Effect on Social Judgment of Prior Non-Judgment Responses to Related Stimuli

Abstract

Ss judged the favorableness-unfavorableness of attitude statements, which for different groups were presented in an intermixed or in a pro-con or in a con-pro order. Two other groups first indicated their agreement-disagreement with either the pro or the con subset and then made scale judgments of the oppositely evaluative con or pro subsets. The data provide some evidence for an expected effect in the judgments of the pro items when they were judged first and suggest that agreeing-disagreeing with the con items did not carry over to influence the judgments of the following pro items. The latter result implicates the nature of the responses to prior stimuli as a determiner of judgmental responses to following stimuli of the same kind as the prior ones.