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Study: Some people just like liking things

Researchers say 'dispositional attitude' determines if a person likes lots of things, or not

How do you feel about that new project the boss just handed you? What about spinach? A Shakespearean sonnet? How about vaccines?

For years, social scientists have known that our likes and dislikes are a function of many things: our education, our tastes, how optimistic we are.

But a new study published recently in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology suggests that there's another component to this equation that we've been missing — one that may seem as obvious as the nose on our face — and it's the overall individual.

Researchers Justin Hepler at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and Dolores Albarracín at the University of Pennsylvania are calling this component or dimension our "dispositional attitude" and say it's a big deal because it gives insights into why we might like (or dislike) a slew of different things that are unrelated — such as the list above.

"Our research was about refocusing the lens to say you have to pay attention to the person making the judgment," said Hepler, who's at work on his doctorate in social personality psychology.

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It makes sense that if you have a positive dispositional attitude you might tend to like a variety of items, and if you have a negative one, well, you might strongly dislike a bunch of items.

Hepler said that if you asked moviegoers, for example, why they liked a film, they might list a set of reasons. But hardly anyone would say, "I liked it because I'm a person who tends to like things."

"But we believe that's exactly what's happening, and we can identify (through personality tests) people who tend to like or dislike a range of things," he said.

If you're wondering why this is important, consider this:

Say I'm a potential employer who can discern this information about you from a personality test I've asked you to take. I can use the findings to decide whether you're a good fit for my company.

Or, say I'm in advertising and I have this information (and we all know what's private is becoming far less so), then maybe it would affect the way I might pitch my product to you.

"We're just speculating here, but there are wide implications," said Hepler. "Some jobs are narrower and might be a better fit for people who dislike things. But a college student with a positive dispositional attitude might be more attracted to (and perform better in) the liberal arts."

I wondered: Can a person have a high positive dispositional attitude and be somewhat introverted? Hepler said the answer is yes because although the two are related, they're not the same.

Proving this was one of the core accomplishments of Hepler's and Albarracín's work. They knew early on they had to show that a person's dispositional attitude could be measured apart from other personality traits.

The researchers began by asking a group of participants how they felt about 100 different stimuli, including architecture, crossword puzzles, cold showers and public speaking. The responses ranged from really negative to neutral to very positive.

Researchers then whittled the number of items down to 16 and had participants rate those, but also fill out questionnaires regarding whether they identified with having such personality traits as being an introvert or extrovert; an optimist or pessimist.

"We found that your tendency to like and dislike isn't the same as your tendency to be an optimist or an extrovert," said Hepler.

He said that because we know attitude is related to behavior — for example, if you like to run, you're more likely to be a runner — he asked participants how they used their time. Not surprisingly, the people with a more positive dispositional attitude were adventurous and got out more. The people who liked fewer things were kind of couch-potato-y.

I asked Hepler what surprised him about the study. He said it was that a person's dispositional attitude can predict how he or she feels about specific things. So, you might be right in guessing that a person who likes her new work project, spinach, Shakespearean sonnets and vaccines may also like, for example, recycling.

He said it's not exactly clear yet how much our dispositional attitude is based on nature or nurture. But he imagines it has both biological and environmental influences and that's true of other personality traits.

Hepler said the next area of research is to learn how dispositional attitude affects behavior, and how persuasion can be used effectively.

"If a business finds out that its target audience has a negative dispositional attitude, it may be more effective to get customers to dislike their opponent's product rather than trying to get them to like theirs," said Hepler.

I like this area of study, and I'm eager to learn more.



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