Editing Persuasion (section)

===Social judgment theory===
{{Main|Social judgment theory}}
Social judgment theory suggests that when people are presented with an idea or any kind of persuasive proposal, their natural reaction is to immediately seek a way to sort the information subconsciously and react to it.  We evaluate the information and compare it with the attitude we already have, which is called the initial attitude or anchor point.

When trying to sort incoming persuasive information, an audience evaluates whether it lands in their latitude of acceptance, latitude of non-commitment or indifference, or the latitude of rejection.  The size of these latitudes varies from topic to topic.  Our "ego-involvement" generally plays one of the largest roles in determining the size of these latitudes.  When a topic is closely connected to how we define and perceive ourselves, or deals with anything we care passionately about, our latitudes of acceptance and non-commitment are likely to be much smaller and our attitude of rejection much larger.  A person's anchor point is considered to be the center of their latitude of acceptance, the position that is most acceptable to them.

An audience is likely to distort incoming information to fit into their unique latitudes.  If something falls within the latitude of acceptance, the subject tends to assimilate the information and consider it closer to his anchor point than it really is.  Inversely, if something falls within the latitude of rejection, the subject tends to contrast the information and convince themself the information is farther away from their anchor point than it really is.

When trying to persuade an individual target or an entire audience, it is vital to first learn the average latitudes of acceptance, non-commitment, and rejection of your audience.  It is ideal to use persuasive information that lands near the boundary of the latitude of acceptance if the goal is to change the audience's anchor point.  Repeatedly suggesting ideas on the fringe of the acceptance latitude makes people gradually adjust their anchor points, while suggesting ideas in the rejection latitude or even the non-commitment latitude does not change the audience's anchor point.<ref>{{cite web|url=http://healthyinfluence.com/wordpress/steves-primer-of-practical-persuasion-3-0/feeling/social-judgment-theory/ |title=Social Judgment Theory &#124; Persuasion Blog |publisher=Healthyinfluence.com |date=22 April 2014 |access-date=30 April 2014}}</ref>