Abstract
It was hypothesized that attraction is greater to a community in which most of its members hold attitudes similar to one's own than to one in which members ascribe to views different from one's own. It was also hypothesized that person-community attitude similarity would affect evaluations of a community's friendliness to strangers, morality, sense of well-being, and sense of community responsibility, with high person-community similarity causing more favorable evaluations than would low similarity. Each S completed a 15-item attitude survey and, at a later session, received an attitude survey purportedly representing the attitudes held by most of a community's members and expressing either 20% or 80% agreement with S's own views. S then made judgments about the community's probable level of friendliness to newcomers, morality, sense of well-being, sense of community responsibility, how much he would like the community, and how much he would enjoy living in the community. The hypothesized effects of person-community similarity were confirmed for all of these evaluative responses with the exception of the ratings of morality.