Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion · chapter 1 · id influence-c1-08-the-civilization-advanced-type

“The Civilization advanced typewriter experiment demonstrated that people who were shown an obviously inferior product first rated a mediocre product much higher than those who saw the mediocre product alone.”

unsupportedconfidence: low⚠ extracted by pipeline, re-audit pending

Receipts

Sherif, Taub & Hovland (1958), Assimilation and contrast effects, Journal of Experimental PsychologyDOI registry: valid

Contrast effects were consistently demonstrated when subjects judged stimuli in sequence, with judgments of later stimuli displaced away from anchoring stimuli.

Kenrick & Gutierres (1980), Contrast Effects and Judgments of Physical Attractiveness, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 38(1)FLAGGED: DOI not in registry

Exposure to highly attractive stimuli reduced the perceived attractiveness of average stimuli, demonstrating contrast effects in social judgment parallel to psychophysical contrast.

This claim is a stable, citable object. If you can falsify a verdict, tell us — corrections are loud here.