People like others who share their attitudes. Online dating platforms as well as other social media platforms regularly rely on the social bonding power of their users’ shared attitudes. However, little is known about moderating variables. In the present work, I argue that sharing rare compared with sharing common attitudes should evoke stronger interpersonal attraction among people. In five studies, I tested this prediction for the case of shared interests from different domains. I found converging evidence that people’s rare compared with their common interests are especially potent to elicit interpersonal attraction. I discuss the current framework’s theoretical implications for impression formation and impression management as well as its practical implications for improving online dating services.
AjzenI. (1974). Effects of information on interpersonal attraction: Similarity versus affective value. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 29, 374-380.
2.
AlvesH.KochA.UnkelbachC. (2016). My friends are all alike—The relation between liking and perceived similarity in person perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 103-117.
3.
AlvesH.KochA.UnkelbachC. (2017). The “common good” phenomenon: Why similarities are positive and differences are negative. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 146, 512-528.
4.
AlvesH.KochA.UnkelbachC. (in press). An ecological explanation of intergroup biases. Psychological Science.
5.
AronsonE.WorchelP. (1966). Similarity versus liking as determinants of interpersonal attractiveness. Psychonomic Science, 5, 157-158.
6.
BahnsA. J.CrandallC. S.GillathO.PreacherK. J. (2017). Similarity in relationships as niche construction: Choice, stability, and influence within dyads in a free choice environment. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 112, 329-355.
7.
BaumeisterR. F.LearyM. R. (1995). The need to belong: Desire for interpersonal attachments as a fundamental human motivation. Psychological Bulletin, 117, 497-529.
8.
BergerC. R. (1973). Task performance and attributional communication as determinants of interpersonal attraction. Communications Monographs, 40, 280-286.
9.
BossonJ. K.JohnsonA. B.NiederhofferK.SwannW. B. (2006). Interpersonal chemistry through negativity: Bonding by sharing negative attitudes about others. Personal Relationships, 13, 135-150.
10.
BurgerJ. M.MessianN.PatelS.del PradoA.AndersonC. (2004). What a coincidence! The effects of incidental similarity on compliance. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30, 35-43.
11.
ByrneD. (1961). Interpersonal attraction and attitude similarity. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 62, 713-715.
12.
ByrneD. (1971). The attraction paradigm. New York, NY: Academic Press.
13.
ByrneD.BlaylockB. (1963). Similarity and assumed similarity of attitudes between husbands and wives. The Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 67, 636-640.
14.
CialdiniR. (1993). The psychology of influence. New York, NY: William Morrow.
15.
CialdiniR. B.GoldsteinN. J. (2004). Social influence: Compliance and conformity. Annual Review of Psychology, 55, 591-621.
16.
CohenJ. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 155-159.
17.
CupachW. R.MettsS. (1995). The role of sexual attitude similarity in romantic heterosexual relationships. Personal Relationships, 2, 287-300.
18.
FestingerL. (1954). A theory of social comparison processes. Human Relations, 7, 117-140.
19.
FestingerL. (1957). A theory of cognitive dissonance. Oxford, UK: Row, Peterson.
20.
FestingerL.SchachterS.BackK. W. (1950). Social pressures in informal groups. New York, NY: Harper.
21.
FinchJ. F.CialdiniR. B. (1989). Another indirect tactic of (self-) image management: Boosting. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 15, 222-232.
22.
FiskeS. T. (1980). Attention and weight in person perception: The impact of negative and extreme behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 38, 889-906.
23.
GonzagaG. C.CamposB.BradburyT. (2007). Similarity, convergence, and relationship satisfaction in dating and married couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 34-48.
24.
HeiderF. (1958). The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York, NY: John Wiley.
25.
JamiesonD. W.LydonJ. E.ZannaM. P. (1987). Attitude and activity preference similarity: Differential bases of interpersonal attraction for low and high self-monitors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 53, 1052-1060.
26.
JiangL.HoeggJ.DahlD. W.ChattopadhyayA. (2009). The persuasive role of incidental similarity on attitudes and purchase intentions in a sales context. Journal of Consumer Research, 36, 778-791.
27.
JuddC. M.WestfallJ.KennyD. A. (2017). Experiments with more than one random factor: Designs, analytic models, and statistical power. Annual Review of Psychology, 68, 601-625.
28.
KaplanM. F.AndersonN. H. (1973). Information integration theory and reinforcement theory as approaches to interpersonal attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 28, 301-312.
29.
KelmanH. C. (1958). Compliance, identification, and internalization three processes of attitude change. Journal of Conflict Resolution, 2, 51-60.
30.
LewisK. N.WalshW. B. (1980). Effects of value-communication style and similarity of values on counselor evaluation. Journal of Counseling Psychology, 27, 305-314.
31.
MontoyaR. M.HortonR. S. (2013). A meta-analytic investigation of the processes underlying the similarity-attraction effect. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 30, 64-94.
32.
MontoyaR. M.HortonR. S.KirchnerJ. (2008). Is actual similarity necessary for attraction? A meta-analysis of actual and perceived similarity. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 25, 889-922.
33.
NewcombT. M. (1943). Personality and social change. New York, NY: Dryden Press.
34.
NewcombT. M. (1961). The acquaintance process. New York, NY: Holt, Reinhart, & Winston.
35.
ReederG. D.BrewerM. B. (1979). A schematic model of dispositional attribution in interpersonal perception. Psychological Review, 86, 61-79.
36.
RosenbaumM. E. (1986). The repulsion hypothesis: On the nondevelopment of relationships. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1156-1166.
37.
SkowronskiJ. J.CarlstonD. E. (1987). Social judgment and social memory: The role of cue diagnosticity in negativity, positivity, and extremity biases. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 52, 689-699.
38.
SteeleM. E.McGlynnR. P. (1979). Effects of affective value and similarity on attraction. The Journal of Social Psychology, 108, 111-119.
39.
StevensG.OwensD.SchaeferE. C. (1990). Education and attractiveness in marriage choices. Social Psychology Quarterly, 62-70.
40.
TanD. T. Y.SinghR. (1995). Attitudes and attraction: A developmental study of the similarity-attraction and dissimilarity-repulsion hypotheses. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21, 975-986.
41.
TesserA. (1971). Evaluative and structural similarity of attitudes as determinants of interpersonal attraction. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 18, 92-96.
42.
TukeyJ. W. (1977). Exploratory data analysis. Reading, MA: Addison-Wesley.
43.
WeaverJ. R.BossonJ. K. (2011). I feel like I know you: Sharing negative attitudes of others promotes feelings of familiarity. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 37, 481-491.
44.
WestfallJ.KennyD. A.JuddC. M. (2014). Statistical power and optimal design in experiments in which samples of participants respond to samples of stimuli. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, 143, 2020-2045.
45.
WootenD. B.ReedA. (1998). Informational influence and the ambiguity of product experience: Order effects on the weighting of evidence. Journal of Consumer Psychology, 7, 79-99.
Supplementary Material
Please find the following supplemental material available below.
For Open Access articles published under a Creative Commons License, all supplemental material carries the same license as the article it is associated with.
For non-Open Access articles published, all supplemental material carries a non-exclusive license, and permission requests for re-use of supplemental material or any part of supplemental material shall be sent directly to the copyright owner as specified in the copyright notice associated with the article.
