469-8986.2005.00314.x

Griffin, Emory A., Andrew Ledbetter, and Glenn Grayson Sparks. A First Look at

Communication Theory. Tenth edition. New York, NY: McGraw-Hill Education, 2019.

Print.

Namkee Park, Younbo Jung, Kwan Min Lee, Intention to upload video content on the internet:

The role of social norms and ego-involvement, Computers in Human Behavior, Volume

27, Issue 5, 2011, Pages 1996-2004, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2011.05.006

(https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0747563211001014)

Thompson, C.A et al. “Using Social Judgement Theory to Model Nurses’ Use of Clinical

Information in Critical Care Education.” Nurse education today 25.1 (2005): 68–77.

Web.