William Griffitt

The effect of topic importance and attitude similarity-dissimilarity on attraction in an intrastranger design

Although topic importance has been proposed as a crucial factor in the relationship between attitude similarity and attraction, two previous experiments failed to confirm this proposition. In the present investigation an intrastranger design was used in which two levels of attitude similarity were created by systematically assigning topics of differential importance as the similar and dissimilar items. Both the similarity variable and the importance variable significantly influenced attraction responses. It was shown that importance effects can be expected only when topics heterogeneous in importance are associated with one stranger.

Similarity versus liking: A clarification'

It had been found in previous research that both attitude similarity and personal evaluations affect attraction. Aronson and Worchel repeated one of these experiments utilizing a face-to-face situation and found Ss responsive only to personal evaluations, not to attitude similarity. Their failure was attributable to their use of a restricted range of attitude similarity-dissimilarity. Replicating their study with greater attitudinal differentiation, the present investigation indicated that even with face-to-face interaction, personal evaluation and attitude similarity each affect attraction. With weighting coefficients derived in a noninteractive situation, attraction in the face-to-face situation was again found to be a linear function of weighted positive reinforcements.

Response discrepancy versus attitude similarity-dissimilarity as determinants of attraction'

In a previous investigation Nelson found that with proportion of similar attitudes experimentally controlled, subject-stranger response discrepancy has a significant effect on attraction. He hypothesized that if discrepancy were held constant, attraction would not vary as a function of similarity-dissimilarity. With new data involving 31 Ss and old data based on 120 Ss, proportion of similar attitudes significantly influenced attraction even though response discrepancy was controlled. It appears that attraction is a joint function of these two partially independent stimulus dimensions.

Attraction toward a stranger as a function of direct and associated reinforcement

The experiment was designed to examine the effects of reinforcement directly attributable to a stranger and reinforcement associated in time with a stranger on the determination of attraction toward the individual. It was found that attraction varies positively (p <.001) with the proportion of similar attitudes expressed by the stranger (direct reinforcement) and positively with the amount of reinforcement associated in time with the stranger (p <.001). Attraction was found to be a linear function of weighted positive reinforcements.

Anticipated reinforcement and attraction

Implicit affective responses, hypothesized to be, in part, anticipations of future reinforcement, are proposed to mediate the relationship between reinforcement and attraction. In the present experiment, it was found that attraction responses are more positive to an individual from whom Ss anticipate positive reinforcement than to one from whom negative reinforcement is anticipated (p <.01). In addition, attraction was found to be a positive function of the proportion of similar attitudes expressed by a stranger (p < .001). The results were in clear support of a reinforcement model of attraction.

Attitudinal reinforcement effects as a function of stimulus homogeneity-heterogeneity

Attitude statements are conceptualized as having evaluative (affective) meaning and hence reinforcement properties. Previous findings consistently indicate that traditional rightwrong reinforcement in a discrimination learning task yields higher performance levels than does attitudinal reinforcement. This differential performance has been attributed to differences in reinforcement value. In the present investigation, it was hypothesized that such differences are a function of the heterogeneity of the attitude stimuli. A simple discrimination-learning task was employed (N = 45) with three conditions of reinforcement: traditional right-wrong feedback, similar and dissimilar attitude statements on a heterogeneous variety of topics, and statements involving similarity and dissimilarity on only one homogeneous attitude topic. The hypothesis was supported. Analysis of variance indicated a significant difference among the three experimental groups, with the homogeneous attitude condition yielding the highest performance level.