Effects of the recipient's status and responsiveness on physical pleasuring between heterosexual strangers

Previous research relating status to intimate behavior has demonstrated that persons are more reluctant to initiate physical intimacy with another of higher than one of equal or lower status. The present research explored three potential interpretations of the observed relationship: (1) that persons perceive others of higher status as less likely to react positively to intimate behavior, (2) that social norms discourage intimate behavior toward higher status others, and (3) that persons of different status may be differentially liked. Using a modification of the apparatus developed by Davis, Rainey, and Brock, seventy-seven undergraduate subjects chose to give either a verbal or physically pleasurable reward for correct responses to a confederate learner whom they believed to be of either higher (PhD candidate), equal (freshman), or lower (high school drop-out) academic status. The learner was either responsive to the physical reward (expressing enjoyment) or unresponsive (remaining silent). In support of the first interpretation, status affected the magnitude of physical reward only when the recipient remained silent. When clear evidence of positive reaction to the vibrations was provided by the recipient's responsiveness, status differences were eliminated. This indicates that status may be used as a basis for regulating intimate behavior only when direct information about the recipient's reactions is unclear or unavailable. The differential liking interpretation received no support, in that status affected neither rated liking of the recipient nor the magnitude of verbal reward.     

Implications for interaction versus effectance as mediators of the similarity-attraction relationship

The rewards of interaction interpretation of the similarity-attraction relationship implies that this relationship should be stronger when similarity has stronger implications for the quality of interaction. In contrast, the reinforcement-affect (D. Byrne & G. L. Clore, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 1967, 6(Whole No. 638)) interpretation suggests that similarity should affect attraction most for characteristics that are most “important” to the perceiver. Three experiments tested these predictions. In Experiments 1 and 2, subjects rated eight strangers who were similar or dissimilar with respect to four opinion categories. With item importance held constant, the magnitude of the similarity-attraction relationship was greater for opinion categories with greater implications for interaction. In Experiment 3, item sets were constructed using subjects' own ratings of item importance and of amount of information conveyed about interaction. The magnitude of the similarity-attraction relationship was significantly related to the interaction ratings of item sets, but not to their importance ratings. The meaning of the concept of item “importance”, and the potential of the rewards of interaction formulation for generation of research are discussed.