Width of the latitude of acceptance as a determinant of attitude change

Bibliographic Data

ID6204619
AuthorsAlice H Eagly (0000-0003-4938-9101), Kathleen Telaak, Kathleen Ann Telaak (University of Massachusetts Amherst)
Year1972
Volume23
Issue3
Pages388-397
Publication date1972-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueJournal of Personality and Social Psychology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0022-3514 • E-ISSN: 1939-1315
PublisherAmerican Psychological Association (APA) (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1037/h0033161
OpenAlexW2141621393
LanguageEN
Citations received27
References cited16

In a study examining the implications of social judgment theory for predicting individual differences in attitude change, a subject received a message advo-cating a position on birth control either mildly, moderately, or strongly dis-crepant from his own. For all three levels of discrepancy, the subjects with wide latitudes of acceptance on the issue showed greater attitude change than did subjects with either narrow or medium latitudes of acceptance. Since a mildly discrepant message was in the lattitude of acceptance even for narrow latitude subjects and a strongly discrepant message in the latitude of rejec-tion even for wide latitude subjects, this finding cannot be reconciled with social judgment theory. Since correlations between latitude widths on birth control and two irrelevant issues were low and latitude width on the irrelevant issues did not relate to attitude change on birth control, width of the latitude of acceptance was interpreted as an issue-specific index of influenceability. Cate-gory width, though independent of latitude of acceptance width, also predicted attitude change: narrow categorizers changed their attitudes more than did either medium or broad categorizers. Central to the social judgment approach to attitude change (Sherif, Sherif, & Neber-gall, 1965; Sherif & Hovland, 1961) is the assumption that the structure of an indi-vidual's attitude is a determinant of receptiv-ity to a persuasive communication. Social judgment theory specifies attitude structure by dividing the attitude dimension into "latitudes " or regions: a latitude of accept-ance, which is the range of positions that an individual accepts, and a latitude of rejection, which is the range of positions that he re-jects.4 According to the major hypothesis of

Attitude · Attitude change · Social acceptance · Behavioral Health and Interventions · Consumer Behavior in Brand Consumption and Identification · Psychology · Social and Intergroup Psychology · Social Psychology

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