Bogus Stranger Paradigm

The bogus stranger paradigm was developed by the social psychologist Donn Byrne to study the role of attitude similarity and dissimilarity in interpersonal attraction. The method was originally devised to allow experimenters to vary the degree of agreement and disagreement between a hypothetical (bogus) other and a participant in order to examine their effects on liking and disliking. Since then, it has been adapted to examine a variety of other factors in attraction as well.

The bogus stranger paradigm used an experimental approach. The purpose was to examine the causal effect of similarity-dissimilarity on attraction. In the basic study, degree of similarity was the manipulated independent variable and liking expressed for the bogus other was the dependent variable. The original procedure involved administration of a survey of opinions to a large psychology class at the beginning of the semester. On an item concerning political parties, for example, one can indicate that one is “a strong supporter of,” “prefers,” or has “a slight preference for the Democratic Party” or has “a slight preference for,” “prefers,” or “is a strong supporter of the Republican Party.” Later in the semester, some of these same students signed up for a “first impressions” study, and the experimenter, unknown to the participants, filled in the survey for the bogus stranger to express views that were between 0 and 100 percent similar to those of the participant. Participants then indicated their impression of the person on the Interpersonal Judgment Scale. The scale includes ratings of the stranger's intelligence, knowledge of current events, adjustment, morality, and their liking and desire to work with the stranger. The “liking” and “work with” items are added together to measure attraction. Experiments found a linear relationship between the proportion of similar attitudes and interpersonal attraction, sometimes referred to as the Law of Attraction.

The basic paradigm is easily adapted. For example, the method has been used to examine voter reactions to the opinions expressed by political candidates about whom additional information was also varied. Many different kinds of similarities have been studied, including similarity of economic status, academic ability, and teaching expertise, among others. Beyond similarities, the paradigm has also been used to examine the importance of such factors as gender, expressiveness, physical attractiveness, earning potential, reciprocal liking, and so on. The technique provides a standardized context within which to compare the effectiveness of virtually any interpersonal characteristic on attraction and dislike. For example, a meta-analysis of studies varying physical attractiveness of opposite-sex bogus strangers found that women valued attitude similarity in men significantly more than physical attractiveness, whereas men tended to emphasize a woman's physical attractiveness more than her attitude similarity. In another study, high earning potential was liked in women who were also attractive. In men it was generally liked, but especially when men were unattractive. Such results indicate that [Page 184]despite limitations regarding realism, the bogus stranger paradigm is capable of uncovering some of the complexities of interpersonal attraction.

The initial effect of attitude similarity on attraction was explained by Donna Byrne using Leon Festinger's observation that attitudes have no objective criterion of correctness so that people must depend on consensual validation. He later invoked the concept of effectance motivation, proposing that agreement may satisfy people's basic desires to be effective. As a test, experiments involving a “crazy movie” intended to temporarily arouse this motive found that moderate levels of confusion did amplify the role of attitude similarity in interpersonal attraction.

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