The "Positivity Bias" in Evaluations of Public Figures: Evidence Against Instrument Artifacts

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Abstract
The “positivity bias” is a term used to describe the consistent favorable evaluation of public figures found in surveys over the past 40 years. This paper explored several possible artifactual explanations for this bias,focusing on the survey instrument itself. Two experiments varied the labeling and ordering of scale endpoints, the affective value of the initial context evaluated, and the presence or absence of a prestigious job title associated with the nameof the public figure. None of the variations produced significantly different levels of positivity than the standard control condition used in each experiment.Richard R. Lau is a graduate student in social psychology at the University of California, Los Angeles. David O. Sears is Professor of Psychology and Political Science at UCLA. Richard Centers is Professor of Psychology at UCLA. This research was supported in part by Grant #SOC73-09153 A03 from the National Science Foundation to David O. Sears. The authors wish to expess their thanks to Mark Williams, who did most of the coding and checking involved in the survey.

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