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

When they are required to express a judgment on social targets, people may ask asymmetric questions, that is questions for which the yes- and the no-answers are neither equally diagnostic nor equally frequent. The consequences of this information-gathering strategy on impression formation still deserve empirical investigation. The present work explored the role played by the trade-off between the diagnosticity and the frequency of the answers that follow asymmetric questions. In Study 1, participants received answers 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 of both studies indicated that asymmetric questions had less impact on impressions than did symmetric questions, suggesting individuals' greater sensitivity to data frequency than to diagnosticity when forming impressions.