The Effects of Attitude Similarity-Dissimilarity, Religion, and Topic Importance on Interpersonal Attraction among Lebanese University Students.

Abstract

This study was designed to investigate the effects of attitudinal similarity and topic importance on interpersonal attraction when the religion of the stimulus stranger was the same as or was different from that of the S. Each of 80 Lebanese male and female undergraduates at the American University of Beirut responded to an eight-item attitude scale dealing with four important and four unimportant issues, examined later the same scale purportedly filled out by a stranger, and then indicated his attraction toward that stranger. The standard stranger technique was followed which consisted of experimentally manipulating similarity or dissimilarity of a stranger's attitudes and religion with respect to those of the S. The results confirmed the hypothesis in showing that while the variable of religion had no significant effect on interpersonal attraction, the latter was significantly influenced by attitudinal similarity between subject and stranger, particularly on topics considered important by the S.