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Measurement of Individual Differences in Sensitivity to Appearance
Author(s) -
Miller Franklin G.,
Feinberg Richard A.,
Davis Leslie L.,
Rowold Kathleen L.
Publication year - 1982
Publication title -
home economics research journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.372
H-Index - 31
eISSN - 1552-3934
pISSN - 0046-7774
DOI - 10.1177/1077727x8201000409
Subject(s) - semantic differential , stimulus (psychology) , clothing , cognitive psychology , psychology , bayesian probability , statistics , social psychology , mathematics , archaeology , history
In order to measure individual differences in the use of clothing cues in impression formation, subjects wre shown slides of one model in two outfits. Three types of data were collected; 1) responses on semantic differential scales, 2) subjects' stated conditional probabilities of the likelihood of an individual wearing the particular garments given that the individual pos sessed particular traits (also traits given garments), and 3) the computed Bayesian diag nostic ratios of the likelihood of an individual wearing the garments given the traits (also traits given garments). For each of the three types of data, two measures were constructed: 1) a measure of differential judgments of the stimulus person on the basis of differences in attire, and 2) a measure of the extent to which the subject used the extreme ends of the scales in judg ing a stimulus person on the basis of appearance. For both the semantic differential and diag nostic ratio data, there were positive correlations between the two measures. This was inter preted as suggesting a positive relationship between the tendency to make extreme attribu tions of personality traits on the basis of appearance and the tendency to differentially ascribe traits on the basis of differences in attire. A positive correlation between the measures con structed from the semantic differential data and the computed Bayesian diagnostic ratio of garments given traits was interpreted as suggesting that as subjects respond to the physical appearance of a stimulus person on semantic differential scales, they indicate the extent to which they find particular forms of physical appearance to be differentially characteristic of personality traits.