摘要：

Persons threatened by electric shock want to be with similarly threatened people. Schachter concluded that this was due to the subjects' desire for anxiety-reduction and for evaluation of their emotions by comparison with others. Seventy-eight female subjects were run in an experiment that sought to determine the relative strengths of the anxiety-reduction needs and emotional evaluation needs of a threatened subject. Each subject was given information about the initial emotional reactions of two other subjects (actually confederates of the experimenter) and then allowed to choose which of these other persons she wished to be with. The subject reported her initial fear reaction, then one of the confederates reported being slightly more afraid than the subject, while the other confederate reported being considerably calmer. High-Fear subjects chose to wait with the slightly more nervous confederate significantly more than did the Low-Fear control group ( p < .01), indicating that emotional comparison was the relatively more important determinant of affiliation choice. An additional group of subjects heard the high-fear instructions and then received some information that could be interpreted as uncertainty producing. These subjects chose to wait alone or with the calmer confederate more than even the Low-Fear group ( p < .05). This may indicate that, when subjects have the possibility of minimizing a fear provoking threat, they will make affiliation choices which will enable them to do so rather than choices dictated by needs for social comparison.

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