No abstract

Dissimilarity and similarity between attitudes of the participants and a stranger were manipulated across two sets of issues to test the attraction, repulsion and similarity-dissimilarity asymmetry hypotheses. Participants (N = 192) judged social (liking, enjoyment of company) and intellectual (intelligence, general knowledge) attractiveness of the stranger. The similarity in the first set of attitudes x similarity in the second set of attitudes effect emerged in social attraction, but not in intellectual attraction. Stated simply, dissimilarity had a greater weight than similarity in social attraction, but equal weight in intellectual attraction. These results support the similarity-dissimilarity asymmetry hypothesis that predicts dissimilarity-repulsion to be stronger than similarity-attraction. However, they reject (1) the attraction hypothesis that dissimilarity and similarity produce equal and opposite effects on social attraction; and (2) the repulsion hypothesis that only dissimilar attitudes affect social attraction by leading to repulsion. An equal weighting of dissimilarity and similarity in intellectual attraction further suggested that the similarity-dissimilarity asymmetry on social attraction is reflective of a stronger avoidance response in the Darwinian sense.

It is widely held that similarity of attitudes promotes interpersonal attraction. However, Rosenbaum (1986a) argued that the relationship between attitudinal similarity and attraction is actually a relationship between attitudinal dissimilarity and repulsion. Contrasting predictions of the similarity‐attraction and dissimilarity‐repulsion hypotheses were tested in a main within‐subjects experiment. Ninety subjects first judged a stranger, a randomly sampled same‐sex university student, in a no‐attitude information control condition. Later they judged the same student again, knowing that the stranger shared 0.00, 0.50 or 1.00 proportion of similar attitudes with them (N = 30). As predicted by the similarity‐attraction hypothesis, both similar and dissimilar attitudes affected attraction. Moreover, the effects of similar and dissimilar attitudes were contingent upon the level of similarity of attitudes assumed by the subjects in the no‐attitude information control condition. In an auxiliary between‐subjects experiment, attraction response was also higher in the experimental condition of similar attitudes (N = 19) than in the control condition of no‐attitude information (N = 20). These results reaffirm the similarity‐attraction relationship but reject the dissimilarity‐repulsion hypothesis. In addition, they call attention to the proper consideration of assumed similarity in Byrne's (1971) reinforcement‐affect model.

Trust has been identified as a key factor in relationship development and appreciation of group members. However, trust has not been previously considered as a reason for attitude similarity to result in attraction. Thus, in the current research, the authors investigated trust as a key component of attraction based on attitude similarity. Trust was shown to significantly mediate attitude similarity effects on attraction when measured alone (Experiment 1) and alongside positive affect in the participants (Experiment 2A), respect for the partner (Experiment 2B), or inferred partner's attraction to the participants (Experiment 2C). Trust was also shown to have independent effects on attraction when juxtaposed with all three of the traditional mediators of attitude similarity effects (Experiment 3). Implications of these findings for models of attraction are discussed.

No abstract

The authors hypothesized that (1) attraction toward a stranger based on attitudinal similarity is automatic, but cognitive evaluation of the stranger's quality before the measurement of attraction can make attraction nonautomatic or controlled; (2) personal evaluations from the stranger activate automatic attraction and cognitive evaluation; (3) controlled attraction from attitudes and automatic attraction and cognitive evaluation from personal evaluations engender reverse-causal effects (i.e. they mediate each other); and (4) attraction and cognitive evaluation are distinct constructs. Attitudinal similarity between the participant and the stranger or personal evaluations of the former by the latter were varied in Experiment 1 (N=96), and were crossed with each other in Experiment 2 (N=240). Orders of response measurement were either cognitive evaluation followed by attraction or attraction followed by cognitive evaluation. Results confirmed the hypotheses. Implications of the findings are discussed.

Recent studies reported a greater effect of attitudinal dissimilarity than similarity on interpersonal attraction. Hypotheses of (1) person positivity bias and (2) a greater weighting of attitudinal dissimilarity than similarity for such an asymmetry were tested. Extravert (N = 90) and introvert (N = 90) college students in Singapore indicated their social and intellectual attraction towards a dissimilar or similar stranger. Attraction responses were also obtained in a control condition of no‐attitude information. As predicted, extraverts showed a higher person positivity bias in the control condition and hence a greater rejection of the dissimilar stranger than did introverts. Dissimilarity also resulted in a more negative social than intellectual attraction. Taken together, these results put the similarity‐dissimilarity asymmetry on a firm ground. More important, they show (a) that extraversion affects the asymmetry via the person positivity bias, and (b) that weight of dissimilar attitudes depends upon the kind of attraction responses solicited. Reasons for the similarity‐dissimilarity symmetry, instead of the asymmetry, in past attitudes‐and‐attraction research are discussed.

Judgments of intellectual and social attractiveness of a target were taken from a pair of moderate and extreme intellectual or social traits. Weights of the traits given were identified from the pattern in their two-way interaction effect. Responses to a control condition of no-trait information provided the estimates of the person positivity bias in the participants, and the relative effects of the negative and positive traits were determined relative to such bias values. Consistent with the cognitive hypothesis, positive intellectual and negative social traits received more weight in the intellectual and social attraction responses, respectively. However, negative and moderate traits carried more weight in social attraction as predicted by the hypothesis of behavioural adaptation. Despite the asymmetric weighting of intellectual traits in intellectual attraction and of social traits in social attraction, the negativity effect was stronger than the positivity effect. Evidently, mechanisms postulated by both the hypotheses co-exist but they are detectable by only the operationalization employed in the two research paradigms.