Framing of comparisons in research and practice

Applied & Preventive Psychology 7: t 61-180 (1998). Cambridge University Press. Printed in the USA. Copyright © i998 AAAPP 0962-1849/98 $9.50

Framing of comparisons in research and practice

DENISE R. BEIKE

University of Arkansas

STEVEN J. SHERMAN

Indiana University

Abstract

We discuss important ways in which the framing of a question or a decision can have significant effects on responses. Several areas of research and theory that indicate the scope and importance of these effects are presented. The major discussion, however, is limited to how responses to comparative judgments are constrained by the order or sequence in which the direction of comparison occurs. Direction of comparison is first discussed with respect to similarity judgments, in which a model taking direction of comparison into account is used to explain both degrees of perceived similarity and asymmetries in judgment. A feature-matching model of comparison is then developed and is used to analyze preference judgments, judgments of change, and self-relevant judgments involving comparisons of the self with other people, with counterfactual alternatives to reality, and with the self at a different point in time. This model is employed to account for predecisional conflict and difficulty, the preferences that one makes, and the degree of satisfaction or regret that one feels subsequent to making a comparison. Finally, the potential for applying this framework to areas of consumer behavior, political decision making, and psychotherapy is explored. Techniques for taking advantage of direction of comparison effects as well as methods for eliminating the biases associated with these effects are discussed.

Key words" Direction of comparison, Feature-matching, Framing, Postchoice satisfaction, Preference judgments, Similarity

Psychologists often find it essential to their work to ask

people for their evaluations of items and their responses to bel ief and attitude questions. We may use different meth- odologies, depending on our goals and the settings in which we work. Sometimes responses are collected in a laboratory setting, as when an attitude researcher examines the effectiveness of her or his persuasion manipulation. Sometimes responses are collected in a real-world setting, as when a marketing researcher examines the effectiveness of a recent advertising campaign. Whether the concerns of the researcher are basic or applied, responses may be collected anonymously (e.g., a mail survey) or face-to-face (e.g., in the context of psychotherapy). Respondents may be asked to give their responses orally, in writing, or by marking a scale. Although all of these questioning differences affect judgments in some manner, we will look at a different and more subtle contextual issue that cuts across differences in settings or response type. This issue is how a question or judgment is framed, meaning the phrasing and presentation

Send correspondence and reprint requests to: Denise R. Beike, Depart- ment of Psychology, University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, AR 72701. E-mail: [email protected]

of information in the question. Virtually any question or i tem can be framed in a way that is positive or negative, vague or specific, neutral or loaded. Similarly, items can be framed in different ways so that attention is focused on different aspects of the information presented or asked for. Framing may be accomplished by linguistic and contextual cues so subtle that they may escape the questioner 's notice as well as the respondent 's . But even very small changes in framing can have relatively large and often undesired effects on responses. Therefore, it is essential to any

information-gathering enterprise to consider framing.

161

A Catalogue of Framing Effects

The goal of this article is to provide an in-depth discussion of the framing of comparative questions in particular, rather than a broad overview of framing effects in general. We would first like to mention a number of framing effects however, so as to provide the reader with a sense of the breadth and subtlety of this phenomenon. Differences in the order in which items are presented, the context in which an item appears, the language used to express the question, the

162 Beike and Sherman

type of response scale used, and the manner in which respondents are asked to consider the question all result in large effects on responses.

Primacy effects in judgments demonstrate how changes in the presentation order of identical information can dra- matically alter responses. For example, a person described as intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious is rated far more positively than a person described as envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent (Asch, 1946). Moreover, first impressions in a real interpersonal context dominate the ultimate perceptions of a target person (Park, 1986). Similarly, the mere order in which individual questions in a survey are presented affects preferences and attitudes because people tend to use the implications of a previous judgment to make a later judgment (Schwarz, Hippler, & Noelle-Neumann, 1992). For example, in one study the idea of political scandals was raised at the beginning of a survey given to respondents, who were then asked to evaluate the trustworthiness of some specific politicians (who were not involved in scan- dais) as well as to evaluate the trustworthiness of politicians in general. Those who evaluated politicians in general prior to evaluating specific politicians said that politicians in general were not trustworthy, and, consequently, the three specific politicians were also not trustworthy. Those who evaluated the three specific politicians prior to evaluating politicians in general said that the three specific politicians were moderately trustworthy, and, consequently, that politicians in general were moderately trustworthy (Schwarz & Bless, 1992). The implications of the first judgment thus carried over onto the next; that is, the second response was determined to a large extent by the response to the first question.

Relatedly, the context surrounding the information of interest is also a critical part of the framing. For instance, people asked to rate the importance of recycling rated it as highly important when it was presented in the context of unimportant issues such as pooper scooper laws and as less important when it was presented in the context of important issues such as global warming (S. J. Sherman, Ahlm, Ber- man, & Lynn, 1978). Similar to framing an item as important or unimportant is framing an item as a loss (negative) or a gain (positive), which affects value and preference judgments (Kahneman, 1992). The same item or option can be seen as positive compared to one standard and negative compared to a different standard, just as the proverbial half glass of water may be seen as half empty or half full. In a situation involving gains and losses (e.g., lives saved and lives lost), the framing of the problem can focus a decision maker on the positive outcomes or on the negative outcomes, with subsequent differences in judgments about and attitudes toward the situation (Tversky & Kahneman, 1981). Generally, losses are much more psychologically powerful than gains. A person given an item and then asked for a selling price values the item much more highly than a per-

son shown the item and then asked to give a buying price (Kahneman, Knetsch, & Thaler, 1991). This is because the possibility of losing valued attributes of an already owned product loom larger than the potential gains from buying an item as yet unowned.

Along similar lines, Thaler (1993) has discussed the framing of events in terms of mental accounting. Mental accounting is a system of implicit aggregation rules for transactions and outcomes--what gets psychologically combined with what. Mental accounting decisions involving the category to which an outcome is assigned and whether or not it combines with other events in the category affect the choice of alternatives and the perceived attractiveness of alternatives. For example, when projects within an organization are categorized in separate mental accounts rather than as part of an overall portfolio, there is likely to be an extreme unwillingness to take any risk. This outcome of separate rather than integrated mental accounting framing is referred to as myopic loss aversion by Thaler.

Language can also be used to frame an event or a set of circumstances such that judgments are affected. That is, the specific words, syntax, or grammatical structure of a question can shape the answer, and the specific language used to express a set of facts can shape the inferences and attribu- tions that are made. For example, state verbs (e.g., trust) cause agency to be applied to the sentence object, whereas action verbs (e.g., confide) cause agency to be applied to the sentence subject (Semin & de Poot, 1997). Thus, "John trusted Bill" leads us to see Bill as the important agent, whereas "John confided in Bill" leads to the inference that John is the important agent. In this way, the precise language that is used in a survey question or used by a lawyer to a witness can affect the answer that is given, as well as shape the inferences that are drawn, and can do so in a very subtle and difficult-to-recognize way.

Other types of framing that affect responses involve the way in which the responses are to be recorded. The framing of a response scale has been shown to imply to respondents what type of comparison should be made, which affects judgments. For example, people's preexisting biases and stereotypes about groups of people affect responses only when a response scale is given in objective terms rather than subjective terms. A person might believe that men are smarter than women, but this belief would not show up if this person was asked to rate the average man and then the average woman on a scale labeled "unintelligent" to "intelligent." In this case, people interpret the terms to mean "unintelligent compared to other men (or women)" and "intelligent compared to other men (or women)," and they rate the average man and the average woman the same. But the stereotyped belief would be revealed if this same person was asked to rate the average man and the average woman on a scale labeled "IQ of 50" to "IQ of 200." In this case, the man would be rated as more intelligent than the woman. People cannot interpret the scale endpoints as being differ-

Framing Comparisons 163

ent for men and women, because IQ scores are an "objective" standard common across both men and women (Bier- nat, Manis, & Nelson, 1991; Manis, Nelson, & Shedler, 1988). Ironically, then, more personal bias emerges when a question asks for a response on a scale labeled with more precise and objective endpoints.

Another example of scale framing concerns the phrasing and grouping of possible responses. Small linguistic changes in questions asked of respondents influence their responses, possibly because the phrasing of the question suggests the "appropriate" answer. An experimental demon- stration of this linguistic framing effect was obtained in people who had all viewed the same videotaped car accident. These eyewitnesses to the videotaped accident made quite different estimates of the speed at which the at-fault car was traveling, depending on the framing of the question. Those asked how fast the car was going when it "bumped" into the other car gave a lower speed estimate than those asked how fast the car was going when it "smashed" into the other car (Loftus, Miller, & Burns, 1978; Loftus & Palmer, 1974).

Perhaps it is not surprising that one' s memory of a videotaped event seen only once can be distorted by the phrasing of a question about the event. More compelling yet are situations in which one's report of events that happened to oneself are affected by mere framing. One way to distort responses is to change the structure rather than the words used in a response scale. Respondents tend to choose a response that is near the middle of the scale, regardless of the labeling of scale items and endpoints. Thus, respondents asked to report the frequency with which they experience headaches give different frequency estimates depending on the response options provided. If respondents are provided with the options "1 to 2 times a month," "3 to 4 times a month," "5 to 6 times a month," and "7 or more times a month," this would result in a lower number of reported headaches than if the respondents are provided with the options "1 to 4 times a month," "5 to 9 times a month," "10 to 13 times a month," and "14 or more times a month" (Loftus, 1975).

In decision making in general, people are drawn to options for which they can generate reasons, with these reasons often affected by the framing of the decision itself. For instance, imagine that you are lying in the hot sun on a beach and your friend offers to go to the corner grocery store to buy each of you a cold beer. The friend asks you how much you are willing to pay for the beer and agrees that if the price is that amount or lower she will bring you back a beer (for which you will reimburse her). But she will not go beyond the amount you have authorized her to spend. What dollar amount would you authorize her to spend? Now what if, instead, she said she was going to a nearby hotel bar to buy the same brand of beer? Most people give a higher price if the friend would be going to a hotel bar than a corner store, presumably because they can think of reasons why the

hotel would need to charge a higher price for beer (upkeep, posh surroundings, etc.). Note that in this scenario, however, both the beer and the atmosphere in which it will be drunk are the same-- the reasons for the high hotel bar price are taken into account, even though they do not matter (Shafir, Simonson, & Tversky, 1993; Simonson, 1989). Thus, the framing of the information provides a set of reasons that may or may not be relevant for the decision at hand.

A particularly interesting aspect of framing concerns whether the target response is given directly or whether this response follows other kinds of responses or judgments, which in some way alter the target response. Three kinds of prior judgments have been investigated that have important and interesting effects on subsequent judgments. First, there are many studies that have investigated the effects of imagining or explaining a hypothetical future event on subsequent judgments of the likelihood of that event and subsequent behaviors as well (see Koehler, 1991, for a review). In general, the act of imagining or explaining some possible future event makes it appear more likely that that event will actually occur. For example, subjects in one study read detailed information about an upcoming game between two football teams. Some subjects were asked to imagine and explain a victory by one of the teams, whereas the other subjects were asked to imagine and explain a victory by the other team. All subjects then made predictions about how the game would actually turn out. Whichever side had been explained by subjects became subjectively more likely to win (S. J. Sherman, Zehner, Johnson, & Hirt, 1983).

These kinds of effects of earlier judgments and explanations not only affect perceptions of the likelihood of future events but can actually alter subsequent behaviors as well. S. J. Sherman, Skov, Hervitz, and Stock (1981) had subjects explain their own hypothetical success or failure on an upcoming anagram task. Such explanations affected expectations of performance in the predicted way. That is, subjects who had explained success expected to do better on the upcoming task than did those who explained failure. Inter- estingly, actual subsequent behavior on the anagram task was consistent with these expectations, with subjects who had explained hypothetical success greatly outperforming those subjects who had explained hypothetical failures. Similarly, R. T. Sherman and Anderson (1987) employed such an explanation task to decrease the high dropout rate among clients at a mental health center. Those clients who at the beginning of therapy imagined and explained why they stuck with the therapy for at least four sessions had a significantly lower dropout rate than did subjects who simply read about the importance of staying with the therapy.

A second kind of prejudgment response that affects subsequent judgments and behaviors involves the prediction of some hypothetical future response. For example, S. J. Sher- man (1980) asked subjects to predict how they would respond to a telephone call that asked them to offer their time


to help collect money for a charity. About 40% of the subjects predicted that they would agree to such a request. This was a gross misprediction, as only 2% of subjects who had made no prior prediction actually agreed to such a request when called by a charitable organization. Interestingly, the errors of prediction were self-erasing in that, once subjects had "mispredicted" that they would agree to work for a charitable organization if called, they actually did agree to such requests to offer their time to a charity (about 37% agreed) when called at a later time and in a different context by a charitable organization. Similar effects of prior predictions were demonstrated by Greenwald and his colleagues (Greenwald, Carnot, Beach, & Young, 1987), who showed that people greatly overpredict whether they will vote in an upcoming election (compared to the actual voting rate). The effect of this "misprediction" is to greatly increase the percentage of people who actually do vote, however. Once again, responses given directly differ greatly from responses that are given after a task that involves making prior relevant judgments. Thus, the effect of making such predictions prior to the target behavior is to greatly increase the likelihood of whatever behavior is predicted. Such a technique obviously has the potential for increasing socially desirable behaviors such as giving to charity or voting, because it is precisely these kinds of socially desirable behaviors that are overpredicted.

In a third and related kind of research, Wilson and his colleagues (see Wilson, Dunn, Kraft, & Lisle, 1989, for a review) ask subjects to give reasons for their attitudes before divulging these attitudes. Rather than such introspection leading to more reliable attitude judgments, the effects of introspection are often to bring about attitudinal responses that do not reflect true underlying attitudes. This is because people generally do not have access to some of the reasons underlying their attitudes. When forced to intro- spect, they come up with plausible, but wrong reasons, and those reasons imply an attitude different from their actual feelings. This in turn leads to a subsequent decrease in attitude-behavior consistency and to less satisfaction with choices that are made subsequent to introspection. For example, Wilson et al. (1993) gave subjects a choice of art posters to take home as a gift. Some subjects made the choice without having to think about it. Other subjects first introspected about their reasons for their choice prior to selecting one of the posters. The type of poster chosen by the two groups differed. More important, when contacted 3 weeks later, subjects who had introspected prior to their choice were less satisfied with their poster. Their real attitudes had returned, and thus the chosen poster was not so attractive.

Verbalizing and introspecting about responses prior to giving them has also been shown to interfere with other subsequent judgments. For example, the ability to identify a color that was previously seen is interfered with by verbalization, and even the ability to pick out a criminal from a

lineup is diminished by verbalizing about the criminal's features prior to the lineup (Schooler & Engstler-Schooler, 1990). Whenever verbalization or introspection precedes a response that is not essentially verbal in nature, that response is interfered with.

Framing of Comparative Judgments

These above examples and a large number of other phenom- ena could be discussed as issues of framing. We hope that we have given the reader a taste of the numerous complica- tions and the tantalizing conclusions about human nature and human judgment processes that emerge from this literature. Given limited space, however, we will confine our main discussion of framing to one specific issue, that of comparative judgments, and in particular to the issue of direction of comparison in comparative judgments. Ques- tions asking for or implying a comparison are common across applications of psychological research. It is seldom that a person, object, or issue is judged in isolation from a consideration of other persons, objects, or issues. Usually social responses are not absolute, but rather they involve a comparison standard and a process by which the comparison is made. For example, researchers and practitioners may be interested in product comparisons, price comparisons, or social comparisons. Moreover, comparisons can be made for different reasons--judgments of the similarity of items, judgments to express a preference among items, or evaluations of change of a person or object over two or more points in time.

We shall focus primarily on the order or sequence in which two items are compared. We have done a good deal of thinking and research on direction of comparison that leads us to believe that the framing of comparative questions is both important (in terms of size of effect) and perva- sive (in terms of frequency with which the issue will arise in practice). An example of differences that are perceived with regard to the direction of comparative judgments may help to demonstrate the importance of the issue we will be ad- dressing. One of us (DRB), on meeting the mother of a friend for the first time, made a nonchalant comment about the family resemblance between the two: "I can tell you're Eve's mother- -you look like her." The mother, indignant, uttered the following correction: '7 don't look like her; she looks like me!" The two statements are logically equivalent; both imply that mother and daughter have various physical features in common. The connotations of the two different directions of comparison implied by the two statements were clearly different to the mother, however, who was neither a psychologist nor a student of judgment processes. Not only were the connotations different, but one ("She looks like me") was apparently so preferable to the other that she was inspired to correct the form of what was merely a banal comment. The psychological difference between these two statements, and the reason the mother preferred


the latter framing will be the topic of the next section of this article. In the remainder of the article, we shall discuss several types of comparative judgments affected by framing, and we shall review the relevant research where appropriate.

We will also apply each issue to areas of practice and social relevance. Finally, we will provide guidelines for dealing with comparison-framing effects. In these guidelines, we distinguish between instances in which framing effects can be used to the questioner's advantage and instances in which framing simply adds to error variance and therefore reduces the reliability and validity of responses. For example, a market researcher trying to sell more of a product, a therapist trying to elicit a positive response from a client, or a charity attempting to convince more people to donate time or money might use a knowledge of framing effects on comparative judgments to help achieve an in- tended goal. On the other hand, a survey researcher trying to obtain reliable responses or a therapist trying to accurately assess the level of a client's problem might use his or her awareness of such framing effects to avoid errors and biases in his or her assessments.

The potential applications of direction of comparison are sufficiently broad to cover most areas of research and practice--survey research, basic experimental research, advertising, marketing, or psychotherapy. Whether the goal is choosing an appropriate dependent measure, providing a client with insight, or sampling public opinion, the framing of a comparative question should be a concern for anyone asking questions of respondents. We begin with a review of the literature on four types of comparisons: similarity judgments, preference judgments, judgments of change, and self-relevant judgments.

Similarity Judgments Much of the research on comparison has concerned judg-

ments of the similarity of two relatively well-defined items. The process of comparison involved in similarity judgments was most clearly delineated by Tversky (1977) in his contrast model. This model was designed to explain the common finding that judgments of the similarity of two items may result in quite different judgments, depending on the direction of that comparison. Although similarity judgments would logically be symmetric (A is as similar to B as B is to A), in fact it is often the case that the similarity of item A to item B is not equal to the similarity of item B to item A. As an example, Tversky (1977) showed that people perceive North Korea to be more similar to China than China is to North Korea. Like the mother-daughter similarity statement given previously, these two similarity comparisons are logically, but not psychologically, equivalent.

According to Tversky, such asymmetries in similarity judgments resulting from a change in the direction (framing) of the comparison are based on a change in the features that are most likely to be used in making the comparison.

This is based on the assumption that the process of comparison is unidirectional in nature. Similarity is derived not by an overall comparison of all of one's knowledge about the to-be-compared items, but rather by comparing what is known about one item to what is known about another. In the model, the first item or starting point in the comparison is called the subject of comparison, and the item to which the subject is compared is called the referent. A question framed as "How similar is North Korea to China?" uses North Korea as the subject and China as the referent. To make this comparison, people think of the information that they know about North Korea (for example, Communist country, in Asia, language spoken is Korean) and thet~ match this information to what they know about China (for example, Communist country, in Asia, language spoken is Chinese, contains 25% of the world's population, land of Mao Tse-Tung).

The next step is to look for common or shared features; in this case, "Communist country" and "in Asia" are shared features. The similarity judgment is then made by a calcula- tion of the number of shared relative to unique (noncom- mon) features of the subject of the comparison; in this case, North Korea. Because two thirds of the known features about North Korea are shared with China, perceived similarity is high. In comparing China to North Korea, the same shared features will be noted, but the relative number of unique features increases. That is, only two fifths of the known features of China are shared with North Korea, and therefore perceived similarity is lower. The structure of the comparison task is importantly dependent, then, on which item is the subject of the comparison.

This model of the cognitive process of comparison for purposes of similarity judgments implies that the total number of features known about the subject of comparison (the features of which dominate the judgment) will be an important factor in the degree of perceived similarity. Regardless of which item is the subject of comparison and which is the referent, shared features (i.e., features found in both the subject and the referent) will be used in the judgment. The number of shared features employed for any judgment of similarity will thus be constant. The number of unique features will vary depending on which item is the subject of comparison, however. If a great deal is known about the subject relative to the referent (beyond the shared features), then there will be many unique features in the judgment, and little similarity will be perceived. If little is known about the subject of comparison (beyond the shared features), however, there will be few unique features used in the judgment, and the items will be perceived as highly similar. The relative familiarity that a person has with each item is thus important in whether or not asymmetries of similarity judgments will occur. To the extent that the two items differ in familiarity, asymmetries in judgments of similarity will result, depending on which item is the subject of comparison. Returning to our previous example, because


more is known about China than North Korea, China will be perceived as less similar to North Korea than North Korea is to China.

Preferences

Our theoretical discussion thus far has been confined to judgments of similarity, but the role of direction of comparison on judgments of other types has also been investigated. For instance, judgments of preference of one item to another are comparative in nature and are therefore also directional (Houston, Sherman, & Baker, 1989). The features of the subject of comparison constrain the comparison and domi~ nate in judgments of preference just as they do in judgments of similarity, with the difference that it is the desirability of the unique features of the subject of comparison rather than the degree of overlap versus the degree of uniqueness of the features that serves as the basis for the judgment. Thus, for similarity judgments, both shared and unique features play a role. It is the degree of sharedness of features relative to uniqueness of features that determine the degree of perceived similarity. For preference judgments, on the other hand, overlapping or shared features play no role and "cancel out"--logically, features that occur in both items can provide no basis for preference. This conceptual framework led to the development of the feature-matching model, which involves two phases, cancellation plus focus (Houston, Sherman, & Baker, 1991). First, the cancellation process eliminates any features that are common to both options. Then, the focus is on the value of the unique features of the subject of comparison, whereas the unique features of the referent play a very small role. Thus, if the features that are unique to the subject of comparison are mainly positive, the subject will be strongly preferred. If the subject's unique features are primarily negative, the referent will be preferred.

This model makes many interesting and important predictions about all phases of the judgment process-- the predecisional conflict stage, the choice itself, and the postdecision levels of satisfaction and regret. In order to discuss these predictions and the empirical findings of past research, the following examples of a preference task will be used (Table 1).

Choice Processes In Preference Task A, the choice is between two auto-

mobiles that share bad features but have different (and equally positive) good features. In Preference Task B, the choice is between two automobiles that share good features but have different (and equally negative) bad features. What does the feature-matching model predict? For Task A, when automobile 1 is the subject of comparison, the shared negative features cancel, and the focus is on the unique features of automobile 1. Because these unique features of the subject are positive, automobile 1 will be preferred. By the same reasoning, if automobile 2 is the starting point (the subject

Table 1. Preference Tasks

Preference Task A

Automobile 1 Automobile 2

Doesn't need repairs often Good consumer guide rating Stereo Good financing Sun roof Good acceleration Air conditioning Powerful engine Hard to find service Hard to find service Poor warranty Poor warranty Poor mileage Poor mileage High priced High priced

Preference Task B

Automobile 1 Automobile 3

Doesn't need repairs often Doesn't need repairs often Stereo Stereo Sun roof Sun roof Air conditioning Air conditioning Hard to find service Many recalls Poor warranty High insurance Poor mileage Few colors High priced Parts are hard to find

of comparison) in Task A, its unique positive features dominate the judgment, and automobile 2 will be preferred. Thus, when the unique features of the two items involved in a comparative judgment are predominantly positive, the subject of comparison will be preferred. In addition, although the two items are equal in attractiveness (on an absolute basis), there should be a preference reversal depending on which item serves as the subject of comparison.

For Preference Task B, when automobile 1 serves as the subject of comparison, the shared positive features will cancel, and the focus is again on the unique features of automobile 1. In this case, however, these unique features are negative, and thus it is automobile 3, the referent, that will be preferred. On the other hand, when automobile 3 serves as the subject of comparison, its unique negative features will dominate, and this will lead to a preference for automobile 1. Thus, unlike Task A, when the unique features for a preference comparison are predominantly negative, the referent of comparison will be preferred. And, again, the preference will be reversed depending on which item serves as the subject of comparison.

These predictions concerning preference judgments have now been demonstrated in a number of empirical studies (Houston et al., 1989, 1991). These studies have shown that both the evaluative nature of the unique features of the items and the direction of comparison are extremely important in determining the preference. Although it has not yet been demonstrated empirically, the feature-matching model can even identify cases in which an objectively lower quality item will be preferred to a higher quality item. For example,


consider the case in which two items share negative features and have unique positive features. Item x has four reasonably positive features, whereas item y has six reasonably positive features. When evaluated independently, item y gets consistently higher ratings. In a preference task, however, if item x is the subject of comparison, its four unique positive features will dominate the judgment, whereas the six positive features of item y will not enter into the comparison process. Thus, item x, although not as good as item y, may be preferred if a feature-matching process is employed and if the comparison begins with item x.

This kind of comparison process can also make the non- obvious prediction that the same item can be the one chosen and can be the one rejected with respect to another item. Item m has three very good features and three very bad features. Item n has three slightly positive features and three slightly negative features. Overall, independently the two items are objectively equal in total evaluation. Alter- natively, imagine that item m has six positive and six negative features, whereas item n has only three positive and three negative features. Again, on average, the two items are evaluatively equivalent. If a person is asked which item he/she would choose, the focus is on the positive features because choice implies searching for positive reasons to choose, and item m will be chosen (because it has better positive features or more of these positive features). If the person is asked which item he/she would reject, however, the focus is on the negative features because rejection implies searching for negative aspects as a basis for rejection, and item m will be rejected (because it has worse negative features or more of these negative features). Thus, paradox- ically, the very same item can be both chosen and rejected, depending on how the preference task is framed (Shafir, 1993; S. J. Sherman, 1991).

Predecision Processes In addition to predictions about the preference itself, the

feature-matching model also makes predictions about the predecisional phase of preference judgments. Because shared features cancel according to the model, Task A in Table 1 reduces to a choice between the good features of the two items, an approach-approach conflict. Task B, on the other hand, becomes a choice between the bad features of the two items, an avoidance-avoidance conflict. For the approach-approach conflict, the initial focus is on the subject of comparison, with its unique good features. These features attract the decision maker, the choice is psychologically pleasant, and the subject of comparison is quickly chosen for its merits. For the avoidance-avoidance conflict, the initial focus is again on the features of the subject of comparison, this time on its unique bad features. This pushes the decision maker toward the other item. If the focus now shifts to this other item, however, it too has unique negative features, and the decision maker is pushed back toward the original item again. Such a vacillation is

typical of avoidance-avoidance conflicts (Lewin, 1933; Miller, 1944). Finally, one of the items is ultimately chosen through a process of eliminating its competitor on the basis of its unique detriments. This renders the choice difficult and psychologically unpleasant. These predictions were borne out (Houston et al., 1991) in that choices such as those exemplified by Task A (see Table 1) were made quickly and easily, with little vacillation between items. Choices such as those exemplified by Task B, on the other hand, showed great vacillation between the alternatives, and the decisions were made significantly more slowly.

Postdecision Satisfaction Thus, the feature-matching model of preferences can pre-

dict the ease or difficulty of making a choice and can predict which choice is likely to be made. In addition, this model can also make important predictions about the degree of satisfaction or regret that one is likely to feel subsequent to a choice. Consider again the two preference tasks in Table h Imagine someone who chooses automobile 1 in Task A as opposed to someone who chooses automobile 1 in Task B. In both cases, the automobile chosen is exactly the same-- i t has the identical good and bad features. The only difference is the context alternative against which it is chosen. But which decision maker is likely to be more satisfied? As we have seen, in Task A, the choice becomes an approach- approach conflict. It is a choice between "goods," as only the good features serve as a basis of judgment. This leads to a framing of the items as positive. In Task B, on the other hand, the conflict becomes an avoidance-avoidance conflict, as only the negative features serve as a basis for judgment. The frame is thus negative. In a series of studies (Houston & Sherman, 1995), it was shown that both the chosen and the rejected items are evaluated significantly higher when the unique features of these alternatives are positive (as in Task A) than when they are negative (as in Task B). In fact, it was quite common to observe that the item rejected from a context of unique positive features was evaluated more highly than an objectively equivalent item that was chosen from a context of unique negative features. In addition, when faced with a choice among items with shared positive and unique negative features, subjects are more likely to delay the choice and consider a third alternative than when the initial two items share negative and have unique positive features (Dhar & Sherman, Experiment 1, 1996). Similarly (Dhar & Sherman, Experiment 2, 1996), the likelihood of being unhappy with one's choice and switching to a new item that is available later is significantly greater when the choice is made from items with unique negative features (remembering, again, that the objective value of all items is equivalent in the unique positive and the unique negative cases).

Finally, when the choice context is manipulated such that the good features of one item are made to appear relatively unique, whereas the bad features of a second item are made


to appear unique, the former item is chosen (Dhar & Sher- man, Experiment 4, 1996). Similarly, Hodges (1997) examined the role of feature matching in choice and satisfaction level when successive judgments were involved. Subjects read about two apartments with shared positive and unique negative features. They also read about one less positive apartment that had all unique features, both good and bad. Some subjects first saw one of the shared-positive-features apartments along with the all-unique-features apartment. They then saw the other shared-positive-features apartment. In this case, the shared positive features did not cancel, and the shared-features apartments were rated very highly. Oth- er subjects first saw the two shared-positive-features apartments together and then saw the all-unique-features apartment. In this case, the shared positive features canceled, and the all-unique-features apartment was rated relatively highly. Thus, by manipulating the context in which options are seen, it is possible to change evaluations of those options.

The feature-matching model also predicts changes over time in one's satisfaction with a choice, depending on which item is salient in the environment at a later time. Imagine deciding to buy a Honda rather than a Toyota when the two cars share bad features but have unique good features. After the purchase, whenever the Honda is seen in the driveway, its unique good features will be salient, and one will be very pleased with the choice. When one happens to see a Toyota, however, the unique positive feature of the rejected car will become salient, and feelings of regret will arise. Thus, when positive features are unique in the choice alternatives, subsequent focus on the chosen item will increase satisfaction, whereas subsequent focus on the rejected item will increase regret. Now imagine deciding to buy a Honda rather than a Toyota when the two cars share positive features but have unique negative features. After the purchase, whenever the Honda (the chosen car) is in view, its unique bad features will become salient, and one will regret the purchase. When one sees a Toyota on the road, however, its unique bad features will become salient, and the purchaser of the Honda will feel glad to have chosen the Honda rather than the Toyota. Thus, when negative features are unique in the chosen alternatives, subsequent focus on the chosen item will increase regret, whereas subsequent focus on the rejected item will increase satisfaction. This predicted interaction between the value of the unique features and the focus subsequent to the choice was demonstrated empirically by Houston et al. (1991).

In short, the feature-matching model makes many nonob- vious and important predictions about the way in which preferences are made, even when the items involved in the choice are evaluatively equivalent on an objective basis. The key factors in the predictions are the degree to which the unique features of the items are predominantly negative or predominantly positive and whether the comparison is framed as an x to y or a y to x comparison. The model predicts the difficulty of making a preference judgment, it

predicts which of the items will be chosen, it predicts preference reversals that depend on the framing of the comparison, it predicts general satisfaction or regret with the decision as well as the absolute levels of evaluation of the chosen and rejected items, and it predicts changes in postdecision satisfaction and regret as a function of the salience of items and their features.

This is not to say that feature matching is the only process employed when choices or preferences must be made. There are a number of other contemporary models of choice that have empirical support and no doubt are applicable in many situations. For example, rather than a comparison of a sub- set of features, which is the assumption of the feature- matching model, the choice alternatives could be separately and globally evaluated, and these global evaluations could then be compared (Sanbonmatsu, Kardes, & Gibson, 1991). Conditions that foster consideration of the choice alternatives in a global or holistic manner (e.g., importance or self- relevance of the decision) should lead to choices and evaluations that are not predictable from the feature-matching model.

Another model of choice is elimination by aspects (Tver- sky, 1972). According to this model, features are ordered according to their importance for the decision. Items that do not have the most important feature are eliminated, and this process is followed (for each successively important feature) until only one item remains. This kind of process should be more useful when there are a large number of candidate items, whereas the feature-matching approach would be more effective with only two candidates. In any case, different models of choice highlight different aspects of the items under consideration, and all approaches are likely to be applicable under different but specifiable conditions.

Change

In order to respond successfully to their complex and constantly varying environment, people must make accurate assessments of change. Physicians and patients must be alert to health problems that represent a noticeable change from recent functioning; politicians must notice when the attitudes of the voting public have changed and when new issues have suddenly become the key issues for the next election; teachers must judge whether the performance of their students has changed and whether their levels of understanding and competence have increased; and therapists must assess whether clients are improving and becoming happier and more functional or whether they are backsliding and perhaps are in need of a different therapy approach. Detecting changes over time can be difficult because of the operation of biasing factors such as prior expectations or motivations and because of cognitive limitations. Ross and Conway (1986) and Hirt (1990) have discussed these kinds of factors in an effort to arrive at an understanding of people's difficulty in knowing when things, and especially when people, have changed.


From our point of view, it is important to realize that these judgments of change, like the other kinds of judgments that we have already discussed, are comparative in nature. That is, they involve a matching of one stimulus with another stimulus. In this case, however, the focus is on the comparison of an object or a person at one point in time with that same object or person at a different point in time. By comparing the attributes or features of the target object across time, some judgment of whether the object has changed or not and how significant this change is can be made.

The feature-matching model, which was introduced as a model for making judgments of preference, can also be fruitfully applied to judgments of change. In deciding whether a client has changed from last year to this year, one must compare the behaviors, traits, and emotions that were exhibited a year ago with the behaviors, traits, and emotions that are exhibited at the present time. In other words, one must match features at one time with features at a different time. And, as with preference judgments, the direction of comparison is a key factor for determining judgments of change or stability. Do we use the client's attributes from a year ago as the subject of comparison and map these features onto the client as she or he is now, or do we start our comparison with the current behaviors and attributes and go backward in time to map them onto the client of a year ago?

Agostinelli, Sherman, Fazio, and Hearst (1986) examined the ability of subjects to recognize changes in everyday objects. These changes consisted either of the addition of features or the deletion of features. Moreover, the direction of comparison was manipulated so that either the original object or the revised object at a later time was used as the subject (the starting po in t )o f the comparison. When the object at the later time was the subject of comparison, additions were detected and identified much better than were deletions. This is because the features of the later stimulus object were focused on and used for comparison purposes. Any new features (or any unchanged features) would be available for use. A deleted feature would not be present in the subject of comparison, however, but is present only in the referent (the original object). It would thus not be available for use, and it would be difficult to detect a change involving such a deleted feature. We cannot easily notice the absence of a feature (Newman, Wolff, & Hearst, 1980). On the other hand, when the earlier stimulus was used as the subject of comparison, its features were salient and were available for comparison purposes. Thus, in this case, deletions were easier to detect, whereas additions (features present only in the later stimulus, now the referent) were not well noted.

This approach explains some counterintuitive findings about the perception of change. Only when the change involves features present in the subject of comparison will any change be easily detected. This is why, for example, it is easy to notice when someone has grown a beard, but diffi-

cult to detect when a beard has been shaved off. This is because the current face is the subject of comparison and contains the features that are used for comparison purposes. Thus, men who shave their beards are often faced with comments such as "You've lost weight" or "You look pale; have you been sick?" or "When did you get a haircut?" tn fact, when a beard is shaved but the moustache is left, friends often ask, "When did you grow the moustache?" The accurate detection of change is determined by both the type of change involved and the direction of comparison used for matching the objects for the purpose of the judgment of change.

Self-Relevant Judgments Many of the kinds of comparisons that we have been

discussing, including directional comparisons (e.g., similarity, change), are often applied to the self. Because of the unique importance of the self as an object of judgment and because of the operation of special motivations involving self-perception, it is worth considering comparative judgments that entail the self as a separate topic. In general, there are three kinds of comparisons that are important when it comes to judgments and evaluations of the self. These comparisons and these judgments all play a critical role in self-esteem and in the content of the self-concept.

Social Comparison Comparison of oneself and another person, or social com-

parison, is assumed to provide information about one's abilities (Festinger, 1954) as well as influencing self-evaluation (Tesser, 1988). In situations of uncertainty in particular, individuals compare themselves with relevant others in order to ascertain their standing with respect to the other. If one doubts one's abilities as a tennis player, one may compare oneself to another person to judge whether the self is better or worse than the other. Of course, and most interestingly for the theory, the other person who is chosen (the comparison other) will be crucial in determining the outcome of this judgment. One's tennis skills compared to Andre Agassi are likely to appear poor, but one's tennis skills compared to an untalented player in the next court are likely to appear very good.

Two types of social comparison have been identified based on this notion of who is chosen as the comparison other. In upward comparison, the comparison other has abilities or characteristics superior to one's own. In downward comparison, the comparison other has abilities or characteristics inferior to one's own. The two comparison types are chosen in different circumstances to accomplish different goals. Upward comparison tends to be engaged in when a person wishes to assess how well he or she is performing (Nosanchuk & Erikson, 1985). For instance, if the tennis player in our example wants to know how good a player he really is, he may compare himself to Andre Agassi, who provides a benchmark for excellent performance. Compar-


ing the self to an unskilled player does not provide the same degree of information. Downward comparison, on the other hand, tends to be engaged in when people wish to improve their own subjective well-being (Gibbons & Gerrard, 1991). For instance, if the tennis player in our example has just suffered a humiliating loss, he may compare himself to the untalented player in the next court in order to console himself: "At least I 'm not as bad as that guy!"

Each type of comparison therefore has its own distinct advantage. Upward comparisons provide information, and downward comparisons boost self-evaluation. But social comparisons of either type are a double-edged sword, because along with the advantages of each type of social comparison come characteristic drawbacks. The drawback of upward comparison is that it usually results in a self- evaluation deflation. If the tennis player finds he or she is not as good as Agassi, his or her self-esteem will suffer a temporary setback (Morse & Gergen, 1970). The cost of downward comparison is that it often renders the person who makes the comparison feel guilty or uncomfortable and may even result in derogation of the comparison other (Wills, 1981). If the tennis player sees that he or she is better than the next player, he or she may feel bad for looking down on that person.

This discussion implies that, after social comparison, perceptions of the self will follow the "better" or "worse" outcome of the comparison. Comparing oneself to Agassi will depress self-esteem, because one's own skills are worse than his, but comparing oneself to the untalented player will inflate self-esteem, because one's own skills are better than that player's. In both cases, self-esteem is pulled away from the evaluation of the comparison other (Morse & Gergen, 1970). Under some circumstances, however, self-esteem will be pulled toward the evaluation of the comparison other instead of away from it. That is, Agassi's impressive performance may provide a boost to self-esteem, and the pitiful performance of the untalented player will deflate self- esteem. This opposite direction of effect tends to occur when the comparison other is a person with whom one shares fate. For example, if one's doubles partner per- forms well, one's own self-esteem will increase (Pelham & Wachsmuth, 1995). Another situation that compels this opposite direction of effect is when the comparison other is seen as a representation of what one might achieve, rather than as a comparison standard per se (Kunda, 1996). If the tennis player is young and still learning, with his entire career ahead of him, comparing himself to Agassi may make the young player feel good about himself and the possibilities that he may yet achieve.

Another framing effect found to mediate whether self- esteem is inflated or deflated by upward and downward comparison is the framing of the comparison in terms of directionality. Most research on upward and downward comparison has not, however, given consideration to the directional framing of the comparative question. That is,

whether the self is compared to the other person or the other person is compared to the self is not specified, nor is it a critical part of extant theories of social comparison. But as our discussion of comparison direction has shown, the focus of the respondent's attention changes as the direction of comparison changes. Therefore, the respondent focuses more on the self when the self is the subject of the comparison and more on the comparison other when the other is the subject of the comparison. This suggests that altering the direction of social comparison should result in different implications for self-judgments and for self-esteem.

In support of this contention, respondents in a study by Beike and Rains (1996) who were asked to compare another person to the self showed the standard self-esteem effect of the social comparison, with self-evaluation moving away from evaluation of the comparison other. Using the other as the subject of the comparison resulted in deflated self- esteem after upward comparison and inflated self-esteem after downward comparison. On the other hand, respondents who were asked to compare the self to another person showed the reverse effects of social comparison, with self- evaluation moving toward evaluation of the comparison other. Using the self as the subject of the comparison resulted in inflated self-esteem after upward comparison and deflated self-esteem after downward comparison. This reversal in self-esteem effects may have resulted from an increase in feelings of relatedness or association with the comparison other when the self was the subject of comparison, and it is in comparing the self with closely associated others that this reversed effect often occurs (Pelham & Wach- smuth, 1995). In line with this reasoning are the results frotu participants' own descriptions of themselves. At the end of the Beike and Rains study, participants were asked to describe themselves by listing any features or descriptors they chose. Those participants who had made a social comparison using the self (rather than the other) as the subject of comparison were more likely to list the same features as descriptors of the self that had been used to describe the comparison other. The framing of the comparative question appears to have altered the perception of the self and the relationship of the comparison other to the self. In short, when the direction of comparison was reversed, the self- esteem effects also reversed, making knowledge of the directionality of social comparison essential to predicting the effect of that comparison on self-evaluation.

Social comparison also ties back to our discussion of similarity in several important ways. First, an important factor that determines whether someone is likely to compare the self with another person is the perceived similarity of the other and the self. We find comparisons most informative when they involve others whom we see as similar to us (Festinger, 1954; Gilbert, Giesler, & Morris, 1995). But perceived similarity is itself a function of the direction of the social comparison. Studies investigating similarity asymmetries have found that, when the self is used as the


subject of the social comparison, perceived similarity is lower than when the other is used as the subject. For example, students see "the typical jock" as being more similar to the self when the typical jock, rather than the self, is used as the subject of comparison. Tversky's (1977) model would explain this result in terms of differences in knowledge or familiarity. The number of unique features of "the typical jock" (with respect to the self) is small relative to the number of unique features of the self (with respect to "the typical jock"). Therefore, when "the typical jock" is the subject, perceived similarity is higher (Holyoak & Gordon, 1983; Srull & Gaelick, 1983). In the same way, the self is seen as less similar to one's friend or mother when the self, as opposed to the friend or mother, is the starting point of the comparison.

This finding itself is consistent with the model of similarity judgments that we outlined, but it is uniquely interesting when applied to social comparison for two reasons. First, theorists have suggested that these similarity asymmetries indicate that the self is used as a habitual point of reference or comparison standard in social judgment (Holyoak & Gordon, 1983; Karylowski, 1990; but cf. Cat- rambone, Beike, & Niedenthal, 1996). In other words, we always perceive and evaluate others by reference to the self, suggesting that it is important to know how people think of the self in order to understand how they will perceive others. Second, as mentioned earlier, perceived similarity mod- erates the importance people place on social comparison. The more similar the comparison other, the more relevant the comparison is judged to be. Therefore, questioning techniques that employ social comparison of any type will reveal smaller effects if the self is used as the subject of the comparison. We will return to this issue later.

Counterfactual Comparison In addition to using other individuals for purposes of

comparative judgments, a second standard of comparison involves imagined worlds that are different from the world as it is. These imagined worlds are called counterfactuals, and they are extremely important in judgments of current circumstances (Kahneman & Miller, 1986). Counterfactuals bring about the realization that our current situation was not inevitable and that things could easily have been different. Such a realization can have significant cognitive, affective, and behavioral consequences.

In general, as with social comparisons, there are two types of counterfactuals. Downward counterfactuals are alternatives that change reality to a worse one. For example, consider an automobile accident where there is $5,000 worth of dam- age, and the driver suffers a broken leg. The following would represent a downward counterfactual to this situation: "If I hadn't fastened my seat belt 5 minutes before the accident, I would have been killed." This framing makes current reality appear not so bad by contrast and allows one to regulate the negative affect that might usually accompany a serious and

costly automobile accident. Such affect regulation is the major function of downward counterfactuals.

Upward counterfactuals are alternatives that change reality into a better world. Again considering the automobile accident, an upward counterfactual would be: "If only I had come to a complete stop at the stop sign, the accident would have been avoided. I would be $5,000 richer and not have a broken leg." Such upward counterfactuals clearly have the potential for worsening one's affective experience. With this framing, current reality seems terrible in comparison to what could have been. On the other hand, if life could have been better given the imagined mutations, by extension, life will be better if such changes are made in the future. Thus, if one stops at stops signs and drives more carefully in the future, accidents will be avoided. This not only makes one more optimistic about the future, but it actually prepares one to deal better with that future. This preparation for the future is the major function of upward counterfactuals.

The general functions of counterfactual generation have been identified in a number of recent studies (Markman, Gavanski, Sherman, & McMullen, 1993, 1995; Roese, 1994). These studies make it clear that counterfactuals serve an important case for contrasting comparisons, and that different framings of the same reality are achieved through the generation of different counterfactuals. Importantly, these different framings lead to very different affective and judg- mental consequences. Thus, thoughts and feelings about our current situation are determined not only by the value of and the facts of that real situation, but also by the framing of reality in terms of outcomes that did not occur, but might have occurred, if only certain antecedent conditions had been slightly different.

The Self Across Time Thus far in our treatment of self-relevant comparisons we

have discussed the ways in which the self can be involved in comparisons with other people and other possibilities. Two themes are emerging. First, the appraisal of the other entity is an important factor in determining the effect of that comparison (i.e., excellent tennis player versus poor tennis player; a more serious accident than occurred versus no accident at all). Second, the direction of comparison is another important factor (i.e., whether the self or the other person or alternative is the subject of the comparison). The changes in focus of attention and framing that occur under different directions of comparison play an important role in the outcome that will result. If the subject of the comparison is the self, different processes may be engaged, as compared to cases in which the subject is another person.

We will now address a third category of self-relevant comparative judgments that involve only the self, that is, comparing one "self" to another "self." Some social psychological theories of self-regulation and self-evaluation assume that the self is sometimes compared to other "selves." In self-discrepancy theory, for example, these


other selves are called self-guides, which are representations of who one ought to be or wants to be (Higgins, 1987). When the actual self and a self-guide are compared, feelings of depression or anxiety often result as the ways in which one is "missing the mark" become clear (Strauman & Hig- gins, 1988). In the theory of possible selves, these other selves are representations of our goals, wishes, and fears for the self (Markus & Nurius, 1986). Comparison of the current, actual self to possible selves is assumed to occur peri- odically. In this comparison, feelings of anxiety result when a feared possible self is considered, and feelings of happi- ness result when a hoped-for possible self is considered. These feelings motivate behaviors away from or toward this possible self.

As in the research on social comparison and counterfactual comparison, .the main focus of research and theory in self-discrepancy and the theory of possible selves has been on the evaluative content of the actual self and the possible self (or self-guides) and o n when such comparisons are engaged. We believe that the process of comparison plays a critical role in the comparison outcome as well, but research on the process of self-to-self comparisons is lacking. The effect of the framing of a comparative question has been investigated only in one particular case of self-to-self comparisons: that of comparing the self at one point in time to the self as remembered or imagined at another point in time. This type of judgment is often undertaken in an effort to judge the degree of change in the self over time (Piolat, 1988). As we discussed earlier in our section on judgments of change, the framing of the comparative judgment will be an important factor in how much change is perceived.

In fact, perceived similarity judgments of oneself now to oneself at a different point in time reveal the direction of comparison asymmetries comparable to those found in other types of comparisons. Judgments of the Similarity of and the differences in the past self, the present self, and the future self have been investigated, varying which temporal self is the subject of comparison. In one study, when respondents judged similarity, no differences were found based on which temporal self was used as the subject of the comparison. When respondents judged the degree of difference, however, which self was used as the subject did have an effect. Specifically, the past and present selves were seen as more different when the present self was the subject, and the present and future selves were also seen as more different when the present self was the subject (Gruenfeld, 1988). These findings are consistent with Tversky's (1977) formu- lation. The present self should be the most well-known and therefore will share few features with the past and the future selves (compared to the relative number of shared features of the past and the future with the present self). When the present self is the subject, then, its relatively many unique features will suggest a high degree of difference (low similarity) from either the past or future self.

Another study produced findings that contradict these, however. Respondents' perceptions of the similarity of the past and present selves were unaffected by direction of comparison. Respondents' perceptions of the similarity of the present and future selves were affected, however. They tended to see the present self and the future self as more similar when the present self was the subject of the comparison (Piolat, 1988). This finding is in direct opposition to what might be expected from Tversky's contrast model of similarity. The present self is more familiar than the future self, so when the present self acts as the subject of the comparison, its many unique features should decrease rather than increase the perception of similarity. Piolat (1988) suggests that the (unknown) future self is interpreted in light of the (well-understood) present self when the future self is the subject, thus leading to a perception of more overlap between the present and future selves. When the present self is the subject, it is familiar enough to stand on its own as a starting point for the comparison. This analysis suggests that Tversky's model may not apply to similarity judgments in which one of the items is extremely unfamiliar. Alter- natively, Tversky's model may not operate as previously specified when the self is involved in the comparison. There may be an overwhelming tendency to use the present self as the referent. These findings are intriguing, but because they conflict with Tversky's model and Gruenfeld's (1988) findings, replication and extension are warranted before any conclusions about the role of extremely unfamiliar items can be drawn.

As in social comparison, perceived similarity is not the only variable affected by direction of self-comparison; subjective well-being is affected as well. When the past self and present self are compared, features common to both "myself now" and "myself then" do not cancel out entirely, but they are less salient to the respondent than differences or changes across time. Consider the aging process for anecdotal evidence of the idea that what is salient to people about the self are the changes that have occurred rather than the things that have stayed the same. A few gray hairs are more salient than are the multitude of hairs that continue to grow in the same color (at least until the relative number of gray hairs exceeds the other color). This is particularly true for younger people, for whom most changes are welcomed and even exagger- ated because they are seen as evidence of maturation. For example, young respondents whose political views have changed from conservative to liberal or vice versa consider the current political views to be better than the former ones, and even culturally frowned-on behaviors such as drug taking are seen as positive if they represent changes from the past (Beike, 1996).

In a comparison of the past and present selves, aspects of the self that have remained constant therefore provide only a background against, which aspects of the self that have changed are salient. As in preference judgments, then, when the past and present selves are compared, the emphasis is on


the evaluative nature of the unique features of the self at each point in time rather than on the number of shared and unique features. For most young adults, the past self is seen as evaluatively more negative than the present self (Ryff, 1991). When the past self is the subject of the comparison, primarily negative features will be the focus of attention, and when the present self is the subject, primarily positive features will be the focus of attention. This suggests that feelings about the self and one's life should be more positive when the present self is the subject. Among most young- adult participants, perceived well-being is higher when the present rather than the past self is the subject of the comparison (Beike, 1996; Beike & Niedenthal, in press). In short, when evaluation of change in the self over time is integral in a question given to a respondent, whether similarity or well- being is the variable of interest, the framing of the comparison is a critical component that must be ascertained before responses can be interpreted or predicted.

Determinants of Comparative Question Framing We have now explained how judgments of similarity,

preference, change, and perception of the self are affected by the framing of the comparative question, specifically with regard to the direction of the comparison. We hope we have made a convincing case for the importance of this type of framing. We have not specifically addressed the issue of how the directional framing of a comparison is determined, however. We will tackle this by discussing three ways to determine direction of comparison, two of which can be used to impose whichever direction one chooses and the third of which simply allows one to infer which direction is likely to be used. The first method for imposing direction of comparison is to use linguistic framing. The simple phrasing of a comparative question can be used to frame for the respondent which item is to be used as the subject and which as the referent. For example, consider the statement "Please compare the Toshiba VCR to the Magnavox VCR, and judge how similar the Toshiba is to the Magnavox." In this statement, the Toshiba will be the subject, and its features will dominate the judgment (Tversky, 1977).

The second method for imposing direction of comparison is to use presentation order. The order in which items are presented also frames for the respondent which item is to be used as the subject and which is to be the referent. Consider this statement: "Here is some information about the Toshiba VCR . . . . Now here is some information about the Magna- vox VCR. Take a moment to compare them and decide which you prefer." In this statement, the Magnavox will be the subject, and its features wiIl dominate the judgment. This occurs because the information about both items is being held in memory, and the information about the most recent item is the most salient and accessible because of its recent presentation (Houston et al., 1989). In addition, preferences are determined by evaluative rather than descriptive features, and evaluation is a relative process so that eompar-

ison cannot be engaged until the features of both items are known. Thus, the features of the second object are the natural starting point for evaluative comparisons. We should note that this second method of imposing direction of comparison has been successfully applied only to preference judgments (Houston et al., 1989) and to self-evaluative judgments (Beike, 1996); it does not seem to have the same framing effect for judgments of similarity (Catrambone et al., 1996),

The third way to determine direction of comparison is to ascertain people's natural preference for one direction of comparison over the other. Preferred comparison direction cannot be manipulated, but we can infer which direction of comparison is most likely to be engaged by a given question. For example, some theorists have argued that people prefer to use a comparison rather than the self as the subject of a social comparison (Holyoak & Gordon, 1983; Ka-- rylowski, 1990), citing research that shows directional asymmetries in similarity judgments. That is, the fact that others are judged more similar to the self than the self is to others has been viewed as evidence of a tendency or prefer-- ence for using ~the other as subject. Although the conclusion may be sound, the logic used to reach that conclusion is actually flawed; asymmetries do not reveal what people prefer to do, they simply reveal what they do when direction of comparison is constrained.

The appropriate methodology for determining which direction of comparison people prefer is to compare their judgments in an unconstrained situation to situations in which direction of comparison is constrained. For instance, the sentence "How similar is the typical preppie to you?" constrains the direction of comparison such that the other- person concept will be used as the subject. But the sentence "How similar are the following people in general?" followed by the terms "the typical preppie" and "you" listed beneath it allows the respondent to choose the direction of comparison that she or he prefers.

This methodology reveals that people do prefer to use the other-person concept as the subject of the comparison. The similarity judgments given by respondents in the unconstrained conditions match those given by respondents in the condition in which the other person is constrained to be the subject. In fact, this tendency extends beyond social comparisons and into nonsocial comparisons. In general, people prefer to compare unfamiliar items to familiar items (Cat- rambone et al., 1996). We suspect that the reason for this effect is that it is simpler to focus on the smaller total amount of information known about the unfamiliar item and allow that information to drive the comparison process, rather than focusing on the larger amount of information known about the familiar item, which would make the comparison process lengthier and more complex.

This preferred way of ,framing the comparative question is certainly part of the reason that _the mother discussed earlier corrected the statement about family resemblance to


become a statement of the daughter's resemblance to her. A daughter is less familiar than the self; therefore the mother preferred to think of the daughter in comparison to herself rather than vice versa. Another factor in the mother- daughter case is the fact that people are more certain about inferring effects from causes than vice versa. People believe there is a higher probability that a daughter will have blue eyes, given that the mother does than vice versa, although the probabilities are in fact equal (Tversky & Kahneman, 1980). This results from the causal role of the mother in transmitting genes to the daughter, which people inap- propriately factor into their probability judgments. Sim- ilarly, the mother in our example was stressing the importance of her role in conceiving the daughter by reversing the direction of comparison. In this example, the fact that the two people being compared were mother and daughter was therefore doubly important, both in terms of familiarity and causality.

Temporal comparisons might be contrary to the general rule about preferring to compare unfamiliar to familiar items. Just as both familiarity and causality determined the preferred direction of comparison in the mother-daughter example, both familiarity and desirability can determine the preferred direction of temporal comparisons. It has been suggested that people prefer to compare the present to the past rather than vice versa (Schwarz, Wanke, & Bless, 1994), because knowledge about the present is constantly salient. We believe that this will not be true for everyone. Preference for the present as the subject of comparison is likely to be true only for people who prefer the present to the past. Past-oriented individuals, those who like and tend to think more about the past, express higher subjective well-being after comparing the past to the present, whereas present-oriented individuals, those who like the present, express higher subjective well-being after comparing the present to the past (Beike & Landoll, 1997). Although the study reporting these findings did not use the appropriate methodology for determining which item is preferred as the subject, we infer from the well-being ratings that past- oriented individuals prefer to compare the (more liked) past to the present, in contrast to the general principle that people prefer to compare the (more salient) present to the past.

Applications of Comparative Judgment Framing Let us now be more precise about applying these theoreti-

cal issues and research findings regarding direction of comparison to several areas of applied interest. Within each section concerning comparative judgments, several obvious applications were discussed. We have seen, for example, how direction of comparison can affect predecision conflict, the actual choices made, postdecision satisfaction and regret; and decisions to defer choices or trade prior choices for new opportunities. These effects would hold for decisions across a wide variety of applied areas, including consumer

behavior, political decision making, and self-relevant decisions involving careers, partners, or courses of action.

More specifically, several researchers have discussed the implications of the feature-matching model for applied decision making. Kardes and Sanbonmatsu (1993) investigated consumer behavior across several different product catego- ries. They found that consumers preferred brands described by a large set of features when the features were generally favorable, whereas they preferred a brand described by a small set of features when the features were primarily unfa- vorable. Moreover, this effect was more pronounced when information about the large-set brand was presented second rather than first. These findings are easily predicted from the feature-matching model and show that the amount of information available about brands, the manner of comparing the items, and the manner in which missing information is han- dled all affect brand preference.

Dhar and Sherman (1996) have also used the feature- matching model to clarify brand preferences by consumers. They demonstrated that consumer decisions are more likely to be delayed when the unique features of the current candidate choices are negative. In addition, they presented an analysis of the market-share impact of a newly introduced product. When two market choices currently exist, the intro- duction of a third option will not affect the two other choices equally. The new market shares will depend on the extent to which the third item makes salient the good or the bad features of the original items. In fact, when the new item makes the good features of one of the other items especially salient, the market share for that item may even increase--even though there are now three rather than two brands available.

Application of the previously cited work on comparative judgment has also been made within the area of political decision making. The work by Hodges (1997) demonstrated that the order in which three items are presented can affect the evaluation of these items. When two of the items share positive features and have unique negative features, they will be evaluated very positively when one of these items is first paired with an item with all unique features and finally the other item with shared positive and unique negative features is offered. On the other hand, the two items with shared positive and unique negative features will be less acceptable when they are paired and presented first and then the all-unique feature item is offered. Hodges used these findings to analyze the affect of Ross Perot on the 1992 presidential election. The two initial candidates (Bush and Clinton) had many overlapping positive qualities, and each had several unique negative features. Perot, a candidate with primarily unique features, both good and bad, then entered the race. This led to an increased salience of the unique negative features of Bush and Clinton and thus to a perception that choosing between Bush and Clinton was a choice between the lesser of two evils. Thus, the percentage of voters who supported Perot was remarkably high. He did


not do as well in 1996 when he entered the race along with the other candidates (Clinton and Dole) rather than after the first two alternatives had been presented.

Houston and Doan (1996), too, examined how the comparative-judgment process affects political choice. Po- litical campaigns usually consist of a mixture of positive and negative advertisements. One's political ads either focus on one's own positive features or on the negative features of one's opponent. In general, negative campaigning will focus attention on the unique negative features of each candidate and thus should frame the choice as an avoidance-avoidance conflict. As discussed previously, this should lead to a difficult choice process and to dissatisfaction with both candidates. In fact, Houston and Doan cite results that negative campaigning generally leads to dissatisfaction with both the chosen and the rejected candidate, and with lower levels of voting. Interestingly, the feature- matching model would indicate that dissatisfaction may not always accompany negative campaigns. If the two candidates are negative about each other regarding the same features (e.g., campaign financing), these shared negative features should cancel, and the focus would turn to unique (perhaps positive) features, thus raising the level of satisfaction with the candidates.

Given the many applied effects of direction of comparison on the judgment process, and given that many of these effects can be considered to be biases in the judgment process, it is worthwhile discussing some of the ways in which the problems or opportunities presented by directional framing effects can be reduced or used in practice. The appropriate way of dealing with framing issues in comparative judgments depends on which of two goals is more important to the questioner: Encouraging and increasing the likelihood of a particular response versus assuring an accurate and precise response. The first goal may be reached by using directional framing effects to one's advantage. The second goal may be reached by learning to recognize when framing effects are likely to pose a problem for valid response assessment, how these effects will bias responses, and how to control for these biases.

Influencing Judgments in a Desired Direction First, we will discuss using directional comparisons to

achieve a particular response to a comparative question. There are certainly times when one wishes to maximize perceived similarity or to increase the preference for one item over another rather than to obtain an accurate measurement of people's preexisting similarity perception or preference. In these cases, it is important to understand theoreti- cally how directional comparison operates, thereby enabling one to frame the question for respondents in the way that will promote the desired response. An advertising campaign may involve promoting a new product as being similar to an already successful one. Consider this real-world ad: "Diet Dr. Pepper tastes just like regular Dr. Pepper!" Whether Diet

Dr. Pepper truly is similar to regular Dr. Pepper is a moot point; creating the belief that the two are similar is the ad's goal. Similarly, a politician may wish to increase the preference for his or her favored program over a competing one: "This is my balanced budget plan, and this is theirs. Which do you prefer?" Again, learning which plan the voting public actually prefers is less important than driving the perception of his or her plan as the superior one. Framing manipu- lations may be used to increase or decrease both similarity and preference, given enough information about the to-be- compared items and the context in which they are presented.

Because the unique features of the subject of the comparison dominate both similarity and preference judgments, it is necessary to know which item is more familiar (and therefore has more unique features relative to shared features). If the goal is to maximize perceived similarity, the comparison should be framed such that the less familiar item is the subject. To minimize similarity, the comparison should be framed such that the more familiar item is the subject. In introducing a new product, for example, it may be desirable to make use of the positive reputation of the market leader by increasing perceived similarity of the new product and the existing product. This requires engaging a comparison of the new product as the subject. Note that this direction of comparison is likely to happen naturally, as the new product is less familiar and will therefore generally be preferred as the subject of the comparison (Catrambone et al., 1996). For established products, on the other hand, it may be advan- tageous to avoid comparative advertising altogether. Any comparison that might indicate similarity between a new and an established product can only hurt the market share of the established product.

If our theoretical treatment of the complexity of making similarity judgments seems picayune, consider how widety relevant the perceived similarity of two items may be. For example, a marketer may be interested in whether or not a marketing campaign has been successful in promoting tile idea that a new product is completely different from a competitor's product. Whether a judgment of similarity is explicitly asked for or not, the types of questions written on a survey designed to investigate the perception of the new product may engage this comparison. Or a therapist may wish to make clear to a client how much progress she or he has made in the course of therapy. Asking the client to consider how well she or he is functioning now versus how well she or he was functioning when she or he first entered therapy will engage a similarity judgment.

When evaluative or preference judgments are being made, it is crucial to know not only the difference in familiarity, but also the difference in terms of the evaluative content of people's knowledge about the two items. Specifi- cally, it is important to know whether the unique features of each item are mainly positive or mainly negative. If the unique features of both items are mainly positive, the subject will appear more attractive than the referent; if they are


mainly negative, the referent will appear more attractive than the subject (Houston & Sherman, 1995; W/~nke, Schwarz, & Noelle-Neumann, 1995). A new product and the competitor's product, for instance, may differ in ways that are mainly positive (e.g, both are very good products, but they differ in the reasons for which people find them satisfactory). To promote preference for the new product, a comparative question should be asked in terms of the new product as the subject, or the new product should be described after the competitor's product, in order to ensure that the new product is the subject of comparison. This will result in preference for the subject of the comparison, the new product. On the other hand, a new product and the competitor's product may differ in ways that are mainly negative (e.g., both are good products, but have visible drawbacks that are different). This could occur, for example, in the area of pharmaceuticals, where different drugs may be equally effective in the same way but differ in their side effects. In this case, the comparison direction or item- description order should be reversed. The question should be asked in terms of the competitor's product as the subject, or the new product should be described before the competitor's product, in order to ensure that the competitor's product is the subject of comparison. This will result in a preference for the referent of the comparison, the new product.

Yet another form of comparison that may be used to promote a particular judgment is social comparison. An advertiser may wish to make use of social comparison in a campaign, such that a viewer who sees the ad compares the self to the actor or spokesperson in the ad, finds the self lacking by comparison, and is motivated to purchase the product being promoted by the actor. But if the actor or spokesperson is not seen as sufficiently similar to the self, the effect of social comparison will be limited. Therefore, the framing of a comparison of the self and another person may be critical to promoting this important initial feeling of similarity. To maximize the perceived similarity of the self and the other, an other-to-self direction of comparison should be used (Srull & Gaelick, 1983). Thus, it may be important to ask the viewer of such an ad explicitly to compare the spokesperson to the self, rather than leaving both the direction and the occurrence of this social comparison to~ chance.

Similar logic can be extended to practitioners in therapy. It is often desirable to minimize the degree to which clients see their present selves as simiIar to the past selves who were so troubled prior to the particular therapy technique. For example, a couple may be resistant to continuing some therapeutic intervention that is healthy for them, such as expressing anger verbally rather than physically. To encourage this couple to continue with therapy, it may be useful to point out the significant change over time or, in other words, the low similarity of the past and the present. Because the present is more familiar than the past, the present will con- tain more unique features. Drawing attention to the unique

features of the present will therefore reduce perceived similarity of the present and the past. The couple may then appreciate how far they have come through therapy. To ensure this, it is preferable to encourage this couple to compare the present to the past. Not only will this framing of the comparison minimize perceived similarity, but it will also elevate the clients' assessment of the present, as these unique features of the present will be mainly positive, and therefore the present will be evaluated more positively.

Maximizing Judgment Validity In contrast to these examples and the goal of guiding

respondents to a particular desired perception or preference is the goal of gaining information that is as accurate as possible from a survey or questionnaire. To the extent that the framing of the comparative question, whether given or inferred, affects responses, the validity of the measure de- creases. In fact, as we have seen, different answers will be received depending on the framing of the question. The best advice we can give to reduce this particular threat to validity is to be on the alert for comparative questions in which the to-be-compared items have salient differences other than those differences important to the surveyor or questioner. These problematic differences include differential familiarity of the to-be-compared items, desirability of the features unique to each item, and general desirability of the to- be-compared items. We will discuss each of these possible salient differences in turn.

If the to-be-compared items differ in familiarity to most respondents, one of two problems will occur. If no comparison direction is indicated by the wording of the question, then most respondents wilt choose to compare the unfamiliar item to the familiar item. The few unique features known about the unfamiliar item will then dominate the judgment, and the result will be an inflated measure of the actual perceived similarity of the two items. For instance, the difference in knowledge that most Americans have about Bill Clinton versus A1 Gore will constrain the direction of comparison such that Gore will usually be compared to Clinton, resulting in a relatively high similarity judgment. But the "true" similarity of Clinton and Gore is likely to be some- what lower than this, and in fact a lower similarity judgment would be obtained if Clinton were compared to Gore.

Giving only one comparison direction to all respondents in the wording of the question ("Compare Bill Clinton to A1 Gore") will constrain variability even further. This may increase the reliability of the responses, but it will also reduce validity. When items differing in familiarity must be compared, the best solution is to counterbalance the framing of the comparative question across respondents in order to determine the range of values that would occur in various comparison situations. That is, half of respondents should be explicitly asked to give the similarity of A1 Gore to Bill Clinton, and half should be explicitly asked to give the


similarity of Bill Clinton to A1 Gore. Then these two similarity judgments should be averaged together. Without knowledge of the perceived similarity given by both directions of comparison, the estimate provided by the survey respondents will be skewed in one direction or the other. Of course, the smaller the difference in familiarity, the smaller the directional comparison asymmetry, and the smaller the threat to validity provided by a tendency to make the comparison in one direction. Therefore, it is necessary to counterbalance the framing of the comparative question only when the familiarity difference is assumed to be relatively large.

A second difference among to-be-compared items of which one should be aware, aside from familiarity differences, is a difference in the evaluative content of each item. The evaluative content of the information unique to each item may be particularly problematic in reducing the validity of the responses received on a questionnaire. If the two items both have unique features that are desirable (or both have unique features that are undesirable), the results of a question comparing these two items will reveal more about the direction of the comparison than the actual preference. For example, with unique positive features, the subject of the comparison will be preferred. If all respondents are presented with information in the same order, or most of them frame the comparison in the same direction, responses will be skewed toward the subject of the comparison over and above any true preference for it in the population. With unique negative features, the referent of the comparison will be preferred. Responses will be skewed toward the referent over and above any true preference for it in the population. Again, counterbalancing order or question wording is likely to reduce this problem.

But this situation of unique features matching in pos- itivity seems to us less likely to occur than a situation in which the two to-be-compared items differ overall in pos- itivity, with one item being seen as more positive than the other on virtually all (important) dimensions. In this case, the preference or evaluation of the two items will generally be unaffected by direction of comparison; the more positive item will simply be preferred to and/or evaluated more favorably than the less positive item (although we earlier pointed to a situation in which an objectively less valuable item would be preferred to a more valuable item). The effect of direction of comparison may still have an impact on the evaluative ratings of both of the items as a set (or the two ratings added together), however.

As an example, take the case of comparing one's past and one's present. Most young adult respondents consider the present to be more positive and enjoyable than the past (Ryff, 1991), so preference judgments are a foregone conclusion: Virtually all respondents prefer the present to the past regardless of the direction of the comparison. In judgments of subjective well-being, however, directional asymmetries appear. People who compare the present to the past express

greater satisfaction with their lives as a whole than people who compare the past to the present (Beike, 1996). Presumably, this occurs because attention is focused on the subject of the comparison and its features. When the present self is the subject, its positive features are salient, and subjective well- being increases. Notice the counterintuitive direction of this effect: If the present is better than the past, then a comparison of the past to the present should suggest improvement, which ought to increase well-being. Rather than the comparative judgment being affected by this better/worse logic, however, it appears to be affected instead by noticing the negative content of the past (as part of one's life) more when the past is the subject of the comparison and noticing the positive content of the present (as part of one's life) more when the present is the subject of the comparison.

Therefore, asking people to compare a negative item to a positive one should decrease the summed evaluation of the two items, whereas asking people to compare a positive item to a negative one should increase the summed evaluation of the two items. If relative differences between the items are the only variable of interest, this should not be a problem. But if an estimate of the overall evaluation of each item is desired, an avoidable threat to the validity of this estimate has been introduced by direction of comparison. The best way to solve the problem is again counterbalancing the order or wording across respondents to provide information about the range of actual perceptions of the items.

Conclusions

To summarize, direction of comparison is often inferred or induced by the presentation order of to-be-compared items, the difference in familiarity of to-be-compared items, or the phrasing of the comparative question. Direction of comparison affects perceived similarity, preference, evaluation, and judgments involving the self and other people. We suggested ways to use directional comparison asymmetries to one's advantage, as well as ways of increasing the validity of responses to comparative questions. We described some "warning signs" that indicate a possible direction of comparison-based threat to the validity of responses: differences in familiarity, evaluation, and the content of the features unique to each item. In general, we feel it is most useful to counterbalance the framing of a comparative question across all respondents in order to see the true range of responses.

Careful examination of comparative questions and item differences may be tedious, especially after the time- consuming item selection that goes into development of a survey or measurement instrument. Ignoring the potential effects of the framing of comparative judgments can lead to substantial biases in such judgments, however. Direction of comparison effects often result in differences as large as half of a scale point on a 7-point scale (Catrambone et al., 1996) or as significant as a complete preference or rank-ordering


reversal (Houston et al., 1989; W~inke et al., 1995). Effects of this magnitude may swamp the veridical reaction that the questioner seeks. Moreover, our own experience suggests that the direction of comparison implications are not necessarily invisible to the respondent--a t least if the respondent is a mother being compared to her own daughter!

We hope we have convinced the reader to consider the framing of comparative questions used in research or practice, and that we have offered some useful suggestions for

dealing with comparison direction. Our own research into the determinants and operation of direction of comparison continues to inform us of the surprising complexity of this superficially simple process of framing. As our understanding continues to grow, we hope to offer further suggestions that will be of use to both researchers and practitioners. This article represents merely a starting point for continuing discussion of the broader application of cognitive models of comparison processes.

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Framing of comparisons in research and practice

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