Subjective rating scales stretch elastically as stimulus range narrows

Evidence

I stopped anchoring the scale at the low end, and an interesting thing happened: most listeners continued to use the same numerical range to describe what they heard. The scores rarely went above 8, which is a common subjective scaling phenomenon—people like to leave some “headroom” in case something better comes along. The advantage was that it was now easier to distinguish the rankings of the remaining loudspeakers because they were more widely separated on the scale. However, it was evident that they were no longer judging on the same scale—the upper end of it had stretched. When listening to just a few of the top-rated loudspeakers, which in Figure 3.19 would have been crowded together, statistically difficult to separate, the same product ratings would cover a much larger portion of the scale and be easy to separate and rank. Listeners were still judging fidelity, but it was rated on an elastic scale. — , Toole, Floyd E - Sound reproduction-…, 300

Categorization

• XREF: This is a concrete instance of range-frequency theory of judgment and anchoring effects in psychophysics; connects to Parducci’s range-frequency theory. — connects to: Cross-modality scaling yields a true ratio scale that numeric rating cannot guarantee.; Perceptual discrimination precision falls as stimulus variance rises — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5269
• QUESTION: Worth chasing: does this elastic-scale phenomenon apply to other expert rating domains (e.g., wine ratings, medical imaging scoring, figure skating)? Could be a seed for a cross-domain essay on how rating scales warp.

Related

• Cross-modality scaling yields a true ratio scale that numeric rating cannot guarantee. (similarity 0.89)

Broader Connections

• Perceptual discrimination precision falls as stimulus variance rises #complicates (0.75) — Dijk, Pim van, Physiology, Psychoacoustics and…, 5269