Ego-Involvement and Persuasion: An Appreciative Look at the Sherif’s Contribution to the Study of Self-Relevance and Attitude Change

Abstract

It has been 30 years since Sherif and Hovland's (1961) Social Judgment volume in the Yale series on attitude and communication was published. This text, which was the fourth and final monograph in the highly influential Yale series, represented a significant departure from the previous books on at least two grounds. First, the volume provided a new theoretical framework for understanding attitudes. While the previous volumes were loosely organized around learning, drive, and reinforcement notions, the new theory was based on the idea that the principles of human judgment uncovered in studies of psychophysics could be applied to understanding attitudes and persuasion. Of particular importance was how a person judged the position advocated by the communicator—was the position judged to fall within the person's latitude of acceptance, rejection, or noncommitment? Placement of the communication was a critical determinant of the amount of attitude change expected.