In his 1944 play, No
Exit, Jean-Paul Sartre suggested that “hell is other people.” And sometimes that definitely is true. However, individuals who blindly accept
Sartre’s assertion can create for themselves their own interpersonal hell. People occasionally can be devils or angels,
but mostly they merely are people with a variety of attractive and unattractive
attributes. The relative balance of
their vices and virtues depends on how you interpret their traits and
behaviors.
Hans Alves, Alex Koch, and Christian Unkelbach (2017) of the
University of Cologne took a long hard look at how we evaluate others. In eight studies they specifically explored
how interpretation of interpersonal similarities and differences determine how
we view our social environments.
In all eight of the studies, subjects were asked to compare the
traits of two persons, some of whom they knew personally and others who were known
only due to their celebrity. Since some the
experiments were refinements of other experiments, five major results applied
to our discussion. They were:
The subjects identified 2.6 more common positive traits
than negative ones.
The subjects were quicker in their abilities to
determine positive than negative traits when the determined traits were shared
by the compared persons. On the other
hand, unshared positive and negative traits took longer to determine.
Subjects rated easy-to-retrieve traits more
positively than difficult-to-retrieve traits.
When subjects liked the compared persons, the compared
persons’ shared traits were more often evaluated as positive; the opposite
happened for disliked compared persons.
When subjects liked the compared persons, there was
a numerical advantage of shared positive traits to shared negative traits, but
no such numerical difference for disliked compared persons.
The experimenters’ theoretical discussion
of the findings was reasonable. They
framed their conclusions in terms of a psychological concept called, “the
common good.” Essentially, that concept claims
that most people share positive attributes and, therefore, that differences are
“uncommon.” The concept further implies
that differences among people tend to be perceived less favorably than do their
similarities. Since we usually judge
others relative to ourselves, if someone is unlike us, we are even more inclined
to view that difference unfavorably. The
theory proposes then that the more we attend to similarities between ourselves
and others, the more we will judge them positively. The converse also is true.
If you accept what Hans Alves and his
co-investigators imply, you can improve your interpersonal contentment in a
number of ways. At one extreme, you can
avoid anyone whom you regard as different from you. That strategy almost certainly would contribute
to your becoming extremely negative toward any out-group persons whom you
encounter. At the other extreme, you can
avoid recognizing any differences between yourself and others. That approach would leave you open to
overusing the psychological defense of denial which would be maladaptive on its
face.
Obviously, there is a healthful middle
ground. If you know that you are likely
to regard perceived differences as negative and similarities as positive, you might
direct most of your attention to how you and your associates are the same, and
limit your attention to the most critical differences between you. Moreover,
merely knowing that the “same is good and different is bad” bias exists, you
can ensure that you do not allow that tendency to preoccupy or stress you. Angels are in heaven and devils are
in hell. Remember that we all live here
together on earth.
Alves, Hans, A., et al. (2017).
The “Common Good” Phenomenon: Why Similarities Are Positive and
Differences Are Negative. Journal of
Experimental Psychology: General, February, No Pagination Specified. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/xge0000276
Sartre Jean-Paul (1944). No Exit (a play)
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