“Fortunately, I’m no Einstein:” Comparison relevance as a determinant of behavioral assimilation and contrast.

We investigated the determinants of whether activated knowledge leads to behavioral assimilation or to contrast. Whereas early studies concluded that behavior assimilates to activated categories but contrasts from activated exemplars, more recent results suggest that the comparison relevance of a prime may predict the direction of its effect. Thus, in four experiments, we manipulated the perceived relevance of category and exemplar primes. Behaviors consistently assimilated to irrelevant primes and contrasted from relevant primes, regardless of the primes' exemplar–category status. Furthermore, participants who explicitly rejected a series of irrelevant self–exemplar comparisons showed relative assimilation to subsequent exemplar primes, suggesting that experience can momentarily render extreme exemplars comparison irrelevant. The role of comparison relevance as a moderator of automatic behavior is discussed.