(Received July 29, 1965). EFFECT OF ECONOMIC SIMILARITY-DISSIMILARITY ON. INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION 3. DONN BYRNE, GERALD L. CLORE, ...
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KUTNEE, B., WILKINS, C., & YARROW, P. R. Verbal altitudes and overt behavior involving racial prejudice. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1952, 47, 64'>-652. LAPIERE, R. T. Attitudes versus actions. Social Forces, 1934, 13, 230-237. MALOF, M., & LOTT, A. J. Ethnocentrism and the acceptance of Negro support in a group pressure
situation. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1962, 65, 254-258. PETTIGREW, T. F. Social psychology and desegrega tion research. American Psychologist, 19fil, 16, 105-112. SIIERJF, M. A study of some social factors in perception. Archives of Psychology, 1935, 27, No. 187. (Received July 29, 1965)
Jo^lrnal oj Personality and Social Psychology 1966, Vol. 4, No. 2, 220-224
EFFECT OF ECONOMIC SIMILARITY-DISSIMILARITY INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION 3
ON
DONN BYRNE, GERALD L. CLORE, JR., AND PHILIP WORCHEL University of Texas The theory of social comparison processes suggests that individuals are attracted to each other on the basis of similarity in opinions, abilities, and emotional state. Generalizing further in the present investigation, attraction was hypothesized to be a function of similarity-dissimilarity in economic status. A total of 84 Ss was divided into high and low economic status on the basis of their responses to items dealing with spending money. 3 experimental conditions were devised in which Ss evaluated a stranger on the basis of his or her responses to the economic items and some attitudinal items. In 1 condition, low-status Ss responded to a high-status stranger, in a 2nd condition, highstatus Ss responded to a low-status stranger, and in a 3rd condition, highand low-status Ss responded to strangers similar to themselves. As hypothesized, attraction was significantly (p < .001) affected by similarity-dissimilarity of economic status. It was found that the specific responses of Ss could be predicted on the basis of a law of attraction formula derived in earlier work on attitude similarity-dissimilarity. An attempt was made to account for the findings in reinforcement terms.
In experimental investigations of interpersonal attraction, various stimulus characteristics associated with an individual have been manipulated and found to exert an effect on attraction toward that individual. For example, attraction is influenced by the expression of positive or negative evaluations concerning the subject (Backman & Secord, 1959; Byrne & Rhamey, 1965; Deutsch & Solomon, 1959; Jones, Hester, Farina, & Davis, 1959; Keislar, 1961), the sequence in which these evaluations are expressed (Aronson & Linder, 1965), behavior which results in the reduction of the threat that the subject will fail at a task (Kleiner, 1960), behavior which is responsible for the subject's failure at a task (Lerner, 1965), the administration of punishment in the form of insults to another individual (Pepitone & Sherberg, 1957), deviation in opinion from the subject (Berkowitz & Howard, 1959; Worchel & McCormick, 1963), the propor1 This research was supported in part by Research Grant MH-11178-01 from the National Institute of Mental Health, United States Public Health Service.
tion of expressed attitudes and opinions which are similar to those of the subject (Byrne, 1961; Byrne & Nelson, 1965), and simply being present when the subject is rewarded (Lott & Lott, 1960). One of the principles which has been proposed to account for these diverse findings is that of reinforcement (e.g., Byrne, 1961; Golightly, 1965; Kleiner, 1960; Lott & Lott, 1960; McDonald, 1962; Nelson, 1965; Newcomb, 1956, 1961; Pepitone & Sherberg, 1957). When Individual A receives positive reinforcement from Individual B, A's attraction toward B increases. Individual B constitutes a conditioned stimulus for the positive affect evoked by the reinforcement. In the same general way, negative reinforcement from Individual B results in negative affect and hence dislike for B. In the present paper, the effect of socioeconomic status on attraction will be explored and an attempt made to encompass this variable within the framework of reinforcement theory. There are sociometric data which suggest that
BRIEF ARTICLES friendship choices within a group tend to be between members of the same general socioeconomic status (Bonney, 1946; Dahlke, 1953; Longmore, 1948; Lundberg & Beazley, 1948; Lundberg & Stcele, 1938). One possible explanation for such findings comes from Feslinger's (19SO, 19S4) theory of social comparison processes which is not incompatible with reinforcement theory. Pie suggests that individuals are attracted to others who are similar to themselves with respect to both opinions and abilities. Thus, groups arc formed on the basis of such similarities, and communication and comparison with those who are divergent may be avoided. Festinger (19S4, p. 136) goes on to say: The segmentation into groups which are relatively alike with respect to abilities also gives rise to status in a society. And it seems clear that when such status distinctions are firmly maintained, it is not only members of the higher status who maintain them. It is also important to the members of the lower status to maintain them for it is in this way that they can relatively ignore the differences and compare themselves wilh their own group. Comparisons with members of a different status group, either higher or lower, may sometimes he made on a phantasy level, but very rarely in reality. A number of investigations lend support to Festinger's position. For example, Zander and Havelin (1960) found that subjects in a group situation were most attracted to others whose competence with respect to an experimental task was closest to their own. In addition, many of the affiliation studies indicate that subjects choose to be with others similar to themselves in emotional stale (e.g., Zimbardo & Formica, 1963). Both the sociometric findings and the social comparison theory suggest the possibility that the effect of attitude similarity-dissimilarity on attraction may be a much more general phenomenon in that various other types of similaritydissimilarity also affect attraction. In order to manipulate economic similarity in a controlled laboratory setting and to obtain attraction data directly comparable to that obtained in attitude studies, the present work was undertaken. Utilizing the same general experimental methodology as in earlier work (e.g., Byrne & Nelson, 196S), subjects were asked to evaluate a stranger about whom information concerning both attitudes and economic status was provided. It was hypothesized that attraction is a positive function of similarity of economic status. METHOD The subjects were 42 male and 42 female students enrolled in several sections of a required sophomore
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history course at the University of Texas. In their classrooms the subjects were given a scale dealing with their economic level and an attitude scale. A week later each subject was instructed to examine an economic level and an attitude scale supposedly filled out by another student. Each subject's attraction toward the stranger was then determined. Economic Level In order to build realistic economic items, a pilot study was carried out, using 30 undergraduates. In response to open-ended questions, the students were asked to indicate their monthly spending money, entertainment expenses, clothing expenses, and the number of several specific items of clothing which they owned. On the basis of these data, 4-itcm scales for males and females were constructed; on each item subjects could indicate his or her own economic standing on a 9-poinl scale ranging from "very much less than average" to "very much more than average." The items were: 1. The average University of Texas undergraduate male (female) spends about $26 ($19) per month on entertainment. I spend: 2. The average University of Texas undergraduate male (female) has about $43 ($40) per month of spending money besides food, rent, and other such necessities. I have: 3. The average male (female) at Texas spends $8 ($20) per month on clothes. I spend: 4. The average male (female) at Texas has 3 sport coats and 3 suits (7 pairs of high heeled shoes and 4 cocktail dresses). I have: Attitudes Immediately after filling out the economic-level items, the subjects responded to a 4-item attitude scale. These items were drawn from a 56-item pool used in previous attitude studies (Byrne & Nelson, 1964). The items were selected on the basis of yielding approximately SO-SO opinion splits among previous subjects. The items are answered on 6-point scales and deal with the university grading system, undergraduate marriages, strict disciplining of children, and sex differences in adjusting to stress. Experimental Session The subjects were divided into 3 cxpcrimcnlal groups of 28 subjects each. On the basis of their responses to the four economic items, subjects were divided at the median of the total economic score into high and low groups. In Condition L-H, subjects of relatively low economic level were asked to evaluate high-cconomic-lcvel strangers. In Condition H-L, subjects of relatively high economic level were asked to evaluate Iow~economic-levcl strangers. The difference between each subject and his dissimilar stranger was a constant total of IS scale points on the economic items. A third condition (L-L, H-H) consisted of both low- and high-economic-level subjects who were presented with strangers similar to themselves in economic level. For all subjects, the bogus stranger's responses to the attitude items were
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made to agree with 50% and disagree with 50% of the subject's opinions. Using the method described in previous investigations, subjects were told that the purpose of the experiment was to determine whether they could make accurate judgments about an anonymous stranger on the basis of that person's responses to the attitude and economic scales. Each subject then received the two scales of the purported stranger, examined them, and evaluated him on the Interpersonal Judgment Scale with respect to intelligence, knowledge of current evenls, morality, and adjustment. Attraction is defined by two items of this scale: probable liking for the stranger, and probable enjoyment of working with him. Responses to these latter two items are combined to yield a measure of the dependent variable with a possible range of 2-14 points and a corrected split-half reliability of .85 (Byrne & Nelson, 1965). Subjects also indicated on a 4-point scale the extent to which they would prefer to have the amount of spending money the stranger had or the amount they themselves had.
RESULTS The means and standard deviations of the attraction scores are shown in Table 1. It may be seen that attraction responses are most positive toward a stranger of similar economic status and least positive toward a stranger of dissimilar economic status. An analysis of variance of the attraction scores is shown in Table 2. The manipulation of the bogus stranger's economic level in relation to the subject's economic level produced differences in attraction significant at beyond the .001 level, as hypothesized. Neither the male-female differences nor the interaction attained statistical significance. Further analysis of the three economic-similarity conditions by means of t tests indicated that the overall difference was a function of the H-L group responding significantly more negatively than the other two groups (t~3.62, df~S2, p < .001). The difference between the L-H and L-L, H-H groups did not reach statistical significance (i = 1.76, df = 54, p > .05). Therefore, TAJJLE 1 MEANS AND STANDARD DEVIATIONS OF ATTRACTION SCORES TOWARD STRANGERS OF SIMILAR AND DISSIMILAR ECONOMIC LEVEL Experimental conditions 5s
Males Females Total
L-H
L-L, H-H
I-I-L
M
SD
M
SD
M
SD
9.21 8.79 9.00
2.62 1.97 2.33
6.93 8.50 7.71
1.91 1.55 1.91
9.29 10.79 10.04
1.71 1.97 1.99
TABLE 2 ANALYSIS OP VARIANCE OF ATTRACTION SCORES -COWARD STRANGERS OF SIMILAR AND DISSIMILAR ECONOMIC LEVEL Source
MS
F
Economic level Interaction Within
16.30 37.87 9.01 4.23
3.85 8.94*** 2.13
Sex
***p
