Learn to hate comm

Similar or dissimilar others

• One of the most firmly established findings in social psychology is the relationship between similarity and liking, even as to infants

• Two rabbit puppets indicated their own food preferences

  • Orange bunny good (likes crackers), green bunny bad (likes beans)

• On alternating trials, a helper dog puppet (nice blue dog) returned a bouncing ball to the target, and a harmer dog puppet (mean yellow dog) took the ball and ran away with it

• Human infants like those who are similar to them, preferring individuals who share their own preferences for food, clothing, or toys over those who have expressed contrasting tastes, and dislike those who are different

• Percentage of infants choosing which puppet in Experiments 1and 2

• Perceived similarity in appearance, attitudes, personality traits, and group membership leads to deeming others trustworthy, fair, and intelligent; in contrast, dissimilar others are perceived as unkind, untrustworthy, and unintelligent

Voting preferences

• Is the candidate dishonest, moral, knowledgeable, caring, out of touch, warm, intelligent, friendly, principled, and/or a strong leader.

  • Is there anything that the candidate has ever done to make you feel angry, proud, disgusted, hopeful, or afraid?

  • How favorable or warm do you feel toward the candidate?

  • How likely are you to vote for each candidate in the upcoming election?

• A national random sample of voters was presented with photos of unfamiliar candidates that had been morphed either with the voter filling out the survey or with an unfamiliar person.

• Strength of party affiliation and facial similarity were examined

• A national random sample of voters was presented with photos of familiar candidates (George W. Bush or John Kerry) one week before the 2004 presidential election. Strength of party affiliation (i.e., strong partisans, weak partisans, and independents) and degree of facial similarity were examined

Dislike of foreigners during pregnancy

• Study asks 206 pregnant women to evaluate the authors of two essays.

• One essay presents the negative experiences and opinions of a foreigner critical of America and its citizens. The other essay presents an American's positive appraisal of the country and its values

• The solid line depicts the relative attraction for the American over the foreign target across the week of pregnancy. The dashed line depicts self-reported nausea. 

• Even after nausea was statistically controlled, during the first trimester, women continued to show an increase in positive attitudes toward Americans and an increase in negative attitudes toward foreigners

Dislike of foreigners

• Christopher Columbus’s first stop in the Americas was on an island in the Caribbean, with an estimated population of about 250,000 indigenous people upon his arrival in the year 1492

• WATERLOO, Iowa (AP) — President Trump [on Dec. 19, 2023] defended his comments about migrants crossing the southern border “poisoning the blood” of America, and he reinforced the message while denying any similarities to fascist writings others had noted.

  • “I never read ‘Mein Kampf,’” Trump said at a campaign rally in Waterloo, Iowa, referencing Adolf Hitler’s fascist manifesto.

  • Immigrants in the U.S. illegally, Trump said, are “destroying the blood of our country, they’re destroying the fabric of our country.”

Race bias and the menstrual cycle

• Study reports data on 77 normally ovulating White undergraduate women for a study ostensibly on social attitudes and mate choice.

• The researchers create a composite race bias measure from questions assessing explicit and implicit bias and race bias in mate attraction.

  • For example, they are asked about their agreement with beliefs such as, “It is likely that Blacks will bring violence to neighborhoods when they move in.”

• They are also shown digital images of four seminude male exemplars representing Black and White American race categories, and asked, e.g., “To what extent do you think he looks sexy or scary?”

• Race bias is highest during the ovulatory phase of the cycle

• The graph depicts the measure of race bias as a function of conception risk among women with low and high self-reported vulnerability to sexual coercion

True crime consumption

• Study finds that women who were more fearful of rape reported consuming true crime media with greater frequency than other women