I feel like I know you: Sharing negative attitudes of others promotes feelings of familiarity

Holding similar negative-versus positive-attitudes toward a third party has been shown to predict increased closeness to a stranger. here,the authors examined whether this effect is mediated by the heightened feelings of familiarity engendered by shared negative attitudes. in study 1,participants who shared with a (bogus) stranger a negative attitude of a professor subsequently reported knowing more about the stranger than those who shared a positive attitude,but only when they did not feel strongly about the attitude. in study 2,a familiarity manipulation produced high levels of closeness among participants who believed they had a lot of information about a stranger. among those who believed they knew little about the stranger,closeness was facilitated by sharing a weakly held,negative attitude of a professor. discussion considers the relevance of these findings to the interpersonal attraction literature. © 2011 by the society for personality and social psychology.