Bias in survey questions based on either positive or negative wording I have this impression that if you ask respondents in a survey, questions such as "do you like the item X/ person X" or "which one of the two variations do you like more", or "what in particular would you like about the item X/ person X", etc, you would get a lot of bias and rationalizations. That is, "say vs think vs do" would be extremely disparate.

At the same time, I would expect negative questions such as "is there something you dislike about the item X" or "could you list top three shortcomings of the item X/ person X", etc, to render quite objective responses; I would expect strong consistency between what respondents would say compared to what they actually think or feel and then compared to what they would actually do.

(Of course, I exclude some extreme cases of social desirability.)

Given that I am speaking about my subjective impressions, based on my personal limited observations, I would like to ask, is there such a pattern indeed and if so, how could it be possibly explained?
I think your examples can be explained with the Anchoring bias (aslo know as focalism).


  Anchoring or focalism is a cognitive bias that describes the common
  human tendency to rely too heavily on the first piece of information
  offered (the "anchor") when making decisions. During decision making,
  anchoring occurs when individuals use an initial piece of information
  to make subsequent judgments. Once an anchor is set, other judgments
  are made by adjusting away from that anchor, and there is a bias
  toward interpreting other information around the anchor.


A theory that explains anchoring is selective accessibility.


  selective accessibility proposes that when given an anchor, a judge
  (i.e. a person making some judgment) will evaluate the hypothesis that
  the anchor is a suitable answer. Assuming it is not, the judge moves
  on to another guess, but not before accessing all the relevant
  attributes of the anchor itself. Then, when evaluating the new answer,
  the judge looks for ways in which it is similar to the anchor,
  resulting in the anchoring effect.


The Anchoring is a type of priming. The following extract is from Brain Bugs by Dean Buonomano :



Below is the definition of priming :


  Priming is a technique whereby exposure to one stimulus influences a
  response to a subsequent stimulus, without conscious guidance or
  intention. For example, the word NURSE is recognized more quickly
  following the word DOCTOR than following the word BREAD. Priming can
  be perceptual, semantic, or conceptual.