title: Explaining Extremity in Evaluation of Group Members: Meta-Analytic Tests of Three Theories.
abstract: A meta-analysis that included more than 1,100 effect sizes tested the predictions of three theoretical perspectives that explain evaluative extremity in social judgment: complexity-extremity theory, subjective group dynamics model, and expectancy-violation theory. The work seeks to understand the ways in which group-based information interacts with person-based information to influence extremity in evaluations. Together, these three theories point to the valence of person-based information, group membership of the evaluated targets relative to the evaluator, status of the evaluators' ingroup, norm consistency of the person-based information, and incongruency of person-based information with stereotype-based expectations as moderators. Considerable support, but some limiting conditions, were found for each theoretical perspective. Implications of the results are discussed.
authors.affiliation: University of Missouri, Columbia, USA Bettencourta@missouri.edu.
authors.forename: B Ann
authors.initials: BA
authors.lastname: Bettencourt
authors.affiliation: Karmanos Cancer Institute, Detroit, MI, USA.
authors.forename: Mark
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Manning
authors.affiliation: Tulane University, New Orleans, LA, USA.
authors.forename: Lisa
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Molix
authors.affiliation: Texas A&M University, College Station, USA.
authors.forename: Rebecca
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Schlegel
authors.affiliation: University of Arkansas, Fayetteville, USA.
authors.forename: Scott
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Eidelman
authors.affiliation: University of Kansas, Lawrence, USA.
authors.forename: Monica
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Biernat
mesh_terms: D006126:Group Processes; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D011582:Psychological Theory; D012919:Social Behavior; D012933:Social Identification; D012938:Social Perception; D013240:Stereotyping
keywords: Complexity extremity; evaluative extremity; expectancy violation; impression formation; stereotyping; subjective group dynamics