5-1. Conclusion & Review
Our studies of contextual effects in the condition of mixed primes couldn’t support all four hypotheses were not confirmed. For our first experiment, we observed whether the influence of two primes caused assimilation or contrast effects, and as a result, these positive and negative primes assimilated toward each other. As we expected, an assimilation effect occurred in the second experiment of the negative prime, Prime 1 and the target, however, it was not statistically significant. Although we expected an assimilation effect between positive prime, Prime 2 and the target in the third experiment, the dimensional range of Prime 2 was widened and its representative value shifted away from the target. Thus, the third experiment was also not confirmed. The last experiment of two primes and the target also failed since two primes assimilated toward each other.
While Prime 1 of the forth experiment moved upward greatly rather than downward, the target moved toward Prime 2.
Table 5.1 Tests Results
Hypothesis Results
H1 When prime 1 and 2 have different valences and there is no overlap between primes initially, the prime 1 and 2 will contrast away from each other
Not confirmed
H2A For the condition in which the prime on the negative valence of the target is wide enough to create an overlap with the
Not
confirmed
target initially, then both the prime and target will assimilate towards each other.
H2B For the condition in which the prime on the positive valence of the target is wide enough to create an overlap with the target initially, then the prime and target will assimilate toward each other.
Not
confirmed
H3 For the condition in which the two primes have different valences and each overlap with the target initially, but the positive prime overlaps with the target at a larger amount than the negative prime, and both primes do not overlap with each other, the target will likely to shift toward the positive prime than toward the negative prime.
Not
confirmed
Two reasons would affect the results that showed the assimilation effect between the positive and negative primes rather than contrast effect for experiment 1. One reason could be the design of the experiment. The other may be that two primes are influencing each other. Participants evaluated brands in two absolutely different conditions for Experiment 1. Having screened the brand lists, they filled in the names of brands for the positive prime falling between the range 2.5 and 4.5 and negative prime placing between the range 5.0 and 7.5. On the other hand, they gave ratings to brands after viewing logos and brief information of two brands. This is to say, participants compared between many brands in the list or only two brands for evaluation. The brand list itself could provide participants with specifying positioning of those brands. In addition, participants saw luxury brands (i.e. Channel, Louis Vuitton, Ralph Lauren) in a list before they filled in Prime 1 and 2. At that time, they could underestimate Prime 1 and 2 for the given values.
Participants assessing only two brands processed comparisons between these two.
The assimilation effect arose under the condition of evaluating only two brands, thus, focusing on few brands to compare made its judgement equivalent to the primed categories. Moreover, these brands are in moderate categories rather than extreme categories, although participants distinguish these brands between positive and negative.
Therefore, these two primes in closed ratings, the negative prime from 2.5 to 4.5 and the positive prime from 5.0 to 7.0 are partially correlated, which caused the assimilation effect.
For the insignificant assimilation effect in Experiment 2A, two causes are considered.
First, the presence of the brand list affected the large shift of Prime 1. After prospecting the list, participants filled in a blank for Prime 1 which is manipulated 0.5 to overlap with the target. Subsequently, the questionnaire didn’t show the list for the primed condition, but gave participants the image and brief explanation of P1 and the target. Similar to the cause in Experiment 1, participants had underestimated the brand list by inserting a brand for the negative prime. They gave the higher score to P1 when comparing with the target brands. Secondly, no shift of the target resulted in no simultaneous shift between that and P1, therefore we couldn’t confirm the assimilation effect. The target was always given scores by participants without viewing the brand list, furthermore, it was always the first question asked to P1. Although Lu (2014) didn’t have the brand list and time gap between stages for her questionnaire design, her Experiment 2A also similarly indicated that the target stayed in the same position while P1 shifted dramatically. We are wondering if the anonymous brand setting of the target influenced P1’s shift because it hardly shifted.
Experiment 2B also couldn’t be confirmed as the assimilation effect because both positive prime P2 and the target shifted upwards. To put it another way, it was the only experiment which showed the target’s shift was more visible. This experiment’s
evaluation to the target in Stage 1 was drastically lower than other experiments, which caused it significantly moved upward in the primed condition. For the shift of P2, the brand list influenced the huge inconsistency to evaluation between pre-primed and the primed condition again. P2 failed to shift in the upward direction rather than our expected downward movement. However, we could also say that the target was influenced by P2 in the condition of context effect. Participants gave higher scores to the target when viewing only two brands, the target and P2.
Although the target’s shift was not statistically proved in Experiment 3, the target moved slightly toward positive prime P2 since it manipulated the larger amount of the overlap range between these two than that with negative prime. As opposed to our expectation of contrast effect, P1 and P2 indicated the assimilation effect from the non-overlap range and represented values, furthermore, both P1 and P2 shifted greatly upward.
Two assumptions of this upward shift were considered. One could also be attributed by the presence of the brand list. The other could be the relationship of manipulated overlap range and brands prestige among all three. P1 was influenced vastly by the target. When they compare the brand that was given a negative evaluation of P1 and the hypothetical brand of the target which was nameless and anonymous to participants, they gave high scores to P1 due to the trust of the existing brand. On the other hand, compared to the target and P1, participants gave higher scores to P2 because it was more prestigious than P1. It made more difference between these two since the larger amount of overlap range showed more than the manipulated range. In another perspective, the manipulated overlap range created the closer distance between the target and P2 than that of the target and P1, which means the highly overlapped range of target and P2 is more similar than the P1 with the target. Therefore, P1 in the further distance was pulled by the other two.
5-2. Limitation
Procedural Design.
One major limitation we had was the difficulty of acquiring high numbers of participants due to the complicated design and limited time. We conducted entire questionnaires over three to four weeks to complete all three stages. One obstacle was trying to follow the same participants during this period. It was not easy to see them every week due to their absence from the researcher’s targeted classes. Another limitation is that the format of the questionnaire used for the study was a hard copy. The researcher needs to create new questionnaires of Stage 2 and 3 for each participant in order to be suitable for Prime 1 and 2 the brands he or she chose in Stage 1. The speed of producing new questionnaires made it difficult to catch up in real time to conducting questionnaire.
Questionnaire Design.
Participants were asked questions in different conditions in pre and post context effects, where they have been provided the list of brands including more than 30 brands in the first stage. However, they were not provided with this list in following stages.
Compared to pre context effect conditions, evaluations only focusing on two primes and targets caused different judgement to these three items.
There were difficulties arising in the contrast effect with the negative prime of scale between 2.5-4.5 and the positive prime of scale between 5.0 -7.0. Both are close to the neutral ratings while we expected the negative and positive primes to create differences.
We are afraid that if these primes are so moderate that participants cannot clearly differentiate them.
5-3 Research Contribution and Practical Implications
In the current study, we extended the Dimensional Range Overlap Model (Chien et al. 2010) and Hsiao’s Reciprocity Hypothesis (2002) to mixed primed conditions. By offering more complete research of multiple contexts, we hope to provide some practical consumer attitudes to the marketing and management fields.
Our study was built from the idea that consumers’ judgements on products are affected by knowledge or evaluations in daily life. The DROM was designed to experiment with a single prime and its context effect on the target. We considered that the mixed primed condition was more realistic than evaluating one prime with the target. Although we haven’t confirmed our hypothesis, our finding or tendencies of context effect under multiple primes can be used to further analyze consumers’ perceptions toward a given product. In addition, this study would contribute to understanding consumer’s evaluations of hypothetical brands (the target) compared to several primes, so marketers can refer to studies on context effects for their marketing strategy.
5-4. Future Research
Future research may consider our assumptions of tendency shift as we earlier explained in this chapter. First of all, future researchers may consider equal settings of pre- and post- context effect experiments. Its difference of forms would arise unexpected rating. A list of brands for fill-in-the-blank context free questions in Stage 1 was designed to make participants underestimate contexts compared to rating in post priming condition.
In addition, choosing brands on the list should be careful. Although we attempted to prepare various prestige levels for apparel brands based on participants’ evaluations for prestige level in these contexts, the list would give the impression of extreme images (i.e.
luxury brands) to participants.
Secondly, we recommend avoiding the inconvenience caused by the questionnaire procedure. The current research forces researchers to wait one to two weeks after each stage to prevent the possibility of memorizing contexts and rates from Stage 1 and 2. By replacing Lu’s (2014) Sudoku games between stages, we improve the likelihood of accessibility of each contexts and numbers, and also get better participant’s motivation for each stage. However, the results were not much different between the current and her research. We also changed the questionnaire into a hard copy version compared to Lu’s Excel-run VBA program. The weakness of paper based questionnaires is the necessity of spending a lot of time and effort to produce new questionnaires for Stage 2 and 3 for individual participants. We hope that the future researchers may consider a better way to obtain more participants.
Third, the setting of numbers for manipulated overlap ranges can be considered for future research. We assume that the negative range from 2.5-4.5 and the positive prime from 5.0 to 7.0 are close enough to create the assimilation effect. The contrast effect needs to make two primes repel each other, thus these two should indicate clear difference to participants. We believe that future researchers could succeed in their experiments by creating distinct positions of positive and negative primes.
REFERENCES
Bargh, J. A., & Chartrand, T. L. (2000). Studying the mind in the middle: a practical guide to priming and automaticity research. In: H. Reis, & C. Judd (Eds.), Handbook of research methods in social psychology (pp. 253–285). New York:
Cambridge Univ. Press.
Chien, Y., Wegener, D.T., Hsiao, C., & Petty, R.E., (2010). Dimensional Range Overlap and Context Effects in Consumer Judgments. Journal of Consumer Research, 37 (October), 530—542.
Fazio, R. H., Powell, M.C., & Herr, P. M. (1983). Toward a process model of the attitude-behavior relation: Accessing one’s attitude upon more observation of the attitude object. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 723-735.
Helson, H. (1964), Adaption Level Theory. New York: Harper and Row.
Herr, P. M., Sherman, S. J., & Fazio, R. H. (1983). On the consequences of priming:
Assimilation and contrast effects. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 19, 232-340.
Herr, P. M. (1986). Consequences of priming: Judgment and behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1106-1115.
Herr, P. M. (1989). Priming price: Prior knowledge and context effects. Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 67-75.
Higgins, E. T., Rholes, W. S., & Jones, C. R. (1977) Category accessibility and
impression formation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 13, 141-151.
Higgins, E. T., & King, G. A. (1981), Accessibility of social constructs: Information processing consequences of individual and contextual variability. In N. Cantor &
J. Kihlstrom (Eds.), Personality cognition, and social interaction (pp.69-121).
Hillsdales, NJ: Erlbaum.
Higgins, E. T., Bargh, J. A., & Lombardi, W. J. (1985). Nature of priming effects on categorization. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 11, 59-69.
Hsiao, C. (2002). The Reciprocity Hypothesis As an Explanation of Perception Shifts in Product Judgment. Dissertation, Purdue University.
Lin, C. (2006). Examining Effects of Attribute and Exemplar Priming on Product Judgments through the Dimensional Range Overlap Model. Master’s Thesis, National Taiwan University.
Lombardi, W. J., Higgins, E. T., & Bargh, J. A. (1987). The role of consciousness in priming effects on categorization: Assimilation versus contrast as a function of awareness of the priming task. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 13, 411-429.
Lu, Eunice R. (2014). Context Effect under Dual Contexts:
The Influence of Positive and Negative Primes to Product Judgement. Master’s Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University.
Lu, T. (2012). Context Effects under Multiple Contexts: An Extension of Dimensional Range Overlap Model. Master’s Thesis, National Taiwan Normal University.
Meyers-Levy, J., & Sternthal, B. (1993). A two-factor explanation of assimilation and contrast effects. Journal of Marketing Research, 30, 359-368.
Meyers-Levy, J., (1989). Priming Effects on Product Judgements: A Hemispheric Interp. Journal of Consumer Research, 16, 76-86.
Petty, Richard E., John T. Cacioppo & David Schumann (1983), “Central and Peripheral Routes to Advertising Effectiveness: The Moderating Role of Involvement,” Journal of Consumer Research, 10 (September), 2, 135-146.
Petty, Richard E. & Duane T. Wegener (1993), “Flexible Correction Processes in Social Judgment: Correcting for Context-Induced Contrast,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 29 (March), 137-165.
Segal, S. J. Cofer, C. N. (1960). The effect of recency and recall on word association.
American Psychologist, 15, 451.
Sherif, M., & Hovland, C.I. (1961). Social judgement: Assimilation and contrast effects in communication and attitude change. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
Sherman, Steven J., Karin Ahlm, Leonard Berman, and Steven Lynn (1978),
"Contrast
Effects and Their Relationship to Subsequent Behavior," Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 14 (July), 340-350.
Srull, T. K., & Wyer, R. S. (1979). The role of category accessibility in the
interpretation of information about persons: Some determinants and implications.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 37, 1660-1672.
Tse, C. (2012). The Context Effect of Dual Primes: The Influence of Positive Primes and Negative Primes On Product Judgment. Master’s Thesis, National Taiwan University.
Tulving, E. (1985). Memory and consciousness. Canadian Psychology, 26, 1-12.
Wyer, R. S., & Srull, T. K. (1989). Memory and cognition in its social context.
Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.
Yi, Y. (1990). The effects of contextual priming in print advertisements. Journal of Consumer Research, 17, 215-222.
Yi, Y. (1993). Contextual priming effects in print advertisements: The moderating role of prior knowledge. Journal of Advertising, 22, 1-10.