Thesis (Ph.D.)--Brown University, 2008. / Vita. Advisor : Joachim I. Krueger.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Auburn University, 2009. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 77-87).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: William B. Swann and Samuel D. Gosling. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Supervisors: William B. Swann and Samuel D. Gosling. Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

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Three studies were conducted to investigate the moderating and mediating influences of perceiver and target variables in the similarity-attraction relationship. In Study 1, 85 heterosexual males rated the interpersonal attractiveness and perceived attitude similarity of heterosexual and homosexual targets who were either attitudinally similar, ambiguous (i.e., no-attitude-information controls), or dissimilar to the participant. The relative effect of attitude similarity and attitude dissimilarity information on attraction judgments was moderated by the perceiver's prejudice level, but not by the target's group membership. Supplementary analyses revealed that target attraction ratings were only partially mediated by participants' perceptions of attitude similarity. Study 3 expanded on these findings by investigating the combined influence of a perceiver's prejudice level and his personal need for structure (PNS) on attraction judgments for ingroup and outgroup targets. One hundred and sixteen heterosexual males participated in an identical impression formation experiment. As predicted, the relative effect of attitude similarity and attitude dissimilarity information on heterosexual and homosexual target attraction judgments was moderated jointly by the perceiver's prejudice level and by his level of PNS: Individuals who were high in PNS and prejudice assigned lower attraction ratings to dissimilar targets than to control or similar targets, who were rated equivalently (i.e., S = C > D). Precisely the opposite was true of participants who were high in PNS but concurrently low in prejudice: These individuals assigned higher attraction ratings to similar targets than to control or dissimilar targets, who were rated equivalently (i.e., S > C = D). This interaction between the perceivers prejudice level and the attitude similarity/dissimilarity of the target was perfectly inverted for individuals who were low, rather than high, in PNS. Moreover, the role of prejudice i

A number of theories have suggested a relation between depression and several cognitive and behavioral variables. The present study investigated how depressed and nondepressed individuals differ in the way they perceive others, and what they remember about others. Depressed and nondepressed college students were selected based on their Beck Depression Inventory scores. Subjects read one of two scenarios. One scenario was a description of a person who received predominantly positive outcomes, the other was a description of a person who received predominantly negative outcomes. Later, subjects were asked to rate the target person on several dimensions, and were asked to recall as much as possible from the scenario. The results suggest that: a) depressed subjects found the negative target as more enjoyable than did the nondepressed subjects; b) depressed subjects found the negative scenario target as more similar to them than nondepressed subjects did, with the reverse occuring for the positive scenario target; and c) depressed subjects recalled more negative intrusions than the nondepressed subjects. / Department of Psychological Science