Reasons for the Referent: Reducing Direction of Comparison Effects

Abstract

Two studies examined the effects of asking college-aged participants to analyze their feelings regarding two options presented (student government candidates and college courses) that either shared positive features but had unique negative features, or shared negative features but had unique positive features. Past feature-matching studies have revealed a direction-of-comparison effect such that the valence of the unique (unmatched) features of the second option disproportionately influenced people's preferences. Asking participants in the present studies to list reasons about options before rating them reduced direction-of-comparison effects. Content analysis of the reasons indicated that analyzing reasons may have caused participants to use more of the features in their evaluations of the options and to consider unique features of both options, rather than disproportionately focusing on unique features of just the second option. The studies suggest a context in which analyzing reasons may improve judgments.

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