A similarity map is used to assess how similar people are to each other. Participants drag the names of the participants closer to each other if they think they are more similar to each other. Jimi, Tom, Frank, and Keith are all similar to each other, but Frank and Tom are the most similar. Mary and Emily are similar to each other, but different from everyone else. 

Alma College

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

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

Similarity Map

Similarity was assessed using a distance measure. They found that the mean distance among the liked individuals was significantly smaller than the distance between the disliked individuals. In other words, the participants thought the people they liked were  more similar to each other than a disliked person was to the other disliked individuals. 

Exp. 1 Results: Similarity (Alves et al., 2016)

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.

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