The Relative Effect of Attitude Similarity and Attitude Dissimilarity on Interpersonal Attraction: Investigating the Moderating Roles of Prejudice and Group Membership

Abstract

Heterosexual male undergraduates rated the interpersonal attractiveness and perceived attitude similarity of heterosexual and homosexual targets who were either attitudinally similar, ambiguous (i.e., no-attitude-information controls), or dissimilar to the participant. The relative effect of attitude similarity and dissimilarity information on attraction judgments was moderated by the perceiver's prejudice level but not by the target's group membership: Dissimilarity decreased low-prejudice (LP) individuals' attraction toward heterosexual and homosexual targets. Conversely, similarity increased high-prejudice (HP) participants' attraction toward both targets. Dissimilarity also decreased HPs' attraction toward heterosexual targets. Attraction effects for LPs were independent of perceived attitude similarity in the no-attitude control conditions and were more consistent with the person-positivity bias. For HPs, judgments of homosexual targets were partially mediated by perceived attitude dissimilarity. Findings are discussed in the context of the similarity-attraction principle, the repulsion hypothesis, and theories of intergroup discrimination.