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Positive-negative asymmetryand bipolar contrastJack Adams-webber aa Department of Psychology , Brock University , St.Catharines, Ontario, CanadaPublished online: 24 Dec 2007.

To cite this article: Jack Adams-webber (1997) Positive-negative asymmetryand bipolar contrast, Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 10:4, 387-393, DOI:10.1080/10720539708404633

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POSITIVE-NEGATIVE ASYMMETRY AND BIPOLAR CONTRAST

JACK ADAMS-WEBBER

Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada

Repertory grids in which personal acquaintances were eimluated on the basis of bipolar constructs (eg., generous-stingy) were completed by 58 undergraduates. A "person format," with all constructs applied to each acquaintance in turn, was assigned randomly to 29 students; a "construct format," in which these acquaintan- ces were evaluated successively on only 1 construct at a time, was assigned to the other 29. The relative frequency of positive evaluations in the construct format grids (0.62) was consistent with the golden section hypothesis, a'herens that in the person formal grids (0.66) was significantly higher. Theoretical implications of these find- ings were discussed in terms of H. Frank's (1964) theoretical definition of strilangness and V. A. Lefebvre's (1990) computational model of reflexion.

Kelly's (1955) constructivist approach to the analysis of social cogni- tion implies that people rely on dichotomous constructs (e.g., gener- ous-stingy) to evaluate their impressions of other people. He defined the relationship between the alternative poles of such constructs in terms of bipolar opposition (contrariety). Accordingly, in his repertory grid technique, which has played an integral role in the development of Kellyan theory, individuals are asked to evaluate persons dichoto- mously on the basis of the contrasting poles of each construct. It has been found repeatedly in previous research based on this procedure (reviewed by Adams-Webber, 1992) that individuals tend to assign other persons to the positive poles ( eg , generous) approximately 62% of the time. This result has been reported by several investigators, using both elicited and supplied constructs, real and imaginary fig- ures, not only with adults, but also with children and adolescents of every age between 8 and 19, in Canada, England, Poland, Trinidad, and the United States.

Received 8 February 1996; accepted 30 July 1996. This work was supported by Research Grant 410-92-0153 from the Social Sciences

and Humanities Research Council of Canada. I am grateful also to Dawn Binkley, Scott Kernaghan, and Anne-Marie Masgoret for their assistance In collecting data.

Address correspondence to Jack Adams-Webber, Department of Psychology, Brock University, St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada L2S 3A1. E-mail: jadams@spartan.ac.brocku.ca

Journal of Constructivist Psychology, 10:387-393, 1997 387 Copyright 0 1997 Taylor 8 Fruncis

1072-0537/97 $12.00 + .00

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388 J . Adam-Webber

Benjafield and Adams-Webber (1976) conjectured that the exact theoretical value of this proportion might be (6 - 1)/2 o 0.618 . . ., known in mathematics as the golden section (cf. Benjafield, 1992a). In general, it can be defined as the ratio between any two values, x and y/ whenever x/y = y/(x + y). We hypothesized specifically that the ratio of negative to positive evaluations of other persons equals that of positive to total evaluations.

Soldz (1994) observed that ”there has been no systematic attempt to clarify exactly what tasks and conditions are conducive to the emer- gence of the golden section” (p. 816). For example, in all of the experi- ments referred to above, participants evaluated several persons suc- cessively in terms of one bipolar construct at a time. Although it has been found consistently under these specific conditions that the posi- tive poles are applied to approximately 62% of the persons catego- rized (cf. Benjafield, 1992b), it remains open to question whether par- ticipants’ impressions of individual persons tend to be, on average, approximately 62% positive.

In operational terms, if participants were asked to apply all of a given set of bipolar constructs to only one person at a time, one might find either a higher or lower percentage of positive evaluations than when all persons are evaluated successively with each construct in turn held constant. As specifically recommended by Epting, Prichard, Wiggins, Leonard, and Beagle (1992), the experiment reported here addresses this question “through the use of computers that present one dimension or one figure at a time” (p. 90). They suggested that systematically varying repertory grid formats in this way could affect several different structural indices; however, this research is concerned specifically with its potential influence on the relative frequency of positive evaluations in the context of the golden section hypothesis.

METHOD

Kelly’s (1955) repertory grid technique (summarized by Adams-Webber, 1994) is essentially a complex sorting procedure in which a set of persons (“figures”) are evaluated on the basis of several bipolar con- structs. One can either elicit “personal constructs” from participants individually (Kelly, 1955) or supply a standard set of constructs to all participants (e.g./ Osgood, Suci, Tannenbaum, 1957). Each participant’s responses are recorded in a separate grid matrix with columns for all figures and rows for all constructs. Every row-column intersect con- tains either a ”1” or ”0,” indicating which pole of a given construct was applied to a particular figure.

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Bipolar Contrast 389

Whenever figures are assigned to the contrasting poles of con- structs that can be mapped onto the basic distinction between positive and negative (cf. Osgood & Richards, 1973), the resulting binary matrix can be interpreted as a table of truth values wherein “the positive pole of a bipolar construct corresponds to Boolean value 1, and its negative pole to Boolean value 0” (Lefebvre, 1990, p. 60). Ac- cordingly, each entry of 1 indicates that the predicate defining the positive pole is true for that figure. Conversely, each entry of 0 means that the predicate defining the positive pole is false and that defining the negative pole is true. The golden section hypothesis, as stated above, predicts that the relative frequency of positive responses (1s) in this matrix should be approximately 0.618 (cf. 14dams-Webber, 1996).

OMNIGRID (Mitterer & Adams-Webber, l988; Sewell, Mitterer, Adams-Webber, & Cromwell, 1991), an automated version of reper- tory grid procedure, was used to administer one of two grid tasks described below individually to each of 58 Canadian undergraduates enrolled in an introductory psychology course. ‘They received optional credit in this course for their voluntary participation. Every student was randomly assigned one of two different grid formats.

In the construct format, all of the figures were presented on screen, one at a time, in a different random order with each construct in turn. In the person format, the entire list of constructs was presented in a differ- ent random order for each figure in turn so that students applied all constructs sequentially to only one figure at a time. In both formats, every figure was evaluated once on each construct. Students entered their own responses directly into a computer using a standard key- board. They were instructed to “type either 1 or 2 to indicate which quality better describes the person named.” ClMNIGRID stored each student’s data in a separate 12 x 12 binary matrix and then computed the relative frequency of positive responses for every student.

In the interests of standardization, the same 12 constructs were incorporated into both grid formats: (1) generms-stingy, (2) pleasant- unpleasant, (3) true-false, (4) fair-unfair, (5) active-passive, (6) energetic- lethargic, (7) sharpdull, (8) excitable-calm, (9) strong-weak, (10) bold-timid, (11) hard-soft, and (12) rugged-delicate. These constructs were first used in a repertory grid experiment by Warr and Coffman (1970), who found that they did not differ significantly in terms of “personal rel- evance” (i.e., rating extremity) from constructs elicited individually from the same participants. Each of the three rnajor semantic differen- tial components of connotative meaning (Osgood et al., 1957) was represented by four constructs: evaluation ( l a ) , activity (5-8), and potency (9-12). The “positive” poles of constructs were identified in terms of the direction of their loadings on these components (i.e., the

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390 1. Adams-Webber

first listed pole of each construct). As Osgood and Richards (1973) point out, "strong and active, as well as good are somehow positive as compared to their opposites" (p. 81). The positive pole appeared on the left and right equally often and was labeled "1" half of the time.

In both grid formats, the figures comprised the names of people with whom students were personally acquainted. These names were elicited with 12 brief "role descriptions," selected from Kelly's (1955) original set of 19 in such a manner that half of them were expected to be regarded favorably (e.g., "the most ethical person you know") and half unfavorably (eg , "the person with whom you feel least comfort- able"). OMNIGRID simply requested students to "type the name of a particular acquaintance who best fits each description, without repeat- ing any names."

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The mean proportion of positive responses was significantly larger, t(56) = 2.022, p < .05, two-tailed test, in the person format grids (M = .656, SD = .073) than in the construct format grids (M = .620, SD = .063). A one-sample t test indicated that the person format mean was also significantly larger, t(28) = 2.796, p < .01, two-tailed test, than the theoretical value predicted from the golden section hypothesis, that is, .618. The 95% confidence limits for the person format mean com- prised an upper limit of .684 and a lower limit of .628. Thus, the golden section hypothesis was disconfirmed when students applied a set of different constructs successively to just one acquaintance at a time. This finding suggests that, insofar as people rely on bipolar constructs to encode their impressions of individual acquaintances, as posited by Kelly (1955), the information contained in these profiles is, on average, probably more than 62% positive.

On the other hand, another one-sample t test, t(28) = .141, ns, revealed that the mean proportion of positive responses in the con- struct format grids (.620) did not differ significantly from the value predicted from the golden section hypothesis (.618), which is consis- tent with the results of several earlier experiments based on the same grid format (summarized above). Indeed, the observed value is a very close approximation to the theoretical one. The 95% confidence limits for the construct format mean comprised an upper limit of .644 and a lower limit of .596.

This finding lends itself to further interpretation in terms of Frank's theoretical definition of strikingrzess. Specifically, Frank (1964), summa- rized by Benjafield (1992a), defines the strikingness (salience) of any

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Bipolar Contrast 391

category of event in terms of both its relative frequency of occurrence (p,> and the amount of information that it yields (i.e., H = -log,pl). His specific index of strikingness is the product of these two values: -p,log,p,. This expression is equivalent to the contribution of any event to average information in the classic Shannon-Wiener formula: H = -C p,log,p,. Its maximum value occurs when p, = l/e (=0.37), where e is the base of the natural logarithms. For example, Frank (1964) found that when individuals were asked to arrange samples of various col- ors together so that one particular color would stand out maximally among the others, the designated color was used approximately 37% of the time (cf. Benjafield, 1992a). It should be noted that the function -p,log,p, is fairly “flat” in the vicinity of its maximum value, and con- sequently, relatively small deviations of p, from the value l/e involve little loss in strilungness as defined by Frank (see Attneave, 1959).

Benjafield and Adams-Webber (1976) argued on the basis of Frank‘s theoretical definition of strikingness that assigning approximately 37% of others to the negative pole of any construct could make negative evaluations stand out maximally as “figure” against a ”background of positive evaluations, thereby highlighting the contrast between its positive and negative poles. This inference is supported by Rigdon and Epting’s (1982) subsequent finding that the more useful an indi- vidual regards a particular construct for understanding people, the more closely the distribution of her or his positive and negative evalu- ations of other persons on that construct approximates 62-38.

Tuohy (1987) speculated further that “the informational bias iden- tified by Benjafield and Adams-Webber (1976) may constitute an oper- ating characteristic of a relatively independent affective mediator” (p. 44; cf. Tuohy & Stradling, 1992). In Tuohy and Sltradling’s (1987) words, “any differentiation is made maximally distinct when the smaller class of elements is given a probability of occurrence of lle” (p. 457). Thus, applying the negative poles of constructs to approximately 37% of other persons should yield “maximal differentiation of negative evalu- ation” (Tuohy, 1987, p. 44). Specifically, Stradling, Tuohy, and Harper (1990, p. 409) found that, when 522 police officers rated 40 sets of circumstances as to how far each would influence them to prosecute motorists stopped for speeding, their responses “exhibited an asym- metry, consistent with the maximum salience bias towards a negative proportion of lle” (~0.37).

The proposed theoretical implications of the golden section hy- pothesis in terms of Frank‘s definition of strikingness may be specifi- cally relevant to situations in which a series of figures are assigned sequentially to the contrasting poles of only one dichotomous con- struct at a time. This format, which was developed originally by Kelly

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392 J. Adams-Webber

(1955) himself, explicitly requires the bifurcation of a list of figures into two separate groups designated by the opposite poles of each construct. As Kelly (1970) pointed out, “a construct is the basic con- trast between two groups” (p. 13). In short, construct format instruc- tions would seem to emphasize the importance of differentiating among the figures in terms of the contrasting meanings of the alternative poles of each construct.

On the other hand, individuals given the person format instruc- tions might have concentrated primarily on using whatever informa- tion they remembered about particular acquaintances to construct in- tegrated impressions of their individual personalities rather than on comparing and contrasting them with one another other in terms of the opposite poles of specific constructs. This person-focused orienta- tion may also be more conducive to “halo effects,” for example, infer- ring additional positive characteristics from those already attributed to favourably regarded acquaintances (see Lee, 1989). In fact, “rating all people on one trait before going on to the next” is a frequently used method of controlling for potential halo effects (Berger, 1994, p. 104).

Finally, these findings may also be relevant to Lefebvre’s compu- tational model of reflexion. Lefebvre (1992) assumed that when the observed responses of individuals closely match the predictions of this model, its detailed functional specifications can be viewed as a poten- tial theoretical explanation of their performance. Specifically, he hy- pothesized that people rely on an “automatic inner computer” for evaluating persons and “the constant 0.62 is a characteristic of this computer” (Lefebvre’s, 1985, p. 291). Lefebvre (1990) concluded that “the hypothesis of Benjafield and Adams-Webber (1976) about the golden section ratio coincides with the general predictions of our model” (p. 19; cf. Benjafield, 199213). Rapoport (1990) submitted that “the most remarkable examples of quantitative corroborations of Lefebvre’s model of reflexion are the recurrences of the ratio near 0.62‘ (p. 124). The results of this experiment suggest further that the range of conve- nience of Lefebvre’s model may be limited to situations in which indi- viduals evaluate several different persons in terms of one bipolar con- struct at a time.

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