Similarity of allocation and interpersonal attraction under cooperative and competitive conditions

Abstract

The present study explored the relations between opinion similarity and interpersonal attraction among persons who advocated either equal or equitable allocation of rewards in cooperative or competitive situations. The main hypotheses were that subjects would prefer equality to equity in cooperative situations while they would prefer equity to equality in competitive situations, and that subjects would like members who favored similar allocation better than those who favored dissimilar allocation. One hundred and twenty undergraduate students participated in a dilemma game in groups of four under either cooperative or competitive conditions in Experiment I. Each subject was informed of the opinion on reward allocation of one of his group members. The main hypotheses were supported. Further, altruistic members were better liked than self-interested members, whether or not their opinions were similar to those of the subjects. Similar results were obtained in Experiment 2 in which 168 undergraduate subjects observed the game.

Interpersonal attraction in reward allocation situations

“…others, which was previously reported for no-input observers (Brickman & Bryan, 1976;Feather & O'Driscoll, 1980;Greenberg, 1982;Kahn et al, 1977;Leung & Bond, 1984;Okuda, 1984;Watts & Messe, 1982). In general, subjects also tended to like others whose choices of allocation were similar to their own, more than they liked those making dissimilar allocation choices, as previously reported (Okuda, 1986).…”

Competitiveness and the Similarity of Preferred Coworkers1

“…Although research found that individual differences generally do not moderate the relationship between similarity and attraction (Baskett, 1973;Byrne, 1965;Gormly & Clore, 1969;Jamieson, Lydon, & Zanna, 1987;Wiener, 1970), there is evidence that highly competitive individuals might be attracted to dissimilar others (Brown, 1984;Brown & Abrams, 1986;Glaman et al, 1996;Okuda, 1986). Brown (1 984;Brown & Abrams, 1986) found that competitive schoolchildren reported greater liking for dissimilar than for similar peers, while cooperative students were more attracted to similar peers.…”

Determinants of perceived fairness in reward allocation

“…Studies in the former category investigated, for example, the effect of expectation of future interaction on types of allocation (e.g., Shapiro, 1975;Matsuzaki, Aikawa, Ueno, 1980) , and the influence of interpersonal relationscooperative or competitive-among al- locators (e.g., Deutsch, 1975;Okuda, 1986). This second category consists of studies which investigated, for example, how differences of allocational situationwhether oriented towards task-performance or towards human-relations-influenced behavior in allocation behavior (e.g., Deutsch, 1975;Saito and Sasaki, 1987).…”