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Similarity

The video explores how similarity influences attraction, showing that we gravitate towards those who share our attitudes, beliefs, interests, and even physical features. It also discusses how similarity can impact the longevity of relationships, and the potential downside of excluding those who are different. Created by Brooke Miller.

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  • aqualine tree style avatar for user Marianne Thibeault
    What about "opposites attract?" Aren't expressions like these repeated over and over because of the age-old truths they tell?
    (7 votes)
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  • male robot hal style avatar for user Mohammad Sohail
    please fix the audio! thanks
    (17 votes)
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  • leafers ultimate style avatar for user Tárik/Petra
    it's really hard to say that people become friends only because they are similar. I think it's more related to empathy, people who understand each eachother and accept their differences tend to become friendlier to each other. The less differences, or the more similarities you have with each other, easier it is to have empathy, but you can empathise with people who are different from you ttoo. (Sorry for commenting in a place meant for questions).
    (5 votes)
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  • male robot hal style avatar for user Joshua Gaunt
    If a photo of a person was merged with the participant's photo and the participant had a negative self-image of themselves, would they still rate that person higher? Would the rating potentially decrease?
    (4 votes)
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  • piceratops sapling style avatar for user JeanCarlo.Montes
    Similarity : "We like people who are like ourselves". But, what if you can not seem to find someone similar to yourself?
    (2 votes)
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    • blobby green style avatar for user Liz
      The number of people that exist in the world and in your respective country makes it statistically improbable that you are unable to find someone similar. If you can't find someone similar, it is more likely because you are limiting your options or social interactions, not because people who are similar do not exist.
      (1 vote)
  • duskpin sapling style avatar for user EmeraldRay
    Why was the girl with the red background rated more attractive than the same photo with the white background? Is there a specific colour/ spectrum of colours we associate attraction to?
    (2 votes)
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    • leaf green style avatar for user Nikki
      Perhaps it is because of the overall contrasting effect the Red background has over the entire photograph. The woman eyes appear more green in the red compared to the white background, and the green tree's in the background stand out more as well. It seems as if the red allows us to focus solely on the woman where the white background kind of causes her to blend in with the rest of the photo. In the white background none of her features seem to stand out as much compared to the red.
      (1 vote)
  • blobby green style avatar for user aubrey.mayes
    This is very interesting but wouldn't you also say that attraction has a lot to do with your level of self confidence as well? Confident people ( Not arrogant people... there is a big difference) tend to be able to have a wide range of friends from all walks of life and actually embrace the differences without judgement or fear. The natural propensity to be attracted to like minded people seems to have great merit. Maybe truly confident people are more open minded and therefore cast a wider friendship net.
    (2 votes)
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    • aqualine ultimate style avatar for user Eddie Olson
      Interesting proposition! To view that from another perspective, could it be that those who are insecure seek out those who are similar to them in other qualities IN ORDER to feel more secure about themselves? In which case, those individuals who already poses self-security and confidence are more free to befriend those who are different because they don't require self-assurance from others? What do you think?
      (1 vote)
  • leafers ultimate style avatar for user Mike Dacre
    Doesn't it seem that the morphing effect could be fully explained by the mere exposure effect from the 'Proximity and the mere exposure effect' video? In that video, Brooke pointed out research that we find people, and indeed anything, more attractive when we have seen them multiple times. Given that most people see themselves in the mirror every day, that would seem to completely explain that effect. Does anyone know of any literature replicating this kind of experiment but using the facial features of an existing friend for the morphing, instead of an individual's own features? My expectation is that the effect would be identical.
    (1 vote)
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  • leafers ultimate style avatar for user ff142
    For the morphing experiment, what if the participant got a botched plastic surgery and hates her new face and her new facial features are morphed with the confederate's face? Would that still lead to increased cooperativeness and trust?
    (1 vote)
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  • blobby green style avatar for user Elissa Janelle
    The labeling in this video was fantastic!
    (1 vote)
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Video transcript

- [Voiceover] Let's say that this is you and that these are your friends. What kind of things are you most likely to have in common with these friends? Well, it turns out just about everything, and that's because similarity or how similar someone is to us is a huge predictor of attraction. Compared to any two random people that you might find, close friends and couples are far more likely to share common attitudes, beliefs, and interests, and it doesn't stop there. We tend to befriend and partner up with people who match our age and race and religion, even things like economic status and educational level. We like people who are like ourselves, and this has been demonstrated through a number of surveys and correlational studies, but it's also been demonstrated experimentally as well. In one study, university students were brought into a lab, and they were told that they were going to be playing a game with another student. In reality, the other student was a confederate, meaning that they were in on the study the whole time. Participants were split into one of two conditions. In one condition, they were shown the image of the other player, in this case our confederate. In the second condition, participants also saw a picture of the other player, but unbeknownst to them, that picture had some of their own facial features mapped onto it, and the results of this study showed that the individual was much more likely to cooperate with the other player and to deem them as trustworthy when the picture of the other player had some of their own facial features morphed into it. Other studies have shown similar findings. We're more likely to think that another individual is attractive when their facial features are morphed with our own. We're even more likely to vote for political candidates whose photographs have been changed to include some of our facial features. So, when I say that we like people who are like us, I don't just mean that in terms of attitudes and interests. We are more likely to like people who are similar to us on any level, even if they just share some of our facial features. So, we've noted that similarity can help to bring people together, but does it help them stay together? Do friendships and relationships tend to last longer the more similar we are? And the research has shown that the answer is yes, but it's a little bit complicated, because I think it would be really easy to say that couples who are really similar to each other share a lot of attitudes and share a lot of interests. And it seems fairly obvious how those shared interests could keep two people together over long periods of time, but it could also be the case that couples stay together because of perceptions of similarity. and this could mean one of two things. The first is that as couples stay together and share their interests with each other, their interests tend to become more aligned over time. So, it's not that couples who stay together for a long time are similar in general. More like they become similar as time goes on. Another option would be that perceived similarity could be just that, perceived. Maybe individuals who stay together for long periods of time merely think that the other person is similar to them. After all, the way that this data is collected is typically through surveys. So, it could be that couples who stay together for long periods of time aren't actually that similar at all, they just think that they are. The thing I find to be most interesting about the similarity effect is what it might leave out. Because it's not really hard to see how the similarity effect could actually become a similarity bias, because while on the one hand it predicts that we will like people who are like us, it also kind of implies that we will not befriend people who are different from us. So, the same force that helps pull people together, might cause them to exclude individuals who are physically or culturally different from themselves.