Looking as a Measure of Attraction1

Byrne's reinforcement theory of attraction is almost exclusively based upon studies that use the Interpersonal Judgment Scale (IJS) as their measure of attraction. The present study used Byrne's general experimental procedure but employed an unobtrusive “looking” measure of attraction as well as the more familiar IJS measure. The degree of attitude similarity between women subjects and a female stranger was not significantly related to the IJS measure of attraction but was significantly related to the proportion of looking time measure (p < .01). This was true for both subjects who verbalized and did not verbalize awareness of the relationship between the independent variable and the dependent measures of the study.