New light on the mechanisms underlying the attitude similarity-attraction link

Abstract

People are drawn to those with whom they share attitudes and values. To demonstrate this similarity effect on interpersonal attraction, Byrne (1961) asked participants to complete an attitude survey. When they arrived for a later interaction session, they were provided with another survey that included responses surreptitiously made similar to or dissimilar from the participant’s own responses to the first attitude survey (i.e., the independent variable (IV) of attitude similarity manipulated by the experimenter). Participants examined the survey and rated the partner along attraction items. Participants typically report being attracted to the stranger to the extent they share attitudes (Byrne, 1997). Nevertheless, the similarity-attraction link (SAL) remains far from being fully understood and is still a topic of great interest (Montoya & Horton, 2013).