The Real Reason We Like People Who Are Like Us.

Whether it’s about geography, culture, skin color, a love of reading, socio-economic status, or personal style- all humans are inherently biased towards liking people who are similar to themselves. By definition, this means we are unfortunately wired to not like people who we can’t identify with.

This news isn’t really news. It’s more like a fact of life that we tend to ignore or never really think about in the first place. Unless you take inventory of your cognitive biases, as we should all try to do often, you probably won’t recognize that all of your friends kind of resemble each other and every person that makes you uneasy seems unfamiliar.

Why do we like people that are similar to us?

Until today, I believed that there was a simple evolutionary-based answer to this question. We like people that remind us of ourselves because they are familiar to us.

We understand their thought processes and the words they use because we were likely schooled in the same way they were.

We understand their cultural habits because we grew up largely the same way they did.

Nearly everything that we find comforting about a person can be drawn back to a feeling of familiarity.