Categorization, accentuation and social judgement

Abstract

Contrast effects have long been recognized as important for the study of judgement. It has been predicted that the presence of a categorization superimposed on a series of stimuli (and correlated with their magnitude) would serve to accentuate judged differences between and judged similarities within classes. Fifty‐five subjects judged political statements, classified in terms of their authors. It was predicted that the contrast effects would be mediated by the salience of the categorization, the political views of the subjects, their affective ratings of authors and evaluations of political terms. Unlike numerous other studies with similar designs the results provided evidence for both the accentuation of inter‐class differences and intra‐class similarities. The relationships between judges' views and contrast were in accordance with accentuation theory and social identity theory, in that judges whose positions were congruent with the positive evaluations of the scale labels showed more contrast between classes. The results are discussed with reference to social identity theory and the role of category salience.