Term Paper on Social Judgement Theory

Chapter three explains different theories that help us understand how we perceive, judge, explain, and our expectations matter of our social worlds. How we use our thinking and how it impacts the judgments we make. How our beliefs, attitudes, and values affects our roles and perceptions in the society. We perceive our social worlds on how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people. For instance, we interpret things differently saying someone is “okay” can be a good for one or bad for another.

“Life in society requires consensus as an indispensable conditions. But consensus, to be productive, requires that each individual contribute independently out of his experience and insight. (…) We have found that tendency to conformity in our society so strong that reasonably and well- meaning young people are willing to call white black is a matter of concern” (Salomon E. Asch “Opinion and Social Pressure” pp.730). The experiment has proven that we live in times where opinion become very subjective and can be easily modified. Social techniques are wildly used in marketing and sales or even by lobbyist in governmental decision making process. The uncertainty of people own senses, opinion or knowledge can be easily abused. Asch’s experiment implements how people believe in the obvious lies. It’s shows simple ways of influencing perception, judgment and action. Results of this experiment trigger a number of social and scientifically researches like study of Berns

I believe what drives our judgement is the way people think of others. Today in this world, people are close minded and not open to new ideas. Society’s think that people who grew up from the bad side of town, they will get nowhere in life. We judge people for the way they look, what they wear, where they 're from, where they live, etc. We judge out of our own fears and insecurities. We must treat people the way the want to be treated, not by how you think they should be treated. When we judge someone, do we really know what goes on in their life. Also, still discriminate others to this day, such as, we still judge people based on their race. We have to treat people with equal rights no matter what race or ethnicity they are. We have qualities

We learnt that people should not be using shortcut to judge others such as selective perception which is a perceptual filtering process based on interests, background and attitude. Another shortcut in judging others is stereotyping which is judging someone on the

judged based on their sociality’s common opinion at that time. Therefore, this fallacy means if

Judgment is a fundamental function of the human brain. On a daily basis one judges their peers for their actions, whether it be good or bad. In the novel, Monster by Walter Dean Myers, a young boy named Steve Harmon is put on trial for felony murder; he shares his experiences of what is going on throughout the case and how he is being perceived by his peers. The jury has to make a decision, marking Harmon guilty or not guilty. The jury must make a judgment about him, about who he is. Evidently, it is revealed that judgment is determined by one’s traits, actions, and appearance.

One of the first and worst things that come with judgement is discrimination. Discrimination occurs when a person stands out from what a society portrays and accepts as normal. The story of Sophie with six toes is a great example. Once a loudmouth norm boy named Alan found out that

An important part of gaining understanding of other perceptions is acknowledging that what a person takes away from a particular event can be different from another’s view of the same event. People make judgements of others based on the past and if past instances are negative then present situations and the people involved will be judged in a negative light.

Before reading Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink I knew that we judged other individuals around us based off of personal criticism. It has become an adapted instinct of our lives that we may not even be aware of, but we do it all the time. I used to think that we judged people because of the way our mind reacts in an instant second of meeting somebody new. However, after reading this book I learned that our reactions are not only quick based on instinct, but based on personal experience in something that has already existed in our lives.

A social bias is a prejudice attitude aimed at a particular race, culture, ethnic group, religion, or sexual orientation. People with limited vision often form negative opinions toward a group of people without knowing who they are. People have to be careful with the thought process because it can lead him or her to make a judgmental statement toward an individual, or a group of individuals, without the person realizing that the statement or comment was prejudicial. In this paper the concept of social biases,

Snap judgments have been around forever. Whether or not you are aware, millions of thoughts go through your head when you lay your eyes on something for the first time. These small judgments seem unimportant at first, but what if “…our snap judgments could be educated and controlled” (Gladwell 15)?

How we view an individual makes a huge difference in life because people tend to judge without any knowledge, which will lead to regret in the future, therefore; making judgments towards a person, based on their actions or feelings is perverse.

In today’s society more and more Americans are being judged based on their appearance and not their character. Furthermore it has been shown that Americans are the most ignorant out of all cultures. In addition to being called names and targeted by government officials has brought the prison system at an all-time high. Basically people are being judged in society without knowing the person's background or even a last name. Being brought up in a world where slavery was a past time traditions seems like nothing has changed in America. They say all Americans

“Judging a person does not define who you are. It defines who you are.” - Unknown. In the novel “The Wednesday Wars” by Gary D. Schmidt, all of the characters judge another at one point. I believe that Gary D. Schmidt is trying to tell the readers that judging a person too quickly is wrong. For example, Holling judges Mrs Baker by thinking that she hates him.

People judge each other on a daily basis. The way an individual presents themselves, speaks, and behave are all qualities other people base their perception off of. Consequently, these inferences are quite useful in determining who you would and would not enjoy being in any type of relationship with based on surface appearance. However, people may take judging people on surface appearance too far. Therefore, although making a judgement on about a person may not be a negative inference, people take their judgmental attitude to the extreme. Consequently, they have placed themselves in a negative lifestyle which negatively impacts their mood and social interactions.