Effect of context and instructional set upon evaluations of personality-trait adjectives.

A series of studies was performed to investigate the effect of context upon evaluations made of personality-trait adjectives. Ss were presented sets of 3 adjectives which varied in favorableness as indicated by normative data and were then asked to evaluate 1 (test) adjective in each set under a variety of instructional conditions. Results indicated that whenever Ss were asked to rate the 3 adjectives in each set as a collective before rating test adjectives, evaluations of test adjectives increased with the favorableness of the context adjectives accompanying them. This effect occurred regardless of whether Ss were told that the adjectives in the collective described a single person or whether they were related in any way other than through their physical juxtaposition; it was only necessary that Ss form an impression of the collective as a whole before evaluating the test adjective. Results were interpreted as inconsistent with theoretical formulations of Anderson and Lampel (1965) and Osgood and Tannenbaum (1955). It was tentatively hypothesized that when Ss are asked to evaluate a group of stimuli, the range of stimuli included in each category along the scale used in making judgments, and hence the size of each scale category, increases with the dispersion of stimuli contained in the group.