Judging attraction from nonverbal behavior: The gain phenomenon.

Used warm and cold nonverbal behaviors in an attempt to produce the gain phenomenon (i.e., the finding that people are more attracted to a person who is initially punishing and then rewarding than to one who is always rewarding). In Exp I with 33 male and 33 female undergraduates, nonverbal behaviors scaled for their capacity to convey attraction were factor analyzed. An actress then performed selected behaviors in videotaped conversations with a male. Subsequent ratings of the tapes confirmed that Ss attributed more mutual attraction to actors in warm than in cold segments. In Exp II with 27 male and 36 female undergraduates, segments were spliced together. A gain effect resulted: Ss judged the man as more attracted when the woman was first cold and then warm than when she was consistently warm. Explanations based on stimulus contrast, or adaptation level, theory were ruled out because Ss did not perceive the woman in the cold-warm sequence as warmer or as indicating more attraction to the man than in the warm-warm sequence. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)