LIKING PERSONS VERSUS LIKING GROUPS - A DUAL-PROCESS HYPOTHESIS

Most research on liking of persons and groups has been conducted withi n separate paradigms, but the implicit assumption has been that the sa me processes govern judgments of liking or disliking regardless of the nature of the target. Departing from this assumption, we suggest a du al-process hypothesis according to which people base their liking of a target per son primarily on the desirability of the person's characte ristics, whereas they base their liking of a group primarily on the de gree of similarity between the group and themselves. To test this hypo thesis, participants were presented with either positively or negative ly valenced sketches that either described an individual pel son or a group of people. Path analyses revealed that liking of a person was be st predicted by desirability ratings, whereas liking of a group was be st predicted by similarity ratings. Implications of these findings for stereotype maintenance are discussed. (C) 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd .