Windschitl, P. D., Conybeare, D., & Krizan, Z. (2008). Direct-comparison judgments: When and why above- and below-average effects reverse. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 137, 182-200.

Above-average and below-average effects appear to be common and consistent across a variety of judgment domains. For example, several studies show that individual items from a high (low) quality set tend to be rated as better (worse) than the other items in the set (e.g., Giladi & Klar, 2002). Experiments in this paper demonstrate reversals of these effects. A novel account is supported, which describes how the timing of the denotation of the to-be-judged item influences attention and ultimately affects the size or direction of comparative biases. The authors discuss how this timing account is relevant for many types of referent-dependent judgments (e.g., probability judgments, resource allocations) and how it intersects with various accounts of comparative bias (focalism, generalized-group, LOGE).