How asser tive are women? How empa thetic are men?

Transcription

1 PER SON AL ITY AND SO CIAL PSY CHOL OGY BUL LE TIN Bless et al. / SET-SIZE EF FECTS Reducing Context Effects by Adding Context In for ma tion: The Direction and Size of Con text Ef fects in Po lit i cal Judg ment Her bert Bless Eric R. Igou University of Mannheim, Germany Norbert Schwarz University of Mich i gan Michaela Wänke University of Hei del berg, Germany This arti cle inves ti gates how the acti va tion of a specific exem - plar influ ences the direc tion and the size of con text effects on evaluative judg ments about other specific exem plars or about a superordinate cat e gory. The activation of an untrust wor thy pol - i ti cian decreased judg ments of trust wor thi ness of politicians in gen eral but increased judg ments of the trust wor thi ness of specific exemplars. The assim i la tion as well as the con trast effect were attenuated when addi tional judgment-relevant exemplars were activated. The results sug gest that the impact of a specific context infor ma tion depends on the amount of other judg ment-rel e vant infor ma tion that can be used in con struct ing a mental represen - ta tion of the judg men tal target or of a com par i son stan dard. Impli ca tions for scandal management are dis cussed. How asser tive are women? How empa thetic are men? How extra verted are sorority members? How trustworthy are pol i ti cians? Answers to these ques tions require judg - ments about a social category. How asser tive is Linda? How emphatic is John? How extra verted is Sarah? How trustworthy is Colin Powell? Answers to these ques tions require judgments about a spe cific exemplar of a social cat e gory. The present research addresses how judg - ments about a social cat e gory and judgments about spe - cific exemplars are influenced by other exemplars that come to mind. For example, how does thinking about the very asser tive Lou ise influ ence our judg ments about women in gen eral and about Linda in par tic u lar? We address two aspects of this poten tial influ ence, namely, the direc tion and the size of the influ ence of a highly acces si ble spe cific exem plar on evaluative 1036 judg ments of other spe cific exem plars and of a superordinate category. Pre vi ous research, to be reviewed below, dem on - strated that highly accessible exem plars are likely to evoke assim i la tion effects on judg ments of the superordinate category but contrast effects on judg - ments of other exem plars. For exam ple, the acti va tion of an untrustworthy politician decreased the trustworthi - ness of politicians in general but increased the trust wor - thi ness of other spe cific politicians (e.g., Schwarz & Bless, 1992b; see also Stapel & Schwarz, 1998; Winkielman & Schwarz, 1998). We use the terms assimila - tion and con trast in their most general form and speak of an assim i la tion effect when positive (negative) context infor ma tion results in a more positive (or more negative, respectively) judgment of a tar get. Conversely, we speak of a con trast effect when positive (neg a tive) context infor ma tion results in a more negative (or more pos i tive, respectively) judgment of a target. Although in general, variables that deter mine the direction of con text effects have been investigated extensively (e.g., Herr, 1986; Martin, Seta, & Crelia, 1990; Ostrom & Upshaw, 1968; for a review, see Eiser, 1990), the size of these context effects has received lit tle atten tion in pre vi ous research. Au thors Note: The reported re search was supported by Grant No. Bl 289/5 from the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft to Bless, Schwarz, and Wänke. Please ad dress cor re spon dence to Her bert Bless, Mikrosoziologie und Sozialpsychologie, Fakultät für Sozialwissenschaften, Universität Mannheim, D-68131, Ger many; hbless@ sowi.uni-mannheim.de. PSPB, Vol. 26 No. 9, September by the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Inc.

2 Bless et al. / SET-SIZE EFFECTS 1037 Empirically, we address these issues in the domain of political judgment and exam ine how think ing about pol - iticians who were involved in a polit i cal scandal influ - ences the evaluation of politicians in general and the evaluation of other spe cific pol i ti cians. Theoretically, we con cep tu al ize the under ly ing pro cesses in terms of Schwarz and Bless s (Bless & Schwarz, 1998; Schwarz & Bless, 1992a) inclusion/exclusion model that focuses on the men tal construals of tar gets and stan dards. AS SIM I LATION AND CONTRAST EF FECTS: THE ROLE OF MENTAL CONSTRUAL The inclusion/exclusion model (Bless & Schwarz, 1998; Schwarz & Bless, 1992a) assumes that individuals who are asked to form a judg ment about some tar get, for example, a social cat e gory, first need to retrieve some cognitive representation of it. In addi tion, they need to deter mine some standard of com par i son against which the target is eval u ated (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). Both the rep re sen ta tion of the tar get and of the standard of com par i son are, in part, con text dependent and include chron i cally as well as temporarily accessible information (Hig gins, 1996). Whereas the chron i cally acces si ble infor ma tion is the source of context-independent stabil - ity, the temporarily accessible information is the basis of context effects. The specific impact of acces si ble infor - mation depends on how it is used. Infor ma tion that is included in the representation formed about the tar get cat e gory results in assimilation effects, that is, includ ing information with positive (neg - a tive) implications results in a more positive (negative) judg ment. If the information is not included in the rep - resentation formed about the target, it may be used in constructing a standard of comparison. In this case, infor ma tion with positive (neg a tive) implications results in a more positive (neg a tive) stan dard, rel a tive to which the target is eval u ated. Accord ingly, the judg ment shows a contrast effect. Hence, the impact of acces si ble infor - mation depends cru cially on its use in the construction of mental representations of the tar get and a stan dard. Numer ous vari ables, such as aware ness of context activa - tion, per ceived typicality of con text information, or con - versational norms, may influ ence the use of accessible infor ma tion (see Schwarz & Bless, 1992a, for a review). One of these variables is the categorical relationship between the con text infor ma tion and the tar get of judgment. Superordinate Versus Lat eral Cat e go ries: Exemplars and Their Groups First, sup pose that the judg ment per tains to a tar get category that is superordinate to the con text informa - tion, as when Rich ard Nixon (a mem ber of the cat e gory Amer i can politicians ) is brought to mind and the judg - ment per tains to the trustworthiness of American politi - cians in general. In this case, the exemplar (Nixon) can be included in the tem po rary rep re sen ta tion formed of the superordinate tar get cat e gory (Amer i can pol i ti - cians), which now includes a mem ber of low trustworthi - ness (see also Smith & Zárate, 1992). As a result, Ameri - can politicians are evaluated as less trustworthy than when Nixon had not come to mind, reflect ing an assimi - lation effect. Pre vi ous studies confirmed this prediction. For example, thinking about a Ger man politician who was involved in a scan dal decreased the per ceived trust - wor thi ness of German politicians in general (Schwarz & Bless, 1992b). Sim i larly, think ing about a respected member of the Christian Democratic party in Ger many (Bless & Schwarz, 1998), or about Colin Powell s deci - sion to join the Republican party (Stapel & Schwarz, 1998), improved over all evaluations of these parties. These findings are not sur pris ing and are fully consistent with intu itions. As a sec ond possibility, how ever, suppose that the judgment pertains to a target cat e gory that is lat eral, so that the context infor ma tion and the tar get cat e gory are on the same level as when Richard Nixon is brought to mind and the judg ment pertains to the trustworthiness of Newt Gingrich (another exem plar). In this case, Nixon cannot be included in the tem po rary representa - tion formed of the tar get Newt Gingrich, reflect ing that lateral cat e go ries are mutually exclu sive (and Gingrich is, after all, not Richard Nixon). Nev er the less, Nixon is likely to influ ence judgments of Gingrich, in this case by serv ing as a highly accessible stan dard of comparison, relative to which Gingrich looks more trustworthy than would oth er wise be the case. Again, previous studies con - firmed this prediction. Spe cifically, think ing about a Ger man pol i ti cian who was involved in a scan dal increased the perceived trust wor thi ness of specific Ger - man pol i ti cians, despite the fact that the same task decreased the trustworthiness of Ger man politicians in general (Schwarz & Bless, 1992b). Similarly, thinking about the highly respected Colin Powell decreased eval - uations of Bob Dole, the Republican candidate in the 1996 elec tions, despite the fact that the same task increased evaluations of the Republican party in gen eral (Stapel & Schwarz, 1998). In sum, highly acces si ble exem plars elicit assim i la tion effects on judgments of their groups, reflect ing that sub - ordinate information (exem plars) can be included in the representation formed of a superordinate cat e gory (their group). In contrast, lat eral categories are mutu - ally exclu sive. Accord ingly, highly accessible exemplars elicit con trast effects on judgments of other exemplars, reflecting their use in the con struc tion of a stan dard of comparison. In combination, these effects can result in paradoxical outcomes, such as when a scandal-ridden

3 1038 PER SON AL ITY AND SO CIAL PSY CHOL OGY BUL LE TIN politician decreases the perceived trustworthiness of the political class in general but increases the per ceived trustworthiness of every indi vid ual member of the class (Schwarz & Bless, 1992b). Set-Size Ef fects in Mental Construal What has been insufficiently addressed in pre vi ous research are the variables that determine the size of assim i la tion and con trast effects. One of the more obvi - ous vari ables is the extremity of the acces si ble con text information: The more extreme the information is that is included in the representation of the target, or the rep - resentation of the stan dard, the larger is the resulting assim i la tion or contrast effect (Schwarz & Bless, 1992a). Hence, a major scandal should have more impact than a minor scandal, for example. Although this logic seems very straight for ward, a poten tial caveat needs to be noted. Whereas more extreme exem plars should pro - duce more impact, extreme exem plars also are more likely to be perceived as atypical and may consequently trigger an exclu sion process (see Bless & Wänke, 2000; Schwarz & Bless, 1992a), which in turn results in con trast effects (e.g., Herr, Sherman, & Fazio, 1983). More over, it should be noted that it is not the extremity of the con text infor ma tion per se but its rel a tive difference to oth er wise accessible information that influ ences the size of an effect: If the infor ma tion that is chronically accessible is as extreme as the contextual information, including the contextual information in the tem po rary rep re sen ta tion formed of the tar get has little additional impact. Theoretically more interesting is a variable that follows directly from the mental construal logic of the inclusion/ exclusion model, namely, the amount of information used in forming a rep re sen ta tion of the target or the standard. As many models of social judgment assume (e.g., Anderson, 1981; Wyer & Srull, 1989), the impact of any given piece of infor ma tion decreases as the overall amount of infor ma tion con sid ered increases. We assume that this gen eral conclusion also holds when indi vid u als con struct the men tal rep re sen ta tion of the tar get and the stan dard of comparison. The present exper i ment tests the implications of this set-size assump - tion for the size of assimilation and contrast effects. With respect to assim i la tion effects, we assume that a specific piece of information, depicted as X in Figure 1, enters into the representation of the judgmental target. To return to the above example, Rich ard Nixon ( X ) is included into the representation of the judgmental tar - get when individuals eval u ate the trust wor thi ness of American politicians in general, resulting in more nega - tive evaluations. The size of this neg a tive impact, how - ever, should depend on how many other exem plars ( E ) are included in the tem po rary representation of Figure 1 Con text effects as a func tion of cat e go ri za tion and amount of com pet ing in for ma tion. NOTE: X = a specific target ex em plar that enters either into the rep re - sen ta tion of the judg men tal tar get or into the representation of the comparison standard; E = other ac ces si ble exemplars that are part of the representation of the judgmental tar get or of the representation of the comparison standard. American pol i ti cians. 1 In the exam ple in the upper left part of Figure 1, only three other exemplars enter into the representation of the tar get. For rea sons of parsi - mony of presentation, we ignore a potential weigh ing of the four pol i ti cians; in addi tion, we assume that the three politicians are per ceived as trustworthy. In this case, add ing Nixon would contribute one fourth to the representation of politicians in general and should have a rel a tively large impact. Now assume that not only three but six other exem - plars are included in the representation of the judg men - tal target. In this case, adding Nixon would contribute only one seventh to the representation of politicians in general and should have a relatively smaller impact on judg ments of the group as a whole. These assump tions are consistent with numerous stud ies that inves ti gated infor ma tion integration in social judgment (for a review, see Ander son, 1981). For exam ple, Schwarz, Strack, and Mai (1991) observed in a different content domain that inducing participants to think about the quality of their marriage affected subsequent judgments of general life sat is fac tion more when mar riage was the only life domain brought to mind than when mar riage was only one of four life domains addressed in preceding ques - tions. As expected, the accessibility of a larger amount of diverse infor ma tion atten u ated the impact of mar - riage-related information. Extending this pre vi ous work, we propose that the same set-size principle holds for the construction of stan - dards of com par i son, an issue that has not been addressed in information-integration research. If stan - dards of comparison are con structed on the basis of accessible information, then the impact of any given

4 Bless et al. / SET-SIZE EFFECTS 1039 piece of infor ma tion should decrease as a function of the overall amount of information used in constructing the standard (right part of Figure 1). In terms of the above example, when the standard includes Rich ard Nixon along with three trustworthy exemplars, the resulting contrast effect should be more pronounced than when the standard includes Nixon along with six trustworthy exem plars (as shown in the right half of Fig ure 1). This pre dic tion again reflects that Nixon makes up one fourth of the standard in the former case but only one seventh of the standard in the latter case. In short, we propose that the set-size effect that emerges from infor ma tion integration applies not only to the con struc tion of mental representations of the tar - get but also to the con struc tion of mental representa - tions of a stan dard. Whereas the pro posed set-size depend ency of assimilation effects is con sis tent with pre - vi ous research and the o riz ing, the proposed set-size depend ency of contrast effects has not been addressed in pre vi ous work. Exper i men tal support for these predic - tions also would have impor tant implications for differ - ent mod els of assim i la tion and con trast, which we address in the Discussion sec tion. In summary, the inclusion/exclusion model pre dicts that the size of context effects is a func tion of the amount and extremity of the infor ma tion used in forming tem - po rary representations of the target and the stan dard: The impact of extreme con text information is attenu - ated the more other information with different implica - tions is used in form ing the respec tive rep re sen ta tion. Accordingly, including additional exemplars in the rep - resentation of the superordinate cat e gory should attenu - ate the resulting assim i la tion effect on judgments of the social cat e gory, whereas includ ing additional exem plars in the rep re sen ta tion of the standard should atten u ate the result ing contrast effect on judg ments of other exem plars. THE PRES ENT RE SEARCH To test these predictions, we asked Ger man par tic i - pants to evaluate either the trustworthiness of Ger man pol i ti cians in general (superordinate cat e gory) or the trustworthiness of spe cific well-known politicians (lat - eral cat e gory). Prior to making these judg ments, partici - pants received a list of politicians who, either currently or in the recent past, held the office of prime min is ter in one of the states of the Fed eral Republic of Ger many. Par tic i pants were asked indi cate the state each prime minister represented. As a con text manipulation, this list either did or did not include a prime minister who was involved in a well-known scan dal, namely, Max Streibl, the for mer prime min is ter of Bavaria. Consistent with our pre vi ous findings, based on a dif fer ent scan dal (Schwarz & Bless, 1992b), we pre dicted that bringing Max Streibl to mind would decrease judgments of the trustworthiness of Ger man politicians in general but would increase judgments of the trust wor thi ness of spe - cific exemplars who were not involved in the scandal. To address the set-size predictions, we fur ther manip - ulated how many prime min is ters were presented on the list. Spe cifically, the list included either three or six other prime ministers in addition to Max Streibl. In either case, Max Streibl was presented in the second-to-last position, thus ensuring that set size was not con founded with the dis tance between thinking about Max Streibl and the target judgments. Based on the set-size assump - tion, we hypothesized that Max Streibl s neg a tive impact on judgments of Ger man politicians in gen eral would be less pronounced when six rather than three additional prime ministers were brought to mind. That is, we pre - dicted an attenuated assimilation effect on judgments of the superordinate cat e gory as a func tion of the accessi - bil ity of additional con text information. Similarly, we predicted that Max Streibl s positive impact on judg - ments of other specific politicians would be atten u ated when six rather than three addi tional prime ministers were pre sented on the list. That is, we pre dicted attenu - ated con trast effects on judgments of lateral target cate - gories (other exem plars) as a func tion of the acces si bil - ity of additional con text information. An increased acces si bil ity of addi tional con text infor - mation may, however, not only result from the experi - mental acti va tion of three versus six prime ministers. Under con di tions where participants eval u ate other spe - cific exemplars (rather than Ger man politicians as a group), the previously eval u ated exemplar constitutes addi tional context information for the subsequent judg - ments. Accord ingly, each exemplar that par tic i pants have evaluated may enter into the standard of compari - son for the evaluation of sub se quent exem plars. As a consequence, the contrastive impact of Max Streibl on the evaluation of spe cific exem plars should decrease the later the to-be-eval u ated exemplar appears on the list of tar gets. METHOD Par tic i pants and Design The study con sisted of 125 stu dents from the Univer - sity of Hei del berg, Ger many. Participants were randomly assigned to experimental conditions according to a 2 (scan dal pol i ti cian acti vated vs. not acti vated) 2 (amount of acti vated context information: three vs. six prime ministers) 2 (tar get of judg ment: politicians in general vs. spe cific exemplars) factorial design. Partici - pants were pro vided with a questionnaire purportedly assessing stu dents attitudes and knowledge on var i ous topics.

5 1040 PER SON AL ITY AND SO CIAL PSY CHOL OGY BUL LE TIN Scandal Activation Par tic i pants were first pro vided with a list of pol i ti - cians, all currently or pre vi ously hold ing the posi tion of prime minister in various states of the Fed eral Republic of Ger many, and were asked to assign these politicians to the state they headed. For par tic i pants who were assigned to the scandal-politician-activated condition, this list included the former prime minister of Bavaria, Max Streibl, who was associated with the so-called Amigo scan dal. In all acti va tion con di tions, Max Streibl appeared second to last in the list of prime ministers. For par tic i pants assigned to the scan dal-pol i ti cian-not-acti - vated condition, the list did not include Max Streibl. In this con di tion, we asked par tic i pants to assign Max Streibl to the state he headed at the very end of the ques - tionnaire to con trol for participants knowl edge about Max Streibl. Amount of Context In for ma tion To manipulate the amount of relevant con text infor - mation, we varied the num ber of prime ministers pro - vided in the list described above. Half of the participants were pro vided with a list of three addi tional prime minis - ters (Vogel, Rau, Teufel), whereas the remaining half of the participants were provided with a list of six additional prime min is ters (Vogel, Rau, Teufel, Biedenkopf, Simonis, Eichel). Note that no evaluative judgment was involved in the acti va tion of Max Streibl or the other prime ministers; all that participants were asked to do was iden tify the state that these politicians headed. Type of Judgment Half of the participants eval u ated the trust wor thi ness of politicians in the Fed eral Republic of Ger many in gen - eral (social cat e gory judgment), whereas the other half of the par tic i pants evaluated the trustworthiness of six specific politicians (exemplar judgment). These six spe - cific exemplars were well-known politicians drawn from dif fer ent polit i cal par ties (Mer kel, Klose, Vollmer, Diepgen, Schroeder, Suessmuth). All rat ings were assessed along 11-point rating scales (1 = not at all trust - wor thy, 11 = very trustworthy). RESULTS To exclude participants who had no knowl edge about the scan dal, we eliminated 13 par tic i pants from fur ther analyses who did not correctly assign Max Streibl (the politician involved in the scan dal) to the state of Bavaria. Given that the media always presented the whole scandal as a Bavar ian affair, this cri te rion served as a rough, but pre sum ably valid, indi ca tor of participants knowledge about the scan dal. Most impor tant, the excluded partici - pants were distributed about equally among the four experimental con di tions (3, 3, 4, and 3 par tic i pants) so that par tic i pants knowledge was not affected by the experimental con di tions. Group Versus Exemplar Judgments As a first step, we exam ined the impact of including Max Streibl on the list of prime ministers on partici - pants evaluations of the superordinate tar get cat e gory (German pol i ti cians) and the lateral tar get categories (spe cific known exem plars). Because our the o riz ing predicts that each evaluated exemplar may influence evaluations of the following one, we limited this first anal y sis to the first three specific exem plars eval u ated and address the subsequent exemplars in subsequent analyses. Sep a rate anal y ses of the first versus the second half of the exemplar evaluations have the additional advantage of allowing further comparisons, as described below. We computed a 2 (scandal activated vs. not activated) 2 (amount of acti vated context information: three vs. six prime min is ters) 2 (group vs. exem plar judgments) factorial ANOVA. Note that the exemplar judgments entering into this analysis reflect an average score of the first three exemplars judg ments. The results pre sented in Table 1 indi cate that the direc tion of the context effects depended on the nature of the target judgment, whereas the size of these effects was a func tion of the amount of acti vated con text information, as reflected in a significant three-way inter ac tion, F(1, 104) = 7.57, p <.01. (This interaction also is significant if we base the anal y sis on a sum mary score that com prises all six evalu - ated exemplars rather than only the first half, F [1, 103] = 6.07, p <.05. As addressed in more detail below, however, the effect is mostly driven by the first three politicians evaluated, as expected on theoretical grounds.) For a more detailed analysis of the obtained triple inter ac tion, we first examined the judg ments of partici - pants who were pro vided with three additional prime ministers in the assignment task, shown in the left panel of Table 1. The pro vided means sug gest that when three addi tional prime ministers were activated, judgments were a function of the acti va tion of the scandal-ridden Max Streibl and the nature of the target judgment, reflected in a sig nif i cant sim ple inter ac tion, F(1, 104) = 4.98, p <.01. Not surprisingly, reminding participants of Max Streibl decreased participants judgments of the trustworthiness of Ger man politicians in general (M = 3.9) rel a tive to participants who were not reminded of Max Streibl (M = 5.5), t(104) = 2.25, p <.03. This rep li - cates the assim i la tion effect on the judgment of the superordinate category observed by Schwarz and Bless (1992b). Con versely, remind ing par tic i pants of Max Streibl increased their reported trust in the three spe - cific tar get politicians (M = 6.9) relative to par tic i pants

6 Bless et al. / SET-SIZE EFFECTS 1041 TABLE 1: Eval u a tion of the Trust wor thi ness of Politicians in Gen - eral and in Specific as a Function of a Scan dal Activation and Amount of Additional In for ma tion who had not been reminded of Max Streibl (M = 5.3), t(104) = 2.16, p <.04. This replicates the con trast effect on judgments of lateral categories pre vi ously observed by Schwarz and Bless (1992b). In sum, this pat tern is consistent with predictions and replicates our previous find ings, thus setting the stage for the analysis of set-size effects. Set-Size Ef fects Additionally Activated Con text Information Three Other Exemplars Six Other Exemplars Not Scandal Not Scandal De pend ent Vari able Ac ti vated Ac ti vated Ac ti vated Ac ti vated Politicians in gen eral M SD Spe cific known exemplars First three M SD Second three M SD NOTE: Evaluations were as sessed on 11-point rat ing scales, with higher scores reflecting more trustworthiness. Next, con sider the conditions in which six rather than three prime min is ters were pre sented in addi tion to Max Streibl, shown in the right panel of Table 1. We predicted that the acti va tion of additional prime min is ters would attenuate Streibl s impact on judgments of German poli - ti cians in gen eral as well as on judgments of spe cific exemplars. We again limit these anal y ses to judgments of the group and the first three exem plars eval u ated, as above. The hypoth e sized atten u a tion should be reflected in the absence of an impact of the acti vated scandal-ridden politician, and this attenuation should be observed for judg ments about spe cific politicians as well as for politi - cians in gen eral. Con firming this pre dic tion, we obtained no effect when entering responses of partici - pants who were exposed to six prime ministers into a 2 (scandal acti vated vs. not acti vated) 2 (group vs. exem - plar judg ments) ANOVA, all simple main or interaction effects (p >.30). Specifically, bringing Max Streibl to mind had no sig nif i cant impact when he was pre sented on a list with six rather than only three other prime min - is ters: The pre vi ously observed assimilation effect on judg ments of the group was elim i nated (Ms = 4.6 vs. 4.7, with vs. without Streibl, respec tively; t < 1) and the previ - ously observed contrast effect on the judgments of these three exemplars was reduced to nonsignificance (Ms = 6.5 vs. 5.9, t < 1). In combination with the obtained sim - ple interaction for par tic i pants exposed to three addi - tional prime min is ters, these results account for the sig - nificant triple interaction reported above (Acti va tion Type of Judgment Amount of Context Infor ma tion). Note that the observed attenuations cannot be attrib - uted to mem ory loss: Inde pend ent of whether Streibl was presented on a list with three or with six other prime ministers, he was always presented in the second-to-last position. Hence, the distance between Streibl and the tar get judg ments was iden ti cal in both con di tions. Accordingly, these atten u a tion effects are most likely due to the differential amount of context information rendered accessible by the prime minister assignment task, as pre dicted on theoretical grounds. The impact of set size on the influ ence of bringing Max Streibl to mind is reflected in sim ple interactions of scandal acti va tion and the set-size vari able for judgments of specific exem plars, F(1, 104) = 5.90, p <.03, as well as for judgments of politicians in general, F(1, 104) = 2.96, p <.08. In combination, these results sug gest that the increased num ber of politicians acti vated in the prime minister assignment task decreased the impact of Max Streibl by rendering a more diverse set of exemplars accessible. 2 Additional Set-Size Anal y ses So far, our anal y ses of set-size effects pertained to how rendering a dif fer en tial num ber of politicians accessible in the prime minister assign ment task affected judg - ments of Ger man politicians in gen eral (superordinate cat e gory) and of the first three spe cific politicians evalu - ated (lateral cat e go ries). How ever, the data set allows for the anal y sis of additional set-size effects under condi - tions where par tic i pants eval u ate specific politicians. Eval u ating an exem plar ren ders this exem plar highly accessible and may be used in constructing a representa - tion of the standard that is brought to bear on the evalua - tion of the next exemplar. Accordingly, six exem plars (in addition to Max Streibl, where he is brought to mind) are highly accessible in two different conditions: First, in the con di tion where participants were exposed to six prime ministers in the initial assignment task, and sec - ond, in the con di tion where participants were exposed to three prime min is ters and completed the evaluation of the first three exem plars presented in the judgment task. Above, we observed that bring ing six prime minis - ters to mind elim i nated the con trast effect that we obtained when only three prime ministers were acti - vated, con sis tent with the set-size prediction. We fur ther predicted that a similar attenuation of the contrast effect would be observed for judgments of exemplars pre -

7 1042 PER SON AL ITY AND SO CIAL PSY CHOL OGY BUL LE TIN sented later in the list. Note, however, that these two dif - ferent set-size conditions are not directly comparable because they dif fer in (a) the amount of material that inter venes between the activation of Max Streibl and the judgment and (b) the judgmental tar get. Hence, these addi tional anal y ses potentially involve set-size changes as well as memory loss and idiosyncratic differences in the judgmental tar get. We had expected that previously evaluated specific pol i ti cians may them selves enter into the standard of com par i son for subsequent evaluations of other spe cific pol i ti cians and may hence attenuate the contrast effect obtained on the evaluation of the first three exem plars. Accordingly, we pre dicted an interaction of the activa - tion of the scan dal-rid den politician and the sequential position of the exemplar judg ments, with the last fac tor treated as a within-par tic i pants factor. (Given that con - text effects on the first three exem plars were restricted to con di tions when only three additional prime min is ters were acti vated, the subsequent anal y ses had to be lim ited to these con di tions.) Our analyses confirm this pre - dicted inter ac tion, F(1, 26) = 4.92, p <.04. Spe cifically, the ini tially observed impact on evaluations of the first three exemplars (M = 3.9 vs. M = 5.5), t(104) = 2.25, p <.03, was not obtained for the fourth to sixth exem plar (M = 6.1 vs. M = 6.0, t < 1). As noted above, the fourth to sixth exem plar was, of course, more removed from the activation of Max Streibl than the first to third exemplar. Hence, this latter set of analyses may reflect mem ory loss as well as changes in the number of exem plars included in the standard of com - par i son used. Nevertheless, the obser va tion that Streibl s impact decreased as a func tion of the num ber of other prime ministers presented under conditions that ruled out mem ory loss sug gests that a set-size interpretation may be applied to the current attenuation as well. DISCUSSION In sum, the pres ent findings support two core pos tu - lates of the inclu sion/exclu sion model (Schwarz & Bless, 1992a). The first pos tu late holds that the same con text infor ma tion can elicit assim i la tion as well as con trast effects, depend ing on its use in the construal of tar gets and stan dards. One of the vari ables that determines this use is the categorical relationship between the con text infor ma tion and the tar get of judg ment. Superordinate categories (such as German pol i ti cians) allow for the inclusion of sub or di nate con text information (in this case, exemplars of the cat e gory Ger man politicians ). This results in assim i la tion effects on judg ments of superordinate targets. Lateral categories, however, such as different exemplars, are mutually exclu sive. Hence, the acces si ble context information is used in construct - ing a standard of com par i son, result ing in con trast effects on judg ments of other lateral targets. The present findings confirmed these pre dic tions, consistent with pre vi ous stud ies (Schwarz & Bless, 1992b; Stapel & Schwarz, 1998): Thinking about a scandal-ridden politi - cian decreased judg ments of the trustworthiness of poli - ti cians in gen eral but increased judgments of the trust - wor thi ness of specific individual politicians. More impor tant, the pres ent find ings sup port a sec - ond, and pre vi ously untested, core pos tu late of the inclu sion/exclu sion model. This postulate holds that the impact of any given piece of context information decreases with the amount and extremity of other infor - mation used in constructing a rep re sen ta tion of the tar - get or of the standard. The present experiment tested the set-size component of this assump tion. As predicted, we found that the oth er wise observed assim i la tion and contrast effects were elim i nated or atten u ated when the priming task brought a more diverse set of context infor - mation to mind. First, think ing about the scandal-ridden Max Streibl only decreased judgments of the trustworthi - ness of German politicians in general when three addi - tional prime ministers were ren dered accessible by the assign ment task. When Streibl was pre sented with six addi tional prime min is ters, his presentation no longer affected judg ments of the group. This pre sum ably reflects that the judgment of the group is based on the exem plars accessible at the time of judg ment, and the more exemplars ren dered acces si ble, the less impact each one has. This attenuation of the assim i la tion effect can not be traced to a decrease in Streibl s accessibility per se because he was always pre sented in the secondto-last position of the prime min is ter assignment task, thus hold ing the dis tance between exposure to Max Streibl and the subsequent judg ments con stant. Hence, we conclude that the attenuation of the assimilation effect reflects a set-size effect in the construction of a tem po rary representation of the target. This set-size effect is consistent with numer ous models of social judg - ment that assume that the judgment is based on an inte - gration of the infor ma tion accessible at the time (e.g., Ander son, 1981; Wyer & Srull, 1989). Second, and more important, the same attenuation was observed for the obtained con trast effects on judg - ments of specific known pol i ti cians. Thinking about the scandal-ridden Max Streibl increased judgments of the trustworthiness of other individual politicians, yet this effect was only reliable when Streibl was pre sented with only three additional prime ministers and was sig nif i - cantly atten u ated, and no lon ger reli able, when he was presented with six additional prime min is ters (or, when three prime ministers were presented and participants had already evaluated three tar get pol i ti cians, again summing up to six con text exem plars). Again, this effect can not be traced to changes in Streibl s acces si bil ity

8 Bless et al. / SET-SIZE EFFECTS 1043 per se, for the rea sons dis cussed above. Instead, it sug - gests that participants con struct a standard of com par i - son based on the exem plars acces si ble at the time, and the more exem plars accessible, the less impact each one has. Hence, we conclude that the attenuation of the con - trast effect reflects a set-size effect in the con struc tion of the tem po rary representation of the stan dard. In combination, these find ings highlight the con - structive nature of social judg ment and emphasize the parallel pro cesses under ly ing the emergence of assimila - tion and contrast effects. When asked to com pute a judg - ment, indi vid u als need to form a men tal representation of the tar get and of a standard against which the tar get is evaluated. Both representations are constructed on the spot, based on the infor ma tion that is most accessible at the time (see also Barsalou, 1987; Kahneman & Miller, 1986). The more information is accessible and used in constructing the respec tive representation, the smaller the impact of any given piece of information, as observed in the present experiment. Im pli ca tions for the Con text De pend ency of So cial Judg ment The set-size effects doc u mented in the pres ent exper i - ment have impor tant impli ca tions for the con text depend ency of social judg ment. In the pres ent study, we rendered differential amounts of context information tem po rarily accessible and observed that the impact of an extreme piece of information was atten u ated by the accessibility of more moderate infor ma tion. How ever, the logic of men tal construal pro cesses not only applies to tem po rarily acces si ble infor ma tion but holds for chron i cally acces si ble infor ma tion as well. Accord ingly, experts on a topic should be less likely to be influ enced by a piece of tem po rarily acces si ble information because they can draw on a larger body of chron i cally accessible infor ma tion that is likely to attenuate its impact. Consis - tent with this notion, we observed in a related study (Wänke, Bless, & Schwarz, 1998) that experts with con - siderable knowl edge about the tar get were less influ - enced by con text information than were nov ices. Many models of social judgment attribute experts relative context inde pend ency to the acces si bil ity of a previously formed judg ment that obliterates the need to form a judgment in the given context (Strack & Martin, 1987). Similarly, many researchers assume that con text effects in atti tude mea sure ment are most likely when par tic i pants do not hold a previously formed attitude (e.g., Converse, 1964) or when this attitude is weak rather than strong (e.g., Krosnick & Abelson, 1992). In contrast, the present set-size findings high light that the basic logic of mental construal mod els can account for the sta bil ity of attitude judgments as well as for their con - text dependency, all within the same par si mo ni ous frame work (see Sudman, Bradburn, & Schwarz, 1996, chap. 5). In the present study, bringing Max Streibl to mind resulted in pronounced context effects when only three addi tional politicians were ren dered acces si ble. Yet, no context effects could be observed when six additional pol i ti cians were brought to mind. Although the experi - mental nature of these effects requires an account in terms of the mental construal and set-size assump tions advanced here, it is easy to see how par al lel dif fer ences in the chronic acces si bil ity of knowl edge would lead research ers to dif fer ent con clu sions. If some partici - pants (labeled polit i cal experts) had more exem plars chron i cally accessible, they would presumably be less influ enced by bringing Max Streibl to mind than would other par tic i pants (labeled nov ices), for whom fewer exem plars are chron i cally acces si ble. Such individual dif fer ences in the emergence of context effects would typically be attributed to experts stronger atti tudes or similar variables (see the dis cus sions in Petty & Krosnick, 1995). Yet, they may as well be accounted for by assuming that experts as well as novices have to form judg ments on the spot but are differentially susceptible to contextual influ ences due to a dif fer en tial amount of chron i cally accessible knowl edge. Obvi ously, the pres ent results do not bear directly on indi vid ual differences. Nevertheless, the plausible parallels in the likely use of temporarily and chronically acces si ble infor ma tion (see Higgins, 1996) highlight that the absence of a context effect pro - vides nei ther any evidence for the presence of a previ - ously formed attitude nor any evi dence that the reported judg ment was not based on a tem po rary construal. Instead, it may simply indi cate that the amount and extremity of the con text information was insufficient to change the evaluation in com pe ti tion with other infor - mation used in forming a rep re sen ta tion of the tar get or the standard (see Sudman et al., 1996, chap. 5, for a more detailed discussion). Po lit i cal Scandals: Some Ad vice to Our Representatives From a sub stan tive point of view, our findings indi cate that political scandals can indeed under mine citizens trust in politicians in general, much as pub lic opinion research ers observed when the Water gate scan dal unfolded (see Corbett, 1991; Erikson, Luttbeg, & Tedin, 1988). At the same time, the diverg ing impact of scan - dals on the perceived trustworthiness of the political class ver sus individual politicians sug gests that a political culture of mistrust (Garment, 1991) is not a nec es sary consequence: In fact, a juicy scan dal makes those not involved in it look all the more trustworthy. Consistent with this diverg ing impact, public opinion research reli - ably shows that Amer i cans distrust Congress in gen eral

9 1044 PER SON AL ITY AND SO CIAL PSY CHOL OGY BUL LE TIN but trust their own rep re sen ta tive (Erikson et al., 1988), thus mir ror ing the find ings of the present study and of Schwarz and Bless (1992b). To put our analysis of the under ly ing men tal construal processes to some use, we conclude with a few words of advice to our worried repre - sentatives and their spin doc tors (on both sides of the Atlantic). First, do not despair! Unless you (or your cli ent) are at the heart of the scan dal, a juicy scan dal is likely to help you. As long as your vot ers eval u ate you as an individual representative, a highly visible crook will make an aver - age record of muddled ethics look good by comparison. If you are closer to the scan dal, try to dis so ci ate yourself from the scandal, as you are likely to do anyway (see Ebbighausen & Neckel, 1989, for case stud ies of scan - dal-management strategies). Sec ond, note that you will only ben e fit from the scan - dal when the scan dal comes to mind at the time your vot ers eval u ate you. Hence, it is not in your inter est when a juicy scan dal is quickly for got ten, and nei ther is it in your interest when the extremity of the scandal is downplayed the more extreme the scan dal is, the better you look by com par i son. And counterintuitive as it may seem, bringing some trustworthy peers to mind may do you no good: They only water down a neg a tive standard of com par i son, depriv ing you of the ben e fits offered by the crook. Third, you should worry, how ever, when your vot ers know lit tle about you. In that case, your voters could not form a judgment on the basis of indi vid u at ing informa - tion about you. Instead, they would probably derive a judgment from your cat e gory mem ber ship (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990), and the last thing you want to be evalu - ated as simply another politician, thus suffering from the negative impact of the scandal on the polit i cal class as a whole (see Schwarz & Bless, 1992b). Fourth, if you are con cerned about the image of the political class, or the image of your party, try to influ ence who is exposed to the public s eye. Rendering many trustworthy peers highly visible will increase their cogni - tive acces si bil ity, thus atten u at ing the impact of the crook on perceptions of the group. This, of course, is again what you are likely to do anyway (see Ebbighausen & Neckel, 1989). But note that whether this strategy is ben - e fi cial to you, per son ally, most likely depends on whether your vot ers evaluate you as an indi vid ual or as a representative of your party: If they eval u ate you as an individual, your trustworthy col leagues may help the party (by atten u at ing the assim i la tion effect) but may hurt you (by atten u at ing the contrast effect). If they eval - u ate you as a rep re sen ta tive of your party, however, what is good for the party is, finally, also good for you. But then, why would you want such an undis tin guished record? Sixth, you are mis taken to only worry about the crooks. In fact, the shin ing stars may be much more dan - gerous for you, personally: Although the crooks make you look good by comparison, the stars make you look bad. Sen a tor Bob Dole s eval u a tions, for example, always suffered when Colin Powell came to mind (Stapel & Schwarz, 1998). But, on the other hand, the stars are good for your party, and evaluations of the Republican party benefited from including Colin Powell in its ranks (Stapel & Schwarz, 1998). Finally, the upshot of all this is as follows: What is good for your party is, unfor tu nately, bad for you (and vice versa) unless your record is so undistinguished that all your vot ers can do is con sider you a representative of your party. NOTES 1. For reasons of presentation, we assume that the information com pet ing with the Nixon infor ma tion are other exem plars. Of course, theoretically, the com pet ing infor ma tion is not restricted to other exem plars but may comprise all infor ma tion that is considered rel e vant for constructing the representation. The same argument holds for the construal of the comparison stan dard described below. 2. 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