The influence of the analogical context on the similarity judgments of compared events

OBERHOLZER, N.; TRENCH M.; MINERVINO R.

San Sebastián

Congreso; 17th Meeting of the European Society for Cognitive Psichology (ESCOP2011),; 2011

Sociedad Europea de Psicología Cognitiva

An experiment was carried out to demonstrate that similarity judgments between two events vary as a function of the base and target analogs in which they take part. In a control condition, participants used a 5-point Likert-scale to rate the similarity of two events considered in isolation (e.g., Mary bought a play station vs. John borrowed a Wii). In the two experimental conditions, participants received these same events framed within base and target analogs aimed at rendering both events more or less similar. For instance, whereas in the pro-similarity condition the protagonists criticize each other?s actions as having broken their agreement to devote exclusively to their studies, in the less-similarity condition the protagonists criticize each other?s actions as having broken their agreement to cut unnecessary expenses. As predicted, similarity scores assigned by participants under the pro-similarity condition were much higher than scores given by participants under the less-similarity condition, with scores from the control condition falling somewhere in between. Data proved that the similarity between two compared situations depends on the way in which they are related to the broader analogy in which they participate, thus posing a challenge to the role adscribed to semantics within traditional approaches.