1st Edition
Standards and Expectancies Contrast and Assimilation in Judgments of Self and Others
This book examines how standards and expectancies affect judgments of others and the self. Standards are points of comparison, expectancies are beliefs about the future, and both serve as frames of reference against which current events and people (including the self) are experienced. The central theme of the book is that judgments can be characterized as either assimilative or contrastive in nature. Assimilation occurs when the target of evaluation (another person, the self) is pulled toward or judged consistently with the standard or expectation, and contrast occurs when the target is differentiated from (judged in a direction opposite) the comparative frame. The book considers factors that determine whether assimilation versus contrast occurs, and focuses on the roles of contextual cues, the self, and stereotypes as standards for judging others, and the roles of internalized guides, stereotypes, and other people for judging the self.
Biography
Monica Biernat
This short monograph is a wonderful and enlightening extension of the promise that was evident, but never realized, in the earlier work [on standards and expectancies by Sherif and Hovland]. It opportunistically capitalizes on some of the nascent insights contained, but never fully articulated, in the earlier volumes and materially extends the reach of the earlier ideas to a point that encapsulates much of what we do today in social psychology.[...] The formal structure of Bienrat's book is well considered and useful. She lays out a set of basic principles in the first chapter and discusses models of assimilation and contrast in the second. She then returns to these fundamental building blocks of her argument throughout the remaining chapters. This strategy lends a coherence to a treatment that otherwise would become even less than fuzzy. The breadth of phenomena that come under the microscope in this brief treatment requires a good structure, and Biernat's structure provides that. - William D. Crano, in PsycCRITQUES, May 2006.
