Opposites Attract? Not Really, Says New Study

Have you ever wondered why you connect instantly with some people while it takes ages to form a bond with others? Conversations with some people are just easier, and the relationship is much deeper. It is widely referred to as the similarity attraction effect. It refers to our tendency to favour people who are like us. Scientists have found another factor that regulates such emotions. Charles Chu, an assistant professor of management and organisations at Boston University’s Questrom School of Business, and his team conducted research on the elements that affect our attraction to or disinterest in other people.

The results were published in the American Psychological Association’s Journal of Personality and Social Psychology under the title, Self-essentialist reasoning underlies the similarity-attraction effect. It found that one of the most important factors that affect our attraction is self-essentialist thinking, which refers to the belief that one has a deep inner core or essence that helps determine one’s identity. The study discovered that people who hold this belief assume other people’s interests, likes, and dislikes are also driven by the same factor. They believe that if they find someone who has even one comparable interest to them, that person may also hold the same worldview as them.

According to the study, the haste to accept an elusive, essential similarity with someone because of one or two shared ideas may be the result of erroneous thinking and may limit the kind of people we engage with. Along with the pull of the similarity-attraction effect, there is a push that works against it. In simple words, we despise people who we don’t think are like us.

For the purpose of the research, the team set up four studies with over 2,200 subjects, each intended to find out a different facet of how they view friends or enemies.

In the first study, participants were presented with a story about a fictional character named Jamie who had either complementing or opposing opinions than them. In order to gauge their level of affinity with self-essentialist reasoning, the participants were also asked several questions. The research team discovered that when participants felt more connected to Jamie, who shared their opinions on one issue, the more they believed their worldview was driven by an essential core.

Next, they examined if that effect continued in second research with less substantive focus themes. The participants were asked to estimate the number of blue dots on a sheet, after which they were classified as over- or under-estimators as compared to Jamie. The results were consistent: the greater people felt connected to Jamie as a fellow over- or under-estimator, the more they believed in an essentialist core.

In further investigations, the team started to sabotage this attraction by eliminating the contribution of self-essentialist thinking.

The study shows that meeting people and forming impressions of them with a self-referential basis is not the best habit to pursue. This tends to leave a bias and make us forget that people are more complex than we think.