 | This article may be too technical for most readers to understand.(May 2016) |
The assimilation effect, assimilation bias or biased assimilation is a bias in evaluative judgments towards the position of a context stimulus, while contrast effects describe a negative correlation between a judgment and contextual information.
Francis Bacon (1561 – 1626) is quoted to have written "The human understanding when it has once adopted an opinion ... draws all things else to support and agree with it." [2]
In 1979, psychologists speculated about the mechanisms of biased assimilation in that one gives "any information that suggests less damaging ‘alternative interpretations’" such importance to use it as proof for one's belief. The classic Stanford University experiment involved supporters and opponents of the death penalty. After showing participants a study that concluded it deterred crime and another suggesting the opposite, they rated the study contradicting their beliefs as poor quality and not persuasive, so that the information resulted in more attitude polarization. [2]
In 2004 it has been defined as a bias in evaluative judgments towards the position of a context stimulus. [3] In an assimilation effect, judgment and contextual information are correlated positively, i.e. a positive context stimulus results in a positive judgment, whereas a negative context stimulus results in a negative judgment. [4]
Assimilation effects are more likely when the context stimulus and the target stimulus have characteristics that are quite close to each other. It is the power of narratives in fueling a certain belief. [5] In priming experiments published in 1983, Herr, Sherman and Fazio found assimilation effects when subjects were primed with moderate context stimuli. [6] Depending on how the individual categorizes information, contrast effects can occur as well. The more specific or extreme the context stimuli were in comparison to the target stimulus, the more likely contrast effects were to occur.
The term assimilation effect appears in the field of social comparison theory as well. Complementary to the stated definition, it describes the effect of a felt psychological closeness of social surroundings that influence the current self-representation and self-knowledge.
A more specific model to predict assimilation and contrast effects with differences in categorizing information is the inclusion/exclusion model developed 1992 by Norbert Schwarz and Herbert Bless.< [7] It explains the mechanism through which effects occur. [8] The model assumes that in feature-based evaluative judgments of a target stimulus, people have to form two mental representations: One representation of the target stimulus and one representation of a standard of comparison to evaluate the target stimulus. Accessible information, i.e. information that comes to mind in that specific moment and draws attention, is the crucial context. The same accessible information can result in assimilation or contrast effects, depending on how it is categorized. When the accessible information to construct the representation of the target is used, an assimilation effect results, whereas accessible information used to construct the standard of comparison leads to contrast effects.
By way of illustration, in their research on the perceived trustworthiness of politicians, Schwarz & Bless either primed their subjects with info on scandal-ridden politicians (e.g. Richard Nixon) or did not prime them. When subsequently asked for the evaluation of politicians' trustworthiness in general, primed subjects evaluated politicians in general as less trustworthy than subjects without priming. This shows how access to the information of politicians' scandals was included in the representation of the target stimulus, i.e. an assimilation effect. [1]
On the contrary, inclusion after priming did not occur, when subjects were subsequently asked for the trustworthiness of other specific politicians. There the priming led to a more favorable evaluation of the other politician's trustworthiness than without priming. This demonstrates a contrast effect, because the accessible information was excluded from the representation of the target stimulus (e.g. Richard Nixon is not Newt Gingrich) and therefore constructed in the mental representation of the standard of comparison. [1]
Assimilation effects have been seen to behave quite differently when objects are presented simultaneously, rather than successively. A series of studies found assimilation effects when asking participants to rate the attractiveness of faces that were presented simultaneously. When an unattractive face was presented next to an attractive face, the unattractive face became more attractive, while the rating of the attractive face did not change. In other words, placing oneself next to an attractive person would make you more attractive, as long as you are less attractive than that person. These effects remained even if the number of faces presented increased and remained over two minutes after the context stimulus (the attractive face) was removed. [9]
Relating these findings to the Inclusion/Exclusion Model above, in the Richard Nixon example, if Nixon is presented side by side Newt Gingrich, Nixon becomes more trustworthy, and the trustworthiness of Gingrich doesn't change then rather than when they are presented successively and Gingrich becomes more trustworthy. These studies also supported the Inclusion/Exclusion Model. Contrast effects appeared if attractive faces were presented before an unattractive face; in this case the unattractive face was rated as even more unattractive. [9] [10]
Assimilation effects arise in fields of social cognition, for example in the field of judgment processes or in social comparison. Whenever researchers conduct attitude surveys and design questionnaires, they have to take judgment processes and resulting assimilation effects into account. Assimilation and contrast effects may arise through the sequence of questions. Previously asked specific questions can influence subsequent more general ones:
Many researchers found assimilation effects when deliberately manipulating the order of general and specific questions. [11] [12] When they first asked participants how happy they were with their dating or how satisfied they were with their relationship (a specific question that functions as a moderate context stimulus) and subsequently asked the participants how happy they were with their life in general (general question), they found assimilation effects. The specific question of their happiness with dating or satisfaction with their relationship made specific information accessible, that was further included as representation of the subsequent general question as target stimulus. Thus, by the time the participants were happy with their dating or satisfied with their relationship, they also reported being happier with their life in general. Similarly, when the participants were unhappy with their dating or dissatisfied with their relationships, they indicated being also unhappier with their life in general. This effect did not occur, when asking the general question in the first place.
To avoid assimilation effects in science communication Tim Caulfield has suggested to "preface any new finding with what the literature says, on balance, about the topic in question; readers might then understand that any marked aberration is less likely to be true." [13]
The availability heuristic, also known as availability bias, is a mental shortcut that relies on immediate examples that come to a given person's mind when evaluating a specific topic, concept, method or decision. The availability heuristic operates on the notion that if something can be recalled, it must be important, or at least more important than alternative solutions which are not as readily recalled. Subsequently, under the availability heuristic, people tend to heavily weigh their judgments toward more recent information, making new opinions biased toward that latest news.
The halo effect is the tendency for positive impressions of a person, company, brand or product in one area to positively influence one's opinion or feelings in other areas. Halo effect is “the name given to the phenomenon whereby evaluators tend to be influenced by their previous judgments of performance or personality.” The halo effect which is a cognitive bias can possibly prevent someone from accepting a person, a product or a brand based on the idea of an unfounded belief on what is good or bad.
The anchoring effect is a cognitive bias whereby an individual's decisions are influenced by a particular reference point or 'anchor'. Once the value of the anchor is set, subsequent arguments, estimates, etc. made by an individual may change from what they would have otherwise been without the anchor. For example, an individual may be more likely to purchase a car if it is placed alongside a more expensive model. Prices discussed in negotiations that are lower than the anchor may seem reasonable, perhaps even cheap to the buyer, even if said prices are still relatively higher than the actual market value of the car. Another example may be when estimating the orbit of Mars, one might start with the Earth's orbit and then adjust upward until they reach a value that seems reasonable.
The big-fish–little-pond effect (BFLPE) is a frame of reference model introduced by Herbert W. Marsh and John W. Parker in 1984. According to the model, individuals compare their own self-concept with their peers and equally capable individuals have higher self-concepts when in a less capable group than in a more capable group. For example, it is better for academic self-concept to be a big fish in a little pond than to be a big fish in a big pond. High achieving and gifted students are just as susceptible to the effect as are less talented students indicating that the effect depends only on the achievement of the reference group. Malcolm Gladwell publicized the BFLPE in his 2013 book David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants.
Implicit personality theory describes the specific patterns and biases an individual uses when forming impressions based on a limited amount of initial information about an unfamiliar person. While there are parts of the impression formation process that are context-dependent, individuals also tend to exhibit certain tendencies in forming impressions across a variety of situations. There is not one singular implicit personality theory utilized by all; rather, each individual approaches the task of impression formation in his or her own unique way. However, there are some components of implicit personality theories that are consistent across individuals, or within groups of similar individuals. These components are of particular interest to social psychologists because they have the potential to give insight into what impression one person will form of another.
Social perception is the study of how people form impressions of and make inferences about other people as sovereign personalities. Social perception refers to identifying and utilizing social cues to make judgments about social roles, rules, relationships, context, or the characteristics of others. This domain also includes social knowledge, which refers to one's knowledge of social roles, norms, and schemas surrounding social situations and interactions. People learn about others' feelings and emotions by picking up information they gather from physical appearance, verbal, and nonverbal communication. Facial expressions, tone of voice, hand gestures, and body position or movement are a few examples of ways people communicate without words. A real-world example of social perception is understanding that others disagree with what one said when one sees them roll their eyes. There are four main components of social perception: observation, attribution, integration, and confirmation.
John A. Bargh is a social psychologist currently working at Yale University, where he has formed the Automaticity in Cognition, Motivation, and Evaluation (ACME) Laboratory. Bargh's work focuses on automaticity and unconscious processing as a method to better understand social behavior, as well as philosophical topics such as free will. Much of Bargh's work investigates whether behaviors thought to be under volitional control may result from automatic interpretations of and reactions to external stimuli, such as words.
Norbert Schwarz is Provost Professor in the Department of Psychology and the USC Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and a co-director of the USC Dornsife Mind and Society Center.
Negative affectivity (NA), or negative affect, is a personality variable that involves the experience of negative emotions and poor self-concept. Negative affectivity subsumes a variety of negative emotions, including anger, contempt, disgust, guilt, fear, and nervousness. Low negative affectivity is characterized by frequent states of calmness and serenity, along with states of confidence, activeness, and great enthusiasm.
Implicit attitudes are evaluations that occur without conscious awareness towards an attitude object or the self. These evaluations are generally either favorable or unfavorable and come about from various influences in the individual experience. The commonly used definition of implicit attitude within cognitive and social psychology comes from Anthony Greenwald and Mahzarin Banaji's template for definitions of terms related to implicit cognition : "Implicit attitudes are introspectively unidentified traces of past experience that mediate favorable or unfavorable feeling, thought, or action toward social objects". These thoughts, feelings or actions have an influence on behavior that the individual may not be aware of.
Priming is a phenomenon whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD. Priming can be perceptual, associative, repetitive, positive, negative, affective, semantic, or conceptual. Research, however, has yet to firmly establish the duration of priming effects, yet their onset can be almost instantaneous.
Impression formation in social psychology refers to the processes by which different pieces of knowledge about another are combined into a global or summary impression. Social psychologist Solomon Asch is credited with the seminal research on impression formation and conducted research on how individuals integrate information about personality traits. Two major theories have been proposed to explain how this process of integration takes place. The Gestalt approach views the formation of a general impression as the sum of several interrelated impressions. As an individual seeks to form a coherent and meaningful impression of another individual, previous impressions significantly influence the interpretation of subsequent information. In contrast to the Gestalt approach, the cognitive algebra approach asserts that individuals' experiences are combined with previous evaluations to form a constantly changing impression of a person. A related area to impression formation is the study of person perception, making dispositional attributions, and then adjusting those inferences based on the information available.
Processing fluency is the ease with which information is processed. Perceptual fluency is the ease of processing stimuli based on manipulations to perceptual quality. Retrieval fluency is the ease with which information can be retrieved from memory.
The processing fluency theory of aesthetic pleasure is a theory in psychological aesthetics on how people experience beauty. Processing fluency is the ease with which information is processed in the human mind.
In the psychology of perception and motor control, the term response priming denotes a special form of priming. Generally, priming effects take place whenever a response to a target stimulus is influenced by a prime stimulus presented at an earlier time. The distinctive feature of response priming is that prime and target are presented in quick succession and are coupled to identical or alternative motor responses. When a speeded motor response is performed to classify the target stimulus, a prime immediately preceding the target can thus induce response conflicts when assigned to a different response as the target. These response conflicts have observable effects on motor behavior, leading to priming effects, e.g., in response times and error rates. A special property of response priming is its independence from visual awareness of the prime.
In psychology, a first impression is the event when one person first encounters another person and forms a mental image of that person. Impression accuracy varies depending on the observer and the target being observed. First impressions are based on a wide range of characteristics: age, race, culture, language, gender, physical appearance, accent, posture, voice, number of people present, economic status, and time allowed to process. The first impressions individuals give to others could greatly influence how they are treated and viewed in many contexts of everyday life.
Subliminal stimuli are any sensory stimuli below an individual's threshold for conscious perception, in contrast to supraliminal stimuli. A 2012 review of functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies showed that subliminal stimuli activate specific regions of the brain despite participants' unawareness. Visual stimuli may be quickly flashed before an individual can process them, or flashed and then masked to interrupt processing. Audio stimuli may be played below audible volumes or masked by other stimuli.
In cognitive psychology the affect-as-information hypothesis, or ‘approach’ is a model of evaluative processing, postulating that affective feelings provide a source of information about objects, tasks, and decision alternatives. A goal of this approach is to understand the extent of influence that affect has on cognitive functioning. It has been proposed that affect has two major dimensions, namely affective valence and affective arousal, and in this way is an embodied source of information. Affect is thought to impact three main cognitive functions: judgement, thought processing and memory. In a variety of scenarios, the influence of affect on these processes is thought to be mediated by its effects on attention. The approach is thought to account for a wide variety of behavioural phenomena in psychology.
Affective priming, also called affect priming, is a type of response priming and was first proposed by Russell H. Fazio. This type of priming entails the evaluation of people, ideas, objects, goods, etc., not only based on the physical features of those things, but also on affective context. The affective context may come from previous life experiences, and therefore, primes may arouse emotions rather than ideas. Most research and concepts about affective priming derive from the affective priming paradigm, which looks to make judgments of neutral affective targets following positive, neutral, or negative primes. A prominent derivation of affective priming paradigm is the Affect Misattribution Procedure (AMP), developed by Payne, Cheng, Govorun, and Stewart. The main idea of AMP is to measure implicit attitudes, therefore, if the evaluation of the prime stimuli of an object is positive, it is said that the person has a positive attitude toward the object exposed.