Attitudes, personal evaluations, cognitive evaluation and interpersonal attraction: On the direct, indirect and reverse‐causal effects

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.

Trust and respect as mediators of the other‐ and self‐profitable trait effects on interpersonal attraction

“…She introduced the task as one of ''forming opinion of a stranger'' with whom there was a ''possibility of working together later in a project as partners'' (Singh, Ho et al, 2007). The partner was presented as an unknown peer of the same-sex as the participant (Byrne, 1971).…”

“…However, any single-mediator test based on trust or respect overestimates mediation due to the omitted variable problem (Preacher & Hayes, 2008). This result explains the sole mediation of both the attitude similarity-attraction (Montoya & Horton, 2004, Experiments 1 and 2; Singh, Ho et al, 2007) and ability-attraction (Montoya & Horton, 2004, Experiment 3) links by the singly measured mediating variable (MV) of respect. In addition, it raises doubt about the conclusion of Montoya and Insko (2008) and Wojciszke et al (2007) about trust as a mediator of the partner's benevolence effect on attraction and liking for two reasons.…”

Similarity and Liking Effects on Interpersonal Attraction: Test of the Two-Dimensional Trust-Respect Model

“…First, liking effects were consistently stronger than similarity effects on attraction (Byrne & Ervin, 1969;Byrne & Griffitt, 1966;Byrne & Rhamey, 1965;Clore & Baldridge, 1970;Singh, 1975;Singh, Ho, et al, 2007;. Second, information about similarity and liking is ideally suited for facilitating cognitive evaluations of respect (Montoya & Horton, 2004) and trust (Montoya & Insko, 2008) as in the two-dimensional cognitive model of interpersonal attraction (Montoya & Horton, 2014).…”

“…Thus, when dissimilar attitudes and/or disliking for the participant would take on greater weights than similar attitudes and/or liking for him or her, the two factors would produce an interaction effect (Anderson, 1981;Kaplan & Anderson, 1973). That is, the effect of one type of information would be smaller at the negative than the positive level of the other type of information (e.g., Singh & Ho, 2000;Singh, Ho, et al, 2007;Singh & Teoh, 2000).…”

“…On the one hand, effects of personal evaluations of (that included liking for) the participant by the partner on attraction were fully mediated by a single MV of respect (Singh, Ho, Tan, & Bell, 2007;Singh, Lin, Tan, & Ho, 2008). On the other hand, liking effects on reciprocated attraction were fully mediated by another single MV of trust (Montoya & Insko, 2008).…”