Social judgments are often influenced by comparison to some standard in the environment, either moving the judgment closer (assimilating) to or away (contrasting) from this standard. Which direction this effect will take depends heavily on the relative standing of these standards on the judgment dimension compared to the target of the judgment. In previous research, items and comparison standards were often selected arbitrarily, ignoring or simplifying their influence substantially. The current work takes a fine-grained holistic curve fitting approach to measure response patterns across a wide range of standard extremities, showing that a narrower approach can pose limits to the generalizability and validity of inferences. A series of 8 experiments (N = 4304) uncovered a dynamic interactive pattern between assimilative and contrastive forces on average, which proved sensitive to item level variation (1a, b & c), but showed stability at the level of the facial judgment dimensions (2a & b). Finally, it revealed how the current approach can offer new insights into the role of other moderating variables, such as focusing on similarities versus differences (3a & b) and cross-category standards (4), which traditional approaches may miss. Implications for study design and theory are discussed.

社会判断通常受到与环境中某些标准的比较的影响，要么使判断更接近（同化）或远离（对比）该标准。这种效应会朝哪个方向发展，很大程度上取决于这些标准在判断维度上相对于判断目标的相对地位。在以往的研究中，项目和比较标准往往是随意选择的，基本上忽略或简化了它们的影响。当前的工作采用细粒度的整体曲线拟合方法来测量各种标准四肢的反应模式，表明较窄的方法可能会对推论的普遍性和有效性造成限制。一系列8个实验（N = 4304) 揭示了平均同化力和对比力之间的动态交互模式，这证明对项目水平变化（1a、b 和 c）敏感，但在面部判断维度（2a 和 b）水平上表现出稳定性。最后，它揭示了当前方法如何为其他调节变量的作用提供新见解，例如关注相似性与差异性 (3a & b) 和跨类别标准 (4)，传统方法可能会遗漏这些。讨论了对研究设计和理论的影响。