Research suggests that attraction to others based on shared interests may be flawed, as it may stem from an assumption of deeper similarity that may not actually exist.

The study, published by the American Psychological Association, warns against unwarranted assumptions and encourages people to be cautious of their thought process when forming attractions.

Charles Chu, PhD, lead author and assistant professor at the Boston University Questrom School of Business, explained that our attraction to people who share our attributes is often driven by the belief that these shared attributes stem from a deep essence within us.

“To put it concretely, we like someone who agrees with us on a political issue, shares our music preferences, or simply laughs at the same thing as us not purely because of those similarities, but because those similarities suggest something more—this person is, in essence, like me, and as such, they share my views of the world at large.”

According to Chu, this thought process is rooted in a type of psychological essentialism that is mainly related to individual identity and self-perception. He said that people tend to “essentialize” various things, including biological categories like animal species and social groups like race and gender, and this phenomenon can be observed across different human cultures.

“To essentialize something is to define it by a set of deeply rooted and unchanging properties, or an essence,” Chu added.

For instance, the ‘wolf’ category is determined by an unchanging and inherent wolf essence that manifests in traits such as pointed noses, sharp teeth, fluffy tails, pack mentality, and aggressiveness. A wolf raised by sheep would still be considered a wolf and will inevitably acquire these wolf-like attributes.

According to Chu, researchers have recently shifted their focus to the category of the self and have discovered that, just as we essentialize other categories, we also essentialize ourselves.

“To essentialize me is to define who I am by a set of entrenched and unchanging properties, and we all, especially in Western societies, do this to some extent. A self-essentialist then would believe that what others can see about us and the way we behave are caused by such an unchanging essence,” he added.

In a bid to comprehend how self-essentialism drives attraction, researchers performed four experiments that were published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. One of the experiments involved 954 participants who were presented with one of five randomly assigned social issues (abortion, capital punishment, gun ownership, animal testing, or physician-assisted suicide) and were then given information about an individual who agreed or disagreed with their position. Afterwards, they completed a questionnaire to determine the level of interpersonal attraction to the fictitious individual, how much they believed they shared a general view of the world with them, and their overall beliefs in self-essentialism.

Participants who exhibited high levels of self-essentialism were more likely to report feeling an attraction towards the fictitious individual who shared their position, according to the study. Additionally, they were more inclined to believe that they shared a general perception of reality with that individual.

In a similar experiment, 464 participants were asked to estimate the number of colored dots on a series of computer slides. Researchers found that the participants who scored high on self-essentialism were more likely to express an attraction to a fictitious individual who had the same propensity to overestimate or underestimate the number of colored dots. The belief in an essential self-led people to assume that just one similarity was an indication of seeing the entire world similarly, which, in turn, led to increased attraction.

In another experiment, 423 participants were presented with eight pairs of paintings and were asked to indicate their preference for each pair. The participants were categorized as fans of either Paul Klee or Wassily Kandinsky based on their responses. Next, half of each fan group was informed that their artistic preference was a part of their essence, while the other half was told that it had no bearing on their essence. Finally, all participants were exposed to two hypothetical individuals, one with the same artistic preference and the other with a different preference. The results indicated that participants who were told that artistic preference was part of their essence were significantly more likely to express attraction to the hypothetical individual who shared their artistic preference compared to those who were told that artistic preference had nothing to do with their essence.

In the last experiment, 449 individuals who were fans of either Paul Klee or Wassily Kandinsky were divided into three groups. Each group was presented with information on the usefulness of essentialist thinking in perceiving other people. One-third of the participants were informed that essentialist thinking could lead to inaccurate impressions, another one-third were told that it could lead to accurate impressions, and the final one-third received no information.

As anticipated, the researchers discovered that participants who were informed that essentialist thinking could lead to accurate impressions were more likely to express an attraction to hypothetical individuals with similar art preferences and shared reality.

According to Chu, the most surprising finding was that a merely shared preference for an artist could make people think that another person views the world in the same way as they do. However, Chu cautioned that self-essentialist thinking could be both a positive and negative thing.

“I think any time when we’re making quick judgments or first impressions with very little information, we are likely to be affected by self-essentialist reasoning,” Chu added. “People are so much more complex than we often give them credit for, and we should be wary of the unwarranted assumptions we make based on this type of thinking.”

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