The role of attitude familiarity in interpersonal decision making

Research suggests that knowledge of a partner's attitudes is functional (e.g., Sanbonmatsu, Uchino, & Birmingham, 2011). This study examined the role of specific knowledge of a close friend's attitudes and more general knowledge of an unknown college student's attitudes in interpersonal decision making. We measured student attitudes toward 97 attitude objects as well as the attitudes of participants' close friends. Participants were then asked to make decisions in five hypothetical scenarios that centered on their friend or an unknown student. Results did not support the hypothesis that greater knowledge of others' attitudes would be associated with better interpersonal decisions. Additionally, narcissism and individualism were expected to be associated with less knowledge of others' attitudes, while self-monitoring and collectivism were predicted to be positively correlated with attitude familiarity. Results indicated there were no associations between these personality variables and knowledge of others' attitudes. An examination of gender differences indicated that females were more likely to show the predicted trends: greater knowledge of others' attitudes was associated with better quality decisions and the individual difference variables were more in keeping with predictions.