Maximum salience vs. golden section proportions in judgemental asymmetry

Three separate sections of a questionnaire administered to 232 university students were found to exhibit a marked asymmetry. Two of the sections were judgemental dichotomies; the third was a five‐point scale of agreement/disagreement. The asymmetries on the two dichotomous measures were consistent both with the ‘golden section’ proportion and with a bias towards a probability of 1/ e (the proportion at which salience is maximized) for negative ratings. When the continuous scale measure was dichotomized across the given mid‐point, the resulting asymmetry was significantly different from both of these proportions. However, when the measure was dichotomized across each subject's individual mean (i.e. ipsatized), the resulting asymmetry was found to support the 1/ e hypothesis while differing significantly from the golden section. Repeated measures analysis of this tendency to organize negative judgements towards maximum salience failed to substantiate the ‘judgemental style’ hypothesis (that it may provide a reliable measure of individual difference).