ABSTRACT
This chapter highlights the notion that judgmental processes are important in understanding attitudes and persuasion. It provides a respected and valuable approach to understanding human judgmental processes, some of which involve attitudes. The chapter presents the judgmental theories that share the notion that the previous attitudinal positions to which the person has been exposed are unique determinants of the individual's reference scale and the attitude positions that anchor it. Adaptation level theory and social judgment theory share the view that assimilation and contrast effects represent a fundamental shift in how an object or issue is perceived. The underlying postulate of judgmental theories, including adaptation level theory as elaborated by H. Helson, is that all stimuli can be arranged in some meaningful order. The theory gets its name from that point on the dimension of judgment that corresponds to the psychological neutral point, called the adaptation leve.
