| Abstract: |
Conducted an experiment with 34 high school graduates about to enter college to test the hypothesis that when a belief is at issue, agreement from a dissimilar other will increase judgmental confidence more than agreement from a similar other; whereas when a value is at issue, agreement from a similar other will be more influential. After listening to tape-recordings purported to be excerpts from 2 university applicants, Ss judged either the relative academic success of the 2 students (belief) or which of the 2 they liked most (value). The Ss were then given an evaluation of the students written by another S who they had been led to believe was similar or dissimilar to themselves in terms of style of judging other people. In all cases, Ss were given the evaluation which agreed with their own. The results support the predictions. |