Range Model of Judgments

Abstract

Judgments of unfamiliar objects are likely to take the psychological form of a range rather than a precise point estimate as is commonly assumed in consumer research. A range model of attitude judgments is formulated to investigate attitude shifts after exposure to a persuasive message. In Study 1, the message was not only shown to affect consumers’ point-estimate judgments but also their range judgments about the attribute targeted by the information. A message consistent with the consumer's pretrial attitude caused the range to narrow, and a message that was inconsistent with the consumer's pretrial attitude caused the range to widen asymmetrically in the direction of the message. In Study 2, judgment ranges were shown to have psychological validity in that a model based on whether the believed and desired judgment ranges overlap predicted purchase intention better than the conventional model that is based on differences in point estimates.