Abstract
Similarity comparisons are highly sensitive to judgment context. Three experiments explore context effects that occur within a single comparison rather than across several trials. Experiment 1 shows reliable intransitivities in which a target is judged to be more similar to stimulus A than to stimulus B, more similar to B than to stimulus C, and more similar to C than to A. Experiment 2 explores the locus of Tversky’s (1977) diagnosticity effect in which the relative similarity of two alternatives to a target is influenced by a third alternative. Experiment 3 demonstrates a new violation of choice independence which is explained by object dimensions’ becoming foregrounded or backgrounded, depending upon the set of displayed objects. The observed violations of common assumptions to many models of similarity and choice can be accommodated in terms of a dynamic property-weighting process based on the variability and diagnosticity of dimensions.
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This research was funded by National Science Foundation Grant SBR-9409232 awarded to the first author, National Science Foundation Grant 95-11757 to the second author, and a Javits Predoctoral Fellowship to the the third author.
Experiment 1 was based on a suggestion by Jerry Busemeyer.
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Goldstone, R.L., Medin, D.L. & Halberstadt, J. Similarity in context. Mem Cogn 25, 237–255 (1997). https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201115
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.3758/BF03201115