Does everybody like a liker

Abstract The primary hypothesis examined was that people giving positive evaluations are themselves regarded as more attractive than when they give negative evaluations. This research tests whether this holds when reciprocity is not at issue. Subjects in six experiments were presented with stimulus persons who varied in the proportion of positive to negative evaluations they gave of various attitude objects (political figures, cafeteria workers, cities, movies, and college courses). Giving predominantly positive evaluations did in fact lead to greater liking of the stimulus person in each experiment. This finding held over (1) audio or written interviews with the stimulus persons, (2) a variety of classes of attitude objects, and (3) both within-subject and between-subject designs. Greater liking for likers occurred even controlling for attitude similarity.

[1]  D. Mettee.  The true discerner as a potent source of positive affect , 1971 .

[2]  D Byrne,et al.  Magnitude of positive and negative reinforcements as a determinant of attraction. , 1965, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[3]  G. Miller,et al.  THE EFFECTS OF LOW CREDIBLE SOURCES ON MESSAGE ACCEPTANCE: FOUR EXPERIMENTAL STUDIES IN PERSUASION , 1966 .

[4]  Richard E. Johnson,et al.  Attribution of Ability as a Function of Consistency of Information across Times, Tasks, and Persons: A Bias toward Favorable Attributions , 1976 .

[5]  J. S. Shrauger,et al.  Social validation and interpersonal evaluations , 1968 .

[6]  Gerard Hb.  Disagreement with others, their credibility, and experienced stress. , 1961 .

[7]  H. Kelley.  The warm-cold variable in first impressions of persons. , 1950, Journal of personality.

[8]  E. Burnstein,et al.  Sources of cognitive bias in the representation of simple social structures: balance, minimal change, positivity, reciprocity, and the respondent's own attitude. , 1967, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[9]  N. Feather,et al.  Effects of variations in source attitude, receiver attitude, and communication stand on reactions to source and content of communications. , 1967, Journal of personality.

[10]  P. F. Secord,et al.  The Effect of Perceived Liking on Interpersonal Attraction , 1959 .

[11]  J. Koivumaki,et al.  The perception of self and others: acquaintanceship, affect, and actor-observer differences. , 1976, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[12]  T. Newcomb,et al.  Psychological balance in situations of negative interpersonal attitudes. , 1966, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[13]  S. Fiske,et al.  The Handbook of Social Psychology , 1935 .

[14]  S. Asch.  Forming impressions of personality. , 1946, Journal of Abnormal Psychology.

[15]  D. Byrne.  The Attraction Paradigm , 1971 .

[16]  T. Newcomb.  The acquaintance process , 1961 .