**The importance of variability:
Experienced category variability modulates the impact of context on evaluative judgments**
Prada & Garcia-Marques
in press, Experimental Psychology
doi:
ABSTRACT
Data from two experiments show that the experienced structure of a category (i.e., as having high vs. low variability) modulates the impact of context on evaluative judgments of individual exemplars. Target objects (unfamiliar in Experiment 1 and familiar in Experiment 2) were primed with positive and negative images while varying the number (Experiment 1) or typicity (Experiment 2) of exemplars known from a category prior to the judgment task. Results show that evaluations of object valence were more influenced by valenced context cues in high than in low variability category conditions. These results are taken as evidence that more varied exemplar-based category representations facilitate context effects on stimulus evaluation.
[SEE ATTACHED DATABASES FOR EXPERIMENT 1 AND EXPERIMENT 2]