Playing with Strangers: Which Shared Traits Attract Us Most to New People?

Jacques Launay,Robin I M Dunbar,Marina A Pavlova

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0129688

Abstract

Homophily, the tendency for individuals to associate with those who are most similar to them, has been well documented. However, the influence of different kinds of similarity (e.g. relating to age, music taste, ethical views) in initial preferences for a stranger have not been compared. In the current study, we test for a relationship between sharing a variety of traits (i.e. having different kinds of similarity) with a stranger and the perceived likeability of that stranger. In two online experiments, participants were introduced to a series of virtual partners with whom they shared traits, and subsequently carried out activities designed to measure positivity directed towards those partners. Greater numbers of shared traits led to linearly increasing ratings of partner likeability and ratings on the Inclusion of Other in Self scale. We identified several consistent predictors of these two measures: shared taste in music, religion and ethical views. These kinds of trait are likely to be judged as correlates of personality or social group, and may therefore be used as proxies of more in-depth information about a person who might be socially more relevant.

Highlights

There is a well-established tendency for friends to be more similar to one another than would occur by chance, and this is known as homophily(for reviews see [1,2])
Choice homophily, which is the tendency to choose to associate with people who are more similar to oneself, is interesting because it can indicate a directional relationship with attraction, and cognitive biases towards certain individuals or groups, unlike forms of homophily that occur between people by chance, or homophily identified in existing relationships
We are interested in the directional relationship from identifying similarities with another person to attraction towards further interaction with that person

Summary

Introduction

There is a well-established tendency for friends to be more similar to one another than would occur by chance, and this is known as homophily(for reviews see [1,2]). While studies in relational demography have typically focused on sociodemographic features and homophily studies more generally focus on values, there is as yet no experimental evidence assessing whether and how these different forms of similarity interact to influence attraction towards strangers during the initiation of friendships. Another important distinction to make here is between choice homophily and induced homophily [44]. In Experiment 1, we test five measures in order to evaluate which demonstrate the well-documented positive linear relationship with increased proportion of shared traits We use these same measures in Experiment 2 to determine which traits are most important in attraction to similar others. If we find no consistent relationship between trait types and positive evaluation of a partner, similarity-attraction may act purely as a minimal group membership effect

Design

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Results

Discussion