The effect of topic importance and attitude similarity-dissimilarity on attraction in an intrastranger design

Abstract

Although topic importance has been proposed as a crucial factor in the relationship between attitude similarity and attraction, two previous experiments failed to confirm this proposition. In the present investigation an intrastranger design was used in which two levels of attitude similarity were created by systematically assigning topics of differential importance as the similar and dissimilar items. Both the similarity variable and the importance variable significantly influenced attraction responses. It was shown that importance effects can be expected only when topics heterogeneous in importance are associated with one stranger. © 1968, Psychonomic Journals. All rights reserved.