Predicted that those who focused on thinking of positive traits would generate a larger number of shared traits for both people; thus, making them view them as being more similar to each other. Secondly, they thought there would be a greater overlap of shared positive traits across all participants.

Hypotheses for Study 7 (Alves et al., 2016)

People who were told to think of positive traits (as opposed to negative traits) judged the two individuals to be more similar to each other. 

Exp. 7 Results: Similarity (Alves et al., 2016)

There was more shared traits among people in the positive term condition than the negative; that is, people used more of the same traits to describe people positively. 

Exp. 7 Results: Trait Overlaps (Alves et al., 2016)

This experiment asked people to indicate 2 people that they know personally (did not have to be exclusively liked or disliked). They were then asked to identify either as many positive or negative traits as they could about each one. Afterwards, they were asked how similar they were to one another.  

Alma College

We tend to have more knowledge about people we like compared to those that we dislike. Intuitively, one would think if we have more knowledge about various individuals we would see them as being more unique. However, research suggest this is not always true. This series of studies investigated if people tend to view liked others as more similar to themselves and others when compared to disliked others despite having more knowledge about them. 

My Friends Are All Alike: Liking and Similarity  

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

Asked participants to provide the names of 4 people they know well and liked as well as 4 people they knew, but did not like. They had to create a similarity map for these 8 individuals.  

Experiment 1; My Friends Are All Alike

Participants were randomly assigned to a liked or disliked condition; they were instructed to make a similarity map for either 4 people they liked or disliked. Participants also indicated how much they liked, knew, and the amount of time typically spent with each person. 
This was done to see if liked targets only appeared more similar in experiment 1 solely because they were also in the presence of disliked individuals.

Experiment 2; All My Friends Are Alike

Participants listed 4 people that they liked and 4 that they disliked. Similarity among the liked and disliked others was assessed using pairwise ratings on a 1-9 scale to questions such as "How similar are Liked Person 1 and Liked Person 2 to each other regarding their personalities?”. Participants also indicated how much they liked, knew, and how much time they spent with each person.

Experiment 3; All My Friends Are Alike

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

Investigates how similar we perceive liked people and disliked when we don't know them very well (e.g. public figures and celebrities). Participants provided the names of 4 liked and 4 disliked celebrities. They were asked questions such as "How similar are Disliked Celebrity 1 and Disliked Celebrity 2 to each other in terms of __?" They also reported how much they knew and liked each individual. 

Experiment 5; My Friends Are All Alike

This investigated the impacts of ratings of larger groups of liked and disliked people would have on the similarity levels. They predicted that by asking participants to think of many celebrities, they would be more likely to pick a diverse set of people; thus, influencing how similar they were all to each other. They asked participants to think of 12 celebrities they liked and disliked; however, only 4 of each were randomly selected for the participants to make comparison ratings about (e.g. Celebrity 1 is more sociable than Celebrity 2).  

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