Have you ever walked into an office cubby or been on a Zoom call, meeting with a person for the first time, and you instantly felt that you could talk with this person for a long while?
Perhaps they had a bobbing head doll from a franchise you also enjoy. Or the screensaver showed a picture you could relate to. Or their Zoom background held pieces of interest. Or their shoes were the same brand you wear. Their poster was of your favorite band. Or…
We humans are super-fast at finding reasons to like or dislike somebody. Affinity bias.
“Affinity bias is the tendency to favor people who share similar interests, backgrounds, and experiences with us. Because of affinity bias, we tend to feel more comfortable around people who are like us.”
Because we need other people to like us, too, paying attention to the surroundings they show us and letting them know about similarities can be a shortcut to building trust. (I don’t blur my Zoom background or use a stock photo exactly because I want to help people find something they can ask questions about or recognize. By all means, use a background if it serves your space better – but use a picture that has a story you can share, should anybody ask.)
Now, let’s say you have gotten to know this person with the backdrop and the two of you have figured out how to work together in a trusting and productive way. Then one day they don’t have the backdrop behind them, and they display something that really raises your hackles. Will the thing you definitely not have in common outweigh all that you have built so far?
If you haven’t watched the Heineken video when it came out in 2017, please do so below.
And, let me immediately add, we humans are very poor at predicting how we might behave in a similar stressful situation.
With most people we have lots of non-commonalities. What does it take for us to not let the differences take precedent over the commonalities?
It has been my experience, for better and worse, that when we are individuals, two people – like in the Heineken video – it is usually not problematic. The commonalities didn’t just disappear into thin air because I learned that the other person in certain contexts holds a view I consider controversial and with which I don’t agree. I can stay with my curiosity and ask into what has informed their position. The world is full of experiences that would lead down different roads and to different logical conclusions than my experiences have led me towards. Being curious doesn’t mean agreeing with or sanctioning; it just means being open to learning more about the other person before we decide what comes next.
What often goes awry is when we are not just the two of us but there are other people present, regardless of what these other people might believe, and suddenly we may see each other as representatives for a wrong-headed group. The token enemy. And the rest of the people becomes an audience to convince about our own righteousness.
It is as if we are afraid that if we are seen as friends with somebody who in some contexts thinks against our dogma, we fear we will be thrown out of our tribe of true believers, and we are compelled to double down rather than to be curious to avoid that fate.
The really sad thing is, that if we expose someone we otherwise care about to become a prop in this our “one-man show for the masses”, we forget their humanity – and they soon stop seeing ours. Nobody likes being reduced to an object.
I had a lovely conversation with an online friend the other day. We discussed the hard work of having discussions with people with whom we don’t agree on everything “so far uncovered”. Whether it is religion, politics, how to raise our children, dogs vs cats, Coke vs Pepsi, TV shows to watch or not… – everything can be fodder for agreement or disagreement, creating affinity or distance. I mentioned the metaphor that we are like Marigolds where only some of the petals overlap, and we behave as if we want to tear the petals that don’t overlap from the other person’s flower.
Or could we just leave those petals alone? It is possible to agree to disagree.
- What would be a relationship-breaker for you?
- And what do you turn into relationship-breakers – or source for derision – that really is not all that important?
- How do you feel about having friends you fear so much that you are willing to ridicule or dehumanize somebody else to fit in?
- How does that serve you and your relationships?
Hi Charlotte,
Thank you for posting this. We are too consumed with differences at the moment. Love the Heineken film.
I confess to blurring my Zoom background, because I don’t really want to talk about the clutter on the bookshelf behind me. I really only use Zoom for the POA association board meeting and the clutter is distracting for me.
But I take the affinity bias point.
Recently I watched left leaning Jon Stewart interview new right economist Oren Cass. I found myself yelling at Jon to listen. He couldn’t hear me, but he eventually did.
At the end of the interview, I felt enlightened, definitely points I disagreed with or agreed with on both sides.
Thanks again.
Alan