The Conversational Basis for the Dilution Effect
Identifieur interne : 000E42 ( Istex/Corpus ); précédent : 000E41; suivant : 000E43The Conversational Basis for the Dilution Effect
Auteurs : Eric R. Igou ; Herbert BlessSource :
- Journal of Language and Social Psychology [ 0261-927X ] ; 2005-03.
Abstract
The impact of diagnostic information on judgments and in decision making is often reduced when additional, nondiagnostic information is presented. This article argues that the diluting impact of nondiagnostic information results in part from rules of everyday communication,which usually grant relevance to presented information.In an experimental test, participants were presented with positive or negative information about a product.Positive diagnostic information resulted in more favorable judgments than negative diagnostic information. This impact of diagnostic information was diluted when nondiagnostic information was added. Most important, the dilution effect was not observed when the applicability of the conversation was experimentally called into question.
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DOI: 10.1177/0261927X04273035
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Igou</name><affiliation><mods:affiliation>Tilburg University</mods:affiliation></affiliation><affiliation><mods:affiliation>Tilburg University</mods:affiliation></affiliation></author><author><name sortKey="Bless, Herbert" sort="Bless, Herbert" uniqKey="Bless H" first="Herbert" last="Bless">Herbert Bless</name><affiliation><mods:affiliation>University of Mannheim</mods:affiliation></affiliation><affiliation><mods:affiliation>University of Mannheim</mods:affiliation></affiliation></author></titleStmt><publicationStmt><idno type="wicri:source">ISTEX</idno><idno type="RBID">ISTEX:5184631E1432FBE4FC0336807DE1D07194B22E86</idno><date when="2005" year="2005">2005</date><idno type="doi">10.1177/0261927X04273035</idno><idno type="url">https://api.istex.fr/document/5184631E1432FBE4FC0336807DE1D07194B22E86/fulltext/pdf</idno><idno type="wicri:Area/Istex/Corpus">000E42</idno><idno type="wicri:explorRef" wicri:stream="Istex" wicri:step="Corpus" wicri:corpus="ISTEX">000E42</idno></publicationStmt><sourceDesc><biblStruct><analytic><title level="a" type="main" xml:lang="en">The Conversational Basis for the Dilution Effect</title><author><name sortKey="Igou, Eric R" sort="Igou, Eric R" uniqKey="Igou E" first="Eric R." last="Igou">Eric R. Igou</name><affiliation><mods:affiliation>Tilburg University</mods:affiliation></affiliation><affiliation><mods:affiliation>Tilburg University</mods:affiliation></affiliation></author><author><name sortKey="Bless, Herbert" sort="Bless, Herbert" uniqKey="Bless H" first="Herbert" last="Bless">Herbert Bless</name><affiliation><mods:affiliation>University of Mannheim</mods:affiliation></affiliation><affiliation><mods:affiliation>University of Mannheim</mods:affiliation></affiliation></author></analytic><monogr></monogr><series><title level="j">Journal of Language and Social Psychology</title><idno type="ISSN">0261-927X</idno><idno type="eISSN">1552-6526</idno><imprint><publisher>Sage Publications</publisher><pubPlace>Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</pubPlace><date type="published" when="2005-03">2005-03</date><biblScope unit="volume">24</biblScope><biblScope unit="issue">1</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" from="25">25</biblScope><biblScope unit="page" to="35">35</biblScope></imprint><idno type="ISSN">0261-927X</idno></series><idno type="istex">5184631E1432FBE4FC0336807DE1D07194B22E86</idno><idno type="DOI">10.1177/0261927X04273035</idno><idno type="ArticleID">10.1177_0261927X04273035</idno></biblStruct></sourceDesc><seriesStmt><idno type="ISSN">0261-927X</idno></seriesStmt></fileDesc><profileDesc><textClass></textClass><langUsage><language ident="en">en</language></langUsage></profileDesc></teiHeader><front><div type="abstract" xml:lang="en">The impact of diagnostic information on judgments and in decision making is often reduced when additional, nondiagnostic information is presented. This article argues that the diluting impact of nondiagnostic information results in part from rules of everyday communication,which usually grant relevance to presented information.In an experimental test, participants were presented with positive or negative information about a product.Positive diagnostic information resulted in more favorable judgments than negative diagnostic information. This impact of diagnostic information was diluted when nondiagnostic information was added. Most important, the dilution effect was not observed when the applicability of the conversation was experimentally called into question.</div></front></TEI><istex><corpusName>sage</corpusName><author><json:item><name>Eric R. Igou</name><affiliations><json:string>Tilburg University</json:string><json:string>Tilburg University</json:string></affiliations></json:item><json:item><name>Herbert Bless</name><affiliations><json:string>University of Mannheim</json:string><json:string>University of Mannheim</json:string></affiliations></json:item></author><subject><json:item><lang><json:string>eng</json:string></lang><value>dilution effect</value></json:item><json:item><lang><json:string>eng</json:string></lang><value>diagnosticity</value></json:item><json:item><lang><json:string>eng</json:string></lang><value>logic of conversation</value></json:item><json:item><lang><json:string>eng</json:string></lang><value>bias</value></json:item><json:item><lang><json:string>eng</json:string></lang><value>predictions</value></json:item></subject><articleId><json:string>10.1177_0261927X04273035</json:string></articleId><language><json:string>eng</json:string></language><originalGenre><json:string>research-article</json:string></originalGenre><abstract>The impact of diagnostic information on judgments and in decision making is often reduced when additional, nondiagnostic information is presented. This article argues that the diluting impact of nondiagnostic information results in part from rules of everyday communication,which usually grant relevance to presented information.In an experimental test, participants were presented with positive or negative information about a product.Positive diagnostic information resulted in more favorable judgments than negative diagnostic information. This impact of diagnostic information was diluted when nondiagnostic information was added. Most important, the dilution effect was not observed when the applicability of the conversation was experimentally called into question.</abstract><qualityIndicators><score>5.26</score><pdfVersion>1.3</pdfVersion><pdfPageSize>612 x 792 pts (letter)</pdfPageSize><refBibsNative>true</refBibsNative><abstractCharCount>771</abstractCharCount><pdfWordCount>4060</pdfWordCount><pdfCharCount>26012</pdfCharCount><pdfPageCount>11</pdfPageCount><abstractWordCount>100</abstractWordCount></qualityIndicators><title>The Conversational Basis for the Dilution Effect</title><refBibs><json:item><author><json:item><name>I. Ajzen</name></json:item></author><host><volume>35</volume><pages><last>314</last><first>303</first></pages><author></author><title>Journal of Personality and Social Psychology</title></host><title>Intuitive theories of events and the effects of base rate information on prediction</title></json:item><json:item><author><json:item><name>H. Bless</name></json:item><json:item><name>F. 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This article argues that the diluting impact of nondiagnostic information results in part from rules of everyday communication,which usually grant relevance to presented information.In an experimental test, participants were presented with positive or negative information about a product.Positive diagnostic information resulted in more favorable judgments than negative diagnostic information. This impact of diagnostic information was diluted when nondiagnostic information was added. Most important, the dilution effect was not observed when the applicability of the conversation was experimentally called into question.</p></abstract><textClass><keywords scheme="keyword"><list><head>keywords</head><item><term>dilution effect</term></item><item><term>diagnosticity</term></item><item><term>logic of conversation</term></item><item><term>bias</term></item><item><term>predictions</term></item></list></keywords></textClass></profileDesc><revisionDesc><change when="2005-03">Published</change></revisionDesc></teiHeader></istex:fulltextTEI><json:item><extension>txt</extension><original>false</original><mimetype>text/plain</mimetype><uri>https://api.istex.fr/document/5184631E1432FBE4FC0336807DE1D07194B22E86/fulltext/txt</uri></json:item></fulltext><metadata><istex:metadataXml wicri:clean="corpus sage not found" wicri:toSee="no header"><istex:xmlDeclaration>version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"</istex:xmlDeclaration><istex:docType PUBLIC="-//NLM//DTD Journal Publishing DTD v2.3 20070202//EN" URI="journalpublishing.dtd" name="istex:docType"></istex:docType><istex:document><article article-type="research-article" dtd-version="2.3" xml:lang="EN"><front><journal-meta><journal-id journal-id-type="hwp">spjls</journal-id><journal-id journal-id-type="publisher-id">JLS</journal-id><journal-title>Journal of Language and Social Psychology</journal-title><issn pub-type="ppub">0261-927X</issn><publisher><publisher-name>Sage Publications</publisher-name><publisher-loc>Sage CA: Thousand Oaks, CA</publisher-loc></publisher></journal-meta><article-meta><article-id pub-id-type="doi">10.1177/0261927X04273035</article-id><article-id pub-id-type="publisher-id">10.1177_0261927X04273035</article-id><article-categories><subj-group subj-group-type="heading"><subject>Articles</subject></subj-group></article-categories><title-group><article-title>The Conversational Basis for the Dilution Effect</article-title></title-group><contrib-group><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Igou</surname><given-names>Eric R.</given-names></name><aff>Tilburg University</aff></contrib><contrib contrib-type="author" xlink:type="simple"><name name-style="western"><surname>Bless</surname><given-names>Herbert</given-names></name><aff>University of Mannheim</aff></contrib></contrib-group><pub-date pub-type="ppub"><month>03</month><year>2005</year></pub-date><volume>24</volume><issue>1</issue><fpage>25</fpage><lpage>35</lpage><abstract><p>The impact of diagnostic information on judgments and in decision making is often reduced when additional, nondiagnostic information is presented. This article argues that the diluting impact of nondiagnostic information results in part from rules of everyday communication,which usually grant relevance to presented information.In an experimental test, participants were presented with positive or negative information about a product.Positive diagnostic information resulted in more favorable judgments than negative diagnostic information. This impact of diagnostic information was diluted when nondiagnostic information was added. Most important, the dilution effect was not observed when the applicability of the conversation was experimentally called into question.</p></abstract><kwd-group><kwd>dilution effect</kwd><kwd>diagnosticity</kwd><kwd>logic of conversation</kwd><kwd>bias</kwd><kwd>predictions</kwd></kwd-group><custom-meta-wrap><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>sagemeta-type</meta-name><meta-value>Journal Article</meta-value></custom-meta><custom-meta xlink:type="simple"><meta-name>search-text</meta-name><meta-value> 10.1177/0261927X04273035 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / March 2005 Igou, Bless / CONVERSATIONAL DILUTION THE CONVERSATIONAL BASIS FOR THE DILUTION EFFECT ERIC R. IGOU Tilburg University HERBERT BLESS University of Mannheim The impact of diagnostic information on judgments and in decision making is often reduced when additional, nondiagnostic information is presented. This article argues that the diluting impact of nondiagnostic information results in part from rules of every- day communication,which usually grant relevance to presented information.In an exper- imental test, participants were presented with positive or negative information about a product.Positivediagnosticinformationresultedinmorefavorablejudgmentsthannega- tive diagnostic information. This impact of diagnostic information was diluted when nondiagnostic information was added. Most important, the dilution effect was not observed when the applicability of the conversation was experimentally called into question. Keywords:dilution effect; diagnosticity; logic of conversation; bias; predictions When individuals form judgments and make decisions,they usually have several pieces of information available.Not all of this information will be equally important and equally relevant to the judgment or deci- sion. Some pieces of information will be considered highly relevant whereas others will be considered less relevant. How do individuals infer the relevance of a particular piece of information? At least under some circumstances, individuals may have considerable difficulty using the relevant and ignoring the irrelevant information. An influential line of research has demonstrated that one important criterion for determining the relevance of a piece of information is its degree of representativeness for the current judgment or decision (see Kahneman & Tversky, 1972, 1973). For example, researchers 25AUTHORS' NOTE: Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Eric R.Igou,SocialPsychology,TilburgUniversity,P.O.Box90153,5000 LE Tilburg,the Neth- erlands; e-mail: E.R.Igou@uvt.nl; phone: +31 13 466 2754; fax: +31 13 466 2067. This re- search was supported by the Sonderforschungsbereich 504 Rationalitätskonzepte, Entscheidungsverhalten und ökonomische Modellierung of the Universität Mannheim. The authors want to thank Sarah Jacob for her assistance in conducting the study and Ronni Michelle Greenwood for comments on an earlier version of the article. JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY Vol. 24 No. 1, March 2005 25-35 DOI: 10.1177/0261927X04273035 2005 Sage Publications explained the phenomena of base-rate neglect (e.g., Ajzen, 1977; Borgida & Nisbett, 1977; Ginossar & Trope, 1980; Kahneman & Tversky, 1973) with the representativeness heuristic: For group mem- bership judgments, participants were strongly influenced by stereo- typic person descriptions and less affected by statistical base-rate information. In other terms, the use of the relevant base-rate distribu- tions was overridden by the representative stereotypic information (e.g., Kahneman & Tversky, 1973). Similarly, the dilution effect (Nisbett, Zukier, & Lemley, 1981; Zukier, 1982) can be considered an explanation of individuals' use of irrelevant information in making predictions. Research suggests that when individuals are provided with information that is predictive of an outcome (diagnostic information), then predictions strongly reflect the information provided. However, when additional information with lit- tle or no actual predictive value for the outcome (nondiagnostic infor- mation) is provided,then predictions are hardly influenced by diagnos- tic information. For example, participants were asked to predict the grade point average (GPA) of a target person. The impact of diagnostic information ("He quite often starts things he doesn't finish") was weakened by the addition of nondiagnostic information ("A few times a year he is bothered by bad dreams"; Zukier, 1982). To account for the impact of nondiagnostic information, some researchers have suggested that individuals base the estimated out- come (e.g., whether the person has a high or a low GPA) on the feature overlap between the target and the outcome. When the information about the target appears representative of the outcome in question (here,a student with a low GPA),individuals will infer a high probabil- ity of the event. Diagnostic features are usually representative of the outcome ("He quite often starts things he doesn't finish"), thereby increasing the representativeness of the target. Nondiagnostic infor- mation (e.g., "A few times a year he is bothered by bad dreams") has no relation to the outcome. Given that representativeness is a positive function of the common features of target and outcome, but a negative function of noncommon features, additional noncommon features will decrease similarity and representativeness, thereby decreasing the estimated likelihood of the outcome (Nisbett et al., 1981). Subsequent research on the dilution effect has addressed the quali- fying role of various variables,such as the extremity and the typicality of the additional information (e.g., Peters & Rothbart, 2000; Zukier & Jennings, 1983-1984). Moreover, Tetlock and Boettger (1989) demon- strated that the dilution effect increased with an increase in individu- als' accountability, which--at first glance--seems counterintuitive. The authors suggest that the increased processing motivation and the increased complexity of impressions about the target led to an enhanced impact of the nondiagnostic information because partici- pants were trying to make sense of the provided information. This 26JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / March 2005 enrichment of the nondiagnostic information in turn increased the dilution effect. In addition to these mainly cognitive explanations of the use of diag- nostic and nondiagnostic information, it has been suggested that com- municative aspects may also play a crucial and central role in individu- als' use of information. In this respect, it has been argued that in everyday communication, communicators usually comply with the maxims of conversation, namely, those of relation, quality, quantity, and manner (Grice, 1975; see also Higgins, 1981; see Schwarz, 1994, 1996,for an overview).According to the maxim of relation,information should be relevant to the aims of the ongoing conversation, or, in other words, communicated information comes with a guarantee of relevance (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). In research settings, researchers want to reduce error and want to increase the comparability of results. Therefore, questionnaires are often standardized, and researchers avoid detailed conversations with participants about the meaning of features of the research instrument. These communicative limitations may become problematic when the task is vague or incomprehensible for participants.Despite this lack in clarity,typically participants do not doubt the relevance of the commu- nicated information and rely even more heavily on the norm of rele- vance ("The current information is not fully clear to me, but it must be relevant, because otherwise the experimenter would not have given me this information"). Therefore, if experimenters present nondiagnostic information, recipients may nevertheless consider this information for the task at hand. In other words, individuals rely on nondiagnostic information even when experimenters violate the maxim of relation by presenting this irrelevant information (see Bless, Strack, & Schwarz, 1993; Schwarz, 1994, 1996; Strack, 1994, for a gen- eral discussion on how violations in the experimental setting influence participants' judgments). A key assumption derived from this perspective holds that individu- als will rely less on irrelevant information and that in turn the dilution effect is less pronounced when they are informed that the maxim of relation does not apply to a given situation.This general logic has been applied in several studies investigating the impact of conversational norms on the use of information (e.g., Higgins, 1981; Igou & Bless, 2003; Krosnick, Li, & Lehman, 1990; Schwarz, Strack, Hilton, & Naderer,1991;Wright & Wells,1988). The results consistently showed that discrediting the applicability of conversational norms influenced individuals' use of presented and activated information (for overviews, see Schwarz, 1994, 1996). Tetlock,Lerner and Boettger (1996) investigated the conversational basis for dilution effects in combination with the impact of accountabil- ity (Tetlock, 1983). In this research, it was found that discrediting the maxim of relation reduced the dilution effect--however, only when Igou, Bless / CONVERSATIONAL DILUTION27 participants' accountability was high. When accountability was low, the authors observed dilution effects independent of whether conver- sational norms were primed, not primed, or explicitly deactivated. The authors argued that "unaccountable subjects might rely on a simple similarity-matching heuristic that requires little mental effort that is relatively unaffected by conversational context. Accountable subjects, however, put considerable effort into processing the diluted predictive information" (Tetlock et al., 1996, p. 931). According to this conclusion, conversational rules should not influence the degree of the dilution effect unless accountability is also considered. Thus,the findings seem to imply that conversational norms do not contribute to the "normal" dilution effect, that is, when accountability is not increased (e.g., Zukier, 1982). The conclusion that conversational norms do not influence the stan- dard dilution effect seems worth reconsidering.Given the general logic that conversational rules are particularly important for efficient com- munication, it seems unlikely these rules should not be applied when they are needed most--that is, in situations where no extensive processing occurs. It would thus appear rather surprising that low- motivated individuals should (a) not rely on these norms to begin with, and would (b) be less affected by the applicability of the norms. A look at the procedure that was used by Tetlock and colleagues (1996) supports our concerns. The authors manipulated (high vs. low) accountability before presenting the prediction task in a certain con- versational context. Unfortunately, no control group with either instruction was assessed. Therefore, the authors did not investigate whether the dilution effect has a conversational basis without men- tioning accountability. The instruction concerning accountability might have triggered cognitive processes that in turn affected the understanding of the conversational context. For instance, account- ability may be a rather special form of manipulating processing moti- vation, in particular in the context of conversational norms. Informing participants that they would later have to explain their judgments to other persons (see Tetlock et al., 1996) may not only have influenced processing motivation but may have also very well emphasized the conversational aspect. As a result, conversational norms were found more influential under high accountability. It is not our aim to fully explain the findings of Tetlock and colleagues, but we want to investi- gate the conversational foundation of the standard dilution effect, which is only possible if the experimental variation of the conversational context is not influenced by other manipulations (e.g., accountability). Our primary goal was to investigate the possibility of a conversa- tional basis for the dilution effect. Based on the above considerations, we provided participants with diagnostic information about a product that had either positive or negative implications for an evaluation of 28JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / March 2005 the product. We expected more positive evaluations after presenting positive rather than negative information,and this effect was expected to dilute when additional nondiagnostic information was presented. Sometimes recipients have good reasons to doubt the overall diagnosticity of information,for example,when they expect that a com- municator may lack motivation or ability to regard the rules of conver- sation (see Schwarz, 1996). What happens when the norm of relevance is called into question? We argue that reducing the applicability of the conversational norm should attenuate the dilution effect, because in this case, individuals are more likely to discount nondiagnostic information. To also investigate the role of processing motivation on the reliance on conversational norms, we assessed chronic differences in need for cognitive closure (Kruglanski, Webster, & Klem, 1993). One hundred twenty students from a German university were ran- domly assigned to the 2 (valence of diagnostic information: positive vs. negative) × 2 (added nondiagnostic information:no vs.yes) × 2 (applica- bility of maxim of relation: yes vs. no) factorial design. In a pilot study, independent participants were provided with a list of items. Participants were asked to categorize each item as favorable (= positive valence) or as unfavorable (= negative valence), and as rele- vant or as irrelevant with respect to the acquisition of a coffeemaker. Of course, under some circumstances unfavorable or irrelevant items may seem favorable or relevant, but for the purpose of this study, we were interested in general evaluations of product characteristics. We selected three items of each of the following categories: favorable (e.g., "It has an automatic off switch"), unfavorable (e.g., "Only a special fil- ter can be used"), and irrelevant (e.g., "It has three buttons"). Participants were provided with a questionnaire and were asked to imagine a scenario in which one person gave information about a prod- uct (the coffeemaker) and another person formed an impression about this target. The description of the product included either three favor- able (= positive valence) or three unfavorable (= negative valence) arguments that were diagnostic with respect to its acquisition. Half of the participants were additionally presented with three nondiagnostic arguments (see pilot study). To manipulate the applicability of the norm of relevance, prior to the sales scenario half of the participants were informed that some of the presented information might not be relevant for their task. Participants' task was to predict the likelihood that customers will buy the product, with the response scale ranging from 0% (very unlikely) to 100% (very likely). Subsequently, participants were pro- vided with an additional questionnaire that comprised different scales assessing chronic differences in processing motivation. Specifically, participants worked on the Need for Closure Scale (NFCS; Kruglanski et al., 1993). Igou, Bless / CONVERSATIONAL DILUTION29 As expected, participants' predictions about the purchase of the coffeemaker were a function of the valence of the information, the pre- sentation of nondiagnostic information, and the applicability of the conversational norm (maxim of relation), reflected in a significant three-way interaction,F(1,112) = 4.19,p < .05.As can be seen in Figure 1,the dilution effect was replicated when the conversational norm was not called into question. Specifically, the purchase of the coffeemaker was considered more likely when positive (= favorable) rather than negative (= unfavorable) diagnostic information was provided, M = 63% versus M = 16%,t(112) = 6.95,p < .01.This effect was diluted,how- ever, when three additional, nondiagnostic items were presented, M = 66% versus M = 58%, t(112) = 1.22, n.s., resulting in a significant sim- ple interaction of valence and diagnosticity of the presented informa- tion, F(1, 112) = 16.40, p < .01. This dilution pattern was not obtained, however, when the conversational norm was called into question. In this case, participants estimated a higher likelihood of purchase when positive rather than negative arguments were presented,and this pat- tern was independent of whether additional nondiagnostic informa- tion was presented,M = 59% versus M = 17%,t(112) = 6.24,p < .01,and M =60%versusM =29%,t(112) =4.61,p<.01,respectively,resulting in the absence of a simple interaction effect, F(1, 112) = 1.44, p > .20. To examine the impact of processing motivation, we performed a median split for the values of the NFCS ( = .82) before we added this variable into a 2 (valence of diagnostic information: positive vs. nega- tive) × 2 (added nondiagnostic information:no vs.yes) × 2 (applicability 30JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / March 2005 63% 16%66% 58%59% 17%60% 29% 0%10%20%30%40%50% 60%70%Predicted Purchase (Scale: 0% - 100%)Positive CharacteristicsNegative Characteristics Added Non-Diagnostic Information:NoYesNoYes Applicability of Conversational Norm:YesNo Figure 1: Mean Prediction of a Product's Purchase as a Function of the Va- lence of Its Characteristics (Favorable Versus Unfavorable), Their Diagnosticity, and the Applicability of the Conversational Norm (Maxim Of Relation). of maxim of relation: yes vs. no) × 2 (need for closure: high vs. low) quasi-experimental design. Need for closure did not have an influence on either the dilution effect or the impact of the conversational context (both Fs < 1). Most important, when the conversational norm was applicable, we observed the interaction of valence and diagnosticity of information both for participants in high and low need for closure, F(104) = 10.89, p < .05, and F(104) = 8.82, p < .05, respectively. This dilution effect pattern was eliminated both for participants with a high and a low need for closure when the conversational rule was not appli- cable, both Fs < 1 for the interaction. The present results provide further evidence for the interface of communication and information processing. Consistent with prior research (Nisbett et al.,1981;Zukier,1982),participants were strongly affected by the valence of diagnostic information, and this impact was diluted by the presentation of additional, nondiagnostic information. As Nisbett and his colleagues (1981) have suggested, this dilution effect may be due to participants' use of the representativeness heuris- tic (Kahneman & Tversky,1972,1973).However,the results presented here suggest that the dilution effect is at least in part due to the indi- viduals' consideration of conversational norms when making judg- ments (see Schwarz,1994,1996). Most important in this respect,when we hinted to participants that some pieces of information within the scenario might not be relevant to the task, participants relied less on nondiagnostic information. Our hint did not communicate how to dis- tinguish various arguments with regard to their diagnosticity;instead, participants knew how to distinguish diagnostic from nondiagnostic information when they had a reason to doubt the general relevance of communicated information. In other words, the nondiagnostic infor- mation lost its diluting influence when participants were informed that the maxim of relation (Grice, 1975), which governs most everyday communications, did not apply to the given situation. This finding suggests that the use of the nondiagnostic information rests in part on individuals' assumption that communicated informa- tion comes with a "guarantee of relevance" (Sperber & Wilson, 1995). Simply because the (nondiagnostic) information is provided by the experimenter, recipients will infer that it must be relevant. In stan- dardized testing situations,in particular,recipients need to rely on the maxims of everyday communication to infer the pragmatic meaning of their task (see Bless et al., 1993; for a more general review, see Schwarz, 1994, 1996). This conclusion is particularly important for experimental research on individuals' use of information in judgments and in decision making. On a more general level, our results suggest that when irrelevant information is communicated but features of the situation do not reduce the guarantee of relevance, then dilution effects become likely. This conversational norm could be questioned by very different Igou, Bless / CONVERSATIONAL DILUTION31 features of the social situation (e.g., context cues, characteristics of communicator; see Strack, 1994, Schwarz, 1996). In our study, we gave the hint that not all of the communicated information may be relevant to reduce the norm's impact. This procedure resembles social situa- tions in which a recipient is informed by a communicator that some of the following pieces of information may not be relevant to the recipient. For example, a communicator who describes a target (e.g., a product) could add this information if he or she is not sure what characteristic the recipient may regard as important. Despite communicating infor- mation that might not be relevant to the recipient, the warning still reflects a conversational cooperation, but on a somewhat deeper level (see Schwarz, 1996). Our findings are very much in line with existing research, which demonstrates that conversational norms influence the use of accessi- ble information (for overviews, see Schwarz, 1994, 1996). But unlike Tetlock and colleagues (1996), the present results do not suggest that the conversational basis for the dilution effect is restricted to situa- tions in which individuals have a high-processing motivation. We investigated the dilution effect under conditions in which the applica- bility of the maxim of relation (Grice, 1975) was manipulated. Tetlock and colleagues also varied the conversational context, but in addition, the authors manipulated accountability. Strictly speaking, the authors' results do not clarify whether the standard dilution effect (e.g., Zukier, 1982) is a function of conversational norms, because no control condition (without reference to accountability) was added. The variation of accountability might have had an impact on the interpre- tation of the conversational context.For instance,by emphasizing that individuals need to communicate and explain their judgment to other persons, conversational norms may receive particular attention. From this perspective, the finding that the applicability of conversa- tional norms influenced only participants under high- but not low- accountability conditions cannot only be interpreted in terms of differ- ent levels of processing motivation but may also be traced to different levels of attention toward the communication of information. By relying on a standard personality scale, we may have assessed a different type of processing motivation, namely, need for cognitive clo- sure (Kruglanski et al.,1993). We observed that discrediting the appli- cability of the conversational rules attenuated the dilution effect when processing motivation was both high and low. This observation is in line with the general assumption that conversational rules are partic- ularly important for efficient communication. Given that conversa- tional norms contribute to efficient communication, it is unlikely that these rules should not be applied when there is a high need for efficient communication. The primary goal of this study was to investigate the conversational foundation of the dilution effect. Our results indicate that this 32JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / March 2005 influence is relatively independent of processing motivation.Note that this interpretation does not at all reduce the importance of the research by Tetlock and colleagues (1996). It stresses, however, that when looking at the relationships of processing motivation and conver- sational norms, more extensive research is needed to compare the effects of different forms of processing motivation. The general finding that the dilution effect did not emerge when the maxim of relation (Grice, 1975) was called into question is in line with other research addressing the use of information. Across various domains, research suggests that information is used differentially for social judgments as a function of conversational norms (see Schwarz, 1994, 1996). For example, Schwarz and colleagues (1991) have demon- strated that the well-documented base-rate neglect effect was strongly reduced when conversational norms were experimentally called into question (see also Krosnick et al., 1990). Similarly, Igou and Bless (2003) have demonstrated that the emergence of primacy and recency effects in persuasion was a function of the applicability of conversa- tional rules. Although the available research convincingly demon- strates the influence of conversational norms on cognitive processes, there is considerably less understanding of the conditions under which conversational considerations are more or less influential. In particu- lar, in light of the strong impact of conversational processes on judg- ments and decisions, it is important that future research addresses in more detail moderating condition for the reliance on conversational rules. REFERENCES Ajzen, I. (1977). Intuitive theories of events and the effects of base rate information on prediction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 303-314. Bless, H., Strack, F., & Schwarz, N. (1993). The informative function of research proce- dures: Bias and the logic of conversation. European Journal of Social Psychology, 23, 149-165. Borgida,E.,& Nisbett,R.(1977).The differential impact of abstract vs.concreteinforma- tion on decisions. Journal of Applied Social Psychology, 7, 258-271. Ginossar, Z., & Trope, Y. (1980). The effects of base rates and individuating information on judgments about another person. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 16, 228-242. Grice,P.(1975).Logic ofconversation.In P.Cole& J.L.Morgan(Eds.),Syntaxandseman- tics: Vol. 3. Speech acts (pp. 41-58). New York: Academic Press. Higgins, E. T. (1981). The 'communication game': Implications for social cognition and persuasion. In E. T. Higgins, M. Zanna, & C. P. 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Herbert Bless is chair of microsociology and social psychology at the University of Mannheim,Germany.He receivedhisPh.D.at the UniversityofHeidelberg,andbe- fore his current position, he was an assistant professor of social psychology at the 34JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY / March 2005 University of Heidelberg and an associate professor at the University of Trier. His research focuses on social cognition in general, with a particular emphasis on the impactofmoodandothersubjectiveexperiencesaswellasonassimilationandcon- trast effects in social judgement. 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This article argues that the diluting impact of nondiagnostic information results in part from rules of everyday communication,which usually grant relevance to presented information.In an experimental test, participants were presented with positive or negative information about a product.Positive diagnostic information resulted in more favorable judgments than negative diagnostic information. This impact of diagnostic information was diluted when nondiagnostic information was added. Most important, the dilution effect was not observed when the applicability of the conversation was experimentally called into question.</abstract><subject><genre>keywords</genre><topic>dilution effect</topic><topic>diagnosticity</topic><topic>logic of conversation</topic><topic>bias</topic><topic>predictions</topic></subject><relatedItem type="host"><titleInfo><title>Journal of Language and Social Psychology</title></titleInfo><genre type="journal">journal</genre><identifier type="ISSN">0261-927X</identifier><identifier type="eISSN">1552-6526</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID">JLS</identifier><identifier type="PublisherID-hwp">spjls</identifier><part><date>2005</date><detail type="volume"><caption>vol.</caption><number>24</number></detail><detail type="issue"><caption>no.</caption><number>1</number></detail><extent unit="pages"><start>25</start><end>35</end></extent></part></relatedItem><identifier type="istex">5184631E1432FBE4FC0336807DE1D07194B22E86</identifier><identifier type="DOI">10.1177/0261927X04273035</identifier><identifier type="ArticleID">10.1177_0261927X04273035</identifier><recordInfo><recordContentSource>SAGE</recordContentSource></recordInfo></mods></metadata><serie></serie></istex></record>Pour manipuler ce document sous Unix (Dilib)
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