Morality judgments: tests of an averaging model.

Pairs of items describing objectionable behaviors were rated for their overall morality. Contrary to additive or constant-weight averaging models, the ratings were demonstrated to depend upon the range as well as the average scale value of the component behaviors. A range model accounted for more than half of the variance left unexplained by the additive models. One interpretation of the range effect postulates that each component stimulus produces a distribution of values. The value of the stimulus combination is assumed to be the mean value in the overlap of the component distributions, which is closer to the item with the narrower dispersion.