Attraction, test anxiety, and similarity-dissimilarity of test performance

Eighty students were administered the Mandler-Sarason Test Anxiety Questionnaire and a specially constructed vocabulary test. Later they studied the vocabulary responses of a stranger that were similar to the S’s on 17, or 83%, of the 24 words. With objective cues to the correctness of his own response minimized by the difficulty of the items, the similarity or dissimilarity of the stranger’s response was the only evidence the S had of his own competence. Consequently, those who responded similarly were liked more than those responding dissimilarly (p<.001). This finding extends the generality of the similarity-attraction relationship to similarity and dissimilarity of ability. Unexpectedly, test anxiety attenuated the effect of similarity of ability on liking (p =.05) and of dissimilarity on disliking (p<.02). In addition, anxiety had the same influence on other judgments of the stranger, including his intelligence. An explanation of these effects stressed the test-anxious S’s tendency to devalue his own performance as a standard for judging the stranger on such dimensions as his attractiveness or intelligence.