No, having resemblances to someone – physically or morally – does not mean that one is bound by any “essence” or “deep connection”, warn researchers from the American Psychological Association. At least that’s what a study published on April 13, 2023 in the journal Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
Love: we essentialize others, and ourselves
“More concretely, if we like people who share our political ideas, our musical tastes, or, quite simply, who laugh at the same situations as us, it is not only because these similarities exist, but because they suggest something else : we believe that this person is essentially like us and therefore shares our ideas from a global point of view”, specifies the professor in “Management & Organizations” Charles Chu, main author of the study.
This way of thinking is due to a process of essentialization: we apply it to the ideas of others, to our own identity, but also to many elements of daily life, such as cultures, social groups… “Essentializing something , it is to define it by a set of anchored and immutable properties, or by an essence,” Professor Chu simplifies. This one takes the example of the “wolf” category: from the very essence of this animal derive attributes such as a pointed muzzle, sharp teeth and a bushy tail, but also membership in a pack or aggressiveness. .
We can also essentialize ourselves, especially when we are convinced that our ideas, our behavior and our beliefs are immutable. In order to understand how this self-essentialization affects the choice of our partners, researchers from the American Psychological Association conducted 4 experiments with more than 2000 participants. They thus analyzed how the volunteers, according to their tastes, their visual perceptions and their ideas, considered the other participants. Here are the results of these experiments.
