A Study of the Effects of Group-membership and Opinion-distance on the Social Perception

The present study attempts to extend several principles of Adaptation Level Theory to the perception of social others. Futrher, measures of the subject's liking for Subject-belonging-group (Subject-group) and Other-group and the perceived correctness of opinions of Subject-group and Other-group were taken to test a set of predictions derived from the postulated role of perceived similarity, which were obtained between self and other participants, in mediating attraction and correctness. [Method] In preparation for a group discussion, subjects were informed of the opinion positions of other participants in experiment with regard to two issues with social value. These opinion positions were represented by two distinct groups (group-membership condition). The position of one group, Subject-group, was moderately similar to the subject's opinions and remained constant across conditions (opinion-distance condition). The extent to which the opinions of a second group, Other-group, differed from the subject's was varied across five levels. [Result] When the majority was Subject-group, we found that increasing dissimilarity between the opinions of the subject and Other-group, increased perceived similarity, liking, perceived correctness of Subject-group and decreased perceived similarity, perceived correctness of Other-group. These patterns of data mean that the contrast effect predicted by AL theory occured. But when the minority was Subject-group, the patterns of data were reversely related with the contrast effect and interpreted as the assimilation effect and/or unit dissociation