1974_Touhey_Situated Identiies, Attitude Simialrity and Interpersonal Attraction

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Situated Identities, Attitude Similarity and Interpersonal Attraction Author(s): John C. Touhey Source: Sociometry, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Sep., 1974), pp. 363-374Published by: American Sociological AssociationStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2786388Accessed: 31-05-2015 05:46 UTC

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Sociometry 1974, Vol. 37, No. 3, 363 374

Situated Identities, Attitude Similarity and Interpersonal Attraction

JOHN C. TOUHEY Florida Atlantic University

This study examines the attitude similarity-interpersonal attraction paradigm from the standpoint of Alexander's situated identity theory. Subjects acting as observers predicted P's attraction to 0 for three proportions of similar attitudes and ascribed personality traits as explanations of five orthogonally vazried ratings of P's attraction to 0. Findings of the attraction paradigm were accurately simulated. In addition, subjects' ratings of their own attraction to P and the favorability of P's situated identity were highest for the predicted outcomes. Comparisons among the most frequently ascribed traits revealed two internally consistent sets of undesirable personality attributions to P's who displayed inappropriately high or low ratings of attraction for specific proportions of similar attitudes. The findings are discussed in terms of the subjects' definition of the paradigm and are explicitly related to social exchange theory and symbolic interactionist statements of attraction phenomena.

In recent years, social psychologists have increasingly examined attribution processes in self-referent behavior and social interaction. Findings of several established paradigms have been reinterpreted in terms of the subjects' definition of the experimental situation and the meanings they ascribe to their own acts and those of others. Although substantive phenomena as diverse as person perception (Jones and Davis, 1965; Alexander and Epstein, 1969), risk-taking (Alexander and Weil, 1969), conformity (Mixon, 1972), and attitude change (Bem, 1967; Alexander and Knight, 1971) have been approached from various attribution theories, few investigators have examined the relevance of these statements for the dominant paradigm in the experimental study of interpersonal attraction.

During the past decade, over 50 experimental studies (see Byrne, 1971) have established attitude similarity as a determinant of interpersonal attraction. This finding has been consistently replicated

363


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over a wide variety of populations and settings, and several interpretations of the relationship have been proposed. In addition to the learning theory approach advocated by Byrne and his associates, other formulations have focused on the role of cognitive balance (Newcomb, 1961) and implied liking (Aronson and Worchel, 1966) as mediators of the similarity-attraction findings.

The present study, however, approaches the similarity-attraction paradigm from a somewhat different theoretical perspective. By focusing on the context of social interaction, rather than intraindividual processes within the subject, Mead (1934), Goffman (1963) and other symbolic interactionists have proposed that social action provides entitlements for the attribution of identities and traits to oneself and others. These theorists further suggest that the creation, maintenance, and transformation of social identity depends on consensus among others about the meanings of specific acts and the circumstances surrounding their occurrence. Given these assumptions, Alexander's situated identity theory is unique (among various statements of attribution processes) in its explicit emphasis on the response choices confronting the subject in the typical experimental situation: "Behavior can be predicted if the situated identity that results from the choice of one action is more socially desirable than those associated with alternative actions" (Alexander and Knight, 1971:66).

There are several reasons for suspecting that the similarity-attraction paradigm might be amenable to analysis in terms of situated identity theory. First, the attraction paradigm provides one of the most established and consistently replicated findings in contem- porary social psychology; hence, the very pervasiveness of the relationship raises the possibility that subjects are aware of and alert to relations between similarity and attraction in everyday life. Second, several studies reported by Jones (1964) have examined the exchange of attitudes and sentiments in a variety of experimental settings, and the extent of agreement between subjects appears to be a crucial variable in the management of impression. For example, subjects assigned to play subordinate roles in such studies tend to agree with superiors on important attitude issues and disagree on less important issues, enabling them to foster impressions of inde- pendence rather than ingratiation.

In addition to the opportunities provided by attitude exchange for the negotiation of identity, the consensual aspects of the similarity-attraction findings have been more directly examined in a successful "interpersonal simulation" reported by Scott (1969).


IDENTITIES, SIMILARITY AND ATTRACTION 365

Following procedures similar to those in Bem's (1967) classic simulations of cognitive dissonance phenomena, Scott found that scripts depicting different proportions of attitude similarity between P and 0 enabled independent groups of observers to reproduce estimates of attraction that were virtually identical to ratings obtained from the experimental paradigm. Successful interpersonal simulations raise the possibility that the determinants of behavior are equally accessible to observers and subjects, and that both subscribe to consensual definitions of identity that impart similar meanings to the subjects' behavior. However, neither Scott's nor any other simulation has attempted to identify the specific identities that may be common to the actor and the observer in the attraction paradigm. The principal concern of the present investigation is to provide detailed specification of the identities that are attributed to a subject whose attraction to others is systematically varied in the context of different proportions of attitude similarity.

Accordingly, the present study comprises two parts. First, an interpersonal simulation of the similarity-attraction findings is conducted in order to establish conditions under which observers reproduce the expected findings of the paradigm. Following the simulation, observers are provided with systematically varied attraction ratings and are asked to ascribe identities and personality traits as explanations of the subject's responses.

METHOD

Since the study consisted of an interpersonal simulation of an established paradigm and an examination of the identities situated in various experimental outcomes, procedures reported by Alexander and Knight (1971) were closely followed. Subjects were 180 undergraduates enrolled in several lower division social science classes at the University of Tulsa. Written scripts were prepared to simulate three proportions of similar attitudes between a naive subject, "Bob Downing" (P), and a second subject, "Tom Travis" (0). All scripts depict Bob and Tom reporting to a social psychology experiment, and both subjects fill out a 12-item attitude scale (Byrne and Rhamey, 1965). When the. attitude measures are completed, Bob and Tom exchange scales, and Bob learns that Tom's attitudes are similar to his own for one, six, or eleven of the twelve items. Next, Bob is told that the purpose of the experiment is to measure compatibility between people, and he is asked to indicate his probable liking for and willingness to participate in an experiment with Tom on two


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seven-point measures of attraction taken from the last two items of the Interpersonal Judgment Scale (Byrne and Rhamey, 1965). After reading these scripts, half of the subjects in each of the three similarity treatment conditions turned to the last two items of the Interpersonal Judgment Scale and estimated Bob's probable liking for and willingness to participate in an experiment with Tom.

Up to this point, our experiment is an interpersonal simulation of the similarity-attraction paradigm with half of the subjects estimating Bob's attraction to Tom for three proportions (.08, .50, .92) of similar attitudes. Following the simulation, all subjects received information about Bob's actual attraction to Tom presented on a completed copy of the Interpersonal Judgment Scale. Subjects learned that Bob's attraction to Tom was either 4, 6, 8, 10, or 12 points, presented as the sum of the two seven-point attraction measures. Next, subjects were asked to rate their impression of Bob on 20 bipolar adjective scales and to circle the ten of the forty adjectives that were most characteristic of Bob. Finally, subjects rated their own attraction to Bob on a final copy of the Interpersonal Judgment Scale.

Pre-testing Pre-testing was conducted to resolve two principal methodological

problems. First, while several theoretical considerations suggested that the similarity-attraction findings might be simulated, one study (Scott, 1969) provides less than compelling evidence in support of such a contention. Therefore, a number of scripts depicting the attraction paradigm were presented in interpersonal simulations to several classes which did not participate in the experimental sessions. Scripts that provided outcomes most closely approximating the findings of the paradigm were selected for use in the final study.

A second methodological problem concerned the possibility of bias in the selection of adjectives to describe Bob in each of the 15 treatment combinations. Since it seemed important to measure situated identities with trait ascriptions relevant to the definitions of the subjects rather than the preconceptions of the investigator, the following procedure was employed. Of the more than 1,250 words which appear on trait lists compiled by Gough and Heilbrun (1965), Anderson (1968), and Rosenberg and Jones (1972), redundant and irrelevant traits were eliminated, and a final pre-test listing of 120 adjectives was constructed. Pre-test subjects then heard several of the 15 scripts and circled the ten adjectives that were most descriptive of



TABLE 1 Mean Estimates of P's Attraction to 0 for Three

Proportions of Similar Attitudes

Proportion of Similar Attitudes

.08 .50 .92 Comparison t M 7.23 9.63 11.40 .08 vs. .50 3.97** S 2.43 2.17 2.79 .08 vs. .92 6.07** N 30 30 30 .50 vs. .92 2.69*

**p < .001 *p < .01

Bob for each of the 15 treatment combinations. Of the 120 adjectives, the 23 traits most frequently endorsed as characteristic of Bob were used to construct 60-point bipolar adjective scales. Six of the 23 adjectives (trusting-suspicious, responsive-indifferent, and dominant-submissive) already comprised antonym pairs. The remaining 17 adjectives were paired with their antonyms to form additional bipolar scales. Thus, a total of 20 adjective scales iwas used in the final study.

RESULTS

Before examination of the identities situated in each of the 15 treatment combinations, it is necessary to determine if the interpersonal simulation reproduces the predicted outcomes of the attitude similarity-interpersonal attraction paradigm. Table 1 provides the subjects' estimates of Bob's (P's) attraction to Tom (0) for the three proportions of similar attitudes. Mean attraction estimates are seen to be ordered in the expected direction with .08, .50, and .92 proportions of similar attitudes yielding attraction scores of 7.23, 9.63, and 11.40, respectively (maximum possible = 14). In addition, the standard deviations for the three treatments, presented in the second row of Table 1, are comparable with previously reported measures of dispersion for this paradigm (Byrne, 1971).

All three differences among the similarity treatments were significant (all df = 58); thus the interpersonal simulation appears to have successfully reproduced the findings of the paradigm.


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TABLE 2 Mean Desirability of P's Situated Identity for Three Proportions of Similar Attitudes and Five Ratings

of Attraction to 0

Attitude P's Attraction to Oa Similarity 4 6 8 10 12 Pb

.08 30.27 35.70 33.91 27.42 21.78 .01

.50 24.54 30.22 33.19 36.57 28.13 .01

.92 20.69 24.13 28.82 34.41 38.35 .005

aThere are 12 subjects per cell. Higher scores indicate more desirable identities. bBased on one-way ANOV, df = 4/55

The favorability of P's situated identity was computed from the average ratings of 60 to 0 for the most and least socially desirable adjective of each pair. The mean desirability of P's situated identity for each of the 15 treatment combinations is presented in Table 2. For each proportion of attitude similarity, P's situated identity is seen to be most favorable when he reproduces the attraction ratings that were predicted by the subjects. Moreover, it will be recalled that only half of the subjects in each treatment combination were asked to predict P's attraction to 0, and comparison of the identities attributed by subjects who estimated and did not estimate P's attraction to 0 revealed no significant differences for any of the treatment combinations.

Since the desirability of P's situated identity is directly related to the extent he reproduces the outcomes predicted by the attraction paradigm, it might also be asked if the subjects' own ratings of interpersonal attraction toward P follow their identity evaluations. Table 3 provides the mean attraction to P (maximum possible = 14) for each of the 15 treatment combinations, and the direction of the findings is seen to be virtually identical to that of the situated identity evaluations. Subjects report most interpersonal attraction to P's who reproduce the expected findings, and ratings of subjects who estimated P's attraction to 0 were again not significantly different from ratings of subjects who did not make the estimates.

The last finding of interest in the present study involves a comparison among the frequencies of the adjectives that were circled as most characteristic of P. Examination of the ten most characteristically descriptive traits revealed three classifications of the discrepancy between attitude similarity and attraction among the



TABLE 3 Mean Attraction to P for Three Proportions of Similar

Attitudes and Five Ratings of P's Attraction to 0

Attitude P's Attraction to 0a Similarity 4 6 8 10 12 p

.08 10.33 11.08 12.67 9.92 7.58 .02

.5.0 6.17 8.42 11.25 12.58 8.83 .01

.92 5.75 7.33 9.25 10.67 12.83 .01

aSee notes to Table 2.

15 treatment combinations. These discrepancies are defined in terms of treatment combinations in which: (1) attraction is greater than similarity, (2) attraction and similarity are not discrepant, and (3) similarity is greater than attraction. Each treatment combination was classified into one of these three discrepancy conditions according to the following procedure: (1) for each proportion of attitude similarity, the two levels of P's attraction to 0 that fell closest to the subjects' predictions were classified as nondiscrepant; (2) treatment combinations in which P's attraction to 0 was at least two points higher than that predicted by the subjects were classified as discrepant in the direction of greater attraction than similarity; and (3) treatment combinations in which P's attraction to 0 was at least two points lower than predicted were classified as discrepant in the direction of greater similarity than attraction.

Table 4 shows tne percent of subjects who ascribed specific traits to P for each of the three discrepancy conditions. Frequencies of ascrip- tion are not only seen to differ significantly among conditions for 19 of the 40 trait words but personality attributions show appreciable in- ternal consistency within each discrepancy condition. P's who show unpredictably high attraction ratings, for example, are most often described as submissive, dependent, passive, trusting, and naive. Unpredictably low ratings of interpersonal attraction, on the other hand, lead to trait ascriptions such as cold, dominant, indifferent, and suspicious. Finally, subjects who respond as predicted are most often seen as fair, intelligent, responsive, and sensitive.

DISCUSSION

Although situated identity theory appears to offer a plausible interpretation of the basic findings of the attraction paradigm, it is


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TABLE 4 Percent of Subjects Ascribing Traits to P by

Similarity-Attraction Discrepancy

Discrepancy Attraction Similarity Greater Than No Dis- Greater Than

Traits Similarity crepancy Attraction pa Cold 19% 21% 67% .001 Dominant 8 18 61 .001 Indifferent 11 14 51 .001 Submissive 61 28 14 .001 Dependent 53 22 17 .01 Fair 28 54 22 .01 Insecure 36 15 8 .01 Intelligent 19 54 25 .01 Passive 50 15 31 .01 Responsive 19 44 17 .01 Sensitive 33 49 18 .01 Suspicious 17 19 46 .01 Trusting 47 33 14 .01 Arrogant 11 14 33 .05 Fearful 36 18 14 .05 Forgiving 28 10 11 .05 Hostile 14 12 33 .05 Naive 42 19 17 .05 Sociable 17 38 17 .05 N 36 72 72 -

aBased on X2, df 2

important to emphasize several implications of the present analysis that may be especially relevant for further studies of interpersonal attraction. First, the assumption that subjects actually participating in the experimental paradigm report the predicted attraction ratings in order to present favorable identities-depends on the validity of our simulation. Yet apart from the present study and Scott's (1969) unpublished findings, there have been few efforts to simulate the paradigm, and no simulation has sought to identify the specific aspects of the laboratory procedures that determine the subjects' definition of the experimental situation.

In part, this absence of detail in the simulation follows from the very nature of the findings reported by Byrne (1971) and others. While the results of cognitive dissonance research and other frequently simulated paradigms show an abundance of interactions, replication failures, and significant reversals, studies on the attraction



paradigm seldom report limiting conditions for the main effect of attitude similarity. Thus, the failure of these several experiments to identify limiting conditions of the effects of similarity on attraction necessarily yields a corresponding impoverishment in the simulations; an explicit consideration of previously reported interactions would provide a more definitive assessment of isomorphisms between subjects and observers. Of course, it would also be advisable to examine directly the identities that subjects ascribe to themselves in the experimental setting.

Second, it should be emphasized that, while situated identity theory can predict the attraction responses of observers (and presumably of subjects) in terms of social desirability, neither the theory nor its supporting simulation specifies antecedent conditions that lead subjects to choose the most desirable of several responses. It is at this juncture, perhaps, that the social desirability interpretation of the attraction paradigm might be related to theories explicitly focusing on the antecedents of interpersonal attraction (cf. Murstein, 1971). At the intraindividual level, for example, it is entirely possible that presentations of socially desirable identities tend to be followed by reinforcing consequences (e.g., Byrne, 1971) or by a reduction of cognitive imbalance within the subject (e.g., Newcomb, 1961).

Although it is not our purpose to criticize theories of attraction that invoke intraindividual determinants such as reinforcement processes, it might be appropriate to note one important implication of the present findings for these theories. In the case of Byrne's reinforcement theory, for example, the logic of explanation presumes an invariant relationship between statements of similar attitudes and subsequent reinforcement that is independent of social context. While such a conceptualization may be appropriate for the many cases in which attraction is directly proportional to similarity, it is not apparent how a reinforcement approach explains the few cases in which similarity and attraction are either unrelated or inversely related. Nor would it seem that reinforcement theory can specify such limiting conditions in advance of empirical study. Similar reservations about cognitive balance theory approaches to interpersonal attraction have been expressed by Curry and Emerson (1970).

However, theories derived from the study of social interaction not only provide an alternative approach to the present findings, but may also shed light on the limiting conditions of the attraction paradigm. For example, recent longitudinal studies reported by Curry and


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Emerson (1970) and Doherty and Secord (1971) suggest two limiting conditions that might be understood in terms of social exchange theory and symbolic interaction. Viewing statements of attraction in the context of social exchange raises the possibility that rules of fair exchange dictate permissible limits of attraction in response to specific proportions of attitude similarity; examination of the specific traits ascribed to subjects who showed inappropriately high or low attraction ratings provides some support for this interpretation. In both cases, observers appear to have attributed identities similar to the traits ascribed to those who violate norms of reciprocity in social exchange. Further, given that relations of attraction in ongoing interaction tend to be characterized by increasing reciprocity, expressions of similar attitudes may lead subjects to expect that others will be attracted to them. However, since the implied liking interpretation of the attraction paradigm (Aronson and Worchel, 1966) does not appear to provide a complete explanation of the effects of similarity, Curry and Emerson have suggested that residual effects of attitude similarity might be explained by the hypothesis that presentations of similar attitudes lead subjects to feel that they can successfully induce others to like them.

While exchange theory identifies the prospect of successful interaction as a limiting condition of the attraction paradigm, a second comparative study (Doherty and Secord, 1971) has provided support for an explicitly symbolic interactionist approach to the present findings and the specification of their limiting conditions. Following Secord and Backman's (1961) statement of interpersonal congruency theory, Doherty and Secord found that agreement for the most important aspects of their subjects' self-concepts yielded appreciably greater attraction than similarity for general attitudes. If identity can be assumed to be an important aspect of self, then validation of subjective public identity appears to specify one of several congruency processes that mediates similarity-attraction findings. In addition, the validation of identity in experimental settings might assume special importance insofar as subjects anticipate more predictable and stable interactions with others who see them as they see themselves. At present, however, no experimental study has systematically compared either success or interpersonal congruency with attitude similarity as determinants of attraction. Our present findings indicate the advisability of such investigation.



REFERENCES

Alexander, C. N., Jr. and J. Epstein 1969 "Problems of dispositional inference in person perception research."

Sociometry 32 (4):381-95. Alexander, C. N., Jr. and H. G. Weil 1969 "Players, persons, and purposes: Situational meaning and the prisoner's

dilemma game." Sociometry 32 (2):121-44. Alexander, C. N., Jr. and G. W. Knight 1971 "Situated identities and social psychological experimentation."

Sociometry 34 (1):65-82. Anderson, N. H. 1968 "Likableness ratings of 555 personality-trait words." Journal of

Personality and Social Psychology 9 (3):272-9. Aronson, E. and P. Worchel 1966 "Similarity versus liking as determinants of interpersonal attractive-

ness." Psychonomic Science 5:157-8. Bem, D. J. 1967 "Self-perception: An alternative interpretation of cognitive dissonance

phenomena." Psychological Review 74:183-200. Byrne, D. 1971 The Attraction Paradigm. New York: Academic Press.

Byrne, D. and R. Rhamey 1965 "Magnitude of positive and negative reinforcements as determinants of

attraction." Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 2:884-9. Curry, T. J., and R. M. Emerson 1970 "Balance theory: A theory of interpersonal attraction?" Sociometry 33

(2):216-38. Doherty, E. G. and P. F. Secord 1971 "Change of roommate and interpersonal congruency." Representative

Research in Social Psychology 2 (2):70-6. Goffman, E. 1963 Behavior in Public Places. New York: The Free Press.

Gough, H. G. and A. B. Heilbrun, Jr. 1965 The Adjective Check List Manual. Palo Alto, California: Consulting

Psychologists Press. Jones, E. E. 1964 Ingratiation: A Social Psychological Analysis. New York: Appleton,

Century Crofts. Jones, E. E. and K. E. Davis 1965 "From acts to dispositions: The attribution process in person

perception." Pp. 219-267 in L. Berkowitz (ed.), Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Vol. 2. New York: Academic Press.

Mead, G. H. 1934 Mind, Self, and Society. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Mixon, D. 1972 "Instead of deception." Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior 2

(2): 145-79.


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Murstein, B. I. (ed.) 1971 Theories of Attraction and Love. New York: Springer.

Newcomb, T. M. 1961 The Acquaintance Process. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.

Rosenberg, S. and R. A. Jones 1972 "Ratings of personality trait words on nine semantic properties."

Journal Supplement Abstract Service 2:21-2. Scott, W. C. 1969 "Response prediction and interpersonal attraction." Paper read at the

meetings of the Southwestern Psychological Association. Secord, P. F. and C. W. Backman 1961 "Personality theory and the problem of stability and change in

individual behavior: An interpersonal approach." Psychological Review 68:21-32.

MANUSCRIPTS FOR THE ASA ROSE SOCIOLOGY SERIES

Manuscripts (100 to 300 typed pages; three copies) are solicited for publication in the ASA Arnold and Caroline Rose Monograph Series in Sociology to the Series Editor, Professor Ida Harper Simpson, Department of Sociology, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina 27706.


Article Contentsp. 363p. 364p. 365p. 366p. 367p. 368p. 369p. 370p. 371p. 372p. 373p. 374

Issue Table of ContentsSociometry, Vol. 37, No. 3 (Sep., 1974) pp. i-ii+307-458Front Matter [pp. ]Parental Influence on Educational Goals [pp. 307-327]Interpersonal Conflict and Cohesiveness in Dyadic Relationships [pp. 328-348]Extending Expectation States Theory: A Quantitative Model [pp. 349-362]Situated Identities, Attitude Similarity and Interpersonal Attraction [pp. 363-374]A Comparison of Measures of Cognitive Complexity [pp. 375-390]Patterns of Communication Among Theoretical High Energy Physicists [pp. 391-406]Effects of Humor on Persuasion [pp. 407-422]Compensatory Reactions to Spatial Immediacy [pp. 423-431]Reacions to Threat as a Function of Equity[pp. 432-439]Effects of Status and Knowledgeability of Audience on Self Presentation [pp. 440-449]Student Reactions to Agnew's Resignation: Inconsistency Resolution in Another Natural-Occurring Event [pp. 450-457]Back Matter [pp. ]

1974_Touhey_Situated Identiies, Attitude Simialrity and Interpersonal Attraction

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