Friendship, Similarity and the Reptest

Abstract

The hypothesis that Personal Construct Theory provides a link between studies of attitude-similarity and personality-similarity as factors in attraction proposes that similarities between friends in the structuring of constructs are measured by the Reptest. A comparison of a naturally occurring group of 10 friends with a comparable ‘nominal’ group, i.e., a group constructed of individuals who are not friends with each other but within the same population, was made by giving each S a Reptest where all the members of his own group, and 10 others, common to both sets of Reptests, were elements. The confirmation of the hypothesis was taken to show the normative influences of group membership on construing processes. However, for further investigation of the similarity-attraction hypothesis from a personal construct theory standpoint, it is argued that study of construct content is more promising, since the hypothesis rests largely on a consensual-validation argument, which in turn seems to rest on implicit recognition that individuals can perceive any similarity existing between them.