DIRECTION OF COMPARISON ASYMMETRIES IN RELATIONAL JUDGMENT - THE ROLEOF LINGUISTIC NORMS

This research documented a linguistic norm account of direction of com parison asymmetry effects in relational judgments (e.g., seeing hyenas as more similar to dogs than dogs are similar to hyenas). The asymmet ry effect is magnified by discrepancies in prominence between subject and referent, and has previously been explained using Tversky's (1977) feature-matching model. Given a linguistic norm to place more promine nt objects in the referent position, violation of this norm might redu ce sentence clarity, which then weakens the magnitude of subsequent re lational judgments. This research showed that clarity perceptions pred ict the magnitude of relational judgments independently of the cogniti ve manipulation of the features of the compared objects. The pattern o f findings suggests that a linguistic norm interpretation may account for variance in relational judgments independently of Tversky's (1977) feature-matching model.