Structural Similarity in the Acquaintance Process

An experiment was conducted to determine the relationship between the similarity in structure of adult respondents' personal construct systems and their attraction to one another over the course of a 20-week interaction group that controlled for the frequency, duration, and content of members' disclosures Structural similarity was assessed by comparing the level of construct system differentiation (or cognitive complexity) of each pair of 20 participants Results indicated that members of high-similarity dyads showed greater mutual attraction than members of medium- and low-similarity dyads after 18, but not after 4, weeks of interaction These findings offered support for an expanded personal construct model of the acquaintance process, in which social comparison at the level of construct system structure operates as a subtle but important filtering mechanism at later stages of relationship development.