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perception
Your judgment is relative to what came before.
The sequential contrast effect shows that your evaluation of an object changes based on the quality of the item immediately preceding it.
A mediocre experience feels fantastic if it follows a disaster. An excellent experience feels dull if it follows a masterpiece. You lack an absolute scale for quality, so you rely on the immediate history of your perceptions.
You never see a situation for what it is.
Where this comes from
- Study
- Helson, 1964, Adaptation-Level Theory
- What the check found
- The definition is accurate to the phenomenon of sequential contrast, and Helson (1964) is the authoritative source for the Adaptation-Level Theory underlying these comparative judgments.
- Confidence
- Solid, with limits
Related
One of these every day, and every one names the study it came from. When a finding is contested, it says so.