EFFECT OF INTER-RELATEDNESS OF INFORMATIONS ON CONTEXT EFFECT IN PERSONALITY IMPRESSION FORMATION

要旨

The present study was performed to investigate the effects of the inter-relatedness of informations and the rating order of the test trait upon the context effect in personality impression formation. Ss were presented 16 sets of 4 personalitytrait adjectives, one test trait and three context traits, and were then asked to rate favorableness for the test trait under a variety of inter-relatedness conditions: High-relatedness (HR), Mild-relatedness (MR), and Low-relatedness (LR). Test-trait ratings were made before the total ratings (T-O), or after the total ratings (O-T), On the basis of 2×3 factorial design, 294 female students were randomly assigned to six experimental groups. First, results indicate that the context effect occurred regardless of whether Ss were asked to rate the test trait before the total ratings, or after the total ratings. Second, results showed that the context effect increases with the inter-relatedness among the stimulus trait adjectives in a set, and that the differences of the context effect among three inter-relatedness levels increased as a function of discrepancy between the test trait likableness and the context likableness. Third, results indicate that the relation between the rating of the test trait and the total rating was not linear; that is, the total ratings were polarized as only function of the normative likableness of the context traits. Results of the present study, considered as a whole, are clearly consistent with the meaning-change hypothesis of the context effect.

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