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Abstract

People interact more readily with someone whom they think they have something in common with. At a pedestrian crossing, confederates asked participants for the time and, in one condition, said she/he had the same watch as the participant. The amount of time that participants lingered near a confederate was used as the dependent variable. Participants in the similarity condition spent significantly more time near the confederate than when no similarity was manipulated. The results showed that similarity fosters implicit behavior, adding to the growing body of data on the positive effects of similarity and its role in social interaction.
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... Another study by Guéguen, Martin, and Meineri (2011) indicated that incidental similarity fosters implicit behavior. At a pedestrian crossing, confederates asked participants for the time and, in the similarity condition, said they had the same watch as the participant. ...
... Thus, replications of this study using children of various ages and male instructors are now necessary. In this situation, we examined only one method to create incidental similarity (a similar birthdate), but research has shown that other methods exist (Burger et al., 2044;Guéguen et al., 2011), and that uncommon, incidental similarity exerts more effect (Burger et al., 2044). Thus, in future studies, it would be worth examining the various cues that create incidental similarity. ...
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... Recent studies have revealed distal links between neural similarity and social relationships as well; in particular, close relational ties show greater neural synchrony while interacting when compared to strangers (Kinreich et al., 2017;Pan et al., 2017;Reindl et al., 2018;Djalovski et al., 2021), and friends show more similar neural responses than indirect social network ties even when not interacting (Parkinson et al., 2018). This propensity toward similarity reflects a fundamental way in which humans organize into social groups, as people are more likely to begin a relationship with an assumed similar stranger (Burger et al., 2004;Guéguen et al., 2011;Martin et al., 2013). However, the involvement of individual traits in this process has not been well characterized. ...
... stereotypes, prejudice and conflict; Hewstone et al., 2002;Dunham, 2018). However, our results align with more prosocial consequences of perceived similarity, such as increasing desire to form friendships (Burger et al., 2004;Guéguen et al., 2011;Martin et al., 2013). If these perceptions are the important drivers of perceived interaction quality, then biological similarity may not be needed to establish common ground and engage in healthy and positive interactions. ...
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... To understand the hidden mechanism of the observed correlation patterns, we identify the key factors driving the synchronization of knowledge structures. First, we assume that people are more likely to be similar when they interact more frequently and vice versa (Guéguen et al., 2011). Second, the channel of interaction is progressively moving from a physical route to an online media space, which enables people to interact with overseas countries in real-time (Wasko & Faraj, 2008). ...
... Similarity is a core construct that has an impact on social interactions. Similarity between individuals positively impacts interactions, cohesion, performance, likeness, and perceived competence (Guéguen, Martin, & Meineri, 2011;Harrison, Price, & Bell, 1998;Phillips, Northcraft, Neale, & relations, 2006;Singh et al., 2015). Similarity can be examined from two levels: surfacelevel similarity and deep-level similarity (Harrison et al., 1998;Kacmar, Harris, Carlson, & Zivnuska, 2009;Phillips et al., 2006). ...
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