Norbert Schwarz - Categorization and Judgment

Categorization and Judgment

Norbert Schwarz's work on categorization and mental construal led to the development of his inclusion/exclusion model that accounts for the emergence of contrast and Assimilation effects in social judgments. Contrast effects occur when exposure to valenced information influences judgments in a way that is incongruent with the valenced information. Assimilation effects occur when exposure to valenced information influences judgments in a way that is congruent with the valenced information. The key insight of the inclusion/exclusion model is that the evaluation of a target of judgment requires bringing to mind both the target itself, and a standard against which it is to be evaluated. Whether valenced information produces contrast or assimilation depends on whether it is included within the target (assimilation) or in the standard against which it is compared (contrast).

Therefore, by manipulating a given piece of information as either included within the target or compared against, the same information can have different consequences for judgments. For example, thinking of a politician involved in a scandal (such as Eliot Spitzer) may make people believe that politicians in general are more corrupt because the corrupt exemplar is information that is included within the representation of "politicians". In short, people would be left thinking "they are all like Spitzer". Paradoxically, at the same time every individual politician that is rated may seem more honest, because for these judgments, the exemplar is used as the standard of comparison. In this case, people are left thinking "he (or she) is not as bad as Spitzer".