THE ATTRACTION HYPOTHESIS
Katelyn Cleary
ATTITUDE SIMILARITY
• Newcomb (1961) found that when pairing students on similar
beliefs and attitudes, friendships were more likely to form
when paired with someone similar (58% when similar and 25%
when dissimilar).
• Bryne et al (1968) found that similarity when related to topics
of importance affected attraction.
• Example: If you believe that football players should be unionized and your
significant other believes the same, they become more attractive.
SIMILARITY IN EVERYTHING
• Similarity has also been linked to attraction in demographics
(age, social class, etc), physical attractiveness, cultural beliefs
and personality.
• Rubin (1973) suggested that similarity is important because:
• If we like those who are similar, they will probably like us back
• Communication is easier with similar people
• If we like ourselves, we will like others like us
• They will probably enjoy doing the same things
SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT..
• Rosenbaum (1986) states. “attitude similarity does not lead to
liking” and that “similarity has no important consequence”
• Though Disney taught us anything is possible, it’s pretty safe to
say this is FALSE.
THE PROBLEM IS, HUMANS THINK TOO MUCH
• The main premise of Rosenbaum’s study is that he humans
don’t think or draw conclusions when provided with
information.
• Even with Rosenbaum leaving out information or only
providing a “positive traits” condition it is the human
condition to fill in information that the experimenter left out.
• Thus, there really is no baseline control condition or noattitude control because the participant fills in “holes” with
information similar to themselves.
• An example of this is when provided with a picture, the participant can see if
the subject is the same race, age, education level, etc. and thus assumes
attitude similarity.
NO-BRAIN SUBJECTS NEEDED:
APPLY WITHIN!
• The previous shows us that a no-attitude control group is
impossible with human subjects with brains.
• Humans take the information given to them and fill in the
blanks.
• Example: they are a graduate student, they must be as miserable as I am.
• So, before any empirical evidence, Rosenbaum’s argument is
already incredibly flawed.
• He is basically comparing similarity to similarity so effects
would not be expected. Thus, with the political study, it makes
perfect sense by there was no effect on liking when the
stimilus was a democrat
THE BASIC PREMISE IS FLAWED.
• A basic study in this paradigm (Bryne & Nelson, 1965) in
which much of the first experiment is based on, found that
both similar and dissimilar attitudes were not significantly
related to attraction.
• This finding could not be possible if dissimilar attitudes affect
attraction but similar ones do not.
ALL OR NOTHING
• A major concern in this literature is the fact that social psychologists
assume that similarity and dissimilarity are polar opposites.
• So they conclude it is either present or absent on variables.
• However, the true way to look at these variables is to realize the other
information the participant is given such as physical appearance, trait
descriptions or political affiliation.
• Thus, Rosenbaum is really examining the effect of attitude similarity
against already positive information.
• If you think about the logic in it, you can see that taken literally, the
repulsion hypothesis would suggest that a complete stranger with 2 similar
and 2 dissimilar attitudes would be comparable in liking to a stranger with
200 similar and 2 dissimilar attitudes.
PREDICTIVE POWER
• The most useful part of the Reinforcement-Affect Model is
that each type of stimulus information can be scaled to
specific weights.
• The predictive power permits the ability to say a variable
should or should not have a detectable effect on attraction.
• The formula for attitudinal information is: Y=5.44X+6.62.
• Where y= attraction and x= proportion of similar attitudes by total attitudes
• This formula must be modified for the no attitude condition.
• The table of what these proportions are and their subsequent predicted
attraction verse the reported means is next..
TABLE OF CHALLENGE
CENTRAL POINT
• As you could see in the table, the means found by Rosenbaum
are not incredibly different from those predicted by the widely
accepted model.
• So, the lack of similarity effect is not a surprising indication
that “attitude similarity does not lead to liking” but a reliability
check of the model.
LEARNING AND ATTRACTION??
• Rosenbaum then makes quite the jump from similarity and attraction to
learning.
• He suggests that nonsense syllables contrasted with blank cards have
effects on performance in the discrimination-learning task.
•
Specifically, he stated that similar attitude statements have no more incentive than
nonsense syllables.
• This argument is the complete opposite of Byrne et al. who said that
similar and neutral statements both provide reinforcement because
response frequency increases.
• However, it would be reasonable to assume that participants assumed that
something was a more positive indicator than nothing. Thus, the same
pattern may hold true if blank cards were contrasted to literally
ANYTHING other than negative stimuli.
CONCLUSION
• Does Rosenbaum raise an interesting point about similarity and attraction?
• Yes. He challenged the view that others are similar to us and
share the same attitudes and beliefs.
•
Does he effectively test his hypothesis?
• NOT IN THE SLIGHTEST.
• Thus, as always, more experiments are necessary, and not
because journal reviewers basically require this statement but
because it is really true.
BIG PICTURE
• We hold an expectancy for attitude similarity and the discovery
of dissimilar attitudes play a larger role in friendship formation
than similar ones.
• Over time, positive stimuli may loose their power because they
are less novel than negative stimuli and because of contrast
with extremely positive stimuli such as celebrities.
• Thus, relationships and attraction may rely on negative factors
like dissimilar attitudes to exclude further potential and then
move to rely on positive factors such as similar attitudes to
select “final candidates”.