1988 Volume 27 Issue 2 Pages 121-130
There are individual differences that affect the relationships between attitudinal similarity and interpersonal attraction. One of them is Generous Interpersonal Attitude (GIA), which was a personality variable proposed by this study. The purpose of this study was to investigate effects of evaluator' s GIA on the attractiveness of dissimilar other.
Two experiments based on Byrne' s“Attraction Paradigmgb”were conducted. Major results obtained were as follows: (1) In“Emotional attraction”dimension, dissimilar stimulus persons were less liked than similar ones, regardless of evaluator's GIA; (2) In“Interaction orientation” dimension, high-GIA' s showed greater willingness to accept dissimilar stimulus persons than low-GIA' s; (3) high-GIA' s had relatively higher levels of self-esteem than low-GIA' s.
It was suggested that holding GIA makes it possible to tolerate the“emotionally disliking” dissimilar others.
