Differential Effects of Reciprocity and Attitude Similarity Across Long- Versus Short-Term Mating Contexts

Abstract

Participants were 24 male and 32 female undergraduate and graduate students whom the authors recruited for an examination of the effects of attitude similarity and reciprocity on the degree of attraction toward potential mates. The authors examined the effects of these 2 variables on degree of liking in long-term and short-term contexts. The authors administered a vignette about a bogus stranger to each participant, varying the stranger's attitude similarity with and liking of the participant. The authors enclosed the vignette in a folder that described the stranger as having either very similar or very different attitudes from the participant and that included a passage that notified the participant that the stranger either likes or does not like him or her. The dependent variables included 4 indexes of the extent to which participants reported liking the bogus stranger: a scale that measured short-term mating items, a scale that measured long-term mating items, a degree-of-liking scale, and a behavioral-intention item. Across these 4 attraction-relevant dependent variables, the authors found significant main effects of the reciprocity variable. Also, the authors found a significant main effect of attitude similarity on the likability measure. The authors found significant main effects of reciprocity in a long-term mating context and a short-term mating context.