Attitude similarity and interpersonal liking: A dominance of positive over negative attitudes

Sharing attitudes leads to liking. While this similarity effect is well-established, past research rarely addressed whether positive and negative attitudes differ in their potential to elicit liking. Hence, it is unclear whether people prefer others who share their likes or others who share their dislikes. Four studies (N = 402) showed that likes have a stronger potential to elicit liking than dislikes. That is, participants found others who shared their likes more likable than others who shared their dislikes (Study 1). Also, participants found others who did not share their likes least likable, while not sharing dislikes was not as detrimental to liking (Study 2). We argue that three aspects contribute to this finding. First, people generally prefer likers to dislikers (Study 3). Second and third, likes are stronger and more self-revealing than dislikes (Studies 2 & 4). We discuss the present work's novel insights into the similarity effect and their implications for dating and friendship initiation.