Effects of asymmetric questions on impression formation: A trade-off between evidence diagnosticity and frequency

When examining social targets, people may ask asymmetric questions for which the yes- and the no-answer are neither equally diagnostic nor equally likely. Although asymmetric testing was related to confirmation bias, the consequences of this strategy on impression formation are still ambiguous. The present work explored the role played by the trade-off between the informativeness of the answers and their probability of occurrence implied by the questions asymmetry. In Study 1, participants received answers related to symmetric/asymmetric questions on an anonymous social target. In Study 2, participants read answers to a specific symmetric/asymmetric question provided by different group members. Overall, the results indicated that asymmetric pools had less impact on impressions than did symmetric pools, suggesting individual’s greater sensitivity to data frequency than to diagnosticity