Self-esteem and Interpersonal Attraction Toward Competent and Friendly Persons PDF Download

Author: Dorothy Anne Phillips
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Friendship
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
It was hypothesized that two characteristics, competence and interpersonal relatedness or friendliness, which have been considered important to self-esteem by twentieth century theorists, would be important determinants of interpersonal attraction when perceived in others. Consequences of self-esteem for attraction to persons vary ing in competence and friendliness were investigated. Predictions were made from three social psychological theories, social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954), balance theory (Heider, 1958), and learning theory (Lott & Lott, 1972). Two experiments were designed to test the predictions. Experi ment I presented written interviews of the stimulus persons in a factorial design with two levels each of competence and friendliness. Experiment II presented adjective traits of stimulus persons in a factorial design with four levels each of competence and friendliness. In both experiments, subjects rated each stimulus person on compe tence, friendliness, how much they liked him and how much they anti cipated he would like them. Subjects rated their own competence and friendliness to yield ratings of perceived similarity between subjects and stimulus persons. Results of both experiments indicated that subjects liked com petent and friendly others more than incompetent and unfriendly others regardless of their own self-esteem level. Contrary to these results, both social comparison theory and balance theory based on sentiment relations predicted that self-esteem would influence inter personal attraction. Social comparison theory was based on the assumption that subjects would perceive similarity between them selves and certain stimulus persons. Since support for predictions from social comparison theory as well as support for the assumptions on which predictions were based was lacking, this theory may predict relations when similarity is more salient. The balance theory- sentiment relations prediction was based on the assumption that sub jects would anticipate more liking from competent and friendly others than from incompetent and unfriendly others. Since support for the predictions from balance theory-sentiment relations was lacking but support for the assumptions was present, this theory was rejected as mediating the relations between self-esteem and interpersonal attrac- ti on. Both balance theory based on unit relations and learning theory based on secondary reinforcement predicted the results on the liking measure. However, support for perceived similarity, which was the basis of the balance theory-unit relations prediction, was not found and this theory was not supported. Support for the assumption that competence and friendliness develop secondary reinforcing properties, which was the basis of the predictions from learning theory, was indirect and the theory was tentatively accepted. Results of these experiments are consistent with an hypothesis (Berscheid & Walster, 1969) that only when the stimulus person has evaluated the perceiver will self-esteem affect interpersonal attrac tion. An hypothesis that the perceiver need only be in a position to evaluate was discussed.