Norbert Schwarz

Norbert Schwarz ( born March 28, 1953) is Charles Horton Cooley Collegiate Professor of Social Psychology at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor. He is also Professor of Marketing at the Business School, Research Professor in the program for survey methods and research professor at the Institute for Social Research at the same university. After his dissertation ( University of Mannheim, 1980) and Habilitation ( University of Heidelberg, 1986), he was scientific director of the Center for Survey Research and Methodology ( ZUMA ) before he became a professor at the University of Michigan in 1993.

Norbert Schwarz is one of the most cited contemporary social psychologists. In 2004, he shared with Fritz Strack Wilhelm Wundt - Medal of the German Society for Psychology. He is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the German Academy of Sciences Leopoldina.

All his works have in common that people do not have stable, coherent and easy to access settings that could be reliably measured. Instead, opinions are formed spontaneously and strongly influenced by contextual factors. These influences include feelings such as a person's mood or metacognitive feelings, for example, processing liquid or spontaneously drawn conclusions about the importance of questions. In addition, plays a role in whether people believe that emotions and thoughts for the judgment are relevant.

Feeling as information

Norbert Schwarz developed the " feeling as information " theory ( engl. ' feelings -as- information' theory ), one of the most influential explanations for the cognitive consequences of affect. This theory states that flow into the judgment about an object feelings as information for the evaluation of the object. Although this type of judgment is quite reliable, persons may be wrong in the source of this information. A classic experiment for this hypothesis was conducted by Schwarz and Clore: subjects reported higher life satisfaction when they were in a positive mood than when they were in a negative mood. This mood effect disappears when the interviewer mention the weather before they ask for in life satisfaction, because the people correctly associate the current mood of the weather. This shows that the current mood incorporated as information in reviews.

Another feeling that " feeling - as - information " perspective played an important role in the, is the metacognitive sense of ease or difficulty to retrieve information. Black and his colleagues were able to show, in fact, that people tend to make their judgments on the basis of phenomenal experience the ease of retrieval. However ( List less versus many large events), these feelings can be caused by various factors that are not available in conjunction with the judgment, for example, characteristics of the task of processing liquid ( high versus low figure-ground contrast, readable versus less readable fonts ) or by manipulation of the motor feedback (for example, contraction of the eyebrows). The experience thus generated the processing liquid influenced judgments about truth, frequency, risk and beauty: objects that are easier to process, are considered to be more true, more often, more risky and more beautiful.

In an elegant experiment, a group was asked of subjects to enumerate six episodes in which they behaved even sure what is a relatively easy task; the other group had to enumerate twelve such behavior, which is relatively difficult. Then the subjects were asked to indicate how confident they are. In fact, the subjects used the sense of ease of retrieval as information and considering themselves as more confident if they had to get 6 instead of 12 Episodes own self-confidence.

In another experiment, the perceptual liquid ( engl. perceptual fluency ) manipulated by figure-ground contrast, so that statements of the form " Osorno is in Chile " either were easy to read and difficult to read. Were easy to read the statements that subjects rated the statements as more true than statements that were difficult to read.

Conversational maxims and answers in surveys

Norbert Schwarz is also known for his study of the cognitive processes involved in answering questions in surveys. A survey interview is seen as a conversation between the interviewer and the responder. Like all conversations are subject to interview situations postulated by the philosopher of language Paul Grice 's maxims of conversation that arise from the principle of cooperation. Then try people, truthful and clearly communicate that information which is necessary and relevant. After Black respondents follow in their answers not only the maxims of conversation, but assume that the questions asked by the interviewers follow the same principles.

An example of the effect of these maxims in surveys is a study had to answer the question in the people how successful they were in their lives. One group responded on a scale with numerical endpoints 0 and 10; here 34% responded with a judgment that ranged from 0 to 5 and said that her life was not very successful. The other group responded on a scale with endpoints -5 and 5; answered here only 13% with a number of from -5 to 0, which corresponds to the range between 0 and 5 of the first group. The numerical endpoints are interpreted differently by the subjects: Does the scale of 0 to 10, then interpret respondents the lowest scale half as the absence of success, but that does not mean that a person had to suffer failures. The scale of -5 to 5, however, as the presence of success - interpreted - and not merely the absence of failure..

Similarly, the following of conversational maxims sequence effects can cause when information part of the information in question is A in Question B, but not vice versa. In one experiment, a group of married persons was first asked how much they were satisfied with their lives, then how much they were satisfied with their marriage. The two responses were highly correlated with each other, because the marital satisfaction is an important component of life satisfaction. Another group was then asked first about their satisfaction with marriage after life satisfaction. Here are the answers correlated less because the respondents the question of life satisfaction interpreted so that they would have given the marital satisfaction before, and this was in the assessment of life satisfaction probably no longer of interest ..

The Inklusions-/Exklusionsmodell

Norbert Schwarz and Herbert Bless developed the Inklusions-/Exklusionsmodell that explains assimilation and contrast effects in the judgments. In the social judgment information is compared with standards and then the verdict. This leads to assimilation effects when the judgment object is regarded as similar to the standard and will be adjusted in the direction of the judgment standards ( inclusion). Contrast effects can be observed when the judgment object is separated from the standard and the judgment will be adjusted in the direction away from the standard changed ( exclusion ).

Identical information leads to different judgments depending on whether it is used for the assessment of object judgment ( inclusion) or whether it is compared to the judgment object ( exclusion ). Think, for example, a person of a certain politician after that was involved in a scandal or is (for example, Richard Nixon ), then they can come to the opinion that all politicians are corrupt, because the corrupt example - here Nixon - in the category politician is included, so that it comes to the attitude that " all like Nixon but " are. But if you ask for individual politicians (ie, for example, Angela Merkel ), then these will be displayed as an honest, because they will compare with Nixon as a standard and get away well in this comparison and the evaluators conclude that she or he does not like Nixon were.