I believe you've misunderstood what the o.p. meant by 'smoothing'. It doesn't mean applying the halo effect and making X higher just because Y is high and close to it, or Y lower because X is low and close to it. It means evaluating both X and Y and resetting them to the most neutral justifiable values - which will almost always mean bringing them closer together, but that's a side effect, not the point of the exercise.

Thanks for the feedback.

I've added a link to "The Trouble With 'Good' ", as well as a footnote about my basis for using the concept of affective judgment.

you haven't made the case that habitually "smoothing" this judgment is an improvement (outside the pathological cases).

My main point is that the "pathological" cases are actually very common (but vary in intensity), and most of the benefit is derived from preventing them from occurring. I'll try to make this clearer.