It's Five O'Clock Somewhere

The main issue with the Social Judgment theory is based on the social norm approach. This approach contends that if someone provides true norms or tends that people will understand the actual social norms. Then, they used the horrible example of college and underage drinking. This is definitely the worst possible example as college students view things somewhat differently when compared to what may be the “societal norms”.

The idea was put forth that, “the majority of the student population engages in healthy behavior…..However, most of this population is thought to exist in a state of pluralistic ignorance” (Allen, Atkin, Hembroff, Martell, Smith, 2006, p. 142). This quote shows that the idea behind this theory is that most of the students in college understand of the social norms while others are merely binge drinking and engaging in other erratic and risky activity because they simply do not understand the norms. I think this is ridiculous. College student have an understanding, and I am sure they are simply ignoring them.

How many times have people heard, “The time of your life,” or “You are only young once”? Most college students are living it up as these will be some of the last times in their lives where they will have limited responsibility. They are still sheltered to an extent from the big, bad world, and therefore, they have a skewed view of real world consequences. While they are in college, they have an invincible view of themselves and their health and most know that this is just college and a time to enjoy themselves. I personally do not believe that college students believe the weekend starts on Wednesday night.

This theory is based on the ideal that showing college student the true social norms that they will change their activities. This is incorrect when compared with the idea of the social judgment theory which states, “the effect of a persuasive message on a particular issue depends on the way that the receiver evaluates the position of the message” (Allen, Atkin, Hembroff, Martell, Smith, 2006, p. 142). This shows the problem with dealing with college age students as they are likely to take the rebellion stance that these are simply adults who are interested in control and safety and things that frankly, college students are not extraordinarily concerned with at this point in their lives. They want to have fun while they are young, because that is the message that they have heard their entire lives.

Reference

Smith, S., Atkin, C., Martell, D., Allen, R., & Hembroff, L. (2006). A social judgment theory approach to conducting formative research in a social norms campaign. Communication Theory, 16, 142-152.