Premium
Liking persons versus liking groups: a dual‐process hypothesis
Author(s) -
Clement Russell W.,
Krueger Joachim
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
european journal of social psychology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.609
H-Index - 111
eISSN - 1099-0992
pISSN - 0046-2772
DOI - 10.1002/(sici)1099-0992(199805/06)28:3<457::aid-ejsp880>3.0.co;2-t
Subject(s) - psychology , social psychology , similarity (geometry) , stereotype (uml) , dual (grammatical number) , test (biology) , art , paleontology , literature , artificial intelligence , computer science , image (mathematics) , biology
Most research on liking of persons and groups has been conducted within separate paradigms, but the implicit assumption has been that the same processes govern judgments of liking or disliking regardless of the nature of the target. Departing from this assumption, we suggest a dual‐process hypothesis according to which people base their liking of a target person primarily on the desirability of the person's characteristics, whereas they base their liking of a group primarily on the degree of similarity between the group and themselves. To test this hypothesis, participants were presented with either positively or negatively valenced sketches that either described an individual person or a group of people. Path analyses revealed that liking of a person was best predicted by desirability ratings, whereas liking of a group was best predicted by similarity ratings. Implications of these findings for stereotype maintenance are discussed. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.