Posten, Ann-Christin and Mussweiler, Thomas (2017). That certain something! Focusing on similarities reduces judgmental uncertainty. Cognition, 165. S. 121 - 126. AMSTERDAM: ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV. ISSN 1873-7838
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
Comparative thinking is an efficient cognitive strategy that reduces judgmental uncertainty. However, comparisons may be conducted with a focus on similarities or differences. Similarity-focused comparisons seem to facilitate information-transfer, which has been suggested to drive the uncertainty reducing effect of comparisons. This implies that similarity-focused comparisons reduce uncertainty more than dissimilarity-focused comparisons. Two experiments examine this assumption. In Study 1, a similarity-focus (compared to a difference-focus and a neutral control condition) increased judgmental certainty when the comparison was based on confident standard-knowledge. However, when the comparison was based on vague standard-knowledge the uncertainty-reducing effect diminished. Study 2 shows that a similarity-focus increases information-transfer and that a similarity-focus particularly enhanced certainty for judgments for which a standard-to-target information-transfer had occurred. These studies suggest that similarity-focused comparisons reduce judgmental uncertainty through the mechanism of information-transfer. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Item Type: | Journal Article | ||||||||||||
Creators: |
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URN: | urn:nbn:de:hbz:38-224554 | ||||||||||||
DOI: | 10.1016/j.cognition.2017.05.010 | ||||||||||||
Journal or Publication Title: | Cognition | ||||||||||||
Volume: | 165 | ||||||||||||
Page Range: | S. 121 - 126 | ||||||||||||
Date: | 2017 | ||||||||||||
Publisher: | ELSEVIER SCIENCE BV | ||||||||||||
Place of Publication: | AMSTERDAM | ||||||||||||
ISSN: | 1873-7838 | ||||||||||||
Language: | English | ||||||||||||
Faculty: | Unspecified | ||||||||||||
Divisions: | Unspecified | ||||||||||||
Subjects: | no entry | ||||||||||||
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Refereed: | Yes | ||||||||||||
URI: | http://kups.ub.uni-koeln.de/id/eprint/22455 |
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