Contrast effect

A contrast effect is a cognitive distortion, which leads to a more intense awareness of information, which is presented in conjunction with a person in the contrast information.

Contrast effects occur when a negative relationship between the implications of the context information and the judgment is made. In judgment contraptions such a positive context information leads to more negative reviews and negative contextual information on positive reviews.

Contrast effects are ubiquitous in human perception, cognition and the resulting behavior. An object appears serious when it is compared to a light object or light when it is contrasted with a heavy object. The attractiveness of an alternative can be significantly increased when compared with a similar but inferior alternative and vice versa.

Although both inner circles in the right image have the same size, the left inner circle appears larger. The particular environment influences our perception, the eye tends to overemphasize the differences. This contrast effect is for assessments is essential. A weak employee is perceived in a college or weaker people as relatively powerful, and vice versa.

• 2.1 Service Demonstration

• 3.1 Inclusion / exclusion model
• 3.2 Selective Availability Model

• 4.1 Assessment of texts
• 4.2 Judgments of Judges
• 4.3 attractiveness

Of contrast

Simultaneous Contrast

A simultaneous contrast occurs when two stimuli occur together. It describes the interaction of adjacent color fields or contrast enhancement of the perceived color intensity.

When we perceive color, at the same time, ie simultaneously with the perceived complementary supplement and blasted through the output color. For example, consider the right image. All three horizontal stripes interior are the same color in itself. Due to the environment colors but changed their color impression. With a vertical center line, you can make that impression easily visible.

Successive contrast

From successive- contrast occurs when two stimuli follow each other closely in time and a perception is influenced by the other, eg by afterimages. This effect is caused by the adaptation of the eye to a particular light stimulus. The neural response of the eye over time is weakened, so that the complementary color system is not in equilibrium and corresponds to the complementary color of the original stimulus. For example, for a time, if you look at a red circle and then turns his gaze on a white surface, creating a light green afterimage.

Contrast effects in social psychology

A contrast effect refers to a tendency in judgment formation and social comparisons. An object that receives an average evaluation ( assessment in isolation ) is judged more positively when it is preceded by a negative Judged object ( positive contrast effect), and negative when it is preceded by a positively valued object (negative contrast effect).

Showing often preceded comparison processes, as a standard, or other standard of comparison is necessary, for example in assessing whether a high, medium or low level of a property exists. In assessments of properties (eg, punctuality, conscientiousness, attractiveness), these comparisons often refer to the self, as the representations of the self in memory is easily retrievable. When social comparison processes but also other comparison standards play a role, eg Siblings, classmates, colleagues, etc. Judgment developments are therefore always context-dependent. In context effects can be distinguished generally between contrast effects and assimilation effects ( stand in contrast to contrast effects). With a contrast effect the actions or characteristics of others are assessed as distinct from one's own point of view. Contrast effects often occur in contrast to, and in cases where taken in isolation an average assessment would take place.

Own demonstration

To demonstrate himself a contrast effect, one must keep in cold water and the other at the same time. In warm water for about a minute a hand Then, it holds both hands in a lukewarm water and can themselves learn the contrast effect: the hand that was in cold water before, now feels much warmer than the hand that was in hot water before, as always compared with the previous state will.

Explanatory models

Inclusion / exclusion model

The inclusion / exclusion model is a general model for the explanation of assimilation and contrast effects on the basis of mental constructions in judgment decisions.

Human judgments depends on the context. The evaluation of a judgment object requires two mental representations: a mental representation of the object, and a judgment of the calibration standard. Both designs done flexibly and spontaneously formed on the basis of the information available. The representation of the judgment object only consists of a subset of potentially relevant information and may vary from situation to situation. If a specific evaluation or judgment particularly often used, then you can retrieve it as such and need not always be formed in situ.

The accessibility of information can be divided into two categories share: chronically accessible information that is constantly available and explains the stability of judgments, and temporarily accessible information. This kind of accessibility depends on the context.

The impact of the information available will depend on the categorization of the information. If information is included, so included in the mental representation of the object's judgment, there is an assimilation effect. It will therefore have a positive relationship between the implications of the context information and the judgment of the object. However, several specified boundary conditions can lead to available, relevant information is excluded from the representation of the sentence object. The information is excludes. The excluded information can then be used to construct the comparison standards; it favors contrast effects. The inclusion or exclusion of information is determined by three factors: relevance, representativeness and adequacy.

Most of our current thoughts have to do with what we focus on, ie they are relevant and are automatically included in the judgment object. Suppose, however, a " irrelevant " true cause of accessibility (eg obvious priming ) the information is excludes and there are contrast effects. Context information that is perceived as inappropriate or atypical and information, breaking the rules of conversation, also result in an exclusion of the activated information. The inclusion / exclusion model says away the direction ( assimilation or contrast) and size of the effect before and generalizability across different objects.

Selective Availability Model

The selective availability model (selective accessiblity model, SEM ) of Mussweiler is another model that explains the emergence of assimilation and contrast effects in judgment decisions and social comparisons.

For an assessment process and comparison process must be searched for relevant information about the ruling object and the reference standard. For those looking for and the activation of beurteilungsrelevantem knowledge hypothesis-testing processes are used, which are often selective, as they focus only on a central hypothesis. This is called the mechanism of selective availability.

Can in principle distinguish between two hypotheses, of which one is checked. You can either test the probability that the verdict object is similar to the standard of comparison (similarity hypothesis), or the probability that the judgment of the comparison object state is different ( Unähnlichkeitshypothese ). Which of the hypotheses will be tested depends on the general perceived similarity judgment of object and reference standard, which is determined in a first step of selective availability mechanism by a rapid, superficial judgment process; it briefly examines a few properties to determine whether the judgment object and the reference standard are similar or dissimilar in general. Now, by the hypothesis, starting right information is found and activated. By selectively activated this information, the probability is very high that the initial hypothesis is confirmed and a assimilation effect (with similarity hypothesis ) or to a contrast effect ( at Unähnlichkeitshypothese ) comes.

Examples

Evaluation of texts

Student teachers are asked to evaluate two texts, which, as it was told them, were written by 13 - Jähigen. Before the evaluation, the test subjects were primed to either differences or similarities. It was found that the subjects who focused by the priming differences, the texts of different rated. The subjects who focused on similarities, the texts rated significantly more similar.

Judgments of judges

Experienced judges were asked to rate from a video two exercises in gymnastics after the scoring rules as objective as possible. The judges were told here that the Turner either to the same national team ( focus on similarity) or to different teams included ( focus on dissimilarity ). In the first exercise, one half of the judges a better exercise ( high comparison standard) and the other half saw a worse exercise ( lower standard of comparison ). The second exercise was for all judges the same. The judges who focused on similarities, approached its assessment of the second Turner to the comparison standard (first Turner ), while there was a contrast effect at the judges who focused on dissimilarities.

Attractiveness

Even with the physical attractiveness to contrast effects can affect the self-assessment. Men and women appreciate after the viewing of very attractive same-sex stimulus persons as less attractive (negative contrast effect ) than those who had not seen these pictures. After consideration of unattractive subjects their own attractiveness to be higher ( positive contrast effect) was.