Conditioned Attraction, Similarity, and Evaluative Meaning

Abstract

Recent S-R formulations have indicated that similarity between persons functions as a UCS and that interpersonal P attraction is a classically conditioned evaluative response.The thesis of the present study is that similarity is a correlate of evaluative meaning and that the latter rather than the former is responsible for conditioning. The Staats conditioning procedure was used with trigrams as CS and personality-trait adjectives as UCS. The UCS adjectives were previously rated on evaluation and similarity scales, and these variables were held constant across levels of each other in a 2 x 2 within Ss design.In support of the hypothesis, it was found that for 89 pretested Ss evaluation and similarity were highly correlated (.879) and that for the 16 Ss in the conditioning procedure an evaluative response to trigrams was influe-nced by evaluation (p .005) but not by similarity (p > .20).

Information integration theory and reinforcement theory as approaches to interpersonal attraction.

“…The attitude stimuli bring out more clearly the expectancy conception of integration theory. We ordinarily judge our own attitudes positively, and attitudes similar to our own are also judged positively, whereas dissimilar attitudes are usually judged negatively (e.g., Byrne & Clore, 1970, p. 110;Stalling, 1970). When we are told that X has similar attitudes, we like him not because that information acts as an unconditioned stimulus but because it leads us to expect that he has various positive aspects to his personality.…”