Abstract
College student subjects rated 20 personal descriptors (adjectives) on an 11-point favorable-unfavorable (good-bad) categorical scale. They rated using both a short and a long form. The short form presented 20 descriptors; the long form presented 83 additional descriptors for a total of 103. In two experiments, the ratings of the 20 common adjectives were found to correlate highly, suggesting the absence of a context effect. The results were viewed as extending the boundary conditions of the hypothesis developed by Hicks and his associates, which predicts no context effect when, as true of the present studies, ratings are couched in familiar or conventional terms.
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Siegel, P.S., Andrulot, J. & Calhoon, S.K. The effect on categorical ratings of personal descriptors with list length as a potential context effect. Bull. Psychon. Soc. 25, 79–81 (1987). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330289
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03330289