The context effect of dual primes: influence of positive wide prime and positive narrow prime on product judgment

• Main Authors: I-Han Liu, 劉苡含
• Other Authors: Yi Wen Chien
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2012
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/15000519208234328902

碩士 === 國立臺灣大學 === 商學研究所 === 101 === The present study examined the effect of dual primes as well as the effect of certainty about target range and prime range on product judgment based on Dimensional Range Overlap Model (Chien, Wegener, Hsiao, and Petty 2010), and Reciprocity Hypothesis (Hsiao 2002). It is proposed that the dual primes shall first influence each other, such as assimilating toward or contrasting away from each other. It is assumed that when people hold higher certainty about one prime, the magnitude of shift for the prime will be less, and vice versa. Moreover, it is proposed that when the combined effect of dual primes has an overlap with the target, assimilation effect is expected to occur; however, when there’s no overlap, contrast effect is more likely to occur. To test the above propositions, a within participant study was conducted. We asked participants to identify a suitable target, a positive narrow prime and a positive wide prime. First, we examined whether the primes which have overlaps in interpretation range will assimilate toward each other. Then, we checked if corresponding high certainty leads to smaller magnitude of shifts and vice versa. Even though we didn’t see significant result in our experiment to support our hypothesis, there’s a tendency that follows the predicted pattern. In addition to that, we notice a phenomenon of systematic shift toward the center happening, which might be due to participants’ fatigue from the within participant design that asks participants to do several questionnaires. Though so far we cannot prove our predictions, we have suggested future research method which we assume can help eliminate the systematic shift, and thus better test our current hypotheses.