Attitude and activity preference similarity: Differential bases of interpersonal attraction for low and high self-monitors.

Abstract

The paradigmatic research of Byrne (1971) on the similarity-attraction relation has been recently challenged by the view that it is the similarity of people's pastime preferences more than the similarity of their attitudes that may better predict both friendship and initial attraction (Werner & Parmelee, 1979). An integration of these two views is proposed in the hypothesis that the personality variable of self-monitoring (Snyder, 1974) may moderate both the attitude similarity-attraction relation and the activity preference similarity-attraction relation in initial interpersonal attraction. An experiment is reported in which low and high self-monitors formed impressions of four same-gender persons representing each of the crossed combinations of high and low value-based attitude similarity, and high and low activity preference similarity. These stimulus persons were presented by a microcomputer that created them idiographically on the basis of each subject's responses to previous attitude and activity surveys. As predicted, for low self-monitors, attitude similarity influenced initial attraction to the stimulus persons more than did activity preference similarity, and this was expressed most strongly on attraction ratings relevant to the attitude domain (i.e., judgments of respect and inferences of intellectually desirable personality traits). By contrast, for high self-monitors, activity preference similarity influenced initial attraction more than did attitude similarity, and this was expressed most strongly on attraction ratings relevant to the activity preference domain (i.e., judgments of liking and inferences of socially desirable personality traits). Speculations are offered about the tendency for low and high self-monitoring individuals to attend to different types of information when first forming their impressions of others. This tendency in the first stages of acquaintanceship may reflect the very kinds of interaction goals these individuals also later manifest when creating and maintaining their preferred friendship worlds.Research in the area of impression formation has yielded consistent evidence that similarity between people in terms of their attitudes and values is a strong predictor of initial interpersonal attraction. For example, Donn Byrne and his associates have repeatedly shown that liking for another varies as a generally linear function of manipulated attitude similarity (Byrne & Griffit, 1973). To demonstrate the attitude similarity-attraction relation, these workers used the attraction paradigm (Byrne, 1971), a procedure in which information is given to subjects about a person they are presumably about to meet for the first time. Known by its detractors as the "stranger paradigm," this method has left open the question of whether attitude similarity is a variable of any real importance in actual ongoing relationships. Accordingly, a number of studies have been conducted to explore the determinants of real world liking and friendship choice (e.g.

The similarity hypothesis: a test of the moderating role of social comparison orientation

“…Three of the items were from studies by Byrne (1971) and Jamieson, Lydon, and Zanna (1987) (belief in God, euthanasia, movies) and ®ve were about other issues of interest in France (adoption of children by homosexuals, the point system for drivers, sur®ng on the net, 35-hour work week, mandatory voting).…”

The similarity–attraction relationship revisited: divergence between the affective and behavioral facets of attraction

“…Jamieson et al, 1987;Lydon et al, 1988;Singh & Ho, 2000). Instead of searching for the best single measure of attraction, it might be more important to examine which measures best predict which facets of interpersonal attraction.…”

Agency and communion from the perspective of self versus others.

“…When discrepant (both positive and negative) information about a person has to be integrated into an overall impression, it results in a positive impression in the agentic domain but in a negative impression in the communal domain (Skowronski & Carlston, 1987;Wojciszke, Brycz, & Borkenau, 1993). Studies on interpersonal attitudes are also relevant here: Although such attitudes are usually conceptualized as unitary phenomena, they may also be distinguished into liking and respect (e.g., Jamieson, Lydon, & Zanna, 1987;Kiesler & Goldberg, 1968). Because liking strongly depends on whether the attitude target is friendly and benevolent (information on communal traits), it may be predicted that liking depends more on the target's communal rather than agentic traits.…”