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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Jun 23, 2026

A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments

A Psychophysics Paradigm for the Collection and Analysis of Similarity Judgments

Published on: March 1, 2022

Origins of the sample-size effect in explicit evaluative judgment.

Martina Kaufmann¹, Tilmann Betsch

¹Department of Psychology, University of Erfurt, Germany. Martina.Kaufmann@uni-erfurt.de

Experimental Psychology

|May 19, 2009

Summary

Larger information samples lead to more extreme attitude judgments by increasing perceived reliability, not just by summing information. This finding offers a new perspective on attitude formation processes.

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Area of Science:

Cognitive Psychology
Social Psychology
Decision Making

Background:

Attitude judgments are often formed after reviewing information samples.
Previous research attributes sample-size effects to information integration, where larger samples yield more extreme judgments.
An alternative explanation suggests sample size influences perceived reliability, impacting judgment extremity.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the role of perceived reliability in sample-size effects on attitude judgments.
To provide empirical evidence for an alternative model of attitude formation.
To test whether perceived reliability mediates the relationship between sample size and judgment extremity.

Main Methods:

Three experiments were conducted to test the proposed alternative account.
Experiment 1 assessed participants' perception of reliability based on sample size.
Experiment 2 examined the mediating role of perceived reliability in sample-size effects.
Experiment 3 investigated the influence of other variables, like variability, on this effect.

Main Results:

Participants perceived larger information samples as more reliable than smaller ones.
Perceived reliability was found to mediate the effect of sample size on attitude judgments.
Increased variability, which reduced perceived reliability, attenuated sample-size effects.

Conclusions:

Sample size influences attitude judgment extremity primarily through its effect on perceived information reliability.
The value account model of attitude formation explains how implicit and explicit attitudes integrate information differently.
Findings challenge purely summative accounts of information integration in attitude formation.