assimilation effects

n. Assimilation refers to the tendency to interpret a new experience in a manner that is consistent with one’s preexisting concepts and knowledge. It is distinguished from accommodation, or the modification of established concepts and knowledge to take into account unique features of a new experience. In social psychology, the term has been used more broadly to refer to the judgment of a stimulus as more similar to a standard of comparison than would be the case if the standard were not applied.
Both cognitive and motivational factors theoretically lead to assimilation, and several cognitive processes can underlie it. These factors and processes depend on the stage of cognitive activity at which the effect occurs and the nature of the standard that is applied. Several quite different theories have implications for the conditions in which assimilation can occur. The following summary is representative of the diversity of these theories and the phenomena they purport to explain.
Concept accessibility. If information can be interpreted in terms of more than one concept, its interpretation is likely to depend on the concept that comes to mind most quickly at the time the information is received. A person’s decision to sky dive, for example, might be interpreted as either “adventurous” or “reckless.” Similarly, covering up for a fellow student who cuts class to go swimming might be interpreted as either “kind” or “dishonest.” Note that the concepts that might be applied in each case have different evaluative implications. Consequently, once the behavior is interpreted, judgments of its favorableness (and, perhaps, evaluations of the person who performed the behavior) are assimilated to the evaluative implications of the attribute concept that was used to interpret it.
More general bodies of knowledge may have analogous effects. For example, prior knowledge of an individual,s beliefs and opinions can influence the interpretation of the person’s statements and behavior. A person’s expression of admiration for an American president whose policies favor big business at the expense of social and economic concerns might be viewed as a genuine expression of approval if the speaker is a conservative Republican but as sarcastic if the speaker is a liberal Democrat.
Confirmatory information. People with an a priori expectation for what a person or object will be like may selectively seek and attend to information that is consistent with this expectation. Thus, people who expect a person to be extroverted might selectively attend to information about the person that confirms this expectation, while giving less weight to information that calls this expectation into question. Alternatively, individuals who expect a product to be of high or low quality on the basis of its appearance or brand name may give greater weight to attribute information that confirms this expectation than to information that disconfirms it.
Comparative judgment processes. People are likely to assign a higher value to a stimulus along a given attribute dimension if they have previously compared the stimulus to an arbitrarily high value than if they have compared it to an arbitrarily low value. (For example, they estimate the price of a car to be higher if they have previously considered whether the car would cost more or less than $50,000 than if they have considered whether it would cost more or less than $5,000.) In order to make these comparisons, people apparently think about attributes of a person or object that might conceivably have the value they are considering. Although they may reject this value as implausible, attributes that are called to mind in the course of doing so, whose implications are biased in the direction of the rejected, influence the estimate that participants report later.
Affect. People often use the affective reactions they are experiencing and attribute to a stimulus as a basis for judging this stimulus. However, they often cannot distinguish between their actual reactions to the stimulus and the feelings they are experiencing for other, objectively irrelevant reasons. Consequently, people are inclined to evaluate stimuli more favorably if they happen to be in a good mood at the time than if they happen to be in a bad mood.
Motivational factors. People who are motivated to maintain a favorable self-image may interpret information they receive in a way that confirms this image. Thus, for example, they may take personal responsibility for success and for events that reflect positively on them but may attribute events that potentially threaten their self-esteem to external factors. By the same token, people who find they have behaved in a way that is inconsistent with their previously formed beliefs or attitudes may experience cognitive dissonance and may reduce this dissonance by changing their beliefs or attitude to be consistent with the implications of the behavior. For example, people who have publicly advocated a position with which they disagree may later modify their attitude to be consistent with implications of the behavior.
A related theory of social psychology assumes that people are motivated to maintain beliefs that the world is just, and, therefore, that people both get what they deserve and deserve what they get. Thus, they may hold a person to be more responsible for an accident if the person is seriously injured than if he or she escaped without harm. Furthermore, they may believe not only that the defendant in a rape case will be punished but also that the victim was partly responsible for the incident's occurrence.
The examples summarized provide an indication of the wide range of phenomena that potentially fall under the heading of assimilation and of the diversity of theories that potentially account for them. Beliefs, attitudes, and judgments may be assimilated to concepts and knowledge that happen to be salient at the time the information is received, to expectations concerning the implications of the information, to previously formed beliefs and attitudes, to implications of the behavior one has manifested, and to the evaluative implications of
the affect one happens to be experiencing. Some of these phenomena and the theories that account for them are more firmly established than others, and the conditions on their occurrence are subject to qualification. Nevertheless, assimilation phenomena clearly occupy a central role in social psychological theory and research. - RSW