Preference and the contextual basis of ideals in judgment and choice

Four experiments assessed preferences for schematic faces. In Experiment 1, eye gap and nose width were manipulated separately, and effects of shiftin g the range of values were assessed. Descriptive ratings of width showed co ntrast effects in accordance with A. Parducci's (1995) range-frequency theo ry. Evaluative ratings of pleasantness showed reversals of preference order ing that were modeled as shifts in ideal points toward the means of the con textual distributions. In Experiments 2 and 3, similar effects of context o n preference were demonstrated in a trinary-choice task in which faces vari ed only in eye gap. In Experiment 4, eye gap and nose width were manipulate d together, resulting in systematic contextual shifts of the ideal face wit hin the 2-dimensional attribute space. The results demonstrated the pervasi ve effects of context on the construction of ideals determining preference and underlying attitudes.