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Awareness of the influence as a determinant of assimilation versus contrast
Author(s) -
Strack Fritz,
Schwarz Norbert,
Bless Herbert,
Kübler Almut,
Wänke Michaela
Publication year - 1993
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/ejsp.2420230105
Subject(s) - psychology , priming (agriculture) , trait , contrast (vision) , social psychology , assimilation (phonology) , developmental psychology , cognitive psychology , linguistics , philosophy , botany , germination , artificial intelligence , computer science , biology , programming language
In the present study, subjects had to generate an evaluative judgment about a target person on the basis of his behaviour that had both positive and negative implications. In a previous phase of the study that was ostensibly unrelated to the judgment task, the relevant trait categories were primed. Subsequently, half of the subjects were reminded of the priming episode. Consistent with earlier research (e.g. Lombardi, Higgins and Bargh, 1987; Newman and Uleman, 1990) that used memory of the priming events as a correlational measure, a contrast effect was found under the ‘reminding’ condition and assimilation resulted when subjects were not reminded of the priming episode. This pattern of results is interpreted as the consequence of corrective influences.