Abstract

In the present study, the authors investigated how the information from multiple pay referents were used when people evaluate the attractiveness of their own pay under the assumption that they refer to others' pay level. For this purpose, three cognitive models were compared; adaptation level model, range model, range-frequency model. In Experiment 1A and 1B, we presented two pay referents and compared the validity of the adaptation level model and the range model. The data supported the range model. In Experiment 2, we presented three pay referents and compared the validity of the three models. The data supported the range-frequency model. These results suggest that multiple referents were not combined into one representative value (e.g., average) for comparison, but the information from each pay referent (esp. the range and its frequency) was used separately. The range-frequency model can be generalized to other situations (ie., when there are more than four referents) not tested empirically in the present study.