Three studies examined whetherthefocus of judgment of a rating scale question can influence responses through a hypothesis confirmation bias. Study 1 showed that focusing the question wording on one of two political parties led nonpartisan subjects who had little relevant knowledge to evaluate media coverage as more hostile to that party. Studies 2 and 3 demonstrated that askingfor the likelihood that a specified person was an engineer stimulated more engineerlike ratings in response to a personal description than askingfor the likelihood that the person was a laueryer This effect occurred only when a large amount of hypothesis-compatible information was available to subjects, when they paid close attention to it, and when they had previously been successful at interpreting information as consistent with the hypothesis implied by the question. Together these studies illustrate two focus of judgment effects and identify factors that regulate their magnitudes.
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