Preference and the contextual basis of ideals in judgment and choice.

Abstract

Four experiments assessed preferences for schematic faces. In Experiment 1, eye gap and nose width were manipulated separately, and effects of shifting the range of values were assessed. Descriptive ratings of width showed contrast effects in accordance with A. Parducci's (1995) range-frequency theory. Evaluative ratings of pleasantness showed reversals of preference ordering that were modeled as shifts in ideal points toward the means of the contextual distributions. In Experiments 2 and 3, similar effects of context on preference were demonstrated in a trinary-choice task in which faces varied only in eye gap. In Experiment 4, eye gap and nose width were manipulated together, resulting in systematic contextual shifts of the ideal face within the 2-dimensional attribute space. The results demonstrated the pervasive effects of context on the construction of ideals determining preference and underlying attitudes. In many preference domains, more is better. For example, when all other attributes are held constant, increasing monetary gains for an alternative increases preference strength for that alternative. In such domains there is a monotonic relationship between degree of preference and the values on the underlying stimulus dimension. However, a nonmonotonic relationship between preference and value is observed in many other domains, often characterized by a single-peaked preference curve in which the ideal lies at an intermediate value between extremes. For example, with increasing sugar concentration, the pleasantness of the tastes of soft drinks initially increases and then decreases (Moskowitz, Kluter, Westerling, & Jacobs, 1974), capturing the idea that a drink can be too sweet or not sweet enough. Such single-peaked preference curves are described by Coombs's (1964) ideal-point theory of preference, in which preference is determined by the similarity of the stimulus to an ideal. Monotonic preference curves occur when the ideal is at one extreme or the other, and single-peaked curves occur when the ideal is located at an intermediate value