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

Abstract

In contemporary attitudes-and-attraction research, attraction has been viewed as a multidimensional construct. Moreover, the effects of dissimilar and similar attitudes have been shown to vary with the facets of attraction measured. The hypotheses tested are that (1) only the proportion of similar attitudes relevant to the social context or interaction goals affects behavioral attraction (i.e. interpersonal distance between the participant and targets), and (2) the proportion of similar attitudes influences affective attraction (i.e. Byrne's attraction measure), regardless of attitude relevance. Two experiments were conducted with classroom activities (Experiment 1) and a writing workshop (Experiment 2) as the social contexts. The results of both experiments supported the hypotheses. Clearly, a solely affective measure of attraction seems inadequate for understanding the similarity-attraction relationship. Copyright # 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.In attitudes-and-attraction research, it has been reported that the greater the attitudinal similarity between two persons, the greater the attraction between them (Byrne & Nelson, 1965). While this similarityattraction relationship has been observed repeatedly (for a review, see Byrne, 1971Byrne, , 1997, the limiting conditions were rather rare. Rosenbaum (1986) came up with an altogether new view on the similarityattraction link: only dissimilar attitudes affect attraction by leading to repulsion. Ever since the repulsion hypothesis, the relationship between attitude similarity and attraction has been an important issue in the contemporary literature (e.g. Byrne, Clore, & Smeaton, 1986;Drigotas, 1993;Hoyle, 1993;Pilkington & Lydon, 1997;Singh & Tan, 1992;Smeaton, Byrne, & Murnen, 1989;Tan & Singh, 1995).The first empirical evidence of a positive linear relationship between the proportion of similar attitudes and interpersonal attraction was found by Byrne and Nelson (1965). This relationship implies equal and opposite effects of similar and dissimilar attitudes, which corresponds to the similaritydissimilarity symmetry hypothesis. Recent studies, however, have reported a much stronger effect of dissimilar than similar attitudes, which corresponds to the similarity-dissimilarity asymmetry hypothesis

Phase Transitions in Social Sciences: Two-Population Mean Field Theory

“…The interaction between particles is built up as a sum of pairwise interactions and plays the role of cultural interaction between two individuals i and j as described by a potential, or a cost function, which simply reflects the will to "agree" or "disagree" among the two. The two attitudes of imitation or counter-imitation lie on a well established socio-psychological background [9,10,11]; on the other hand they have also a robust mathematical-physical ground since they have been used to study many particles theory of ferromagnetic and anti-ferromagnetic interactions.The problem we have addressed with the help of an equilibrium statistical mechanics model is to establish whether -in the case of two populations placed in contact-there may be a phase transition in the average cultural trait from one of the two original cultural traits to the other. If so, for which value of the relative percentage of the two populations it happens.…”

Further Exploring the Relation Between Uncertainty and Attraction

“…Indeed, research has observed that affective attraction and behavioral attraction are differentially affected by the uncertainty-aroused need for information (Berger & Calabrese, 1975), the salience of self-interest considerations (Davis, 1981), and by the fear of rejection (Herbst, Gaertner, & Insko, 2003). These findings indicate that the two dimensions need to be considered as distinct, but correlated, processes (e.g., Michinov & Monteil, 2002;Montoya & Horton, 2014).…”

Estou caidinho(a) por ti. Concepção e validação do Índice do Sentimento C (“estar caidinho por...”)

“…Tal como esperado a partir dos critérios aplicados na concepção do Índice C, e ao contrário de outras medidas de atracção (Herbst, Gaertner & Insko, 2003;McCroskey & McCain, 1974;Michinov & Monteil, 2002;Rodrigues & Garcia-Marques, 2006), foi obtida uma solução unidimensional que permite a explicação de 50.03% da variância total. Este índice apresenta uma elevada consistência interna (α=.849).…”

“…A importância do estudo do fenómeno geral de atracção para o campo das relações interpessoais reflecte-se nas diversas investigações sobre este fenómeno (e.g., Byrne, 1971;Jones, Pelham, Carvallo, & Mirenberg, 2004;McCroskey & McCain, 1974;Michinov & Monteil, 2002;Rubin, 1970). No entanto, poucas são as medidas apresentadas na literatura que pretendem aceder a este constructo, havendo alguma confusão entre o conceito de atracção interpessoal e outros conceitos que lhe estão muito próximos (e.g., semelhança amizade, paixão) (Rodrigues & Garcia-Marques, 2006), decorrendo daí a necessidade de uma medida deste sentimento de "estar caidinho por...".…”