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Contrast effects and their relationship to subsequent behavior
JOURNAL
OF EXPERIMENTAL
Contrast
SOCIAL
14, 340-350 (1978)
PSYCHOLOGY
Effects and Their Relationship to Subsequent Behavior
STEVEN J. SHERMAN,KARIN
AHLM,AND
LEONARD BERMAN
Indiana University
AND STEVEN
LYNN
Ohio University Received May 6, 1977 The present study attempted to apply social judgment theories to the effects of context on judgments of the importance of a social issue and on subsequent issue-related behavior. Subjects judged the importance of a target issue (recycling) in the context of either important or unimportant social issues and were subsequently asked in a separate setting for help on a local recycling project. Context produced contrast effects on rating scale judgments of the importance of recycling. These judgments, if salient, were then used as a basis for subsequent support of the recycling project. When either the initial judgment was not salient or no priorjudgment of recycling was made, the importance of the context had a positive effect on amount of support for recycling, such that more help was given in the important conte:.t conditions. Results indicate that contrast effects on the ratings are response bar sther than perceptual in nature, but that the rating, if salient, can serve as a 3r subsequent behavior and attitudes.
Context effects , 1.ewell-documented phenomena in the social judgment literature. Judgments of a social stimulus are affected not only by the characteristics of that stimulus but also by other stimuli that may accompany it (its context). The best known of these context phenomena are contrast effects. That is, when judges rate a series of stimuli along a given dimension, their judgments of a given “target” stimulus are related inversely to the values of the context stimuli that accompany it. Contrast Requests for reprints should be addressed to Steven J. Sherman, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47401. This research was supported by Grant MH 24814 from the National Institute of Mental Health. An-aarlier version of this paper was presented at the 1977 Midwestern Psychological Association meeting. We would like to give thanks to Missy Call& for her help in serving as confederate, and to Marty Kaplan for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. 0022-1031/78/0144-0340$02.00/O Copyright All rights
0 1978 by Academic Press, Inc. of reproduction in any form reserved.
340
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EFFECTS
341
effects have been detected in a variety of settings and stimulus domains (Campbell, Lewis, & Hunt, 1958; Manis & Armstrong, 1971; Ostrom Upshaw, 1968; Parducci, 1968). However, it is not clear whether the effects simply reflect changes in the use of the rating scale or whether they are perceptual in nature (a quantity-oriented process, such that the subjective impression of the test stimulus is affected). Upshaw (1962) argued that when judges are asked to rate a stimulus along a response scale, they may align the scale with the range of stimuli they expect to judge. Thus, if all contextual stimuli are toward one end o scale (e.g., positive on an evaluative scale), the judges will position t response scale toward the positive end of their subjective judgmental continuum. As a result, judges who expect to rate stimuli with generally positive values will make lower ratings of a target stimulus than will judges who expect to evaluate a set of less positive stimuli. Such contrast effects on reported judgments reflect only different anchoring of the response scale rather than changed attitudes or perceptions of the stimulus. An alternative viewpoint is that the contrast phenomenon requires a perceptual interpretation based on a change in underlying judgment. Such a proposal (Helson, 1964) holds that judges develop an adaption level or expectancy for the type of stimulus they might receive and that this acts as a subjective point of neutrality, relative to which the subjective impression of any stimulus is made. As one’s adaptation level changes, the nature of the experience of any stimulus therefore changes. Since one major determinant of adaptation level is the magnitude of stimuli previously experienced, having all contextual stimuli toward one end of a scale (e.g., positive on an evaluative scale) will move the adaptatio level toward the positive end, and thus all stimuli will be experience as more negative than they would otherwise. Manis (1967) and Dawes, Singer, and Lemons (1972) argued for such true changes in subjecti impression on the basis of evidence that contrast effects continued to demonstrated even when the response language was absolute, extraexperimentally anchored, and extensive or unlimited. Tbe importance of distinguishing between these two processes and of isolating their contributions to judgments in a particular rating situation becomes apparent in considering the effects of the judgmental experience on subsequent, nonjudgmental behavior toward the target stimulus. To the extent that the contrast effect on judgments is due simply to shifts in response language, without any changes in underlying impression of t object, the effect may be restricted to ratings of the object along response scale to which the context directly pertains. If, on the other hand, the effect involves changes in the subjective experience of object, it may generalize to other behaviors toward the target. For ex ple, suppose judges are asked to estimate their liking for a target person in the context of other stimulus people. If the context induces a perceptual
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ET AL.
change, contrast effects should be apparent not only on the rating of the target along the same scale used to rate context stimuli but also on more overt behaviors toward the target (e.g., eye contact, date asking, and administration of rewards). Studies that have explored contrast effects (e.g., Krupat, 1974; Pepitone & DiNubile, 1976; Simpson & Ostrom, 1976) on overt behaviors that extend beyond initial rating scale judgments provide some evidence for a perceptual interpretation. Unfortunately, however, all of the various measures in each study were administered by the same experimenter in the same situation. More compelling support for perceptual shifts in contrast effects would be evidence that changes in different kinds of behavior toward the target occurred when the overt behavior (a) were emitted in situations clearly unrelated to the immediate judgmental situation, (b) did not involve a direct comparison with the context stimuli, and (c) were measures of the same underlying construct. To establish these conditions, subjects in the present experiment were first asked to rate the importance of a number of social issues. The target issue was recycling programs. Some subjects rated the importance of recycling in a context of quite important issues (e.g., abortion laws, capital punishment), while others rated it in a context of trivial (i.e., less important) issues (e.g., leash laws for pets, required trash can lids). Items were rated one by one on the same scale, with no indication that the items were part of a single collective, thus establishing conditions conducive to the detection of contrast effects (Parducci, 1968; Wyer & Schwartz, 1969). After rating the items, subjects were asked in a different setting and by a different person to engage in behavior that would indicate support for a local recycling program. Evidence that contrast effects on ratings of recycling generalize to behavior in this latter setting would support a perceptual interpretation of these effects. Own Behavior
as Input for Self-Inferences
To the extent that contrast effects on scale ratings generalize to other behaviors, two alternative processes may underlie this generalizability. On one hand, the context issues themselves may have a direct effect on subjective interpretations of the target issue, for reasons similar to those postulated by Helson (1964). However, it is also possible that these perceptual changes are not stimulated by the context stimuli per se. Rather, the scale rating of the target issue, whatever its basis, may serve as an input for cognitions about the target, and thus may be a cause of changes in content and meaning rather than an effect of these changes. Specifically, labels that one uses to describe stimuli may have implications for subsequent behaviors toward those stimuli. If these labels are modified, regardless of whether this modification is a result of perceptual changes
CONTRAST
EFFECTS
343
or response-based changes, the labels may be recalled and used as a basis for other responses to the stimuli. The assumption is that, when considere out of the original context, labels do have implications for attitudes towar the stimulus, because of the way labels are typically used and the implications that people attach to attitude scale ratings based on their prior experience with them. This occurs even though the label was initially assigned to the stimulus arbitrarily and did not involve a change in subjective perception. When the subject later reflects back on the label without considering how it was arrived at, he/she may assign a meaning to it, based upon its normative correspondence with various subjective values, and assume that some underlying attitude must have been the cause of the label. The rating and its implications then become part of the information one has about the stimulus, and subsequent behavior may be affected, This possibility is consistent with recent work showing that one’s own initial behavior can serve as an input for later self-inferences and behavior. The initial behavior may involve the writing of an attitude-discrepant essay (Bern, 1967), compliance with an initial request (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), an act of commitment (Kiesler, 1971), or an overt expectancy statement (Dweck & Gilliard, 1975). In the present case, the initial behavior is the labeling of a stimulus in context. In this regard, Higgins, Rholes, and Jones (1977) have recently reported that an unobtrusive manipulative of the labels subjects used to encode the behavior of a target person affected subsequent evaluations of that person. Whether or not one’s behavior will serve as an input for self-inference and thus will affect subsequent attitudes and behavior depends upon the salience of that behavior. Salancik and Conway (1975) reported that people use prior behavioral information to derive attitude judgments to the extent that the behavior is salient and relevant for such judgments-whether or not the original behavior is truly reflective of those attitudes Since scale ratings are an extremely representative and relevant piece of information about one’s attitude toward a target, the contrast effects on tho.se ratings should generalize to later independent, issue-relevant behaviors under conditions in which these initial ratings are made salient. In order to see the effects of the salience of initial ratings of recycling (which were made in different contexts and were subject to contrast effects) on subsequent support for a recycling project, the requests for support were made under different conditions of initial rating salience. In one case, requests for support were made while subjects’ ratings were quite visible to them (high salience). In the low salience condition, the initial ratings of recycling were not available and salient at the time of the request. In addition, a condtion was included where subjects rated the contextual stimuli (either important or trivial), but made no initial judgments of recycling (no initial rating condition). For this group, the first exposure to the recycling issue came with the request for support of the local progra
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If the initial rating scale contrast effects were based on a change in perception or cognitive reorganization, subjects under different contexts would have different sets of beliefs and attitudes and different content associated with recycling. Those under a trivial context might identify recycling with the general ecology, cleaner environments, economic responsibility, and personal ethics, while those with an important context might view recycling as simply a way to save bottle companies a little money and cut the price of some goods by a couple of pennies. With such a change in subjective impression of the issue, differences in later behavior with respect to recycling ought to show up regardless of the salience of initial rating scale behavior. That is, more help should be offered under initial trivial context for all cases of rating salience. On the other hand, if the original contrast effects were purely a rating scale phenomenon involving the anchoring of the scale used for judging importance, subjects in different context conditions would label the importance of recycling differently, but all would associate the same beliefs, attitudes, and content with the issue. In this case, differences in initial ratings would not be paralleled in later independent behavior unless the original ratings were made salient and could serve as a basis for subsequent behavior and self-attributions. Thus, with high salience of ratings, subjects in the important context condition should agree to help less in the local recycling program than subjects in the trivial context condition (since the ratings of recycling in the important context should be contrasted to the less important end of the scale). Of course, if contrast effects are response based and subjects do not use their prior judgments as information, there should be no generalization of contrast effects to subsequent behavior regardless of initial rating salience. What might be expected for subsequent behavior if contrast effects are response based rather than perceptual and if the initial ratings are not made salient (the low salience and no initial rating conditions)? In this case, exposure to the entire set of important or trivial contextual issues might have other effects. Subjects who have many important social issues called to their attention may feel more guilty about not doing anything to remedy social ills, may feel a social responsibility norm, and may simply perceive that there is a lot to be done in the way of social action. Subjects in the trivial context condition will not feel such pressures to engage in social action. To this extent, subjects in the important context condition may feel more guilty and socially responsible and therefore may help more than those in the trivial context condition. Under conditions of high initial rating salience, however, these effects may be offset by the behavioral implications of the initial ratings. Thus, the importance of the context ought to be negatively related to subsequent help for recycling under high salience, but positively related under conditions of low salience or no initial rating.
CONTRAST
EFFECTS
345
METHOD Overview The subjects were 105 female undergraduates’ at Indiana University who were recruited from introductory psychology courses. Participation fulfilled part of the psychology course research requirement. Subjects rated the importance of a target issue (recycling), along with 18 other (context) issues of concern either locally, nationally, or internationally. In some instances, these context issues were generally regarded as important, while in other instances they were rather trivial and unimportant. After these ratings, a confederate, who had been posing as another subject, attempted to engage the subject’s support for various aspects of a local recycling program. This was done under conditions in which the subject’s initial rating was either high or low in salience. In addition, another group made no initial rating of recycling, although these subjects did rate the 18 other context items. This group (no initial rating) was thus exposed to contextual stimuli, but was not exposed to the recycling issue until the confederate’s request for help. Finally, a control group simply responded to requests for help in the recycling project without first rating either the recycling item or the context items. Thus, subjects’ compliance with the request was investigated as a function of both context (trivial vs. important) and salience of the initial rating (high low, and no initial rating).
Selection
of Issues
The issues used for the important and unimportant contexts were pretested in introductory psychology classes to ensure that there were large differences in judged importance. These subjects, none of whom participated in the experiment proper, rated the importance of 70 items. All 18 items chosen for the important context were rated above the midpoint. Those chosen for the trivial context were rated below the midpoint. Recycling was rated at the midpoint. Thus, recycling was the least important issue for the important context condition and the most important item in the trivial context.
Procedure Subjects came to the experimental room and were met by the experimenter (the second author), who introduced them to “the other subject” [a confederate (stooge) who was a female undergraduate psychology major]. They were each given a questionnaire, on which they rated the importance of 19 issues on five-point scales ranging from “of little importance” to “extremely important.” At this point. the experimenter left the room. In both low and high salience conditions, recycling (the target issue) was item No. 17 on the questionnaire. In a third, no initial rating condition, subjects did not initially rate the target issue on the importance scale, but did rate the other 18 context items along with an item on medical research that replaced recycling as item No. 17. When the subject had finished the 19 items, the confederate approached her with certain requests for help in a local aecycling program. In all cases, she identified herself as a worker at the recycling center, who was soliciting help for some new projects. Under High Salience conditions, the confederate called attention to the subject’s rating of the recycling issue and made this salient just prior to the request for help. This was done by having the stooge begin her patter with: “Take a look at item No. 17 on this questionnaire” (waits until subject looks). “It’s funny that they should have a question on recycling because. ..’ While the stooge called I There were 15 subjects in each cell, except that, due to a clerical error in assignment, 16 were run in the important context-no initial rating condition and 14 in the important context-low salience condition.
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ET AL.
attention to the item and made sure that the subject looked at her own rating, she stayed on the other side of the room and could not possibly see the rating made by the subject. This served to prevent demands from being put on the subject to try to keep her behavior consistent with her ratings in the eyes of the stooge. Under Low Salience conditions, the procedure was similar except that no special attention was called to this item since the subject was not asked to look at or consider it just prior to the request. Under the No Initial Rating conditions, the procedure was identical to that under Low Salience, except that recycling was not in the original 19-item questionnaire. Thus subjects in this condition emitted no initial rating scale responses that might serve as a basis for later behavior toward recycling. In the control condition, the experimenter excused herself right away “for ten minutes to get things organized,” and the confederate’s request came during this period, before subjects felt the experiment had begun. Control subjects rated neither recycling nor the context items prior to the request. In conducting the experiment, both the experimenter and the stooge were kept blind with respect to the context condition of the subject. While the stooge (although not the experimenter) knew whether or not a subject was in the high salience condition, this information was kept from her until the last possible moment; she consulted a card which informed her of the salience condition just prior to the request. Subjects responded to three requests. The first request was for help in distributing pamphlets. The number agreed to by the subject was the major dependent measure. After this request, the confederate persisted with two further requests-for volunteer work at the recycling center and for monetary contributions. These latter measures proved to be insensitive; virtually no one offered either kind of help.
RESULTS
Contrast Effects on Rating
Scale Judgments
Analysis of ratings of the importance of recycling as a function of context and salience yielded the expected contrast effect of context. Specifically, these ratings were higher in the trivial context (M = 4.23) than in the important context (M = 3.21), F(1,55) = 17.39,~ < .Ol. In addition, there was an unexpected main effect of salience; subjects who were later assigned to the high salience condition rated recycling as less important (M = 3.43) than those later assigned to low salience (M = 4.04), F(1,55) = 5.74, p < .05. The reason for this is unclear. It cannot be due to experimenter bias since both experimenter and confederate were blind to the subject’s salience condition at this point. Thus, differences are apt to be due to chance a priori differences in the attitudes held by subjects later assigned to experimental treatments. The interaction between salience and context was not significant, P(1,55) = 1.09. Effects on Subsequent
Behavior
The extent to which the contrast effects generalized to subsequent behavior, and the contingency of this generalization on judgment salience, was important in order to clarify the nature of the processes underlying contrast effects. A 3 x 2 (salience x context) analysis of variance with a
CONTRAST
TABLE MEAN
NUMBER
OF PAMPHLETS
347
EFFECTS 1 SUBJECTS
AGREED
TO TAKE
Salience Context
High
Low
No Initial Rating
Important (n) Trivial (n) Control (n = 15)
17.60 (15) 32.00 (15)
33.93 (14) 15.40 (15)
45.20 (16) 23.13 (15)
19.20
single control group (Winer, 1971, p. 469) was conducted on the response to requests for pamphlet distribution. Table 1 shows the mean number of pamphlets taken in each condition. Although neither main effect was reliable (p > . lo), the interaction was significant [F(2,98) = 3.17, p < .SS] ~ When subjects’ response scale ratings of the target issue were salient, their helping behavior was in line with these contrasted ratings; that is, more pamphlets were taken under trivial than under important context conditions, F(1,98) = 3.95, p < .05. When salience was low, however, this relationship was nonsignificantly reversed, F(1,98) = 1.92, p < .15, with subjects agreeing to distribute more pamphlets under important context conditions than under trivial context conditions. This positive effect of context importance on pamphlet-taking was increased still further in magnitude under the no initial rating conditions, F(1,98) = 4.84, p < . The results thus indicate that contrast effects of context on ratings of the target issue are paralleled in subsequent issue-related behavior only when the initial ratings are salient (and can serve as a basis for manifesting this behavior). It may be recalled that there was an unexpected main effect of salience on subjects’ initial ratings. However, the difference in pamphlet-taking did not parallel these differences in ratings for the various context and salience conditions. Moreover, there was no hint of the salience x context interaction on initial ratings. Thus, this effect on pamphlet-taking was not simply a reflection of chance initial differences in ratings. Rating -Helping
Correlations
The correlation between subjects’ ratings and pamphlet-taking was positive under high salience conditions (r = + .37, p < .025), thus supporting the view that these subjects were using their ratings as a basis for later behavior. The correlation was similar in direction, regardless of whether the context issues were important (v = .50) or trivial (Y = .16). Unexpectedly, the corresponding correlations under low salience con tions were negative: overall, Y = -..53 (p < .Ol); important contexts
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ET AL.
Y = -.45 (p < .OS); and trivial context, Y = -.59 (p < .Ol). These negative correlations do not necessarily mean that low salience subjects were using initial ratings of recycling as a negative basis for subsequent behavior, however. Note that the positive effect of initial context on pamphlet-taking was even stronger when subjects made 120 initial ratings of recycling. The implications of these negative correlations will be considered in more detail presently. Dunnett’s t tests revealed that only the high salience-trivial context group (A4 = 45.20) differed significantly from the control group (A4 = 19.20) in terms of pamphlets taken, t(98) = 2.49, p < .05. DISCUSSION
The results of this study indicate that subjects did show contrast effects on their scale ratings of the target issue. However, these contrast effects generalized to independent issue-related behavior only when the scale ratings were made salient. When initial ratings either were not salient or had not been made at all, overt helping behavior was positively related to context importance. Thus, in low salience and no initial rating conditions, context affected overt behavior in a direction opposite to its effects on initial ratings. In combination, these results suggest that context produces negative (contrast) effects on overt scale ratings of the target stimulus and that these effects are response based rather than perceptual. If the various contexts had induced changes in the cognitive representation and subjective experience of the issues, we should have observed subsequent behavioral effects that paralleled the contrast effects on initial ratings, irrespective of the degree of salience of these ratings. Instead, subsequent overt behavior was based upon the implications of this response-based rating only when the rating was made salient and could serve as an input for attitude inferences and later behavior. This view of contrast effects as a language phenomenon is consistent with Upshaw (1969), who interprets contrast effects as primarily due to the repositioning of one’s response scale in relation to the subjective continuum of judgment. Recent work (Upshaw, 1978) has demonstrated that discrepant persuasive messages cause differential anchoring of congeneric response scales, but no differences in subjects’ attitudinal positions. The basis for his response scale interpretation of message effects is similar to the one used in the present study-effects were observed only on scales that were directly manipulated, but didn’t produce effects on other congeneric scales. The fact that contrast effects in ratings carried over to subsequent behavior only under high salience therefore suggests that such ratings served a behavior-as-input function. This conclusion is consistent with those drawn from other studies (Salancik & Conway, 1975; Synder & Swann, 1976) which show that prior behavioral information is critical
CONTRAST
EFFECTS
for later attitude judgments and behavior only to the extent that such behavior is salient and relevant for such judgments. These conditions of salience and relevance were clearly met in the present high salience conditions. The behavior used in the present study (importance ratings on a scale) should be especially well-suited for serving such a function. When one sees her own rating scale markings, she ought to see the most representative cause of that behavior as her underlying attitude. Thus, a behavior caused by one set of stimuli (the context) is self-explained by a more representative cause (one’s prior attitude). Subsequently, an issue-related behavior that is relevant (help in the recycling project) is expressed in a manner consistent with the inferred attitude. The positive effect of context importance on later behavior under conditions when initial (contrasted) ratings were not salient is likely due to the fact that subjects in the important context conditions were expos to a variety of issues in need of social action that evoked norms of SOCP responsibility. Without being given their ratings to serve as a basis for behavior, these subjects were more ready to help in a social cause when given the opportunity. Corresponding subjects in the trivial context conditions felt no such guilt or pressure to engage in social action, and co sequently helped less. The positive correlation between subjects’ ratings and their pampblettaking under high salience served as further evidence that they were using their salient behavior as a basis for self-inference. The negative correlation between ratings and pamphlet-taking under low salience is not as readily interpretable. This finding might be explained by the fact that both the negative (contrast) effects on initial ratings and the positive effec of importance on pamphlet-taking under low salience may be consider context-induced effects on behavior. It is likely that there are systematic individual differences in susceptibility to context effects. That is, some people may be more strongly affected in their behavior by contextual stimuli than others, regardless of whether these effects are negative, or are assimilated toward the context or contrasted it. Thus, in the low salience condition, the same people strong contrast effects of context importance in initial ratings will exhibit strong positive effects of context importance on pamphlet-taking behavior. For example, consider subjects in the low salience-important context condition. Those who show strong contrast effects will rate recycling as quite trivial. These same people will be subject to strong positive effects of context importance on pamphlet-taking, and thus will agree to many pamphlets. Those who show weak contrast effects will also show wea positive effects of context on pamphlet-taking. Such results would lea to a strong negative correlation between ratings and ~arn~~~et-t~~~n~~ The notion that there are individual differences in susceptibility to context effects of different sorts is, of course, subject to empirical demonstration.
SHERMAN
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ET AL.
REFERENCES Bern, D. J. Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance phenomena. Psychotogicaf Review, 1967, 74, 183-200. Campbell, D. T., Lewis, N. A., & Hunt, W. A. Context effects with judgmental language that is absolute, extensive and extraexperimentally anchored. Journal of Experimental Psychology,
1958, 55, 220-228.
Dawes, R. M., Singer, D., & Lemons, F. An experimental analysis of the contrast effect and its implications for inter-group communication and the indirect assessment of attitude. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1972, 21, 281-295. Dweck, C. S., & Gilliard, D. Expectancy statements as determinants of reactions to failure: Sex differences in persistence and expectancy change. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, 1077-1084. Freedman, J. L., & Fraser, S. C. Compliance without pressure: The foot-in-the door technique. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1966, 4, 195-202. Helson, H. Adaption-level theory: An experimental and systematic approach to behavior. New York: Harper and Row, 1964. Higgins, E. T., Rholes, W. S., & Jones, C. R. Category accessibility and impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1977, 13, 141-154. Kiesler, C. A. The psychology of commitment. New York: Academic Press, 1971. Krupat, E. Context as a determinant of perceived threat: The role of prior experience. Journal
of Personality
and Social
Psychology,
1974, 29, 731-736.
Manis, M. Context effects in communication. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1967, 5, 326-334. Manis, M., & Armstrong, G. W. Contrast effects in verbal output. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1971, 7, 381-388. Ostrom, T. M., & Upshaw, H. S. Psychological perspective and attitude change. In A. Greenwald, T. Brock, & T. Ostrom (Eds.), Psychological foundations of attitudes. New York: Academic Press, 1968. Parducci, A. The relativism of absolute judgments. ScientiJc American, 1968, 219, 84-90. Pepitone, A., & DiNubile, M. Contrast effects in judgments of crime severity and the punishment of criminal violators. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1976, 33, 448-459. Salancik, G. R., & Conway, M. Attitude inferences from salient and relevant cognitive content about behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1975, 32, 829-849.
Simpson, D. D., & Ostrom, T. M. Contrast effects in impression formation. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1976, 34, 625-629. Snyder, M., & Swann, W. B. When actions reflect attitudes: The politics of impression management. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1976, 34, 1034- 1042. Upshaw, H. S. Own attitude as an anchor in equal-appearing intervals. Journal ofAbnormaf and Social Psychology, 1962, 64, 85-96. Upshaw, H. S. The personal reference scale: An approach to social judgment. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental socialpsychology, Vol. 4. New York: Academic Press, 1969. Upshaw, H. S. Social influence on attitudes and on anchoring of congeneric attitude scales. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 1978, 14, in press. Winer, B. J. Statistical principles in experimental design. New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971. Wyer, R. S., & Schwartz, S. Some contingencies in the effects of the source of a communication on the evaluation of that communication. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1969, 11, l-9.
OF EXPERIMENTAL
Contrast
SOCIAL
14, 340-350 (1978)
PSYCHOLOGY
Effects and Their Relationship to Subsequent Behavior
STEVEN J. SHERMAN,KARIN
AHLM,AND
LEONARD BERMAN
Indiana University
AND STEVEN
LYNN
Ohio University Received May 6, 1977 The present study attempted to apply social judgment theories to the effects of context on judgments of the importance of a social issue and on subsequent issue-related behavior. Subjects judged the importance of a target issue (recycling) in the context of either important or unimportant social issues and were subsequently asked in a separate setting for help on a local recycling project. Context produced contrast effects on rating scale judgments of the importance of recycling. These judgments, if salient, were then used as a basis for subsequent support of the recycling project. When either the initial judgment was not salient or no priorjudgment of recycling was made, the importance of the context had a positive effect on amount of support for recycling, such that more help was given in the important conte:.t conditions. Results indicate that contrast effects on the ratings are response bar sther than perceptual in nature, but that the rating, if salient, can serve as a 3r subsequent behavior and attitudes.
Context effects , 1.ewell-documented phenomena in the social judgment literature. Judgments of a social stimulus are affected not only by the characteristics of that stimulus but also by other stimuli that may accompany it (its context). The best known of these context phenomena are contrast effects. That is, when judges rate a series of stimuli along a given dimension, their judgments of a given “target” stimulus are related inversely to the values of the context stimuli that accompany it. Contrast Requests for reprints should be addressed to Steven J. Sherman, Department of Psychology, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN 47401. This research was supported by Grant MH 24814 from the National Institute of Mental Health. An-aarlier version of this paper was presented at the 1977 Midwestern Psychological Association meeting. We would like to give thanks to Missy Call& for her help in serving as confederate, and to Marty Kaplan for his helpful comments on an earlier draft of the manuscript. 0022-1031/78/0144-0340$02.00/O Copyright All rights
0 1978 by Academic Press, Inc. of reproduction in any form reserved.
340
CONTRAST
EFFECTS
341
effects have been detected in a variety of settings and stimulus domains (Campbell, Lewis, & Hunt, 1958; Manis & Armstrong, 1971; Ostrom Upshaw, 1968; Parducci, 1968). However, it is not clear whether the effects simply reflect changes in the use of the rating scale or whether they are perceptual in nature (a quantity-oriented process, such that the subjective impression of the test stimulus is affected). Upshaw (1962) argued that when judges are asked to rate a stimulus along a response scale, they may align the scale with the range of stimuli they expect to judge. Thus, if all contextual stimuli are toward one end o scale (e.g., positive on an evaluative scale), the judges will position t response scale toward the positive end of their subjective judgmental continuum. As a result, judges who expect to rate stimuli with generally positive values will make lower ratings of a target stimulus than will judges who expect to evaluate a set of less positive stimuli. Such contrast effects on reported judgments reflect only different anchoring of the response scale rather than changed attitudes or perceptions of the stimulus. An alternative viewpoint is that the contrast phenomenon requires a perceptual interpretation based on a change in underlying judgment. Such a proposal (Helson, 1964) holds that judges develop an adaption level or expectancy for the type of stimulus they might receive and that this acts as a subjective point of neutrality, relative to which the subjective impression of any stimulus is made. As one’s adaptation level changes, the nature of the experience of any stimulus therefore changes. Since one major determinant of adaptation level is the magnitude of stimuli previously experienced, having all contextual stimuli toward one end of a scale (e.g., positive on an evaluative scale) will move the adaptatio level toward the positive end, and thus all stimuli will be experience as more negative than they would otherwise. Manis (1967) and Dawes, Singer, and Lemons (1972) argued for such true changes in subjecti impression on the basis of evidence that contrast effects continued to demonstrated even when the response language was absolute, extraexperimentally anchored, and extensive or unlimited. Tbe importance of distinguishing between these two processes and of isolating their contributions to judgments in a particular rating situation becomes apparent in considering the effects of the judgmental experience on subsequent, nonjudgmental behavior toward the target stimulus. To the extent that the contrast effect on judgments is due simply to shifts in response language, without any changes in underlying impression of t object, the effect may be restricted to ratings of the object along response scale to which the context directly pertains. If, on the other hand, the effect involves changes in the subjective experience of object, it may generalize to other behaviors toward the target. For ex ple, suppose judges are asked to estimate their liking for a target person in the context of other stimulus people. If the context induces a perceptual
342
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change, contrast effects should be apparent not only on the rating of the target along the same scale used to rate context stimuli but also on more overt behaviors toward the target (e.g., eye contact, date asking, and administration of rewards). Studies that have explored contrast effects (e.g., Krupat, 1974; Pepitone & DiNubile, 1976; Simpson & Ostrom, 1976) on overt behaviors that extend beyond initial rating scale judgments provide some evidence for a perceptual interpretation. Unfortunately, however, all of the various measures in each study were administered by the same experimenter in the same situation. More compelling support for perceptual shifts in contrast effects would be evidence that changes in different kinds of behavior toward the target occurred when the overt behavior (a) were emitted in situations clearly unrelated to the immediate judgmental situation, (b) did not involve a direct comparison with the context stimuli, and (c) were measures of the same underlying construct. To establish these conditions, subjects in the present experiment were first asked to rate the importance of a number of social issues. The target issue was recycling programs. Some subjects rated the importance of recycling in a context of quite important issues (e.g., abortion laws, capital punishment), while others rated it in a context of trivial (i.e., less important) issues (e.g., leash laws for pets, required trash can lids). Items were rated one by one on the same scale, with no indication that the items were part of a single collective, thus establishing conditions conducive to the detection of contrast effects (Parducci, 1968; Wyer & Schwartz, 1969). After rating the items, subjects were asked in a different setting and by a different person to engage in behavior that would indicate support for a local recycling program. Evidence that contrast effects on ratings of recycling generalize to behavior in this latter setting would support a perceptual interpretation of these effects. Own Behavior
as Input for Self-Inferences
To the extent that contrast effects on scale ratings generalize to other behaviors, two alternative processes may underlie this generalizability. On one hand, the context issues themselves may have a direct effect on subjective interpretations of the target issue, for reasons similar to those postulated by Helson (1964). However, it is also possible that these perceptual changes are not stimulated by the context stimuli per se. Rather, the scale rating of the target issue, whatever its basis, may serve as an input for cognitions about the target, and thus may be a cause of changes in content and meaning rather than an effect of these changes. Specifically, labels that one uses to describe stimuli may have implications for subsequent behaviors toward those stimuli. If these labels are modified, regardless of whether this modification is a result of perceptual changes
CONTRAST
EFFECTS
343
or response-based changes, the labels may be recalled and used as a basis for other responses to the stimuli. The assumption is that, when considere out of the original context, labels do have implications for attitudes towar the stimulus, because of the way labels are typically used and the implications that people attach to attitude scale ratings based on their prior experience with them. This occurs even though the label was initially assigned to the stimulus arbitrarily and did not involve a change in subjective perception. When the subject later reflects back on the label without considering how it was arrived at, he/she may assign a meaning to it, based upon its normative correspondence with various subjective values, and assume that some underlying attitude must have been the cause of the label. The rating and its implications then become part of the information one has about the stimulus, and subsequent behavior may be affected, This possibility is consistent with recent work showing that one’s own initial behavior can serve as an input for later self-inferences and behavior. The initial behavior may involve the writing of an attitude-discrepant essay (Bern, 1967), compliance with an initial request (Freedman & Fraser, 1966), an act of commitment (Kiesler, 1971), or an overt expectancy statement (Dweck & Gilliard, 1975). In the present case, the initial behavior is the labeling of a stimulus in context. In this regard, Higgins, Rholes, and Jones (1977) have recently reported that an unobtrusive manipulative of the labels subjects used to encode the behavior of a target person affected subsequent evaluations of that person. Whether or not one’s behavior will serve as an input for self-inference and thus will affect subsequent attitudes and behavior depends upon the salience of that behavior. Salancik and Conway (1975) reported that people use prior behavioral information to derive attitude judgments to the extent that the behavior is salient and relevant for such judgments-whether or not the original behavior is truly reflective of those attitudes Since scale ratings are an extremely representative and relevant piece of information about one’s attitude toward a target, the contrast effects on tho.se ratings should generalize to later independent, issue-relevant behaviors under conditions in which these initial ratings are made salient. In order to see the effects of the salience of initial ratings of recycling (which were made in different contexts and were subject to contrast effects) on subsequent support for a recycling project, the requests for support were made under different conditions of initial rating salience. In one case, requests for support were made while subjects’ ratings were quite visible to them (high salience). In the low salience condition, the initial ratings of recycling were not available and salient at the time of the request. In addition, a condtion was included where subjects rated the contextual stimuli (either important or trivial), but made no initial judgments of recycling (no initial rating condition). For this group, the first exposure to the recycling issue came with the request for support of the local progra
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If the initial rating scale contrast effects were based on a change in perception or cognitive reorganization, subjects under different contexts would have different sets of beliefs and attitudes and different content associated with recycling. Those under a trivial context might identify recycling with the general ecology, cleaner environments, economic responsibility, and personal ethics, while those with an important context might view recycling as simply a way to save bottle companies a little money and cut the price of some goods by a couple of pennies. With such a change in subjective impression of the issue, differences in later behavior with respect to recycling ought to show up regardless of the salience of initial rating scale behavior. That is, more help should be offered under initial trivial context for all cases of rating salience. On the other hand, if the original contrast effects were purely a rating scale phenomenon involving the anchoring of the scale used for judging importance, subjects in different context conditions would label the importance of recycling differently, but all would associate the same beliefs, attitudes, and content with the issue. In this case, differences in initial ratings would not be paralleled in later independent behavior unless the original ratings were made salient and could serve as a basis for subsequent behavior and self-attributions. Thus, with high salience of ratings, subjects in the important context condition should agree to help less in the local recycling program than subjects in the trivial context condition (since the ratings of recycling in the important context should be contrasted to the less important end of the scale). Of course, if contrast effects are response based and subjects do not use their prior judgments as information, there should be no generalization of contrast effects to subsequent behavior regardless of initial rating salience. What might be expected for subsequent behavior if contrast effects are response based rather than perceptual and if the initial ratings are not made salient (the low salience and no initial rating conditions)? In this case, exposure to the entire set of important or trivial contextual issues might have other effects. Subjects who have many important social issues called to their attention may feel more guilty about not doing anything to remedy social ills, may feel a social responsibility norm, and may simply perceive that there is a lot to be done in the way of social action. Subjects in the trivial context condition will not feel such pressures to engage in social action. To this extent, subjects in the important context condition may feel more guilty and socially responsible and therefore may help more than those in the trivial context condition. Under conditions of high initial rating salience, however, these effects may be offset by the behavioral implications of the initial ratings. Thus, the importance of the context ought to be negatively related to subsequent help for recycling under high salience, but positively related under conditions of low salience or no initial rating.
CONTRAST
EFFECTS
345
METHOD Overview The subjects were 105 female undergraduates’ at Indiana University who were recruited from introductory psychology courses. Participation fulfilled part of the psychology course research requirement. Subjects rated the importance of a target issue (recycling), along with 18 other (context) issues of concern either locally, nationally, or internationally. In some instances, these context issues were generally regarded as important, while in other instances they were rather trivial and unimportant. After these ratings, a confederate, who had been posing as another subject, attempted to engage the subject’s support for various aspects of a local recycling program. This was done under conditions in which the subject’s initial rating was either high or low in salience. In addition, another group made no initial rating of recycling, although these subjects did rate the 18 other context items. This group (no initial rating) was thus exposed to contextual stimuli, but was not exposed to the recycling issue until the confederate’s request for help. Finally, a control group simply responded to requests for help in the recycling project without first rating either the recycling item or the context items. Thus, subjects’ compliance with the request was investigated as a function of both context (trivial vs. important) and salience of the initial rating (high low, and no initial rating).
Selection
of Issues
The issues used for the important and unimportant contexts were pretested in introductory psychology classes to ensure that there were large differences in judged importance. These subjects, none of whom participated in the experiment proper, rated the importance of 70 items. All 18 items chosen for the important context were rated above the midpoint. Those chosen for the trivial context were rated below the midpoint. Recycling was rated at the midpoint. Thus, recycling was the least important issue for the important context condition and the most important item in the trivial context.
Procedure Subjects came to the experimental room and were met by the experimenter (the second author), who introduced them to “the other subject” [a confederate (stooge) who was a female undergraduate psychology major]. They were each given a questionnaire, on which they rated the importance of 19 issues on five-point scales ranging from “of little importance” to “extremely important.” At this point. the experimenter left the room. In both low and high salience conditions, recycling (the target issue) was item No. 17 on the questionnaire. In a third, no initial rating condition, subjects did not initially rate the target issue on the importance scale, but did rate the other 18 context items along with an item on medical research that replaced recycling as item No. 17. When the subject had finished the 19 items, the confederate approached her with certain requests for help in a local aecycling program. In all cases, she identified herself as a worker at the recycling center, who was soliciting help for some new projects. Under High Salience conditions, the confederate called attention to the subject’s rating of the recycling issue and made this salient just prior to the request for help. This was done by having the stooge begin her patter with: “Take a look at item No. 17 on this questionnaire” (waits until subject looks). “It’s funny that they should have a question on recycling because. ..’ While the stooge called I There were 15 subjects in each cell, except that, due to a clerical error in assignment, 16 were run in the important context-no initial rating condition and 14 in the important context-low salience condition.
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attention to the item and made sure that the subject looked at her own rating, she stayed on the other side of the room and could not possibly see the rating made by the subject. This served to prevent demands from being put on the subject to try to keep her behavior consistent with her ratings in the eyes of the stooge. Under Low Salience conditions, the procedure was similar except that no special attention was called to this item since the subject was not asked to look at or consider it just prior to the request. Under the No Initial Rating conditions, the procedure was identical to that under Low Salience, except that recycling was not in the original 19-item questionnaire. Thus subjects in this condition emitted no initial rating scale responses that might serve as a basis for later behavior toward recycling. In the control condition, the experimenter excused herself right away “for ten minutes to get things organized,” and the confederate’s request came during this period, before subjects felt the experiment had begun. Control subjects rated neither recycling nor the context items prior to the request. In conducting the experiment, both the experimenter and the stooge were kept blind with respect to the context condition of the subject. While the stooge (although not the experimenter) knew whether or not a subject was in the high salience condition, this information was kept from her until the last possible moment; she consulted a card which informed her of the salience condition just prior to the request. Subjects responded to three requests. The first request was for help in distributing pamphlets. The number agreed to by the subject was the major dependent measure. After this request, the confederate persisted with two further requests-for volunteer work at the recycling center and for monetary contributions. These latter measures proved to be insensitive; virtually no one offered either kind of help.
RESULTS
Contrast Effects on Rating
Scale Judgments
Analysis of ratings of the importance of recycling as a function of context and salience yielded the expected contrast effect of context. Specifically, these ratings were higher in the trivial context (M = 4.23) than in the important context (M = 3.21), F(1,55) = 17.39,~ < .Ol. In addition, there was an unexpected main effect of salience; subjects who were later assigned to the high salience condition rated recycling as less important (M = 3.43) than those later assigned to low salience (M = 4.04), F(1,55) = 5.74, p < .05. The reason for this is unclear. It cannot be due to experimenter bias since both experimenter and confederate were blind to the subject’s salience condition at this point. Thus, differences are apt to be due to chance a priori differences in the attitudes held by subjects later assigned to experimental treatments. The interaction between salience and context was not significant, P(1,55) = 1.09. Effects on Subsequent
Behavior
The extent to which the contrast effects generalized to subsequent behavior, and the contingency of this generalization on judgment salience, was important in order to clarify the nature of the processes underlying contrast effects. A 3 x 2 (salience x context) analysis of variance with a
CONTRAST
TABLE MEAN
NUMBER
OF PAMPHLETS
347
EFFECTS 1 SUBJECTS
AGREED
TO TAKE
Salience Context
High
Low
No Initial Rating
Important (n) Trivial (n) Control (n = 15)
17.60 (15) 32.00 (15)
33.93 (14) 15.40 (15)
45.20 (16) 23.13 (15)
19.20
single control group (Winer, 1971, p. 469) was conducted on the response to requests for pamphlet distribution. Table 1 shows the mean number of pamphlets taken in each condition. Although neither main effect was reliable (p > . lo), the interaction was significant [F(2,98) = 3.17, p < .SS] ~ When subjects’ response scale ratings of the target issue were salient, their helping behavior was in line with these contrasted ratings; that is, more pamphlets were taken under trivial than under important context conditions, F(1,98) = 3.95, p < .05. When salience was low, however, this relationship was nonsignificantly reversed, F(1,98) = 1.92, p < .15, with subjects agreeing to distribute more pamphlets under important context conditions than under trivial context conditions. This positive effect of context importance on pamphlet-taking was increased still further in magnitude under the no initial rating conditions, F(1,98) = 4.84, p < . The results thus indicate that contrast effects of context on ratings of the target issue are paralleled in subsequent issue-related behavior only when the initial ratings are salient (and can serve as a basis for manifesting this behavior). It may be recalled that there was an unexpected main effect of salience on subjects’ initial ratings. However, the difference in pamphlet-taking did not parallel these differences in ratings for the various context and salience conditions. Moreover, there was no hint of the salience x context interaction on initial ratings. Thus, this effect on pamphlet-taking was not simply a reflection of chance initial differences in ratings. Rating -Helping
Correlations
The correlation between subjects’ ratings and pamphlet-taking was positive under high salience conditions (r = + .37, p < .025), thus supporting the view that these subjects were using their ratings as a basis for later behavior. The correlation was similar in direction, regardless of whether the context issues were important (v = .50) or trivial (Y = .16). Unexpectedly, the corresponding correlations under low salience con tions were negative: overall, Y = -..53 (p < .Ol); important contexts
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Y = -.45 (p < .OS); and trivial context, Y = -.59 (p < .Ol). These negative correlations do not necessarily mean that low salience subjects were using initial ratings of recycling as a negative basis for subsequent behavior, however. Note that the positive effect of initial context on pamphlet-taking was even stronger when subjects made 120 initial ratings of recycling. The implications of these negative correlations will be considered in more detail presently. Dunnett’s t tests revealed that only the high salience-trivial context group (A4 = 45.20) differed significantly from the control group (A4 = 19.20) in terms of pamphlets taken, t(98) = 2.49, p < .05. DISCUSSION
The results of this study indicate that subjects did show contrast effects on their scale ratings of the target issue. However, these contrast effects generalized to independent issue-related behavior only when the scale ratings were made salient. When initial ratings either were not salient or had not been made at all, overt helping behavior was positively related to context importance. Thus, in low salience and no initial rating conditions, context affected overt behavior in a direction opposite to its effects on initial ratings. In combination, these results suggest that context produces negative (contrast) effects on overt scale ratings of the target stimulus and that these effects are response based rather than perceptual. If the various contexts had induced changes in the cognitive representation and subjective experience of the issues, we should have observed subsequent behavioral effects that paralleled the contrast effects on initial ratings, irrespective of the degree of salience of these ratings. Instead, subsequent overt behavior was based upon the implications of this response-based rating only when the rating was made salient and could serve as an input for attitude inferences and later behavior. This view of contrast effects as a language phenomenon is consistent with Upshaw (1969), who interprets contrast effects as primarily due to the repositioning of one’s response scale in relation to the subjective continuum of judgment. Recent work (Upshaw, 1978) has demonstrated that discrepant persuasive messages cause differential anchoring of congeneric response scales, but no differences in subjects’ attitudinal positions. The basis for his response scale interpretation of message effects is similar to the one used in the present study-effects were observed only on scales that were directly manipulated, but didn’t produce effects on other congeneric scales. The fact that contrast effects in ratings carried over to subsequent behavior only under high salience therefore suggests that such ratings served a behavior-as-input function. This conclusion is consistent with those drawn from other studies (Salancik & Conway, 1975; Synder & Swann, 1976) which show that prior behavioral information is critical
CONTRAST
EFFECTS
for later attitude judgments and behavior only to the extent that such behavior is salient and relevant for such judgments. These conditions of salience and relevance were clearly met in the present high salience conditions. The behavior used in the present study (importance ratings on a scale) should be especially well-suited for serving such a function. When one sees her own rating scale markings, she ought to see the most representative cause of that behavior as her underlying attitude. Thus, a behavior caused by one set of stimuli (the context) is self-explained by a more representative cause (one’s prior attitude). Subsequently, an issue-related behavior that is relevant (help in the recycling project) is expressed in a manner consistent with the inferred attitude. The positive effect of context importance on later behavior under conditions when initial (contrasted) ratings were not salient is likely due to the fact that subjects in the important context conditions were expos to a variety of issues in need of social action that evoked norms of SOCP responsibility. Without being given their ratings to serve as a basis for behavior, these subjects were more ready to help in a social cause when given the opportunity. Corresponding subjects in the trivial context conditions felt no such guilt or pressure to engage in social action, and co sequently helped less. The positive correlation between subjects’ ratings and their pampblettaking under high salience served as further evidence that they were using their salient behavior as a basis for self-inference. The negative correlation between ratings and pamphlet-taking under low salience is not as readily interpretable. This finding might be explained by the fact that both the negative (contrast) effects on initial ratings and the positive effec of importance on pamphlet-taking under low salience may be consider context-induced effects on behavior. It is likely that there are systematic individual differences in susceptibility to context effects. That is, some people may be more strongly affected in their behavior by contextual stimuli than others, regardless of whether these effects are negative, or are assimilated toward the context or contrasted it. Thus, in the low salience condition, the same people strong contrast effects of context importance in initial ratings will exhibit strong positive effects of context importance on pamphlet-taking behavior. For example, consider subjects in the low salience-important context condition. Those who show strong contrast effects will rate recycling as quite trivial. These same people will be subject to strong positive effects of context importance on pamphlet-taking, and thus will agree to many pamphlets. Those who show weak contrast effects will also show wea positive effects of context on pamphlet-taking. Such results would lea to a strong negative correlation between ratings and ~arn~~~et-t~~~n~~ The notion that there are individual differences in susceptibility to context effects of different sorts is, of course, subject to empirical demonstration.
SHERMAN
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ET AL.
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