The Creation of Ideals: A Question of the Energy-Distribution in the Personality Field

Semantic contrast occurs when Ss' ratings of the meaning of a word shift as a function of the context in which that word occurs. The current set of studies, using male and female undergraduates as Ss, was designed to determine the conditions necessary to produce semantic contrast. In Experiment 1 (N = 50), words referring to physical beauty and temperature were scaled and used to construct stimuli for subsequent experiments. In Experiment 2 (N = 72), contrast occurred with the temperature expressions with both a limited and extended response mode. However, no contrast effects occurred with either response mode for the expressions of beauty in Experiment 3 (N = 72). These findings suggest that the elaboration of information in semantic memory varies. To the extent that there is an elaborate representation, items will be resistant to contextual effects, while the meaning of less-elaborated items will be affected by the context in which they are experienced.