Subjective Assessments and Evaluations of Change: Some Lessons from Social Cognition Research

Selected judgmental processes that bear on how individuals determine if things have changed in their life, and whether these changes are for the better or worse, are reviewed. In the absence of systematic research into this issue, we draw on related research into the construal and evaluation of the past, present, and future to offer educated guesses, to identify theoretical gaps, and to highlight issues for future research.

[1]  Michaela Wänke,et al.  ASKING COMPARATIVE QUESTIONS THE IMPACT OF THE DIRECTION OF COMPARISON , 1995 .

[2]  S. Plous.  The psychology of judgment and decision making , 1994 .

[3]  D. Kahneman,et al.  When More Pain Is Preferred to Less: Adding a Better End , 1993 .

[4]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Duration neglect in retrospective evaluations of affective episodes. , 1993, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[5]  Christopher G. Davis,et al.  Positive and Negative Life Changes Following Bereavement and their Relations to Adjustment , 1993 .

[6]  Dacher Kehner,et al.  The Influence of Attributions on the Relevance of Negative Feelings to Personal Satisfaction , 1993 .

[7]  Daniel Kahneman,et al.  Experiences extended across time: Evaluation of moments and episodes , 1992 .

[8]  F. Strack,et al.  Ease of retrieval as information: Another look at the availability heuristic. , 1991 .

[9]  Barbara L. Fredrickson,et al.  Anticipated endings: An explanation for selective social interaction. , 1991 .

[10]  J. Krosnick.  Response strategies for coping with the cognitive demands of attitude measures in surveys , 1991 .

[11]  F. Strack,et al.  The impact of administration mode on response effects in survey measurement , 1991 .

[12]  Norbert Schwarz,et al.  Assimilation and Contrast Effects in Part-Whole Question Sequences: A Conversational Logic Analysis , 1991 .

[13]  S. Thompson.  The Search for Meaning Following a Stroke , 1991 .

[14]  D. Kahneman,et al.  Experimental Tests of the Endowment Effect and the Coase Theorem , 1990, Journal of Political Economy.

[15]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  A Better World or a Shattered Vision? Changes in Life Perspectives Following Victimization , 1990 .

[16]  R. Hastie,et al.  Hindsight: Biased judgments of past events after the outcomes are known. , 1990 .

[17]  N. Schwarz,et al.  Die Vergleichsrichtung bestimmt das Ergebnis von Vergleichsprozessen: Ist-Idealdiskrepanzen in der Beziehungsbeurteilung , 1989, 1989.

[18]  David W Harless,et al.  More laboratory evidence on the disparity between willingness to pay and compensation demanded , 1989 .

[19]  M. Ross.  Relation of Implicit Theories to the Construction of Personal Histories , 1989 .

[20]  Robert Cameron Mitchell,et al.  Using Surveys to Value Public Goods: The Contingent Valuation Method , 1989 .

[21]  N. Schwarz,et al.  Judgments of relationship satisfaction: Inter- and intraindividual comparisons as a function of questionnaire structure , 1988 .

[22]  A. Tversky,et al.  Contrasting Rational and Psychological Analyses of Political Choice , 1988, American Political Science Review.

[23]  William Samuelson,et al.  Status quo bias in decision making , 1988 .

[24]  G. Loewenstein.  Frames of mind in intertemporal choice , 1988 .

[25]  Franziska Marquart,et al.  Communication and persuasion : central and peripheral routes to attitude change , 1988 .

[26]  D. M. Scott,et al.  America's Families: A Documentary History , 1987 .

[27]  Shanto Iyengar,et al.  Television News and Citizens' Explanations of National Affairs , 1987, American Political Science Review.

[28]  A. Rapoport,et al.  Discount rates inferred from decisions: an experimental study , 1987 .

[29]  E. Hearst,et al.  Detecting and identifying change: additions versus deletions. , 1986, Journal of experimental psychology. Human perception and performance.

[30]  Dale T. Miller,et al.  Norm theory: Comparing reality to its alternatives , 1986 .

[31]  F. Strack,et al.  Happiness and reminiscing: The role of time perspective, affect, and mode of thinking. , 1985, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.

[32]  J. Graham,et al.  Agreement Between Retrospective Accounts of Substance Use and Earlier Reported Substance Use , 1985 .

[33]  Michael Conway,et al.  Getting what you want by revising what you had. , 1984 .

[34]  J. Knetsch,et al.  Willingness to Pay and Compensation Demanded: Experimental Evidence of an Unexpected Disparity in Measures of Value , 1984 .

[35]  E. Diener,et al.  Subjective well-being. , 1984, Psychological bulletin.

[36]  J. V. Wood,et al.  Attributions, beliefs about control, and adjustment to breast cancer. , 1984, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[37]  L. Silka,et al.  Intuitive Judgments of Rate Change: The Case of Teenage Pregnancies , 1983 .

[38]  S. Linton,et al.  A clinical comparison of two pain scales: Correlation, remembering chronic pain and a measure of compliance , 1983, Pain.

[39]  G. Clore,et al.  Mood, misattribution, and judgments of well-being: Informative and directive functions of affective states. , 1983 .

[40]  T. K. Srull,et al.  General Principles and Individual Differences in the Self as a Habitual Reference Point: An Examination of Self-Other Judgments of Similarity , 1983 .

[41]  A. Tversky,et al.  Affect, Generalization, and the Perception of Risk. , 1983 .

[42]  E F Loftus,et al.  Since the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, has anyone beaten you up? Improving the accuracy of retrospective reports with landmarkevents , 1983, Memory & cognition.

[43]  Lennart Melin,et al.  The accuracy of remembering chronic pain , 1982, PAIN.

[44]  A. Tversky,et al.  The simulation heuristic , 1982 .

[45]  L. Ross,et al.  Human Inference: Strategies and Shortcomings of Social Judgment. , 1981 .

[46]  A. Tversky,et al.  The framing of decisions and the psychology of choice. , 1981, Science.

[47]  R. Thaler.  Toward a positive theory of consumer choice , 1980 .

[48]  Robert M. Groves,et al.  Surveys by Telephone: A National Comparison With Personal Interviews. , 1980 .

[49]  A. Tversky,et al.  Decision, probability, and utility: Prospect theory: An analysis of decision under risk , 1979 .

[50]  D. Morawetz,et al.  Income Distribution and Self-Rated Happiness: Some Empirical Evidence , 1977 .

[51]  A. Tversky.  Features of Similarity , 1977 .

[52]  Timothy D. Wilson,et al.  Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. , 1977 .

[53]  E. Singer.  Subjective evaluations as indicators of change. , 1977, Journal of health and social behavior.

[54]  M. Moss.  Widowhood in an American City , 1975 .

[55]  B. Fischhoff,et al.  I knew it would happen: Remembered probabilities of once—future things , 1975 .

[56]  R. Jessop.  Why Men Rebel , 1971 .

[57]  S. Withey.  Reliability of Recall of Income , 1954 .

[58]  H. Schuman,et al.  Collective Memories in the United States and Lithuania , 1994 .

[59]  J. E. Collins,et al.  Biasing Effects of Retrospective Reports on Current Self-Assessments , 1994 .

[60]  M. Wänke.  Vergleichsprozesse bei evaluativen Urteilen : der Einfluss der in der Frage vorgegebenen Vergleichsrichtung , 1993 .

[61]  N. Schwarz,et al.  The impact of administration modes on response effects in surveys , 1992 .

[62]  J. Forgas.  Affect in Social Judgments and Decisions: A Multiprocess Model , 1992 .

[63]  F. Strack,et al.  Context Effects in Attitude Surveys: Applying Cognitive Theory to Social Research , 1991 .

[64]  Amos Tversky,et al.  Endowment and contrast in judgments of well-being. , 1991 .

[65]  Shelley E. Taylor,et al.  Assault on the Self: Positive Illusions and Adjustment to Threatening Events , 1991 .

[66]  L. Ross,et al.  Subjective Construal, Social Inference, and Human Misunderstanding , 1991 .

[67]  R. Thaler.  The Winner s Curse , 1991 .

[68]  Oded Löwenbein,et al.  Einkommensanalysen auf der Grundlage amtlicher Daten und Umfragedaten: Ergebnisse zur betrieblichen Seniorität und Arbeitslosigkeit , 1991 .

[69]  L. S. Ross,et al.  The person and the situation , 1991 .

[70]  Arie W. Kruglanski,et al.  Motivations for judging and knowing: Implications for causal attribution. , 1990 .

[71]  N. Schwarz.  Feelings as information: Informational and motivational functions of affective states. , 1990 .

[72]  Dale T. Miller,et al.  Counterfactual thinking and social perception : thinking about what might have been , 1990 .

[73]  J. van der Pligt,et al.  Frames of reference, judgment and attitude , 1990 .

[74]  Steven L. Neuberg,et al.  A Continuum of Impression Formation, from Category-Based to Individuating Processes: Influences of Information and Motivation on Attention and Interpretation , 1990 .

[75]  Norbert Schwarz,et al.  Assessing frequency reports of mundane behaviors: Contributions of cognitive psychology to questionnaire construction. , 1990 .

[76]  D. Dunning,et al.  Mental addition versus subtraction in counterfactual reasoning: on assessing the impact of personal actions and life events. , 1989, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[77]  Linda Silka,et al.  Intuitive judgments of change , 1989 .

[78]  Alice H. Eagly,et al.  Heuristic and systematic information processing within and beyond the persuasion context. , 1989 .

[79]  Norbert Schwarz,et al.  Evaluating one's life: A judgment model of subjective well-being. , 1988 .

[80]  T. K. Srull,et al.  A Dual process model of impression formation , 1988 .

[81]  Norbert Schwarz,et al.  Soccer, rooms, and the quality of your life: Mood effects on judgments of satisfaction with life in general and with specific domains , 1987 .

[82]  F. Strack,et al.  Thinking, Judging, and Communicating: A Process Account of Context Effects in Attitude Surveys , 1987 .

[83]  R. Wyer,et al.  Social cognition and social reality: Information acquisition and use in the laboratory and the real world , 1987 .

[84]  Gerhard Strube,et al.  Answering Survey Questions: The Role of Memory , 1987 .

[85]  M. Conway,et al.  Remembering one''s own past: The construction of personal histories , 1986 .

[86]  Daniel Kahneman,et al.  Fairness and the Assumptions of Economics , 1986 .

[87]  B. Rapkin,et al.  Economics and psychosocial dysfunction: Toward a conceptual framework and prevention strategies , 1983 .

[88]  Angus Campbell,et al.  The sense of well-being in America , 1981 .

[89]  G. Bower.  Mood and memory. , 1981, The American psychologist.

[90]  A. Kruglanski.  Lay epistemo-logic—process and contents: Another look at attribution theory. , 1980 .

[91]  Amos Tversky,et al.  Studies of similarity , 1978 .

[92]  C. Coombs,et al.  Single-Peaked Functions and the Theory of Preference , 1977 .

[93]  Baruch Fischhoff,et al.  On the Psychology of Experimental Surprises , 1977 .

[94]  H. Znanieckilopata.  On widowhood. Grief work and indentity reconstruction. , 1975, Journal of geriatric psychiatry.

[95]  H. Lopata.  On widowhood: Grief work and identity reconstruction. , 1975 .

[96]  R. Easterlin.  Does Economic Growth Improve the Human Lot? Some Empirical Evidence , 1974 .

[97]  H. Kelley.  Causal schemata and the attribution process , 1972 .

[98]  W. Runciman.  Relative Deprivation and Social Justice , 1966 .