Summary: People who score high on self-essentialism—the belief that personal attributes stem from a deeper, stable “essence”—are more likely to be attracted to others who share those attributes, the study found.
Source: APA
We tend to feel drawn to people who share our preferences or opinions. New research from the American Psychological Association suggests that this attraction often depends on a belief that shared traits reveal a deeper, stable similarity—an “essence” that makes another person fundamentally like us.
“Our attraction to people who share our attributes is often supported by the belief that those attributes come from something deep within us: an essence,” said lead author Charles Chu, PhD, an assistant professor at the Boston University Questrom School of Business.
In plain terms, we may like someone who agrees with us on a political issue, enjoys the same music, or laughs at the same things not only because of those surface similarities, but because we infer that those similarities point to a shared way of seeing the world—a shared essence.
This pattern reflects a psychological tendency called essentialism, which people apply to many categories: biological kinds (like animals), social groups (such as race or gender), and increasingly, the self. To essentialize the self is to view one’s identity as defined by stable, underlying properties that explain observable behaviors and preferences.
“To essentialize something is to describe it in terms of entrenched, unchanging properties,” Chu explained. “For example, a wolf is thought to possess an essence that explains its features and behavior. Similarly, a self-essentialist believes that visible traits and behaviors reflect an inner essence that remains constant across situations.”
To investigate how self-essentialism influences interpersonal attraction, Chu and colleagues ran four experiments reported in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Across these studies, participants’ beliefs about the self and about the usefulness of essentialist thinking predicted whether simple shared attributes translated into a sense of shared reality and interpersonal attraction.
In the first experiment, 954 participants indicated their position on one of five social issues—abortion, capital punishment, gun ownership, animal testing, or physician-assisted suicide. Each participant then read a brief profile of a hypothetical person who either agreed or disagreed with their position. Participants rated how much they felt they shared a general worldview with the person, how attracted they were to them, and completed measures of self-essentialist beliefs.
Those who scored higher on self-essentialism were more likely to report attraction to, and a perceived shared reality with, the fictional person who agreed with them. In other words, agreement on a single issue led self-essentialists to assume broader agreement about the world, which increased attraction.
A second study with 464 participants replicated this pattern using a minimal attribute: whether participants tended to overestimate or underestimate the number of colored dots in a display. Even this trivial behavioral tendency, when shared, was enough for self-essentialists to infer a broader similarity and greater attraction.
The third experiment used artistic preference as the test case. After 423 participants indicated preferences between pairs of paintings, they were classified as preferring either Paul Klee or Wassily Kandinsky. Half of each group were told that artistic preference reflected their essence, while the other half were told it was unrelated to essence. Participants then evaluated two hypothetical people—one with the same art preference and one with a different preference. Those who were instructed that art preference was part of their essence expressed stronger attraction to the like-minded hypothetical person than participants who had been told preference was unrelated to essence.
A final experiment with 449 participants tested whether changing beliefs about the usefulness of essentialist thinking would alter the similarity-attraction link. Participants were first categorized by art preference, then randomly assigned to one of three conditions: told that essentialist thinking tends to produce accurate impressions, told it tends to produce inaccurate impressions, or given no information. Those who were told essentialist reasoning yields accurate impressions were more likely to report attraction and perceived shared reality with people who shared their artistic taste.
Chu said he was struck by how minimal cues of similarity—such as sharing a favorite artist—can lead people to assume that another person sees the world as they do. He also cautioned that self-essentialist reasoning can mislead, especially when impressions are formed quickly on limited information.
“When making quick judgments or first impressions with little information, we’re especially prone to essentialist reasoning,” Chu said. “People are more complex than these snap inferences imply, so we should be cautious about assuming a deep similarity based on one shared trait.”
About this psychology and attraction research news
Author: Jim Sliwa
Source: APA
Contact: Jim Sliwa – APA
Image: The image is in the public domain
Original Research: Open access. “Self-Essentialist Reasoning Underlies the Similarity-Attraction Effect” by Charles Chu et al., Journal of Personality and Social Psychology
Abstract
Self-Essentialist Reasoning Underlies the Similarity-Attraction Effect
The authors propose that self-essentialist reasoning explains how similarity breeds attraction in two steps: (a) people who share an attribute are categorized as “a person like me” based on the belief that attributes originate from an underlying essence, and (b) observers then apply their own essence-based expectations to the similar person to infer broader agreement about the world—a generalized shared reality.
Across four experimental studies (N = 2,290) using individual-difference and process-manipulation approaches, the research found that individual differences in self-essentialist beliefs amplify the effect of similarity on perceived shared reality and attraction, for both meaningful similarities and minimal similarities. When researchers interrupted the self-essentialist reasoning process—by severing the link between an attribute and essence or by discouraging people from applying their essence to others—the similarity-attraction effect weakened.
These findings have implications for research on the self, the similarity-attraction effect, and intergroup phenomena, highlighting how basic beliefs about identity shape social perception and interpersonal preference.