Abstract

The present study examined subjects' evaluations of groups and individual members of that groups composed of a majority of persons with low test scores and atypical persons with high test scores. As a result, the effect of atypical persons on the impression ratings depended on the type of social comparison. First with regard to the ratings of groups, when subjects made within-group comparisons, they perceived the majority (low scorers) as the representative information of groups. As a result, ratings of the groups did not differ whether or not there was atypical high-scoring members. However, when subjects made between-group comparisons, the atypical high-scorers(who accentuated the difference in between-group comparisons) were perceived as the representative information of groups. That is, subjects rated the group with the high-scorers more positively than the group without them. With regard to the ratings of individual members, there were contrast effects between the high-scorers and the rests of the group members in both the within-comparison and between-comparison conditions. Ratings of the test scores of individuals were more negative when there were atypical high-scoring members in the group than there was none. However ratings of individuals with extremely low scores did not differ whether there were high-scoring members or not. That is, no contrast effects appeared in the ratings of individual members whose scores were extremely different from high-scoring members. Implications of the result to the study of stereotypes and subjective well-being were discussed.