Reducing context effects by adding context information: The direction and size of context effects in political judgment

This article investigates how the activation of a specific exemplar influen ces the direction and the size of context effects on evaluative judgments a bout other specific exemplars or about a superordinate category, The activa tion of an untrustworthy politician decreased judgments of trustworthiness of politicians in general but increased judgments of the trustworthiness of specific exemplars. The assimilation as well as the contrast effect were a ttenuated when additional judgment-relevant exemplars were activated. The r esults suggest that the impact of a specific context information depends on the amount of other judgment-relevant information that can be used in cons tructing a mental representation of the judgmental target or of a compariso n standard. Implications for scandal management are discussed.