Opposites Don’t Attract (And That’s Bad News)

http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/2012/01/opposites-dont-attract-and-thats-bad-news/

by yarapavan • 15 years ago

79 18 15 years ago

j_baker2• 15 years ago

For one thing, the friendships were actually closer and longer lasting at the small colleges, suggesting that there is nothing intrinsically beneficial about seeking out similar people. (Opposites don’t attract, but they should.)

This is worth noting for anyone networking or doing hiring. You have to make a conscious effort to find people who balance you out instead of finding people who are just like you. Many of the most rewarding relationships I've had have been with people who think in ways that are diametrically opposed to mine.

The above noted, you have to make sure that this interaction goes both ways. Some people just can't handle relationships with people who are different from them, and possibly for good reason. They're usually high-challenge, high-reward affairs.

wallflower• 15 years ago

> They're usually high-challenge, high-reward affairs.

I find that if you go somewhere with just the goal of remembering someone and having them remember you, not the first time but maybe the second or third time, it works well for me, even if that is not my goal. I don't hang out with a small group of people on a regular basis (core friends) but I do know a lot of people casually. Everyone probably remembers the person who meets you just to thrust a business card into your hand. And everyone remembers the person who they could not get rid of. Strive to be the person who brings people together. I have met a few who do that not effortlessly, but naturally. The good thing about talking to people not like you, is almost always you can learn something new. Remember even the most logical person has feelings. So, in a roundabout way, my conclusion is there are no true opposites. We are all human. We feel anger sadness disgust happiness joy love anxiety calm.

bh42222• 15 years ago

I thought the the claim that people seek out similarity was very well supported in the article.

The claim that different people make better friends was interesting, but in my opinion not nearly as well supported. I would genuinely love to see more hard data behind that claim.

rockarage• 15 years ago

I agree, there was no data presented to suggest that the students in the smaller colleges were not very similar. Moreover it is more likely that the students in the small colleges are very similar, typically people won't travel to another state to attend a small community college.

j_baker2• 15 years ago

I think the author's point still stands: there's little evidence to support that similarity seeking is beneficial, and some evidence that it might even be harmful.

barrkel• 15 years ago

Those entrepreneurs with more 'entropic' and 'diverse' social networks scored three times higher on a metric of innovation, suggesting that the ability to access 'non-redundant information from peers' is a crucial source of new ideas

Correlation <> causation alert. Perhaps entrepreneurs who are open-minded and not narrowly focused in a small handful of disciplines are more innovative, and this generality shows in their social circle.

underwater2• 15 years ago

The Facebook Data Team just released a study that draws a different conclusion to this article (disclaimer: I'm an employee of Facebook).

https://www.facebook.com/notes/facebook-data-team/rethinking...

Aloisius• 15 years ago

Did they really draw a different conclusion?

Facebook found the same effect as described in this article. People are friends with those who are similar to them.

Information is widely shared between friends. It is only because people have so many acquaintances that information is spread into clusters of close friends. However, that information flow from acquaintances isn't increasing the diversity of beliefs within a cluster of friends. If it was, then you would see clusters of friends with diverse beliefs which has previously been demonstrated to not be the case.

underwater2• 15 years ago

I think so. The Wired article completely dismisses any benefit from our lose associations by saying that we are only shaped by the opinions of our close friends. The Facebook article says that we are actually exposed to the diverse opinions offered by our associates more than those of our close friends.

The example given in the Wired article about the two universities in Kansas implies that the students at the larger university, who are surrounded by a more diverse students but who have close friends similar to themselves, are exposed to less diverse opinions. That is never actually proven in the article.

HeyLaughingBoy• 15 years ago

It really doesn't matter who you seek out; it matters who you encounter and that you are open-minded enough to accept or welcome their differences.

Anecdote: my wife and I are about as different as people can be and still stay together. Like j_baker said, it's a "high-challenge, high-reward" situation. Life would be much easier if we were alike, but also much more boring.

gxs• 15 years ago

>>This is sad on a number of levels. For one thing, the friendships were actually closer and longer lasting at the small colleges, suggesting that there is nothing intrinsically beneficial about seeking out similar people. (Opposites don’t attract, but they should.)

This parallels closely my experiences at a certain UC in the bay area.

It was ironic because for a school that preaches diversity, for a student body that is self-proclaimed ultra liberal and progressive, it was socially very conservative. The better off white kids hang out pretty much with only other better off white kids in their frats..the asians have their own frats..so do the blacks and hispanics. What's more, there is not too much interaction between these groups to the point where you can really feel uncomfortable if you find yourself in a group where you don't belong.

I don't really know where I was going with this, other than people definitely tend to form cluster of like-minded people.

30vanquish• 15 years ago

It's easier. I go to another UC myself and while I agree with most of what you say, I see more and more people interacting with one another. Hopefully this trend continues.

But I get it. For almost all of our evolutionary past, we were in tribes where everyone looked like us. While we're more open to diversity, it takes a certain type of person to want to go outside the comfort zone.

In the past, this would mean getting eaten by an animal or getting killed by a rival tribe. If you looked different, believed in different things, etc. you are dead.

So being with like-minded people, even if you're liberal or whatever is the remnants of human evolution that we haven't fully gotten over yet.

Besides, it's safer. Easier to relate to people who look like you and think like you.

tikhonj• 15 years ago

Heh, this was not my experience at all. I knew several very diverse groups, basically made up of random people that met in the dorms.

Of course, I have to admit that my friends are actually fairly alike: almost all are EECS with some other engineers thrown in. But this does not reflect most of the groups I knew in the dorms. (Also, ignoring the EECS/engineering bent, my best friends are also a fairly diverse group.)

anonfoobar1• 15 years ago

This also parallels closely with my experiences. One of my high schools had a student body of 400, where everyone tended to be friends with everyone. On the other end of the spectrum, my college was the "most diverse school in the United States" and the largest school in Virginia (George Mason University); everyone pretty much stuck to their group that most represented themselves.

ars• 15 years ago

I don't agree with their conclusion at all.

What they found is that it's easier to make a relationship with people who are similar. But that is NOT the same thing as saying opposites don't attract.

Since it's easier, you will naturally have more relationships that are similar, but that tells you nothing whatsoever about the strength of relationships that are "opposite".

To actually do this study properly they need to quantify the "strength" of a relationship (somehow), then correlate that with how different the people are.

They averaged the data and in the process lost the most important part. If I have 10 friends who are similar to me, and one close friend who is different, the data will appear to say that similarity attracts, but that's an incorrect conclusion.

hsshah• 15 years ago

I experienced similar behavior when I moved from a smaller city in US to Bay area. The small city at a macro level was far more homogenous when compared to Bay area. However, I made friends with folks from a diverse group. I found them to be open to meeting new people.

But, when I moved to Bay area, I realized that people are already part of some clusters (based on their home country, state or school) and are less inclined to create new friendships; particularly with someone not fitting into their cluster criteria.

gigantor• 15 years ago

Not a surprise if you've been keeping up with NLP trends, which suggest that you mimick and emulate the person you're speaking with (down to body language and breathing rates), in order to get a favorable reaction.

No surprise in the work place either. When you're interviewing with a company, what seems to make a big impression is that you're a close match to the 'corporate culture', or the corporate average. Sure, you really should be going out of your way to work with people who are different to gain an alternate perspective on things, but that's a risk. Unless you possess a rare skillset and are in short supply, chances are you will be hired not because of your ability, but how close you resemble the team.

6ren• 15 years ago

A fun thing about cliches is there's often one for both sides of an argument. e.g.

  birds of a feather flock together

Humans tend to treat people as in an "in-group" or "out-group". The troop bands together against another troop. So we have all finds of discrimination, from racism to trivial religious wars over text-editors, languages, and smart-phones. If we don't have a way to define our "in-group", we invent one, like cliques in high school.

I think a great invention of modern society is mass-audience sports. This gives us a simulated war to take sides in, but with negligible practical effect on our lives and relationships.

IMHO, it's hard to fix bugs in human nature, better to find a workaround.

Opposites Don’t Attract (And That’s Bad News)

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