[advances in experimental social psychology] advances in experimental social psychology volume 39...

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT Arie W. Kruglanski Antonio Pierro Lucia Mannetti HansPeter Erb Woo Young Chun This chapter reviews research concerning several continuous parameters whose combinations determine the judgmental impact of the information given. The present framework oVers an integration of prior judgmental models in various domains by conceptually distinguishing between qualita- tively distinct contents of information and the quantitative dimensions on which judgmental contexts may vary. Evidence for the present formulation includes a broad array of findings across diVerent areas of psychology, and the discussion considers the comprehensive perspective it oVers on human judgment. I. Introduction The judgment of persons, objects, and events is a ubiquitous human activity inexorably involved in people’s everyday aVairs. From the moment we open our eyes, if not before, we continually pass judgments on a variety of issues. Is it time to get up, brush our teeth, get dressed? What should one wear? What is the weather like? How should one’s day unfold? Is it safe to cross the street? Should one buy or sell? Should one ‘‘order in’’ tonight? And so continually, until the moment we shut our eyes and lull ourselves to sleep. Small wonder then that the 255 ADVANCES IN EXPERIMENTAL Copyright 2007, Elsevier Inc. SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, VOL. 39 All rights reserved. DOI: 10.1016/S0065-2601(06)39005-3 0065-2601/07 $35.00

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Page 1: [Advances in Experimental Social Psychology] Advances in Experimental Social Psychology Volume 39 Volume 39 || On The Parameters of Human Judgment

ADVANCESSOCIAL PSYDOI: 10.1016

ON THE PARAMETERS OF

HUMAN JUDGMENT

Arie W. Kruglanski

Antonio Pierro

Lucia Mannetti

Hans‐Peter Erb

Woo Young Chun

This chapter reviews research concerning several continuous parameters

whose combinations determine the judgmental impact of the information

given. The present framework oVers an integration of prior judgmental

models in various domains by conceptually distinguishing between qualita-

tively distinct contents of information and the quantitative dimensions on

which judgmental contexts may vary. Evidence for the present formulation

includes a broad array of findings across diVerent areas of psychology, andthe discussion considers the comprehensive perspective it oVers on human

judgment.

I. Introduction

The judgment of persons, objects, and events is a ubiquitous human activity

inexorably involved in people’s everyday aVairs. From the moment we open

our eyes, if not before, we continually pass judgments on a variety of issues. Is it

time to get up, brush our teeth, get dressed?What should one wear?What is the

weather like?How should one’s day unfold? Is it safe to cross the street? Should

one buy or sell? Should one ‘‘order in’’ tonight? And so continually, until the

momentwe shut our eyes and lull ourselves to sleep. Small wonder then that the

255IN EXPERIMENTAL Copyright 2007, Elsevier Inc.CHOLOGY, VOL. 39 All rights reserved./S0065-2601(06)39005-3 0065-2601/07 $35.00

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256 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

mysteries of human judgment have fascinated theorists and researchers across

the diVerent areas of psychology including its social, cognitive, perceptual,

clinical, organizational, and personality subfields.

The domain of human judgments is exceedingly diverse and multifaceted.

First, judgments vary a great deal in the domain of content to which they

belong. ‘‘Causal attributions’’ constitute judgments, but so do ‘‘category assign-

ments,’’ ‘‘stereotypiccharacterizations,’’ ‘‘behavioral identifications,’’ ‘‘likelihood

estimates,’’ ‘‘personality impressions,’’ ‘‘attitudes,’’ and ‘‘beliefs.’’ Secondly, judg-

ments vary in their speed and immediacy. Some are based on painstaking

deliberations and a laborious processing of available information. Other

‘‘pop out’’ quite eVortlessly from the stimulus field confronting the perceiver.

They come to mind instantly and intuitively. They feel objective and inevitable,

as if simply impelled by the external reality.

Judgments vary also on the process‐awareness dimension. Some (e.g., of

attorneys in a court of law, or of scholars in an academic treatise) are highly

conscious and transparent; they often come in a written form wherein the

chain of reasoning is explicated in an elaborate detail. Others arise mysteri-

ously, as if out of nowhere, and as an end result of an opaque process

refractory to conscious discovery (Nisbett & Wilson, 1977; Wilson, Dunn,

Kraft, & Lisle, 1989).

Possibly driven by this multifarious variability, a plethora of models and

theories has been advanced to explain diVerent judgmental phenomena,

some highlighting judgmental content domains (e.g., models of stereotyping,

of attribution, or of attitudes), others drawing distinctions along the amount

of processing continuum (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986),

yet other stressing the diVerences between ‘‘automatic’’ and ‘‘deliberative’’

ways of judging, including aspects of eYciency as well as awareness (Bargh,

1996; Devine, 1989). As a consequence of these varied distinctions, the field

of human judgment appears highly fragmented these days, and the diVerentbodies of judgmental research hardly interact with each other.

The question, therefore, is whether an integrative assembly of these various

‘‘puzzle pieces’’ is at all possible and ‘‘how is it all put back together?’’

(Anderson et al., 2004, p. 1036). Clearly, a comprehensive synthesis of the

general judgmental domain would be desirable in light of the growing hetero-

geneity of concepts and models that lend this field of inquiry a complex and

unwieldy character. It is along these lines that Newell (1990, p. 18) argued for

‘‘the necessity of a theory that provides the total picture and explains the role of

the parts and why they exist.’’

In the present chapter, we oVer an outline of such theory. Our key notion

is that of judgmental parameters. By these we mean several dimensional

variables intersecting at some of their values in each judgmental instance.

These variables have been yielded by decades of research on human

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 257

judgment and are well known and noncontroversial. Our proposal highlights

the role of their combinations in determining the degree to which a specific,

situationally given, information aVects judgments (i.e., the degree to which

it is persuasive, convincing, and impactful). Moreover, whereas each judg-

mental situation involves some informational contents, it is presently as-

sumed that apart from the parametric values with which they happen to be

associated, these contents as such are immaterial to the information’s impact.

As will be shown, the conceptual framework resulting from these assump-

tions aVords a novel way of viewing prior findings, and it enables the

generation of novel predictions in a variety of domains.

This chapter is divided into four sequential parts. In Part 1, we describe the

judgmental function of rule following and contrast it with its various proposed

alternatives such as associative learning, pattern recognition, or attribute

matching. As a preview of what is to come, we conclude that, in general,

judgments are mediated by rules, broadly conceived, and that the diVerencesbetween rule following and other putative processes are semantic rather than

substantive. In Part 2, we identify several continuous parameters whose combi-

nations at various values determine whether and to what degree the informa-

tion given would aVect judgments. In Part 3, we present our theory of the

judgmental process and the supporting empirical evidence from the realm of

complex social judgments. Part 4 recapitulates our model’s contributions and

considers their implications.

II. The Role of Rules in Judgment Formation

We are assuming that judgments are based on information the knower treats

as ‘‘evidence.’’ For instance, in forming an attitudinal judgment one

may consider information about the positive and negative consequences

mediated by an attitude object (Albarracin, Johnson, & Zanna, 2005); such

presumed consequences serve as evidence for the attitude object’s goodness

(or badness). In forming a causal attribution, one may consider information

about the covariation of an eVect with an entity as evidence that the entity is

cause of that eVect (Kelley, 1967, 1971). In forming an impression of

a person, prejudiced individuals may treat that individual’s category mem-

bership (e.g., her or his gender, profession, race, age, or religion) as evidence

for various characteristics stereotypically attached to that category. In fore-

casting one’s future aVective state, given a present traumatic event (e.g.,

denial of tenure, bankruptcy), one’s evidence might be one’s presumed immedi-

ate feeling, plus a subjective estimate of its duration (Wilson, Centerbar,Kermer,

& Gilbert, 2005), and so on.

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258 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

A. THE IMPLICATIONAL STRUCTURE OF REASONING

From the present perspective, to fulfill the evidential function information

has to fit an inference rule of an ‘‘IF THEN’’ type (Erb et al., 2003;

Kruglanski & Thompson, 1999a,b; Pierro, Mannetti, Kruglanski, & Sleeth‐Keppler, 2004). For example, information that an actor succeeded on a

diYcult cognitive task could serve as evidence that he/she is intelligent,

given the prior assumption that ‘‘success at diYcult cognitive tasks betokens

intelligence.’’

More formally speaking, the reasoning from evidence to conclusions is

syllogistic.1 It includes a major premise, the ‘‘IF X THEN Y’’ conditional

rule mentioned above, and a minor premise that instantiates the antecedent

term of the major premise (X) for a given entity (event, and so on) P,

asserting that P is X, hence that Y is to be expected. For instance, a person

may subscribe to the stereotypic belief ‘‘if rocket scientist then intelligent.’’

On an instance of encountering P, a rocket scientist (minor premise instan-

tiating the antecedent term of the major premise), the knower would be

subjectively justified in inferring that he or she is, therefore, intelligent.

B. CONDITIONING PHENOMENA

The foregoing, schematic, depiction of syllogistic reasoningmay sound highly

‘‘rational,’’ ‘‘conscious,’’ and ‘‘explicit’’ and in this sense distinct from

associatively mediated judgments, assumed to be ‘‘intuitive,’’ ‘‘implicit,’’ or

‘‘automatic.’’ Yet, from the present perspective, the distinction between the

two merits a closer look. An insight into the processes involved comes from

the many decades of research on conditioning phenomena. These have been

generally viewed as the paradigmatic example of associative learning; none-

theless, there has been increasing tendency to accept the conclusion (Holyoak,

Koh, & Nisbett, 1989; Rescorla, 1985; Rescorla & Holland, 1982; Rescorla

& Wagner, 1972) that they are fundamentally rule based, in fact.

Originally, associative learning was assumed to constitute learning by

contiguity, and repeated pairing of a conditioned stimulus (CS) and an uncon-

ditioned stimulus (US). Yet, evidence from the animal‐learning literature

suggests that neither is necessary nor suYcient for conditioning to occur. This

is attested by the fact that conditioning can occur on a single co‐occurrenceof stimuli, and when an interval of minutes or even hours elapses between

1It is not meant here that people’s reasoning generally follows the rules of formal logic, or is

capable of drawing the various logical implications of conditional statements, a state of aVairs

bellied by decades of research on the Wason’s four card task (Wason & Johnson‐Laird, 1972)among others.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 259

the stimuli . Thus, if a rat ingest ed a novel substa nce an d was made ill minutes

or hours later, it will form a strong aversion to that substance (Garcia,

M cGowan , Ervin, & Koell ing, 1968 ). As Holyoa k et al. ( 1989 , p. 316) noted

‘‘tast e aversi on . . . is onl y the extreme of a co ntinuum of success ful con dition-

ing that occu rs despite lags betw een CS and US present ation. Ther e are many

de monstrati ons of classical and inst rument al co ndition ing in whi ch the delay

be tween events is on the order of man y seconds or minut es.’’

Blocking experiments too establish that temporal contiguity between a CS

and a US is not suYcient for conditioning. In this research, a normally eVectiveCS, placed in close temporal relation to a reinforcer, seems largely unable

to produce conditioning if paired with another CS that had been previously

established as a signal for that reinforcer. That temporal contiguity is not

suYcient for conditioning has been further demonstrated by (1) Rescorla’s

(1968) results that if the probability of the reinforcer is the same in the absence

of the CS as in its presence no appreciable conditioning will take place, (2) by

conditioned inhibition eVects whereby a higher order stimulus (CS1) paired on

some trials with another CS stimulus that on other trials was paired with some

US (say, a shock) comes actually to inhibit the reaction associated with the

US (e.g., crouching) even though a strict associative interpretation (of second

order conditioning) would suggest that this stimulus (i.e., the CS1) should

evoke that very reaction. It thus appears that an animal, rather than responding

mechanistically to contiguous pairings of stimuli over repeated occasions

(representing the associative account), is attempting to learn environmental

contingencies in which the occurrence of one event (e.g., shock) is conditional

on the occurrence of another (e.g., noise). This formulation is reminiscent of

Tolman’s (1932) classic sign‐learning theory whereby what is learned is an

expectancy, or a conditional probability, that a given environmental ‘‘sign’’

(e.g., the appearance of a light) presages a given ‘‘significate’’ (e.g., food).

According to Holyoak et al. (1989, p. 320) specifically,

Rules drive the system’s behavior by means of a recognize‐act cycle. On each cycle,

the conditions of rules are matched against representations of active declarative

information, which we . . . term messages; rules with conditions that are satisfied by

current messages become candidates for execution. For example, if a message repre-

senting the recent occurrence of a tone is active, the conditions of the above rule will

be matched and the actions it specifies may be taken.

It is noteworthy that the ‘‘rule’’ assumed by Holyoak et al. (1989) is

analogous to the major premise, and the ‘‘message’’ is analogous to the minor

premise, that is, an instantiation of the antecedent term in the major premise,

warranting the inference of the consequent term. Thus, ‘‘the rat’s knowledge

about the relation between tones and shocks might be informally represented

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260 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

by a rule such as ‘if a tone sounds in the chamber then a shock will occur,

so stop other activities and crouch’’’ (Holyoak et al., 1989). The foregoing

represents the major premise, and the sounding of a tone in a specific

instance represents the minor premise, jointly aVording the inference that

‘‘crouching’’ was indicated.

The rules underlying conditioning phenomena may be applied speedily and

eYciently. It has been long known that ‘‘automatic’’ phenomena involve a

routinization of IFTHENsequences. Research in this domain has demonstrated

that social judgments (Smith & Branscombe, 1988; Smith, Branscombe, &

Bormann, 1988) represent a special case of procedural learning (Anderson,

1983), based on processes (such as practice) that strengthen the IF THEN

relation resulting in an increased ‘‘automaticity’’ of rule‐based responses

(cf. Bargh, 1996; Neal, Wood, & Quinn, 2006).

1. Pavlovian Versus Evaluative Conditioning

Gawronski and Bodenhausen (2006) suggested that whereas classical or

Pavlovian conditioning is, in fact, propositional, or rule‐based, truly associa-tive processes are based on evaluative learning which is not. A paradigmatic

case of evaluative conditioning is the pairing of a valenced US (say a posi-

tively valenced smiling face) with a neutral CS (say an expressionless face) and

finding that the CS then acquired the valence of the US (i.e., became posi-

tively valenced). Such paradigm is admittedly diVerent from the Pavlovian

conditioning paradigm in which the CS constitutes a signal for the occurrence

of the US. The processes mediating evaluative conditioning are not well under-

stood at this time (Walther, Nagengast, & Trasselli, 2005). Thus, it seems

premature to conclude that evaluative conditioning is not propositional in

nature. For example, Fazio (personal communication, 2005) has proposed that

evaluative conditioning may represent the misattribution to the CS of aVectevoked by the US. Such a process is inferential (as are attributional processes

generally) and hence propositional, in the IF THEN sense. Specifically, one

might infer that if positive aVect was experienced in presence of the CS then

it may have been caused by the CS, warranting a reexperience of the aVect onsubsequent CS presentations.

Alternatively, the CS and the US may form a Gestalt or a group of likable

or unlikable individuals (Walther et al., 2005). Once a CS was categorized as

member of that group, its subsequent appearances may evoke the aVect/evaluation accorded to that group. That would also explain why in evalua-

tive conditioning situations, presentations of the CS alone do not lead to

extinction unlike such presentations in a Pavlovian conditioning situations

(Baeyens, Crombez, Van den Bergh, & Eelen, 1988). In the latter situation,

an appearance of a CS without a subsequent US is inconsistent with the IF

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 261

THEN rule whereby if the CS appears, the US will follow. By contrast, in an

evaluative conditioning situation, presentation of the CS alone does not

invalidate the rule: Once the CS was categorized as member of a group, its

appearance without alternative members of the group does not undermine

its group membership. Imagine that X was classified as a ‘‘terrorist’’ because

of her or his associative connection with a known Al Qaeda member (say

Osama Bin Laden). Encountering X subsequently without the presence of

Bin Laden should not undermine her or his membership in the terrorist

category, because the relevant proposition ‘‘X is a terrorist’’ does not imply

that X would always, or even often, be in Bin Laden’s company.

C. PERCEPTION AND PSYCHOPHYSICS

The idea that even the most basic perceptual judgments are rule‐basedreceives support from research in psychophysics (Pizlo, 2001). Whereas

Fechner (1860/1966) posited that the ‘‘percept’’ is a result of a causal chain

of events emanating from the object, and giving rise to corresponding

sensory data and brain processes to end with the precept of the distal

stimulus, subsequent approaches, including Helmholtzian, Structural, and

Gestalt perspectives, provided evidence that the percept is not directly

elicited by the stimulus, but rather that it involves an unconscious inference

(Helmholtz, 1910/2000) from an associated bundle of sensations. An app-

roach developed within the computer vision community (Pizlo, 2001) treats

perception as solution of an inverse2 problem that depends critically on

innate constraints, or rules, for interpreting proximal stimuli (e.g., the retinal

images). According to this view, ‘‘perception is about inferring the properties

of the distal stimulus X given the proximal stimulus Y (Pizlo, 2001, p. 3146,

emphasis added).

Similar views have been articulated byRock (1983)whodiscussed perceptual

phenomena as inferences from premises (p. 3). Thus, for example, ‘‘Assuming

the perceptual system has available in some form ‘knowledge’ about the prin-

ciples of geometrical optics, objective size could be inferred or computed by

taking account of distance. In following the same rules and making inferences

from them, various anomalies, such as . . . the perceived motion of the afterim-

age, become perfectly predictable’’ (p. 37). And in the realm of vision Gregory

(1997, p. 11) asserted that ‘‘Seeing objects involves general rules, and knowl-

edge of objects from previous experience, derived largely from active hands‐onexploration.’’ Therefore, ‘‘Hypotheses of perception . . . are risky, as they are

2Inverse in the sense that the proximal stimulus (e.g., the retinal image) originally produced

by the distal stimulus is now used to decode such stimulus, going backward as it were.

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262 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

predictive and they go beyond sensed evidence to hidden properties and to

the future . . .’’ (Gregory, 1997, p. 10). Finally, an Annual Review chapter

‘‘treats object perception as a visual inferenceproblem’’ (Kersten,Mammassian,

& Yuille, 2004, p. 272, emphasis added), and proposes that ‘‘the visual system

resolves ambiguity through built in knowledge of how retinal images are

formed and uses this knowledge to automatically and unconsciously infer

the properties of objects . . .’’ (Kersten et al., 2004, p. 273, emphasis added).

D. AWARENESS

Unconscious inferences are not unique to the realm of perceptional phenom-

ena. Routinized cognitive rules as well become ‘‘eYcient,’’ requiring lesser

atte ntional resourc es for the execu tion of judgme nts. As W illiam James (1890 ,

p. 496) aptly put it ‘‘consciousness deserts all processes when it can no longer

be of use.’’ James’ parsimony principle asserts that routinization removes the

need for conscious control of the process, rendering awareness of the process

superfluous. Logan (1992) similarly argued that automatization of activities

eVects an attentional shift to higher organizational levels (see also Vallacher&Wegner, 1985). A champion tennis player, for instance, does not need to pay

attention to the correct grip, knee bending, or the following through on her

strokes. Instead, she can concentrate on strategic aspects of the game, such as

the type of stroke to execute and its court placement.

Indeed, various judgmental eVects based on routinized IF THEN rules take

place outside of conscious awareness. For instance, social cognitive work on

spontaneous trait inferences (Newman & Uleman, 1989; Uleman, 1987)

suggests that lawful (i.e., rule following) inferences presumably can occur

without explicit inferential intentions, and without conscious awareness of

the inference process (Newman & Uleman, 1989, p. 156): The spontaneous

trait inference that ‘‘Mary is intelligent’’ from information that she ‘‘solved

themystery half way through the novel’’ requires the inference rule ‘‘if solves a

mystery quickly then intelligent.’’ Someone who did not subscribe to that

inference rule would be unlikely to draw that specific conclusion.

Schwarz and Clore’s (1996) ‘‘feelings as information’’ model oVers an-

other instance of unconsciously mediated inferences in the realm of social

judgments. For instance, a transient mood state may be mistakenly attrib-

uted to one’s general life satisfaction (Schwarz & Clore, 1983; Schwarz,

Servay, & Kumpf, 1985) based on an IF THEN rule linking one’s feeling

state with an overall satisfaction. Or consider the well‐known use of ‘‘ease

of retrieval’’ as evidence for a trait. Schwarz et al. (1991) asked partici-

pants to recall either 6 or 12 examples of situations in which they either

behaved assertively and felt at ease, or behaved unassertively and felt insecure.

Recalling 6 examples was experienced as easy, while recalling 12 examples

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 263

was experienced as diYcult. Subsequent self‐ratings of assertiveness indicatedthat participants rated themselves as less assertive after recalling 12 rather

than 6 examples of assertive behavior. Apparently, the diYculty of recalling

12 instances implied to participants (in an IF THEN fashion) that they must

not be very assertive.

Jacoby, Kelley, Brown, and Jasechko (1989) had participants read a list

of names pertaining to nonfamous individuals. Immediately afterward or

following 1 day’s delay participants were given a diVerent list of names,

including some of the previously presented ones, as well as other nonfamous

or famous names. Especially after the delay, participants tended to misiden-

tify the nonfamous names from the original list as famous, based on an

inference from their feeling of familiarity or fluency. In most of these cases,

pa rticipant s were unawar e of the basis of their inferences leadi ng Sch warz

an d Clo re ( 1996 , p. 437) to conclude that ‘‘relia nce on experi ences g enerally

does not involve conscious attribution’’ (see also, Schwarz, 2004).

The foregoing review suggests that the distinction between associative versus

rule‐based judgments is problematic: (1) conditioning eVects originally viewed

as quintessentially ‘‘associative’’ have been generally recognized as rule‐based,that is, as a formof signal or expectancy learning (Baeyens&DeHouwer, 1995;

DeHouwer, Thomas, &Baeyens, 2001; Tolman, 1932); (2) IFTHEN judgmen-

tal rules can be routinized or ‘‘automatized,’’ and hence, occur with consider-

able eYciency (Bargh, 1996); and (3) they can operate outside of conscious

awareness, giving rise to inferences ofwhich true basis onemaynot be cognizant

(Schwarz & Clore, 1996), including perceptual judgments believed to be based

on hard wired inference rules (Gregory, 1997; Kersten et al., 2004; Pizlo, 2001;

Rock, 1983). In a recent paper, Moors and De Houwer (2006, p. 13) wondered

‘‘whether rule‐based processes and associative ones can be distinguished empir-

ically.’’ They further stated, and we agree that ‘‘If no functional diVerence canbe found between the two processes, or if no agreement can be obtained about

what this diVerence should be, rule‐based [and] associative models remain

empirically indistinguishable theories’’ (Moors and De Houwer, 2006).

E. PATTERN RECOGNITION

The phenomenon of ‘‘pattern recognition’’ has been occasionally juxtaposed

to rule‐based process (Lieberman,Gaunt,Gilbert, &Trope, 2002). But are the

two actually incompatible? Pattern recognition, after all, does constitute an

inference from a given cue‐constellation (e.g., a given set of facial features or a

given set of pathological symptoms) to an implied, perceptual, or conceptual

judgment (e.g., that the seen face belongs to an acquaintance, or that the

assembly of pathological symptoms represent a given illness). In animal

research, a similar concept of cue‐configuration is explicitly treated as an

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264 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

an tecedent term of an ‘‘IF THEN’’ ru le. Holyoa k et al. ( 1989 , p. 3 19) for

instance, suggested that ‘‘configural cues are not identifiedwithperceptual units;

rather they emerge during learning as multiple‐element conditions of rules.’’

In fact, Lieberman et al. (20 02 , p. 221, emphasis added) allow that ‘‘products

of the X system’’ (assumed to operate on the basis of ‘‘pattern recognition’’)

‘‘can also be described as the result of executing ‘if then’ statements.’’

In theoretical depictions, pattern recognition is often said to depend on

constraint satisfaction, that is, on a relative fit between (1) external input stimuli

and (2) a preexisting structure of associations in memory. The activation of a

concept is said to occur whenever such fit obtains. Although the language here

may appear to diVer from the syllogistic terminology of IF THEN rules, the

contents are remarkably similar. The ‘‘preexisting structure of associations in

memory’’ represents a compound X that if aYrmed in a given instance by the

‘‘external input stimuli’’ indicates Y, that is, a given inference or conclusion.

For instance, a conjunctive presence of ‘‘elegant attire,’’ ‘‘interest in politics,’’

and ‘‘high degree of articulateness’’ may be assumed to indicate a ‘‘lawyer’’ to

an individual holding the appropriate IF THEN rule. If a newly encountered

individual presented this particular ‘‘association’’ of characteristics, this could

be regarded as an ‘‘external input stimulus’’ that fits the antecedent term of the

rule, warranting the ‘‘lawyer’’ inference.

The issue of ‘‘pattern recognition’’ recalls the question whether in a condi-

tioning context the animal responds to the situation as a whole, that is, to an

entire ‘‘Gestalt’’ versus singling out particular features of the situation in its

‘‘hypotheses’’ (Krechevsky, 1932) about the correct rule. Conditioning theor-

ists have opted for the latter view. As Holyoak et al. (1989) put it: ‘‘A rat may

receive a shock while listening to an unfamiliar tone, scratching itself, looking

left, and smelling food pellets . . . the rule ‘if tone, then expect shock’ will be

more likely be generated in this situation than the rule ‘If looking left,

scratching, and smelling pellets, then expect shock’ ’’ (Holyoak et al., 1989,

p. 320; see also, Holland, Holyoak, Nisbett, & Thaggard, 1986).

A diVerent way to think about the problem of ‘‘pattern recognition’’ is

in terms of the kindred notion of ‘‘attribute matching,’’ and the possibi-

lity of it serving as a basis for categorization. According to Murphy and

Medin (1985), however, ‘‘Instead of attribute matching, categorization may

be based on an inference process’’ (Murphy & Medin, 1985, p. 295, emphasis

added). A major problem with the attribute matching view is that it views

categories as mere sum total of their attributes. This ‘‘ignores the problem of

how one decides what is to count as an attribute (and it involves) failing to

view concepts in terms of the relations between exemplar properties and the

categorization system: Human . . . theories are ignored’’ (Murphy & Medin,

1985, p. 295). Thus, somewhat analogously to a conditioning situation

wherein the animal ‘‘decides’’ what features of the situation should figure

in its ‘‘hypothesis’’ about the appropriate rule (Holyoak et al., 1989;

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 265

Krechevsky, 1932) so in classifying objects individuals decide, on the basis of

their prior knowledge, that is, their lay theories and the specific context of

application what counts as an instance of a category. In an example given by

M urphy and M edin (1985 , p. 295, e mphasis add ed), the same behavior

‘‘jumping into a swimming pool with one’s clothes on . . . could imply

drunkenness in one context and heroism in another (e.g., jumping into the

pool to save someone from drowning).’’ In present terms, one’s lay theory or

inference rule may indicate that if a pattern was encountered wherein

‘‘someone jumped into a swimming pool with one’s clothes on’’ and ‘‘some-

one else was drowning’’ this indicated heroism, whereas if the pattern

included ‘‘drinking,’’ ‘‘jumping into a swimming pool with one’s clothes

on,’’ and ‘‘no one drowning’’ this indicated drunkenness.

In summary, a variety of evidence and theoretical considerations across

diVerent domains of psychology converge on the notion that judgments

(whether assessed directly or through behavioral manifestations) are ruled‐based. Tomake a judgment is to go beyond the ‘‘information given’’ (Bartlett,

1932; Bruner, 1973) by using it as testimony for a conclusion in accordance

with an ‘‘IF THEN’’ statement to which the individual subscribes. Such

implicational structure appears to characterize explicit human inferences

(Anderson, 1983), implicit conclusion‐drawing (Schwarz & Clore, 1996),

conditioning responses in animal learning (Holyoak et al., 1989; Rescorla &

Wagner, 1972), and perceptual judgments of everyday objects (Gregory,

1997; Pizlo, 2001; Rock, 1983). The basic IF THEN form appears essential

to all such inferences, whether conscious or nonconscious, instantaneous or

retarded, innate or learned. It is a fundamental building block out of which all

epistemic edifices seem to be constructed.

Thus, though the terminology of ‘‘constraint satisfaction,’’ ‘‘associative pat-

terns,’’ ‘‘attribute matching,’’ and so onmay seem rather diVerent from the rule‐like language of IF THEN premises, the underlying structure of inference seems

common to all instances of judgment.

III. The Parameters of Human Judgment

The foregoing assumption implies a fundamentally unitary approach to

human judgment. Yet our emphasis on commonality is quite compatible with

variability of judgment types and of conditions wherein contextually given

information (contained in message arguments, heuristic cues, statistical data,

and so on) may aVect judgments. In what follows we seek to understand the

essence of such variability. Toward that aim, we now identify several param-

eters of the judgmental process. These are assumed to constitute continuous

dimensions present in any judgmental situation. We propose that diVerentjudgment types vary in their parameter values. Moreover, variability in the

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266 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

judgmental impact of the information given depends on the particular com-

bination of parameter values characterizing a specific judgmental context.

A. INFORMATIONAL RELEVANCE

Our key parameter is the degree of informational relevance. It is intimately

tied to the notion of inference rules discussed above. Specifically, degree of

relevance that information X has for judgment Y is defined as the extent to

which the individual subscribes3 to the IF X THEN Y proposition, or the

major premise of a syllogism. We assume that the relevance of a given X to a

given Y may vary widely across persons as well as (for a given person) across

times, representing rule‐learning. In some instances, the implication may be

experienced as quite strong so that aYrming X (the minor premise) would

create a strong sense that Y too is the case. Strong inferences of this sort may

be aVorded by the way our perceptual system is hard wired (Pizlo, 2001).

Nonetheless, perceptual learning of some sort does take place (cf. Gregory,

1997; Rock, 1983), for instance, at the level of fine discriminations. This is

exemplified by a variety of perceptual expertise individuals may acquire with

practice. Such discrimination learning (e.g., in the realm of sound discrimi-

nation; Wright & Fitzgerald, 2003) may involve procedural training wherein

the rules of inference (our notion of ‘‘major premises’’) from a given stimulus

array may be appropriately augmented, and/or an improved processing may

take place of the stimulus (our notion of ‘‘minor premises’’) fitting the rules

in question . As Br uner ( 1958 , pp. 90–91) obs erved: ‘‘We learn the probab i-

listic texture of the world, conserve this learning, use it as a guide to tuning

our perceptual readiness to what is most likely next. It is this that permits us

to go beyond the information given.’’

Some inferential rules may be highly routinized via sustained practice

(Schneider & ShiVrin, 1977), others may derive from a unique personal experi-

ence (Garcia et al., 1968), or be based on pronouncement of a trusted ‘‘episte-

mic authority’’ (Kruglanski et al., 2005). With lesser degree of routinization,

a less impactful experience or a less trusted epistemic authority, the X to Y

implicationmaybeweaker andmore tenuous. In those instances, the confidence

in Y given X would be correspondingly feeble.

Prior judgmental research (reviewed subsequently) often confounded diVer-ent informational types or contents (e.g., ‘‘heuristic’’ versus ‘‘statistical’’ infor-

mation or ‘‘cue’’ versus ‘‘message’’ information) with diVerent degrees of their

3By ‘‘subscription to’’ we mean the degree of the X–Y contingency represented in the

individual’s memory, such that the subsequent activation of X in some context will tend to

evoke the expectancy of Y.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 267

potential relevance to research participants (Erb et al., 2003; Kruglanski &

Thompson, 1999a,b). If so, claims about qualitative diVerences in the judgmen-

tal process may have stemmed in part from focusing on the qualitative diVer-ences in informational contents, rather than on the quantitative diVerences inparameter values that these contents exhibited. For example, the IFTHEN rule

lending relevance to a given content of information, say about the commu-

nicator’s expertise (the ‘‘expertise heuristic’’) may be believed in less strongly

than an IF THEN rule lending relevance to a given message argument (i.e.,

a diVerent content). If the recipient had suYcient motivation and capacity to

consider both, the latter information may override in its impact the former

information (Pierro et al., 2004). We revisit this point at a later juncture.

1. Potential and Perceived Relevance

It is useful to distinguish between potential relevance that a given item of

information (X) has with respect to a given judgment (Y), and its perceived

relevance in a specific situation. Potential relevance denotes the assignment

of relevance under optimal processing conditions of attentional focus.

It represents the knower’s degree of belief in the IF X THEN Y proposition

if inquired about it directly. Often, however, conditions are suboptimal. The

individual may be unable to focus on X or detect it in the informational

array, or the IF X THEN Y rule may not be strongly activated in this

person’s mind. In such circumstances, the information’s perceived relevance

may diVer from its potential relevance, and the information’s actual impact

may not be commensurate with its potential impact.

In the classic study by Petty, Wells, and Brock (1976), high‐quality (hence

highly potentially relevant) arguments exerted lesser persuasive impact

under distraction (versus no distraction) conditions and low‐quality argu-

ments exerted greater persuasive impact under distraction (versus no distrac-

tion) conditions. In present terms, both cases reflected a discrepancy between

perceived and potential relevance under distraction (hence, reduced focus)

conditions.

B. GLEANING THE RELEVANCE OF THE INFORMATION GIVEN

Confronted with a judgmental question requiring an answer, an individual

typically attempts to glean the relevance of the information given to the judg-

mental task, that is, determines its ‘‘true’’ (potential) relevance for the judgment

at hand. How close he or she may come to divining such relevance may depend

on two factors: (1) task diYculty or ‘‘demandingness’’ and (2) processing

resources. These two factors represent our next two judgmental parameters.

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268 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

Task demands constitute an external factor analogous to the weight of a

barbell. Processing resources are internal and analogous to a weight lifter’s

muscular strength and determination, aVecting whether he or she would lift

the weight to a required height.

C. TASK DEMANDS

The task at handmaydetermine how easy or diYcult it is to detect the potential

relevance to the judgmental question of the information given. Consistent with

our syllogistic analysis, it is possible to distinguish two separate sources of task

diYculty: (1) diYculty of aYrming the minor premise of the syllogism, that

is, identifying that X is the case, and (2) diYculty of activating the (IF X

THEN Y) inference rule (i.e., the major premise) that X may instantiate.

Various circumstances may obscure the identity of the critical information

X, serving as the minor premise in an inference. The stimulus package

in which such information is embedded may be highly complex and lengthy.

It may contain considerable noise, and the relevant signal (i.e., items of

relevant evidence) may be faint, or insuYciently salient to attract the knower’s

attention. The placement of the relevant informational items in the sequence

presented to the knower may also matter. A front end placement may render

the items easier to process, whereas a later placement may make their proces-

sing more diYcult due to the depletion of cognitive resources that the early

items might have eVected.For instance, in typical persuasion studies peripheral or heuristic cues have

been presented up front, and themessage arguments have come subsequently.

Moreover, the message arguments have been typically lengthier and more

complex than the cues. In a review of the relevant literature, Pierro, Mannetti,

Erb, Spiegel, and Kruglanski (2005) found this to be the case in the prepon-

derance of instances. Either length and/or complexity and/or the order of

presentation could have rendered the message arguments more diYcult to

process than the heuristic cues.

In Trope andGaunt’s (2000) attributional research, saliency of information

was manipulated via the modality in which it was presented. The auditory

modality rendered the critical information (about contextual pressures ap-

plied on an actor) more salient, and hence easier to process, than information

presented in a visual modality (the written text). In work on judgment under

uncertainty (Kahneman, 2003; Tversky & Kahneman, 1974), the base rate

information was often presented briefly and up front, whereas the heuristic,

‘‘representativeness’’ information typically appeared later in a relatively

lengthy vignette. This might have rendered the ‘‘representativeness’’ informa-

tion more challenging to process than the base rate information (for reviews

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 269

see Chun &Kruglanski, 2006; Erb et al., 2003). In person perception research

(Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990), the category information was often

presented briefly and early and the individuating information about the target

subsequently and/or more extensively (Neuberg & Fiske, 1987). This, again,

suggests that the two information types (i.e., ‘‘category’’ and ‘‘individuating’’

information) might have diVered in processing diYculty. In the realm of

visual perception, correct identification of objects can be easier or more

diYcult (Dosher, Liu, Blair, & Lu, 2004; Posner, 1980), depending on lumi-

nosity, external noise, or whether the target region was cued in advance of the

stimulus presentation (Santhi & Reeves, 2004), and so on.

The inference rules lending the ‘‘information given’’ relevance to a judg-

ment may also be more likely activated in some contexts than in others. Thus,

some environmental stimuli more than others may prime specific inference

rules (Higgins, 1996) or serve as retrieval cues for such rules. Too, diVerentframings of a problem may prime diVerent rules leading to the utilization of

diVerent types of information (e.g., of statistical versus ‘‘psychological’’ in-

formation) (Hilton, 1995; Schwarz et al., 1991). Contexts that prime or

increase the retrieval likelihood of given inference rules increase the ease with

which such rules will be applied, hence lessen the diYculty of the judgmental

task involved.

In summary, some judgmental tasks are more demanding than others. The

reason that this matters is because in much judgmental research diVerentcontents of information inadvertently diVered in their processing diYculty.

Because diVerence in content is qualitative by definition, it is possible that

claims for qualitatively diVerent processes of judgment often rested on the

confounding of informational contents with task demands in which the latter

rather than the former was actually responsible for judgmental outcomes.We

revisit this issue in a subsequent section, describing our empirical work in the

present conceptual paradigm.

D. COGNITIVE RESOURCES

Successful gleaning of informational relevance may be importantly deter-

mined by individuals’ own capabilities in a given context. Two major classes

of capability factors may be distinguished related to: (1) rule accessibility and

(2) attentional capacity.

1. Rule Accessibility

As noted earlier, potential relevance of information given concerns the

strength with which the individual subscribes to an IF THEN rule‐linkingconceptual categories to each other. But individuals’ readiness to apply a

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270 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

given rule (Bruner, 1957) might be low in which case the judgmental rele-

vance of the information given might go unrecognized. The readiness of rule

application depends on its accessibility from chronic or acute sources

(Chaiken, Liberman, & Eagly, 1989; Higgins, 1996; Wood, Kallgren, &

Pr eisler, 1985 ). For insta nce, in a study by Chaik en et al. (1988) ‘‘sub jects

classified as chronic users of the length‐strength rule agreed more with a

message that ostensibly contained many (versus few) arguments, especially

after exposure to a task that primed this heuristic. In contrast, chronic nonusers

of this rule were nomore persuaded by the long message than by the short one,

regardless ofwhether the length‐strength heuristic hador hadnot been primed’’

(Chaiken et al., 1989, pp. 217–218).

In research on judgme nt unde r uncerta inty, Trope and Ginossar ( 1988 ,

p. 227) reviewed studies suggesting that ‘‘the influence of statistical rules, like

the influence of any rule depends on their prior activation (accessibility) and

their concurrent activation.’’ Presumably, that is so because the more acces-

sible a given (in principle available) rule, the greater one’s readiness to apply

it, whereas the application of less accessible rules may require laborious

retrieval work.

2. Attentional Capacity

An individual whose attentional capacity is taxed (e.g., by cognitive

busyness with other matters) may be less able to thoroughly process and

hence to adequately glean the relevance of the information given under high‐demand conditions. This may reduce the diVerence in impact of highly judg-

mentally relevant versus less judgmentally relevant information. Research by

Petty et al. (1976) referred to earlier demonstrated that under distraction

(versus no distraction) conditions, individuals were less sensitive to quality of

the message arguments. Cognitive capacity may depend also on circadian

rhythm (Bodenhausen, 1990), one’s degree ofmental fatigue (Webster,Richter,

& Kruglanski, 1996), alcoholic intoxication (Steele & Josephs, 1990), and the

degree of depletion by prior activities (Baumeister, Muraven, & Tice, 2000).

The foregoing factors may reduce individuals’ processing capacity, hence in-

crease the diYculty of ‘‘gleaning,’’ the potential relevance of the information

given to the judgment at hand.

Whereas the factor of rule accessibility, considered earlier, is related to the

major premise of a syllogism, attentional capacity pertains both to the indi-

vidual’s ability to aYrm the minor premise (by appropriately identifying the

information given as the antecedent term of the rule) and to considering the

minor and the major premises jointly, that is, carrying out the reasoning

process from evidence to conclusion.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 271

E. MOTIVATION: NONDIRECTIONAL AND DIRECTIONAL

Whether stemming from external task demands or from internal processing

limitations, gleaning diYculty may be compensated for by one’s motivation

to make sense of the information. Motivation determines (1) the extent of

eVort put into information processing and (2) the weights assigned to

diVerent informational items as function of their compatibility with the

individuals’ various wishes and desires. The former eVect is a function of

one’s nondirectional motivation and the latter of one’s directional motivation

(see Kruglanski, 1989, 1996, 2004 for reviews).

Individuals’ extent of nondirectional motivation to thoroughly process

information is determined by their various information‐processing goals,

such as the goal of accuracy (Chaiken et al., 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986),

accountability (Tetlock, 1985), cognitive activity (Cacioppo & Petty, 1982),

evaluation (Jarvis & Petty, 1996), or closure (Kruglanski, 2004; Kruglanski &

Webster, 1996; Kruglanski, Pierro, Mannetti, & De Grada, 2006; Webster

& Kruglanski, 1998). For instance, the higher the magnitude of the goals of

accuracy or cognitive activity, the greater the degree of the processing moti-

vation. By contrast, the higher the magnitude of the goal of closure, the lesser

the degree of processing motivation.

Directional motivation reflects the degree to which given contents of judg-

ment are desired by the individual. DiVerential weight given to informati-

onal items as function of their congruence with a given directional motivation

may result in bias aimed at bringing judgments in line with the individual’s

wishes and desires. For instance, an individual informed that coVee drinkingis unhealthy (or healthy) may appropriately distort her or his recollection of

coVee drinking instances (Kunda & Sanitioso, 1989) so as to reach a desirable

conclusion (see alsoDunning, 1999;Kruglanski, 1999;Kunda&Sinclair, 1999).

Finally, a recent review (Kersten et al., 2004, p. 284) remarked that: ‘‘object

perception shows biases consistent with preferred views.’’ The notion that

perceptual judgments are susceptible to motivational influences is compatible

with the functional understanding of perception. In this vein, ProYtt and

colleagues have found that the perception of slants of hills and of distances

is aVected by whether the perceiver is wearing a heavy backpack (ProYtt,

Stefanucci, Banton, & Epstein, 2003), is old or young (Bhalla & ProYtt,

1999), is fatigued (ProYtt, Bhalla, Gossweiler, & Midgett, 1995), or contem-

plates action goals (Witt, ProYtt, & Epstein, 2004). Such perceptual biases may

guide the mobilization of resources needed for motivated action, and in this

sense are functional. In summary then, directional motivational eVects havebeen observed at diVerent levels of psychological phenomena, including the

very basic ones in the realm of perception.

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272 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

As the judgmental activity unfolds, magnitude of processing motivation may

be determined by the desirability of initially formed beliefs. Should these be

desirable‐the individual would be disinclined to engage in further information

processing, lest current conclusions be undermined by further data. On the other

hand, should the initial beliefs be undesirable‐the individual would be inclined

to process further information that hopefully would serve to sweep away the

initial, unpalatable notions (Ditto and Lopez, 1992). In other words, direction-

al motivation may determine the degree of work individuals are prepared to

invest in information processing en route to a judgment.

F. PROPERTIES OF THE JUDGMENTAL PARAMETERS

1. Multiple Determination of Parameter Values

As presently conceived, the judgmental parameters constitute quantitative

continua whose specific values are determined by diverse factors: A given

informational stimulus may aVord a strong inference because its perceived

relevance was innately ‘‘wired into’’ the human perceptual system, because

such relevance was learned over repeated experience (Neal et al., 2006), or be-

cause it was derived from highly regarded ‘‘epistemic authority’’ (Kruglanski

et al., 2005), and so on. Similarly, task demands could be multiply determined

by informational complexity, signal to noise ratio, ordinal position, or percep-

tual modality. Cognitive capacity could be determined by rule accessibility, in

turn aVected by the recency or frequency of its activation (Higgins, 1996), and/

or by cognitive capacity determined by cognitive load, fatigue, and depletion

occasioned by prior pursuits (Baumeister et al., 2000). Motivation could be

determined by expectancies and values attached to a variety of judgmental

outcomes and processes, for example to the cognitive activity itself (Cacioppo

& Petty, 1982), to cognitive closure (Kruglanski, 2004; Kruglanski &Webster,

1996), accuracy (Funder, 1987; Kruglanski, 1989), accountability (Tetlock,

1985), impression management (Chaiken et al., 1989), ego enhancement

(Kunda, 1990), and so on.

This heterogeneity notwithstanding, we are assuming that as far as infor-

mation’s impact is concerned, diverse determinants of a given parameter’s

values are functionally equivalent. From this perspective, it matters not why a

given information is subjectively relevant to a given judgment, why a given

judgmental task is demanding for an individual, why an individual’s cogni-

tive resources at a given moment are ample or sparse, why an individual is

motivated or unmotivated to expend eVorts on the processing of given

judgmentally relevant information, it matters only that the above parameter

values occur at given magnitudes.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 273

2. Orthogonality of the Parameters

We assume further that the judgmental parameters are orthogonal and that

their values derive from largely independent determinants. Thus, subjective‐relevance of information may derive from a prior forging of conditional IF

THEN links between informational categories, the magnitude of processing

motivation may derive from various goals that persons might have, task

demands may depend on nature of the problem posed, and the stimulus

context, and cognitive resources may depend on rule accessibility and cognitive

busyness, all representing very diVerent concerns.Nonetheless, under some conditions the parameters may exert influence on

one another. For instance, highly relevant information might be used more

frequently than less relevant information, resulting in its greater accessibility,

in turn elevating the level of the cognitive resource parameter. Conversely,

high accessibility of information might increase its perceived relevance in some

contexts, for example by lending it experiential ‘‘fluency’’ (Jacoby et al., 1989;

Schwarz & Clore, 1996).

A given bit of informationmay be perceived as more relevant to a judgment

the more congruent it is with the knower’s wishes and desires (Lord, Ross, &

Lepper, 1979). Thus, in order to justify their ‘‘freezing’’ on early information

persons under high need for closure might perceive it as more relevant to a

judgment at hand than persons under low need for closure (Webster &

Kruglanski, 1998). By contrast, persons with a high need for cognition

(Cacioppo & Petty, 1982) may perceive the early information as less relevant,

in order that they may carry on with their information‐processing activity.

Finally, limited cognitive capacity may reduce processing motivation or

induce a need for cognitive closure (cf. Kruglanski & Webster, 1996), and

so on. Despite these interrelations, however, the judgmental parameters

are relatively independent because for the most part their determinants are

unique or nonoverlapping.

3. Independence of Informational Contents

Inevitably, some parametric values characterize some informational con-

tents. For instance, low‐task demands and/or subjective relevance may have

characterized in prior research ‘‘peripheral’’ or ‘‘heuristic’’ cues, whereas

higher task demands and subjective relevance may have characterized ‘‘mes-

sage or issue information’’ (Chaiken et al., 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986).

For many individuals (lacking statistical know how), low degrees of per-

ceived relevance may characterize statistical information (e.g., base rates)

(Erb et al., 2003; Hilton, 1995). High saliency and hence low‐processing

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274 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

demands may characterize social category information in some cases

(Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990), and so on.

From the present perspective, it is essential to conceptually distinguish

between parametric values and the contents to which such values may be

attached in some contexts. Whereas some parametric values must charac-

terize any informational contents, the very same values (e.g., a given degree

of subjective relevance, task demands, and motivational significance) may

characterize numerous alternative contents as well. Moreover, it is the

parametric values rather than the contents that determine the judgmental

impact of information. In other words, a given combination of parameter

values is assumed to have the same degree of impact across diVerent possiblecontents having those same values. By contrast, the same informational

contents, if characterized by diVerent parameter values (e.g., the same

information diVering in subjective relevance or degree of motivational

significance to diVerent knowers), are assumed to diVer in their judgmental

impact.

G. MULTIDIMENSIONAL PARAMETRIC SPACE

It is possible to conceptualize the constellations of parametric values char-

acterizing diVerent judgmental contexts as points in a multidimensional

space defined by the present quasi‐orthogonal parameters. Each such point

is assumed to diVer from all the others in the impact the associated informa-

tional contents will create. Whereas in theory each of our continuous param-

eters allows an open ended amount of fine gradations, in practice we have

identified some relatively coarse parametric regions and compared them in

empirical research (e.g., by comparing the impact of a highly demanding

information conjoined to high‐ (versus low‐) processing motivation and/or

cognitive resources).

In summary, we have listed five general parameters whose joint operation

may determine whether and to what extent the information given would

aVect judgments. These are: (1) the subjective relevance of the information,

(2) task demands, (3) cognitive resources, (4) nondirectional, and (5) direc-

tional motivation. Each parameter is assumed (1) to constitute a quantitative

continuum, (2) to be represented at some value in each judgmental situation,

(3) to be (largely) orthogonal to the remaining parameters, (4) to be multiply

determined, and (5) conceptually independent of informational contents to

which it happens to be associated. In the next section, we outline a set of

specific postulates and derivations concerning the role our parameters play

in determining the judgmental impact of the information given.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 275

IV. A Parametric Model of Social Judgment

A. THE ROLE OF SUBJECTIVE RELEVANCE

4B

rule

aYrm

Postulate 1: Judgmental impact of information is a positive function

of its degree of perceived relevance in a given context.

Derivation 1 (from Postulate 1): The impact of the information given

will depend on the likelihood of its relevance being adequately

perceived.

In turn, such likelihood will be determined by the degree to which the informa-

tion is accessible in memory and instantiated with respect to a given object of

judgment.4 Evidence for this derivation comes from three studies completed

byKopetz andKruglanski (2006), investigating an eVect originally reported byPavelchak (1989), and oVered in support of a dual‐mode model of impression

formation. In the first session of Pavelchak’s (1989) experiment, participants

rated the likeability of 35 academic majors and 50 personality traits. In the

second session carried out 10–14 days later, participantswere presentedwith six

stimulus persons, each portrayed via four traits. In the category condition,

participants first guessed the targets’ academic majors, then rated their like-

ability. In the piecemeal condition, participants rated the targets’ likeability

after exposure to their traits but before guessing their majors. It was found that

participants in the category condition (those who categorized the targets prior

to rating their likeability) made likeability ratings that were more consistent

with the categories’ likeability than with the likeability of the traits. Partici-

pants, in the piecemeal condition, made likeability ratings that were more

congruent with the likeability of the traits than with the likeability of the

categories. Pavelchak (1989, p. 361) viewed these results as ‘‘clear evidence that

there are two distinctmodes of person evaluation: one computed from attribute

evaluations and one based on category evaluations.’’

It is possible, however, that the findings were due to diVerential accessibilityof the category and the trait information in Pavelchak’s (1989) two condi-

tions. Because in the category condition, participants made their likeability

ratings immediately after exposure to the targets’ guessed categories, category

information may have been more recent and hence more accessible in their

memory than the trait information. Similarly, because in the piecemeal

y instantiation is meant applicability to a given object of judgment, thus if the inference

states that ‘‘if X then Y,’’ instantiation with respect to an object A would amount to

ing that A is X (and hence that Y is expected).

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276 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

condition participants made their likeability ratings immediately after expo-

sure to the targets’ presented traits, trait information may have been more

recent and hence more accessible in their memories than category informa-

tion. In other words, Pavelchak’s (1989) results could have been due to

diVerential accessibility rather than to qualitative diVerences in processing

category and trait information as implied by the dual‐mode approach.

To test this possibility,Kopetz andKruglanski’s (2006) first study carried out

an extended replication of Pavelchak’s (1989) two sessions experiment. During

the first session, participants evaluated the likeability of 48 academic majors

and 66 personality traits. In the second session, taking place 10–14 days later,

participants in a replication condition were presented with six stimulus persons

characterized by two personality traits and were asked either (1) to guess the

target person’s likely academicmajor and then to rate the person’s likeability or

(2) to rate the target’s likeability and then guess this individual’s likelymajor. In

two novel conditions, the targets were characterized by two academic majors

and asked (3) to guess the target’s most likely trait, and then rate this indivi-

dual’s likeability, or (4) to rate the target’s likeability and then to guess this

individual’s most likely trait.

The replication condition obtained results similar to those of Pavelchak

(1989). Participants who guessed the target’s category prior to rating this

person’s likeability exhibited smaller deviation of rated likeability from liking

for the category than liking for the traits, whereas those who guessed the

target’s category (this person’s major) after exposure to the traits but before

guessing the category exhibited smaller deviation of the target’s rated liking

from the traits’ (versus the category’s) likeability. A reversal of these findings

obtained in Kopetz and Kruglanski’s (2006) novel conditions: Where parti-

cipants guessed the target’s trait prior to rating her or his likeability, there

was smaller deviation of rated likeability from liking for the trait (versus

liking for the categories). However, where participants rated the target’s

likeability prior to guessing her or his likely trait, there obtained a smaller

deviation of the target’s rated likeability from liking for the categories (versus

liking for the trait). These findings are illustrated in Fig. 1.

In Kopetz and Kruglanski’s (2006) subsequent study, participants rated in

the first session the likeability of various traits and majors. In the same

session, participants were presented with six target persons each depicted

via four personality traits and were asked to guess each person’s academic

major. In a second session (10–14 days later), participants were presentedwith

the same target persons described in terms of the same traits and categories

(in counterbalanced order). Whereas in the prior study we manipulated the

presentation order of specific categories or specific traits pertaining to the

targets, in the present study we primed the general constructs of ‘‘categories,’’

or ‘‘traits’ ’’ by having participants, prior to rating their liking for the targets

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0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

Deg

ree

of d

evia

tion

Trait-category-judgement

Trait-judgement-

category

Category-trait-judgement

Category-judgement-trait

Category deviation Piecemeal deviation

Fig. 1. Deviation of six targets’ rated likeability from the likeability of the target’s categories

(college majors) and descriptive traits (Kopetz & Kruglanski, 2006, Study 1).

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

Deg

ree

of d

evia

tion

Category prime Trait prime

Category deviation Piecemeal deviation

Fig. 2. Deviation of six targets’ rated likeability from the likeability of the target’s categories

(college majors) and descriptive traits as function of priming the concepts of ‘‘category’’ versus

‘‘traits’’ (Kopetz & Kruglanski, 2006, Study 2).

ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 277

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278 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

either categorize 20 diVerent objects into groups or describe 20 diVerentobjects in terms of their traits. The results (see Fig. 2) showed that when the

concept of ‘‘category’’ was primed, participants liking of the target persons

was less deviant from their liking for the target’s category (i.e., her or his

major) than from their liking for the target’s traits, whereas when the concept

of ‘‘trait’’ was primed, participants liking of the target persons was less

deviant from their liking for the targets’ traits than from their liking for the

target’s category.

In the third and final study using a similar two session paradigm, Kopetz

and Kruglanski (2006) investigated the notion that accessibility of informa-

tion is likely to increase its impact only to the extent that the information

appears to apply to, or is instantiated for, the specific target of judgment:

After having rated in the first session, the likeability of various traits and

major categories in the second session participants evaluated six stimulus

persons each depicted via two academic majors or two personality traits.

To assess credibility, participants also rated the most likely and the most

unlikely academic major of the six stimulus persons depicted via the traits,

and themost likely traits for the six persons depicted via the academic majors.

At that point, participants were shown a picture of each target person and

asked to rate her or his likeability. Concomitantly with the presentation

of the picture, participants were subliminally primed with either the most

likely or the most unlikely major for targets depicted via the traits, or the

most likely or the most unlikely trait for targets depicted via the majors.

It was found (see Fig. 3A) that when participants were presented with

targets depicted by traits and then primed with their academic majors,

participants liking for the targets was less deviant from liking for the primed

categories than the depicted traits, but only when the categories were instan-

tiated for the specific target, that is were consistent with the target’s alleged

traits. Similarly, when participants were presented with targets depicted by

the categories (see Fig. 3B), their liking for those targets was less deviant

from liking for the primed traits than liking for the targets’ categories but,

again, only when the primed traits were instantiated for the specific target,

that is, when they were consistent with the categories to which each target

person was said to belong.

In summary, the Kopetz and Kruglanski (2006) studies support the notion

that Pavelchak’s (1989) results may have been due to the diVerential accessi-bility of category and trait information rather than due to a fundamental

diVerence in the way in which these two information types are processed.

Our experiments suggest that both types of information have greater impact

when they are perceived to instantiate the minor premise of the syllogism

that lends them relevance. In turn, the likelihood of such a perception

depends on the accessibility of the information and its consistency with what

is already known about a given target of judgment.

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0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

Deg

ree

of d

evia

tion

Category-consistenttraits

Category-inconsistenttraits

Deg

ree

of d

evia

tion

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

Traits-consistentcategory

Traits-inconsistentcategory

A

B

Category deviation Piecemeal deviation

Category deviation Piecemeal deviation

Fig. 3. (A) Deviation of six targets’ rated likeability from the likeability of the target’s traits‐consistent versus traits‐inconsistent primed categories. (B) Deviation of six targets’ rated like-

ability from the likeability of the targets’ category‐consistent versus category‐inconsistentprimed traits (Kopetz & Kruglanski, 2006, Study 3).

ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 279

Derivation 2 (from Postulate 1): Assuming that the (potential) relevance

of information is adequately perceived, more subjectively relevant informa-

tion will exert greater judgmental impact than less subjectively relevant

information.

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280 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

Though seemingly straightforward and simple, this derivation illuminates

some intriguing findings in social cognition. These have to do with the

shifting conditions under which the same information will exert greater or

lesser impact.

1. Teaching Relevance

We assume that the potential relevance of information is not fixed and that it

can be altered through learning. Pertinent in this connection is work by

Nisbett, Fong, Lehman, & Cheng (1987) and by Sedlmeier (1999) on the

successful teaching of statistical reasoning. From the present perspective,

such teaching imparts statistical rules to individuals hence it strengthens

the ‘‘IF THEN’’ connections between statistical concepts (e.g., the base rates

of some event’s occurrence) and likelihood judgments. Indeed, research

has demonstrated that teaching statistical reasoning results in an increased

use of statistica l infor mation . As Se dlmeier ( 1999 , p. 190) ex pressed it:

‘‘The pessimistic outlook of the heuristics and biases approach cannot be

maintained . . . Training about statistical reasoning can be eVective.’’

2. Framing EVects

Contextual relevance of diVerent types of information can be inferred from

the framing of the situation, that is, from the way the situation is appre-

hended by the individual. From this perspective, neglect of statistical infor-

mation (e.g., the base rates) and the tendency to rely on individuating profile

(representativeness) information in early studies (Tversky & Kahneman,

1974) might have stemmed from a ‘‘psychological’’ framing of the problem.

Consistent with this possibility, work by Hilton and Slugoski (2001),

Schwarz et al. (1991), and by Zukier and Pepitone (1984) established that

framing the same problems as ‘‘statistical’’ or ‘‘scientific’’ appreciably reduces

the neglect of statistical information.

The key role of subjective relevance in determining the judgmental impact of

statistical information hardly escaped the attention of researchers (cf. Borgida

& Brekke, 1981). For instance, Bar‐Hillel (1990, p. 201) concluded that

base‐rates are by and large neglected if and when they are considered to be irrelevant

to the prediction at hand furthermore in the tasks that dominate laboratory studies of

base rate neglect, base rates provide only a general informational background on

which other information, which typically pertains more directly or specifically to the

target case, is added. Such information tends to render the arbitrary base rates

subjectively irrelevant . . . (emphasis added).

From the present perspective, the subjective relevance parameter applies as

much to statistical information as it does to ‘‘heuristics’’ to which ‘‘statistics’’

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 281

are often juxtaposed.Whichever of these two information types would appear

more relevant to the judgment at hand is likely to be used as evidence for the

judgment. Ginossar and Trope (1980) discovered, for example, that when the

individuating vignette (the ‘‘representativeness’’ information) was rendered

nondiagnostic, and hence subjectively irrelevant to determining the target’s

profession, participants did utilize the base rates. We revisit at a later juncture

the issue of relative (subjective) relevance of diVerent information types.

3. Trait Centrality in Impression Formation

The phenomenon of trait centrality (Asch, 1946), long regarded as a major

psychological insight into person perception, turns out to be a matter of

subjective relevance as well. In otherwords, a given stimulus trait (e.g., ‘‘warm’’

or ‘‘cold’’) impacts personality impressions (e.g., that the target is friendly or

cooperative) to the extent that it implies the impressions in question (Wishner,

1960; Zanna & Hamilton, 1972). In this sense, the well‐known ‘‘warm‐cold’’eVect is nonunique. For instance, whereas ‘‘warmth’’ but not ‘‘speed’’ may

generally imply ‘‘friendliness,’’ ‘‘speed’’ but not ‘‘warmth’’ may generally imply

‘‘athleticism.’’ In this vein, Fishbach, Kruglanski, and Chun (2005, Study 1)

found that informing participants that a target is (among other characteristics)

‘‘warm’’ versus ‘‘cold’’ led them to conclude that she is also ‘‘friendly,’’ ‘‘like-

able,’’ and so on. Including in the same trait list the information that the target

is ‘‘fast’’ versus ‘‘slow,’’ however, had no eVect on these personality dimensions.

By contrast, including in the same trait list the information that Mike, a

candidate for a basketball team, is ‘‘fast’’ versus ‘‘slow’’ led participants to

infer that he is a good prospect for the team, and is characterized by other

athletic traits, whereas information that she is ‘‘warm’’ versus ‘‘cold’’ had no

eVect on this and related judgments (see Fig. 4).

4. Subjective Relevance and Lay Theories

As the term suggests, subjective relevance may vary across individuals in

accordance with their lay theories about implicational IF THEN relations

among categories. In this vein, Fishbach et al. (2005, Study 2) found

that people’s lay theories about the degree to which ‘‘warmth’’ implies

‘‘friendship,’’ or ‘‘fastness’’ implies ‘‘basketball ability’’ mediated the relation

between a list including the ‘‘warm’’ versus ‘‘cold’’ items and judgments of

friendship, and between a list including the ‘‘fast’’ versus ‘‘slow’’ items and

judgments of basketball potential (see Fig. 5).

Ginossar andTrope (1980) assessed the degree towhich participants possessed

the sampling rule that links base rates to probability judgments. ‘‘It turned out

thatmost subjects based their estimates on the base rate frequencies, but a sizable

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3

4

5

6

Warm Cold Fast Slow

Trait information

Eva

luat

ion

Basketball player Friend

Fig. 4. Evaluation of target as a function of trait information and impression task (Fishbach

et al., 2006, Study 1).

Trait:warm versus

fast

Interest infriendship

Perceivedpredictive

value

.08 (.54**)

.84** (.61**)

.54*

Trait:fast versus

warm

Interest inrecruiting

Perceivedpredictive

value

.11 (.38*)

.71** (.64**)

.73**

Fig. 5. Mediation of impressions by lay theories (Fishbach et al., 2006, Study 2). *p < .05;

**p < .01. Note: numbers in parentheses are zero‐order standardized �s.

282 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 283

minority did not’’ (Trope &Ginossar, 1988, p. 215). Consistent with the present

analysis, participants who possessed the sampling rule exhibited greater utiliza-

tion of the base rates than ones who did not possess the rule. These results

demonstrate, again, that the subjective relevance of information (in this case

base rate information) may vary across people, and that it determines their

judgments in response to the information given.

B. THE ROLE OF TASK DEMANDS AND

PROCESSING RESOURCES

Postulate 2: The likelihood of recognizing the potential relevance of

the information given is a direct function of one’s cognitive resources

and one’s processing motivation and is an inverse function of task

demands.

Definition: Let the combination of cognitive resources and processing motivation

defined an individual’s processing potential

Derivation 3 (from Postulates 1 and 2): The higher the task demands, the greater the

processing potential needed for the information given to exert judgmental impact

correspondent with its potential relevance.

Corollary toDerivation 3:Where the processing potential is insuYcient given the level of

task demands, the information given will fail to exert judgmental impact commensurate

with its potential relevance.

1. Persuasion Research

A pervasive finding in persuasion research has been that ‘‘peripheral’’ or

‘‘heuristic’’ cues exert judgmental impact (i.e., eVect change in recipients’

attitudes or opinions) under conditions of low‐processing resources, for exam-

ple where recipients’ interest in the task is low, when they are cognitively busy

or distracted, when their need for cognition is low, and so on. By contrast,

‘‘message arguments’’ have been found to exert their eVects typically under

conditions of high‐processing potential (e.g., high interest in the task, or ample

cognitive capacity).

In reviews of these studies (Erb et al., 2003; Kruglanski & Thompson,

1999a,b; Kruglanski, Thompson, & Spiegel, 1999; Kruglanski, Chen et al.,

2006; Pierro et al., 2005), it became apparent, however, that often in persua-

sion research the type of the information (i.e., ‘‘peripheral’’ or ‘‘heuristic’’

cues versus message arguments) was confounded with task demands.

Because the message arguments were typically lengthier, more complex,

and were placed later in the informational sequence, their processing may

have imposed higher processing demands than the processing of ‘‘cues’’ that

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284 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

were typically brief, simple, and presented up front. When these confound-

ings were experimentally removed, the previously found diVerences betweenconditions under which the ‘‘cues’’ versus the ‘‘message arguments’’ (or vice

versa) exerted their persuasive eVects were eliminated.

In one study (Kruglanski and Thompson, 1999a, Study 4), brief expertise

information conveyed by the communicator’s status (professor in a high‐versus low‐prestige university) was followed by a lengthy expertise informa-

tion presented via the speaker’s curriculum vitae. Under cognitive load that

limited recipients’ processing resources, the brief expertise information

aVected judgments, whereas the lengthy expertise information did not.

In the absence of cognitive load, by contrast, it was the lengthy expertise

information that impacted judgments but not the brief expertise informa-

tion. In another study (Pierro et al., 2005, Study 1), it was found that brief

message arguments impacted judgments under low‐motivational involve-

ment in the issue (hence, under low‐processing resources), whereas lengthy

subsequent arguments impacted judgments under high‐motivational involve-

ment (hence, high‐processing resources). Other studies obtained similar

resul ts (for a review see Krugla nski et al., 2006).

In a recent study, Pierro, Mannetti, and Kruglanski (2006) extended this

work to examine the eVects of length (and hence diYculty) of processing

information about an expert or an inexpert source and the degree of motiva-

tional involvement on (1) attitude stability over time and (2) attitude behavior

relations. In the first phase of the study, participants received an appeal from a

person introduced via a brief or a lengthy curriculum vitae that implied him to

be an expert or an inexpert in psychological science (a full professor in cognitive

psychology at theUniversity ofMilan versus an instructor in the psychology of

tourism at a technical institute).

The appeal introduced a novel proposal to institute a compulsory partici-

pation in psychology experiments for psychology majors at Italian univer-

sities. In the high‐involvement condition, participants were led to believe

that the new program is about to begin next year, and hence that they

themselves would be aVected. In the low‐involvement condition, participants

were told that the program will commence 5 years hence, and hence that it

would not apply to them. Participants were also invited to participate in an

experiment said to take place a month later.

In the first phase of the study, following the presentation of the persuasive

appeal (the same in all conditions) participants’ attitudes and behavioral inten-

tions to participate in the experiment were measured. The attitude results repli-

cated and extended those of Pierro et al. (2005). Participants presented with the

brief expertise information showed more positive attitudes toward the proposal

and corresponding behavioral intentions, as a function of source expertise under

low involvement but not under high involvement,whereas participants presented

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 285

with the lengthy expertise information showed more positive attitudes and

behavioral intentions as a function of source expertise under high involvement

but not under low involvement.

Of greater interest were the attitude and intention data collected at phase 2,

conducted 3 weeks later. As shown in Figs. 6 and 7, the attitudes and

behavioral intentions of the brief information participants showed no eVectof expertise in either the low‐ or the high‐involvement conditions attesting to

low attitude stability (as predicted by the ELM). By contrast, the attitudes

and intentions of the lengthy information participants exhibited an eVect ofexpertise in the high‐ but not in the low‐involvement condition.

Finally, as shown in Fig. 8, the actual behavior assessed a month following

the persuasive manipulation revealed an eVect of source expertise only for

high‐involvement participants who received the lengthy source information.

Appropriate multiple regression results yielded similar results suggesting

together that attitude stability and the consistency between attitudes and

behavior depend on the relation between task demands and individuals’ pro-

cessing potential (operationalized in this study via motivational involvement).

The extensive elaboration that occurs when the task demands are consider-

able and when the processing potential is high increases the robustness of the

attitudes formed as manifested in their stability over time and their ability to

predict behavior. Thus, the eVects predicted by the ELM for message argu-

ments (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) seem to also hold for source information of

Atti

tude

cha

nge

0

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

9

Brief-lowinvolvement

Brief-highinvolvement

Long-lowinvolvement

Long-highinvolvement

Inexpert Expert

Fig. 6. Attitude change 3 weeks after the exposure to the persuasive message as a function of

length of the message, source expertise, and involvement (Pierro et al., 2006).

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Beh

avio

ral i

nten

tions

1

2

3

4

5

6

7

8

0

9

Brief-low involvement

Brief-high involvement

Long-low involvement

Long-high involvement

Inexpert Expert

Fig. 7. Behavioral intentions 3 weeks after the exposure to the persuasive message as a

function of length of the message, source expertise, and involvement (Pierro et al., 2006).

10

20

30

40

50

60

70

0

80

Beh

avio

r

Brief-low involvement

Brief-high involvement

Long-low involvement

Long-high involvement

Inexpert Expert

Fig. 8. Behavior 1 month after the exposure to the persuasive message as a function of

length of the message, source expertise, and involvement (Pierro et al., 2006).

286 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

comparable processing diYculty. Considered collectively with the bulk of

prior persuasion research (Chaiken, Wood, & Eagly, 1996), these findings

support the hypothesis that appreciating the (subjective) relevance of the

information given (e.g., the diVerence between communication from an

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 287

expert versus a nonexpert) hence enabling it to exert its eVects on attitudes

and behaviors depends on the match between recipients’ (cognitive and

motivational) processing resources and the demands of the information

processing task.

2. Dispositional Attributions

A major question posed by attribution researchers concerned the process

whereby a given behavior emitted by an actor is causally ascribed to the

situational context, or to the actor’s disposition. In this vein, Trope (1986)

reviewed evidence that ambiguous behaviors tend to be disambiguated by an

assimilation to the context in which they are taking place. For instance, an

ambiguous facial expression is likely to be perceived as sad if the context is sad

as well (e.g., a funeral) and as happy if the context was happy (e.g., a party).

Once the behavior had been identified, however, and the question of its

causal origin was pondered, the context should play a subtractive (rather an

assimilative) role in determining the behavior’s causal attribution. Specifi-

cally, the role of the context is subtracted to determine the role of the actor’s

disposition in producing the behavior. For instance, if the context was sad,

an individual’s sad expression would tend not to be attributed to the actor’s

dispositional sadness because other persons in the same situation would

probably seem sad as well.

Of present interest, Trope and Alfieri (1997) found that the assimilative

process of behavior identification was independent of cognitive load, whereas

the subtractive process of dispositional attribution was undermined by load.

These investigators also found that invalidating the contextual information did

notmanage to erase its eVect on the behavioral identification,whereas it did eraseit on the dispositional attribution. Two alternative explanations may account

for these results: (1) that the two processes are qualitatively distinct and (2) that

for some reason the behavior identification task in Trope and Alfieri’s (1997)

studies was less demanding than the dispositional attribution task, hence that it

was less sensitive to load, and perhaps carried out more automatically and hence

less impacted by subsequent (invalidating) information.

Consistent with the latter interpretation, Trope and Gaunt (2000) discov-

ered that when demands associated with the dispositional attribution task

were lowered (e.g., by increasing the salience of the information given), the

subtraction of context from dispositional attributions was no longer aVectedby load. Furthermore, Chun, Spiegel, andKruglanski (2002) found that when

the behavior identification task was made more diYcult (e.g., by decreasing

the salience of the information given) it too was undermined by load. More-

over, under those conditions invalidating the information on which the

behavioral identifications were based managed to undo those identifications.

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288 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

These findings are consistent with the notion that when a judgmental task

(e.g., of ‘‘behavior identification’’ or of ‘‘dispositional attribution’’) is suY-ciently demanding, its adequate performance requires cognitive resources

and can be undermined by load. Furthermore, addressing such a task can

be a conscious, deliberative process registered in awareness. Consequently,

invalidating the informational input into this process is likely to be taken

into account, resulting in appropriate adjustments to the judgments rendered.

When the task is substantially less demanding, however, it requires correspond-

ingly less resources, possibly to the point of immunity from interference by

(some degrees of ) load. Furthermore, under such conditions the process may

occur so quickly and subconsciously that its details are not fully encoded.

Hence, invalidating the informational input into this process may not occasion

corrective adjustments to the pertinent judgments.

3. Base‐Rate Neglect

We have suggested that the judgmental impact of information depends on

appreciating its (subjective) relevance to the question at stake, and that such

appreciation, in turn, depends on the relation between task demands and

processing resources. Jointly, these notions are capable of casting a new light

on the problem of base rate neglect and on conditions under which statistical

versus ‘‘heuristic’’ information may impact individuals’ judgments.

In the original demonstrations of base rate neglect (Kahneman & Tversky,

1973), the base rate information was typically presented briefly, via a single

sentence, and up front. By contrast, the individuating (representativeness)

information was presented subsequently via a relatively lengthy vignette.

If one assumes that participants in such studies had suYcient motivation

and cognitive capacity to wade through the entire informational package with

which they were presented, they might have managed to fully process the

later, lengthier, and hence more demanding vignette information, to have

paid it ample attention, and consequently to have given it considerable weight

in the ultimate judgment. This is analogous to the finding in persuasion

studies that the lengthier, later appearing, message argument information

but not the brief, up front appearing, ‘‘cue’’ information typically had impact

under ample processing resources (e.g., of high‐processing motivation and

cognitive capacity). If the above is true, we should be able to ‘‘move’’ base rate

neglect around by reversing the relative length and ordinal position of the

base rate and the individuating (representativeness) information. A series of

studies by Chun and Kruglanski (2006) attempted just that.

In one condition of their first study, the typical lawyer–engineer paradigm

(Kahneman & Tversky, 1973) was replicated via a presentation of brief and

up‐front base rate information followed by lengthier individuating information.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 289

In another condition, these relations were reversed by presenting brief individ-

uating information first, followed by lengthier and more complex base rate

information (in which the overall base rate of lawyers and engineers was decom-

posed into base rates of the various subcategories of lawyers and engineers).

As predicted, the former condition replicated the typical finding of base rate

neglect, whereas the latter condition evinced considerable base rate utilization.

A subsequent study added a manipulation of cognitive load. The former

results were now replicated in the low‐load condition, but were reversed in

the high‐load condition. Regardless of information type, under load the brief

up‐front information was utilized more than the lengthy subsequent informa-

tion, whereas in the absence of load the lengthy and subsequent information

was utilized more.

The next study used two types of individuating information, presented in two

sequences. In one sequence, brief information consistent with the engineer ste-

reotype was followed by lengthy information consistent with the lawyer stereo-

type. In the alternative sequence, brief information consistent with the lawyer

stereotype was followed by lengthy information consistent with the engineer

stereotype. It was found that heightened cognitive load led to reliance on the

brief and up‐front stereotype, whereas the absence of load prompted reliance on

the lengthier and subsequent stereotype. Finally, the last study presented partici-

pants with information about two samples. In one condition, the first sample

consisting of 30% engineers and 70% lawyers (the 30/70 sample) was followed

by a second sample consisting of 70% engineers and 30% lawyers (the 70/30

sample). In a second condition, the first sample consisted of 70% engineers and

30% lawyers whereas the second sample consisted of 30% engineers and 70%

lawyers. In addition, wemanipulated load. It was found that the first sample was

relied more under load, and the second under no load. Hence in the 30/70; 70?30

condition cognitive load decreased the perceived likelihood of the target being

an engineer, whereas in the 70/30; 30/70 condition cognitive load increased the

perceived likelihood of the target being an engineer, whereas in the 70/30 sample

such likelihood was higher under load (versus no load).

To summarize then, evidence across domains (i.e., of persuasion, attribution,

and judgment under uncertainty) supportsDerivation 2 that the higher the task

demands, the greater should be the processing resources if the information

given is to exert judgmental impact commensurate with its potential relevance.

C. RELATIVE INFORMATIONAL IMPACT

In much judgmental research, participants are presented with several (typi-

cally two) types of information and the question posed is which of the two has

the greater judgmental impact and under what conditions. For instance,

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290 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

persuasion researchers wondered when do peripheral or heuristic cues have

greater impact than message arguments and when does the opposite hold true

(Chaiken et al., 1989; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). Workers in the domain of

biases and heuris tics (Borgi da & Br ekke, 1981; Ginos sar & Trope, 1980;

Hilton& Slugosky, 2001; Kahneman, 2003; Trope &Ginossar, 1988; Tversky

& Kahneman, 1974) inquired when statistical information (e.g., base rates) is

neglected in favor of simplistic rules of thumb (or heuristics) and when it is

taken into account. Workers in the area of impression formation (Brewer,

1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Fiske, Lin, & Neuberg, 1999) asked when

individuating information about the target is taken into account, and when

is it neglected in favor of social category information, and so on.

Often, the diVerent types of information presented to participants have (inad-

vertently) diVered in their subjective relevance to these persons. For instance, in

the domain of persuasion Pierro et al. (2004) carried out an extensive content

analysis of experimental materials in persuasion studies and concluded that,

typically, the cues presented to participants were judged as less relevant to the

judgmental (attitudinal) topic than were the message arguments. Note that in

much persuasion research the cues but not the message arguments exerted

judgmental impact under low‐processing resources, whereas the message argu-

ments did so under high‐processing resources. From the present perspective, it is

possible to interpret these findings in terms of the following general derivations:

5A

Derivation 4(a) (from postulates 1 and 2): Given suYcient processing potential, the

more relevant information will have a greater impact on judgments than the less

relevant information.

Derivation 4(b) (from postulates 1 and 2). In the absence of suYcient processing

potential, the easier to process information (assuming an above threshold relevance)

will have a greater judgmental impact than the more diYcult to process information.

Pierro et al. (2004) tested these notions in a series of three experimental studies.

They all employed the same 2 � 2 � 2 � 2 factorial design with the variables:

(1) processing motivation‐manipulated via accountability instructions (high ver-

sus low) (Tetlock, 1985), (2) valence of the early informational set about product

features (positive or negative with respect to the attitude object), (3) valence of

the later informational set about product features (positive or negative with

respect to the attitude object), and (4) relative attitudinal relevance5 of the two

informational sets (the early set less relevant than the later set or vice versa).

Also common to all three studies was content of the target judgments, having to

do with relative desirability of a given brand of a cellular phone compared to its

competitors. The studies diVered, however, in contents of the information given

scertained via appropriate pilot studies.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 291

on which basis participants were to reach their judgments. In the first study,

both the early and the later information consisted of message arguments

(about properties of the target phone), in the second study both consisted of

heuristic information (namely, pertinent to the ‘‘consensus heuristic,’’ and con-

taining information about opinion polls as to the target phone’s attributes),

and in the third study, contrary to the typical sequence in persuasion studies‐the early information consisted of message arguments and the later information

of heuristic cues (again regarding consensus).

All three experiments yielded the same general result: When the later and

hence the more diYcult to process information was more subjectively relevant

to the judgmental topic than the early information it exerted judgmental

(persuasive) impact only under high motivation but not under low motivation.

By contrast, the early, less relevant information exerted its eVect only under lowmotivation but not under high motivation. A very diVerent pattern obtained

where the early information was more subjectively relevant than the latter

information. Here, the impact of the early information invariably overrode

that of the later information: Under low‐processing motivation, this may have

been so because the earlier information was easier to process than the later

information, and under high‐processing motivation because the early informa-

tion was in fact more relevant than the later information (see Figs. 9–12 for

illustrative results of our first study).

V. Recapitulation and Conclusions

Judgmental activity insinuates itself into nearly all manner of people’s

response to their social and physical environments, forging an indispensable

launching pad for intelligent action. Indeed, psychological research on di-

verse levels of analysis, from psychophysics to the psychology of culture, has

placed considerable emphasis on the study of judgments and their underly-

ing processes. Over the last several decades, this work has resulted in an

impressive yield of empirical findings, and a large number of conceptual

models, typically adopting a ‘‘dual‐mode’’ perspective. Though some of

these models incorporated various notions of continua (Fiske & Neuberg,

1990; Kahneman, 2003; Petty & Cacioppo, 1986),6 they were predominantly

6Often these continua were anchored in qualitatively diVerent informational contents sup-

porting the concept of a qualitative dichotomy. Thus, Petty and Cacioppo’s (1986) ‘‘elaboration

likelihood’’ continuum extends from the brief processing of ‘‘peripheral’’ information to the

thorough processing of ‘‘message and issue information.’’ Fiske and Neuberg’s (1990) continu-

um extends from the brief processing of ‘‘social category’’ information to the extensive (moti-

vated and resource intensive) processing of ‘‘individuating’’ information, and so on.

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−0.5

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

2.0

−1.0

2.5A

ttitu

des

Low HighAccuracy motivation

Positive information Negative information

Fig. 9. Later/more relevant information is more persuasive under high motivation than

under low motivation (Pierro et al., 2004, Study 1).

292 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

committed to a qualitative dichotomy of judgmental process, rightfully

earning their ‘‘dual‐mode’’ designation.

Of interest, the binary notions of the various dual‐mode frameworks were

quite disparate and did not readily map onto one another. For instance,

the ‘‘peripheral’’ processing mode (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) was depicted in

diVerent terms than the ‘‘heuristic’’ mode (Chaiken et al., 1989) in turn char-

acterized quite distinctly than the ‘‘associative’’ mode (Smith & DeCoster,

2000), the ‘‘impulsive’’ mode (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), or the ‘‘categorical’’

mode (Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990). Similarly, ‘‘central’’ processing

(Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) was portrayed diVerently than ‘‘systematic’’ proces-

sing (Chaiken et al., 1989), ‘‘reflective’’ processing (Strack&Deutsch, 2004), or

‘‘rational’’ processing (Kahneman, 2003), and so on.

In contrast to such conceptual diversity, the present analysis highlights the

common threads shared by the various dual‐mode formulations. These were

conceptualized as the psychological dimensions, or continuous parameters,

on which judgmental situations may be ordered. The key proposed parameter

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−0.5

0.0

0.5

1.0

1.5

−1.0

2.0

Atti

tude

s

Low High

Accuracy motivation

Positive information Negative information

Fig. 11. Early/more relevant information has greater persuasive impact than later/less

relevant information under either low or high motivation (Pierro et al., 2004, Study 1).

0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

−0.2

1.8

Atti

tude

s

Low HighAccuracy motivation

Positive information Negative information

Fig. 10. Early/less relevant information is more persuasive under low motivation than under

high motivation (Pierro et al., 2004, Study 1).

ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 293

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0.0

0.2

0.4

0.6

0.8

1.0

1.2

1.4

1.6

Atti

tude

s

Low HighAccuracy motivation

Positive information Negative information

Fig. 12. Later/less relevant information has less persuasive impact than early/more relevant

information under either low or high motivation (Pierro et al., 2004, Study 1).

294 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

was that of information’s subjective relevance to a judgment. It rests on the

assumption that judgments constitute inferences from evidential input, based

on implicational rules conditionally linking the two in the knower’s mind.

The remaining parameters, namely task demands, and individuals’ cognitive

and motivational resources, represent auxiliary factors aVecting the knowers’

ability to appreciate the potential relevance of the information given to a

requisite judgment. In brief, we have hypothesized that subjective relevance

determines the information’s judgmental impact granting that individuals’

(cognitive and motivational) resources were suYcient for coping with the

task demands, hence accurately gleaning the potential relevance of the

information given.

Evidence fromheterogeneous judgmental domains (persuasion, attributions,

judgments under uncertainty, or impression formation) yielded support for

these assertions. Among others, it was found that where information extrane-

ous to the message or the issue (e.g., about the communicator’s expertise) is

presented lengthily and complexly, posing considerable processing demands,

it exerts judgmental (persuasive) impact only under high degree of processing

motivation and/or high degree of cognitive capacity. However, where the same

information is presented briefly and simply it exerts impact under low motiva-

tion and/or capacity. Similarly, whenmessage or issue information is presented

lengthily and complexly, it exerts judgmental (persuasive) impact under high‐processing motivation and cognitive capacity. However, where the message or

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 295

issue information is presented briefly and simply, it exerts judgmental (persua-

sive) impact under lowmotivation and/or capacity (Erb et al., 2003;Kruglanski

& Thompson, 1999a; Pierro et al., 2005).7 We also found that the ability of

traits to aVect impressions (the trait centrality eVect; Asch, 1946) depends on

their subjective relevance to the specific impressions, in turn, contingent on

individuals’ lay theories that tie the traits to the impressions (Fishbach et al.,

2005).

In a similar vein, prior research (Borgida & Brekke, 1980; Hilton, 1995) has

demonstrated the role of subjective relevance in mediating the impact of statis-

tical information (such as base rates) on likelihood estimates, and the possibility

of teaching individuals various inferential rules, hence augmenting the subjec-

tive relevance of statistical information to specific estimates (Nisbett et al., 1987;

Sedlmeier, 1999). Furthermore, Chun and Kruglanski (2006) have shown that

the task demands posed by statistical or stereotypic information may vary, and

that in both cases demands interact in an identical manner with individuals’

processing potential to determine the impact of (either type of ) information on

specific judgments. Finally, research has shown that where the individuals’

processing potential suYces to cope with the task demands, the more relevant

information overrides in its judgmental impact the less relevant information;

by contrast, where the processing potential is insuYcient to cope with the

task demands, the easier to process information (even if of lower relevance)

overrides the more diYcult to process information (Pierro et al., 2004).

The judgmental parameters identified in the present model aVord the inte-

gration of the various concepts and findings featured in prior judgmental

models. Consider for example ‘‘intuitions’’ defined by Kahneman (2003) as

highly accessible heuristics that come easily to mind. In present terms, such

‘‘intuitions’’ represent easy to process rules imposing low degree of cognitive

demands on the individual. It is precisely for that reason that ‘‘intuitions’’ have

been known to dominate judgments under conditions of limited cognitive

resources (Kahneman, 2003). Similarly, in persuasion research ‘‘peripheral’’

or ‘‘heuristic’’ cues (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986) have been typically operationa-

lized in a manner that may have rendered their processing appreciably less

demanding than the processing of message or issue information; indeed, that

could be the reason why the former type of information exerted greater impact

under limited processing resources, and the latter type of information under

7Note that our experimental studies pit predictions derived from the present theoretical formu-

lation against those derived from the dual mode persuasion models, aVording them an equal

opportunity to be validated. For instance, if message information turned out to be more impactful

under high processing resources, and the peripheral information under low processing resources

irrespective of their relative length or complexity, this would have validated the dualmode prediction

regarding the importance of the type/content of information (i.e., claiming that message informa-

tion is processed in a qualitatively diVerent manner than peripheral cue information).

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296 ARIE W. KRUGLANSKI et al.

ample informational resources (Erb et al., 2003; Kruglanski & Thompson,

1999a,b; Kruglanski et al., 1999; Pierro et al., 2005). Finally, notions of ‘‘asso-

ciative,’’ ‘‘impulsive,’’ or ‘‘automatic’’ processing are readily interpretable in

terms of highly routinized rules (Anderson, 1983; Bargh, 1996; Schneider &

ShiVrin, 1977) operating swiftly, eYciently, and often outside awareness, hence

imposing low‐processing demands and capable of judgmental impact under

conditions of low‐processing potential.The parametric approach of the unimodel aVords two types of integration

as far as the dualistic frameworks are concerned: a within‐models integration

and a between‐models integration. Rather than treating the two modes within

each model as qualitatively distinct, the within‐models integration orders

them on one or more dimensional continua. For instance, in much persuasion

research ‘‘peripheral cues’’ and ‘‘message or issue arguments’’ have varied

both on the parameter of task demands (the cues being easier to process than

the arguments) and on the parameter of subjective relevance (the cues being

typically perceived as less relevant than the arguments) (Kruglanski &

Thompson, 1999a,b; Pierro et al., 2004, 2005). Similarly, ‘‘intuitive’’ heuris-

tics have been defined as more accessible, hence lower on the parameter of

task demands than ‘‘rational’’ thoughts (Kahneman, 2003), and the proces-

sing of ‘‘social categories’’ was assumed to require less motivation, hence also

to be less demanding than the processing of ‘‘individuating information’’

(Brewer, 1988; Fiske & Neuberg, 1990).

‘‘Automatic’’ or ‘‘impulsive’’ processing was defined as more eYcient,

hence posing lesser demands on the information processing system, than

‘‘reflective’’ processing (Strack & Deutsch, 2004), and so on. The present

analysis suggests that it is such parametric diVerences between the modes

(degree of task demands or of subjective relevance of information) rather than

other possible distinctions (e.g., in the type or contents of the information

processed, awareness, or swiftness of processing) that account for the empiri-

cal results on which numerous dual‐mode formulations were based. The

evidence reviewed above (see also Chun & Kruglanski, 2006; Chun et al.,

2002; Erb et al., 2003; Kruglanski & Thompson, 1999a,b; Pierro et al., 2004,

2005) is consistent with such an analysis.

Because the proposed judgmental parameters constitute dimensions com-

mon to all judgmental contexts, the present model also aVords an integration

between the various dual process models. In other words, the conceptual diver-

sity of the dual‐mode formulations was based on qualitative model‐specificconstructs (e.g., ‘‘peripheral cues,’’ ‘‘heuristics,’’ ‘‘automaticity,’’ ‘‘reflection’’).

If, as presently suggested, such diversity is eVectively reducible to several con-

tinuousparameters, and if suchparameters are common to judgmentaldomains

explored by the dual‐mode models, the present formulation oVers a unified

perspective on human judgment, aVording a synthesis of a rather fragmented

field of psychological inquiry.

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ON THE PARAMETERS OF HUMAN JUDGMENT 297

Perhaps more important than the integrative potential of our unified

formulation is its focus on the several critical determinants of judgments

and their continuous nature. These are conceptualized as orthogonal param-

eters defining a multidimensional space wherein the plethora of judgmental

situations constitute separate points. Such a conception captures the consid-

erable flexibility and malleability of the human judgmental capabilities.

Thus, dynamic processes of rule‐learning determine the degree of relevance

a given bit of information holds for a given individual. Vicissitudes of

situational saliency and rule‐accessibility determine the diYculty of utilizing

a given bit of information in a given context. Perceived degree of task

importance, of cognitive busyness and the individual’s energy level, deter-

mine the degree to which she or he will tend to recruit the needed resources

to address a given judgmental problem. Thus, the present framework views

the judgmental process in terms of infinitely fine gradations on several

intersecting dimensions, whose shifts smoothly transform into one another

what initially may appear as qualitatively distinct phenomena.

Finally but not of least importance, the central issue dealt with by the

present model is of a considerable real‐world relevance. Essentially, it con-

cerns the conditions under which the information given impacts individuals’

judgments, and those in which it does not. This question touches on a variety

of intriguing phenomena such as recipients’ reluctance to be convinced by

seemingly incontrovertible arguments, or, to be quickly persuaded by obvi-

ously specious ones, conflicted parties’ intransigence and inability to reach

agreements despite the adversary’s generous concessions, the considerable

challenges of intercultural communication, or the abysmal failures ‘‘to see it

coming’’ despite the availability of ample, seemingly obvious, information,

prompting costly debacles and tragedies of technical or military nature (see

Bar‐Joseph & Kruglanski, 2003). A generalized understanding how judg-

ments are formed may oVer insights into these and other topics related to the

many complex issues facing individuals and groups in today’s world.

Acknowledgments

We are indebted to Judson Mills and Wendy Wood for comments on a previous draft. This

work was supported by NSF Grant SBR‐9417422.

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