Participants indicated they liked, had more knowledge about, and spent more time with liked individuals as opposed to disliked individuals. Euclidian distance was used to assess the similarity among the liked and disliked individuals. The mean distance was smaller among the disliked individuals; this suggests that we perceived them as being more similar to each other than we did the liked individuals. 

Alma College

Participants were instructed to think of as many traits as they could for each of the 4 liked and disliked individuals; additionally, they were asked comparison questions such as "How similar are Disliked Person 1 and Disliked Person 2 to each other in terms of __?" Similarity among the individuals was then assessed using the pairwise functions. Participants also were instructed to indicate how much they liked, knew, and how much time they spent with each person. 

Experiment 4; My Friends Are All Alike

Alves, H., Koch, A., & Unkelbach, C. (2016). My friends are all alike—the relation between liking and perceived similarity in person perception. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 62, 103-117.

My Friends Are All Alike

Exp. 4 Results: Similarity, Liking, Knowledge, and Time Together (Alves et al., 2016)

Participants were faster at making comparisons between 2 liked individuals as opposed to 2 disliked individuals; however, these were not predictive of how similar we thought them to be. 

Exp. 4 Results: Response Times (Alves et al., 2016)

On average, participants were only able to think of about 4 words for disliked individuals, but around 6-7 for liked individuals. However, it was more common for the same words to be repeated among liked individuals (e.g. nice to be used to define multiple liked people) rather than for disliked people (e.g. mean to be used multiple times). In other words, there was more a variety of terms used to describe disliked people.  

Learn Before

Related