Carter's model of affective relations (1965) and Chaffee's research on cognitive discrepancies and communication (1959) are used to test the hypotheses that increasing an attribute's discriminatory power will increase attribute salience and that increasing the exclusiveness of an object's attributes will increase objective salience. The current literature suggests that increasing the number of attributes will increase the affect for an object. Experimental materials developed in this study had four constraints: (1) use of multi-object, multi-attribute situations (2) use of situations in which equal amounts of information were known about all of the objects; (3) use of situations in which objects could be chosen on a rational basis; and (4) use of situations in which both hypotheses could be tested simultaneously. Results suggest that increased salience leads to greater positive evaluations and that attribute salience is a function of the attribute's discriminatory power not included in Carter's model (but easily incorporated). In terms of learning theories, an exclusive discrimination becomes associated with a reward for making a good decision. (DS)