Abstract:

Preference reversal of joint evaluation is well known in the field of decision-making. The Generalized Evaluability Theory (GET), as a theory for preference reversal with the strongest explanatory power, emphasizes the role of the mode of evaluation (i.e., the presence or absence of contextual information) in the decision-making process. The theoretical models for the contextual effect of social comparison and social evaluation, e.g., the Inclusion/Exclusion Model (IEM), also emphasizes the role of contextual information (especially the similarity between context and target) in the evaluation process. Analogous to preference reversal, the contextual effect can also be explained as a kind of "decision preference" (upward assimilation and downward contrast) and its "reversal" (upward contrast and downward assimilation). Taken as analogous concepts, preference reversal and contextual effect are first introduced and compared, and then contextual effect is explained and extended from the new perspective of joint evaluation. Future research should pay attention to the following aspects to deepen the understanding of the contextual effect and promote the theoretical integration and practical implications of these two fields.
First, how to measure contextual effects. Previous studies usually measured the contextual effects as the relative difference of the target evaluations among different contexts, which might lead to a contrary conclusion. Similar to the fact that preference reversal is concluded from the difference between joint and separate evaluations, future research on contextual effect should also take the baseline condition (i. e., the target is evaluated separately) into account. This is to avoid the inapposite measure of contextual effects of social comparison and social evaluation.
Second, what factors influence contextual effects. Inspired from the contextual factors of preference reversal effects of joint evaluations, future research may pay more attention to the target-context similarity for various evaluation dimensions of social comparison and social evaluation.
Third, the contextual effect may be extended to cross-dimensional domains. It is common for cross-dimensional trade-offs in decision-making during joint evaluations. Thus, the cross-dimensional contextual effects should not be rare in social comparison and social evaluation. Specifically, the cross-dimensional domains may be manifested as followings: 1) context and target are cross-dimensional, 2) target evaluation on one dimension (e.g., trustworthiness) is impacted by the ingroup/outgroup relationships between the evaluator and target resulted from another feature (e.g., race), and 3) contextual effects are modulated by the relevance between the contextual dimension and the target dimension, and so on.
Finally, the contextual effect can be linked into practical applications. Decision-making is common in practical context, and the new perspective of joint evaluation can provide insights for the decision-making dilemma related to contextual effects, in particular when the target and the context are extremely similar leading to a hard prediction of the occurrence of the assimilation effect. Besides, based on the perspective of joint evaluation, multidimensional criteria in real situations such as interviews should be evaluated separately to minimize the adverse impact of contextual assimilation and contrast, when it is more difficult to evaluate the key criterion than the less important criterion. Therefore, the perspective of joint evaluation can inspire the application of contextual effect in a wider range of evaluation and decision-making situations in the future.

Key words: social comparison, social evaluation, contextual effect, joint evaluation, preference reversal