The role of gender, appearance and similarity in the perceptual contrast effect

The study deals with the description of the mediating role of control variables in the perception of the Other under conditions of negative pre-stimulus distraction. As a result of such distraction, a perceptual contrast effect arises. It manifests itself as significant positive changes in the attitude toward the target object (TO). In our study, this effect is analyzed for different levels of assessments given by the subject to the appearance of the TO and for different degrees of similarity between the former and the latter. The gender-related peculiarities in the manifestation of this effect are also investigated. The study involved 541 students, including 417 females (77 %) and 124 males (23 %) from 17 to 35 years (M = 20.11 ± 1.33). The factors of the object’s attractiveness and his/her similarity to the subject were found to mediate the contrast effects in the perception of an ambivalent (but not valent) personality. The study revealed the features of the mediating role of these factors in assessing the TO by three dispositional traits - consciousness, extraversion, and neuroticism. It was also found that men demonstrate stable attitude toward an ambivalent woman, regardless of the negative pre-stimulus impact, while women, when perceiving an ambivalent woman, show a high susceptibility to negative pre-stimulus distraction. The results obtained clarify and limit the range of negative pre-stimulus effects in the process of social perception, which makes it possible to increase the accuracy in prediction of perceptual effects while taking into account the initial attitudes of the subject.