Abstract

The purpose of the present study is to examine the similarity-attraction hypotheses in personal and social self-categorization situations. It was hypothesized that, based upon self-categorization theory, similarity will be operative to personal attraction in personal self-categorization context. On the other hand, both similarity and dissimilarity will be operative to social attraction in social self-categorization context, depending upon the ingroup norm for achieving high performance. More specifically, the following predictions were proposed and examined in two independent laboratory experiments: (1)High attitude similarity would lead to high personal attraction in interpersonal comparison situation; (2)High attitude similarity would lead to high social attraction when group performance task requires homogeneity among ingroup members to achieve high performance in intergroup comparison situation; (3)Low attitude similarity would lead to high social attraction when group performance requires diversity among ingroup members to achieve high performance in intergroup comparison situation; (4)The relations between attitude similarity and attraction would be mediated by expectancy. The obtained results were consistent with the above mentioned predictions (1), (2), and (3). The prediction (4), a mediation effect of expectancy between attitude similarity and attractions, were partly supported in two experiments. The main findings were discussed in terms of the traditional theories of similarity-attraction hypotheses and self-categorization theory.