Talk:Contrast effect
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6/17/2006 -- I'm the original poster of Contrast Effect. Thanks to those who corrected my spelling and other embarassments. However, the successive attempts to improve the definintion of "normal" started to violate the basic structure of a proper abstract definition that separates the definition from specific examples and the examples given were compromising the generality of the original definition.
To wit: "(In this definition a "normal" perception is one free of immediate related context, greater or lesser, more appealing or less appealing.)"
First, there can never be a perception that is "free of immediate related context". All experience and performance have contexts and to suppose that a condition could be free of all immediate related context is confusing and supposes something extremely unlikely. Second, the basic definition carefully includes both perception and performance to cover the broad range of empirical observations in which contrast has been implicated, but the added supplemental definition of normal refers only to perception. Third, the insertion of "greater or lesser, more appealing or less appealing" is to insert examples into the abstract definition and confound that definition as I mentioned above. That's what the example paragraph does and it's unnecessary to redundantly insert them into the abstract definition.
My compromise with the urge to clarify is "(Here, normal perception or performance is that which would obtain in the absence of the comparison stimulus - i.e., one based on all previous experience.). I hope it scratches the itch without the messiness mentioned. Again, thanks for the corrections, but please study all implications of your suggested changes before posting.
Additionally, thanks for removing "Psychological theories" as a reference category. For others, a contrast effect is an empirical phenomenon that theories are designed to explain and is not, itself, a theory. There may be "theories of contrast" or "theories based on constrast", but this page is about the empirical phenomenon and it's ubiquity.
