Social judgment theory (2 of 2)

8. (a) What are assimilation and contrast effects (broadly speaking)? (b) What is a contrast effect? (c) What is an assimilation effect? (d) What is the rule of thumb concerning when each effect will occur?

9. (a) What is the relationship between ego-involvement and assimilation and contrast effects? (b) Explain how contrast effects reduce the effectiveness of persuasive messages; explain how assimilation effects reduce the effectiveness of persuasive messages. (c) What kinds of messages are subject to assimilation and contrast effects? (d) How can a persuader minimize assimilation and contrast effects? (e) Explain how political campaigns can exploit assimilation effects concerning positions on policy issues.

10. (a) What does it mean to say that two factors (variables) are confounded? Explain how the use of the known-groups procedure confounded extremity and involvement in social judgment research. (b) Explain how social judgment theory's concept of involvement is confused.

11. (a) Identify and describe two worrisome findings concerning the measures of ego-involvement. (b) What is a correlation? What values (numbers) can a correlation have? What sort of correlation is expected between two instruments that measure the same property? (c) If the various measures of involvement all do measure involvement, what correlations would be expected between them (e.g., between the number of categories in the Own-Categories procedure and the size of the latitude of rejection on the Ordered Alternatives questionnaire)? What correlations have been observed? Are the measures of ego-involvement strongly correlated with each other? (d) Do the measures of ego-involvement display the expected patterns of association with other variables? (e) How is ego-involvement expected to be related to assessments of perceived topic importance or commitment to one’s position? What relationships are observed? (f) If one rank-orders topics by the average size of the latitude of rejection, what pattern should be seen (according to social judgment theory)? What pattern is seen?