2-1. An Introduction to Contextual Priming Effect
Priming is a method that is described in experimental social psychology by Higgins, Rholes, and Jones (1977). and was previously used in a series of studies that involved analyzing personality concepts and the effects of impression formation on subjects in their everyday lives. These studies remain today as the exemplary definition of priming as it is used in various contexts.
Consumers tend to be unaware that priming effects affect their everyday judgments about products and services in positive and negative ways by varying degrees. Priming a consumer increases the chances that their subconscious opinions about a certain category or concept will be reflected in their real-world decisions (Sherman, Mackie, and Driscoll, 1990).
The two types of contextual effects are the assimilation effect and the contrast effect.
Assimilation effect is observed when a subject’s displacement of judgment shifts towards the primed category, whereas the contrast effect is seen when the shift in judgment is inverse to the values of the context stimuli that accompany the primed value (Helson, 1964; Sherif & Hovland, 1961). In a study conducted by Sherman et al. (1978), participants were asked to rate their views on recycling. Participants primed in the contexts of serious issues viewed recycling as much less important than those primed in the context of more trivial issues, thus demonstrating the effects of priming for the assimilation and contrast effects.
2-2. Empirical Theories of Assimilation and Contrast Effect
Many experiments have been conducted in the past that aimed to show that consumer judgments are context-sensitive based on their priming effects, many of which were designed with the goal of discovering some root causes of assimilation and contrast.
Primed categories have been found to have significant impacts on the decision-making abilities of participants. Higgins et al. conducted an experiment in which participants subliminally exposed to as little as positive or negative trait adjectives affected their views on the target ambiguous people they were asked to judge (1977).
Similarly, in a series of experiments testing the effects of pre-existing knowledge on priming effects, Herr (1989) found that participants were only susceptible to priming effects when they already had high levels of knowledge regarding the category in question.
Herr’s experiments attempted to find the assimilation and contrast effects that participants would experience regarding the prices of hypothetical and real cars. In his first experiment, Herr found that prior knowledge by participants biased both categorization and judgment effects, noting that a variety of factors, specifically prior knowledge on the subject of cars, precluded participants from experiencing the assimilation effect in all but one situation, where the price of real cars is the moderate prime, and the target ambiguous stimuli is the price of hypothetical cars (Herr, 1989).
2-3. The Dimensional Range Overlap Model
Three critical experiments were conducted to explore the utility of the Dimensional Range Overlap Model (DROM). Because the Dimensional Range Overlap Model created a model that essentially relied on the existence of judgment overlap, a whole new set of parameters had to be created in order to allow for the presence of overlapping opinions. These parameters which were used as measurements included three major factors. The width of the context range, the width of the target, and the distance between context and target were all used to gauge context priming, target judgments, and movement of opinions pre priming, post priming, and absent priming (Chien et al., 2010).
By using these three measurement factors, it is possible to observe the consumer’s behavior toward a target stimuli based on the width of the priming context, the width of the attitude toward the target itself, and the presence or lack thereof of any overlap. In these experiments, participants who responded with substantial overlaps in the primed context and the target suggested that they would experience assimilation, whereas the lack of overlap would suggest the contrast effect instead.
Compared to previous theories and models that studied judgment targets, the Dimensional Range Overlap Model was the first developed specifically to allow for the study of participants’ dimensional range as well as overlapping of target judgments.
Using the model made visible the behavior of judgment and contextual effects and helped determine that intersections in judgment and priming or lack thereof either confirmed the presence of assimilation or contrast, respectively.
The following figures will diagram the assimilation effect as proposed in the Dimensional Range Overlap Model.
Figure 2.1 Assimilation Effect: (1) Narrow Context range; (2) wide target range; (3) narrow relative distance between both context and target’s representative values.
Figure 2.2 Contrast Effect: (1) Narrow context range; wide relative distance between both context and target’s representative values; (3) narrow target range.
2-4. Reciprocity Hypothesis
While priming studies typically emphasized the shifts in perception of the target, Hsiao’s study (2002) focused on the shift in the contextual stimuli. Specifically, Hsiao proposed that participant susceptibility to contextual prompts created reciprocal shifts in contextual stimuli, either towards the target in an assimilation prompt, or away from the target in a contrast prompt.
Figure 2.3 Assimilation Effect: The perception of the context shift toward the target will occur simultaneously with the perception of the target shift toward the contextual stimulus.
Figure 2.4 Contrast Effect: The perception of the context shift was from the target will occur simultaneously with the perception of the target shift away from the contextual stimulus
Hsiao devised a series of experiments in order check the strength of the assimilation and contrast effects in the presence of different types and degrees of contextual stimuli.
The Reciprocity Hypothesis predicts that when primed towards a certain target, contrast or assimilation effects would be present depending on whether the participant is primed away or toward a certain point of view, respectively.
To illustrate this point, one experiment separated participants into three groups. One group would evaluate only the target, a “low-humour stimulus” such as Schindler’s List, one would evaluate only the contextual stimulus, a “high-humour stimulus” such as The Simpsons, and the third evaluated both, starting with the contextual stimulus and ending with the target stimulus (Hsiao, 2002). As is expected of the Reciprocity Hypothesis, participant responses generally showed their opinions shifting away from the contextual stimulus and the target, showing a high contrast effect.
The second experiment was designed to test for the assimilation effect using the same methodology, changing only the stimuli. Participants were once again separated into three groups, and all three groups viewed “moderately humorous” films. As both films were relatively similar in tone and mood, the participants’ perceptions of the target and contextual stimuli shifted toward each other, once again lending support to the Reciprocity Hypothesis (Hsiao, 2002).
Hsiao’s experiments helped prove the function and potential magnitude of the Reciprocity Hypothesis in the study of context effects and target judgments by demonstrating the simultaneous shifts of attitudes and perceptions over multiple experiments. The Reciprocity Hypothesis therefore expands upon past research that previously emphasized shifts in target perceptions.
2-5. Extensions of the DROM and Reciprocity Hypothesis
Several studies have expanded upon Chien et al.’s DROM after the establishment of said model. Hsiao’s reciprocity is also employed for the purpose of detecting the simultaneous shift of the contextual effect. In the most recent research, Lu (2014) examined the influence of dual primes on consumer judgements, but failed to confirm Lu’s hypothesis. She pointed out limitations in the number of participants and motivation.
We also assumed that participants’ cognitive abilities are not enough to be disrupted when evaluating contexts and targets under multiple primes. Each participant’s post context effect was influenced by their memories of previous priming attributes.
In addition, according to her hypothesis, the post priming effect is expected to show that positive and negative contexts contrast away, and therefore the difference between the positive and negative primes should be easily distinguishable. We are concerned that the objects of the priming tasks were not clear in participants’ minds. Finally, there was an obstacle in categorizing contexts easily. In her research data, each participant’s contexts tended to be similar, which meant participants had difficulty assigning contexts to the specific numbers.
Lu (2012) also attempted to examine contextual effects under multiple contexts. He expected to see the shift in direction of contextual effects as demonstrated in the Reciprocity Hypothesis. In addition, the new factor of “attitude certainty” was predicted to affect the magnitude of shifts. However, neither proposed hypotheses were able to be proved. The role and potential effectiveness of attitude certainty need further study in order to determine their part in the Reciprocity Hypothesis.
Tse (2012) also attempted to find the correlation between levels of attitude certainty and shifts in magnitude. However, she could not prove that a higher attitude certainty
would result in a smaller shift in judgment, while a lower attitude certainty would allow for a broader shift in judgment.
Lin (2006) took a different approach to the use of primes in the Dimensional Range Overlap Model by using exemplar and attribute information primes. In two experiments, Lin was able to prove that both assimilation and contrast were not dependent on the types of primes used (exemplar or attribute), but rather on the range of overlap or lack thereof.