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Similarity refers to the psychological degree of identity of two
mental representation A mental representation (or cognitive representation), in philosophy of mind, cognitive psychology, neuroscience, and cognitive science, is a hypothetical internal cognitive symbol that represents external reality, or else a mental process that ma ...
s. It is fundamental to human cognition since it provides the basis for categorization of entities into kinds and for various other cognitive processes. It underwrites our ability to interact with unknown entities by predicting how they will behave based on their similarity to entities we are familiar with. Research in
cognitive psychology Cognitive psychology is the scientific study of mental processes such as attention, language use, memory, perception, problem solving, creativity, and reasoning. Cognitive psychology originated in the 1960s in a break from behaviorism, which ...
has taken a number of approaches to the concept of similarity. Each of them is related to a particular set of assumptions about
knowledge representation Knowledge representation and reasoning (KRR, KR&R, KRĀ²) is the field of artificial intelligence (AI) dedicated to representing information about the world in a form that a computer system can use to solve complex tasks such as diagnosing a medic ...
.


Cognitive psychological approaches


Mental distance approaches

Mental distance approaches assume that mental representations can be conceptualized as some kind of mental space. Concepts are represented as points within the space. Similarity between concepts is a function of the distance between the concepts in space. Concepts represented by points that are near to each other are more psychologically similar than are points that are conceptually distant. A strength of this approach is there are many mathematical techniques for deriving spaces from data such as
multidimensional scaling Multidimensional scaling (MDS) is a means of visualizing the level of similarity of individual cases of a dataset. MDS is used to translate "information about the pairwise 'distances' among a set of n objects or individuals" into a configurati ...
and
latent semantic analysis Latent semantic analysis (LSA) is a technique in natural language processing, in particular distributional semantics, of analyzing relationships between a set of documents and the terms they contain by producing a set of concepts related to the do ...
.


Featural approaches

Featural approaches were developed to address limitations of the mental distance approaches. For example, spaces are symmetric. The distance between two points is the same regardless of which point you start from. However, psychological similarity is not symmetric. For example, we often prefer to state similarity in one direction. For example, it feels more natural to say that 101 is like 100 than to say that 100 is like 101. Furthermore, many
metaphor A metaphor is a figure of speech that, for rhetorical effect, directly refers to one thing by mentioning another. It may provide (or obscure) clarity or identify hidden similarities between two different ideas. Metaphors are often compared wit ...
s are also directional. Saying "That surgeon is a butcher" means something quite different from saying "That butcher is a surgeon." Featural approaches assumed that people represent concepts by lists of features that describe properties of the items. A similarity comparison involves comparing the feature lists that represent the concepts. Features that are shared in the feature lists are ''commonalities'' of the pair and features that are contained in one feature set but not the other are ''differences'' of the pair. It is possible to account for people's intuitions or ratings of the similarities between concepts by assuming that judgments of similarity increase with the number of commonalities (weighted by the salience of those commonalities) and decreases with the number of differences (weighted by the salience of the differences).


Structural approaches

Structural approaches to similarity were developed to address limitations of the featural account. In particular, featural approaches assume that the commonalities and differences are independent of each other. However, commonalities and differences are not psychologically independent. In fact, determining the differences between a pair requires finding the commonalities. Consider the comparison between a car and a motorcycle. Both have wheels. That is a commonality. However, cars have four wheels, while motorcycles have two wheels. That is a difference. Because this difference required first finding a commonality between the pair, it is called an ''alignable difference''. Alignable differences contrast with ''nonalignable differences'' which are aspects of one concept that have no correspondence in the other. For example, cars have seatbelts and motorcycles do not. Research suggests that alignable differences have a larger impact on people's judgments of similarity than do nonalignable differences. Thus, the relationship between the commonalities of a pair and the differences is important for understanding people's assessments of similarity. Structural approaches to similarity emerged from research on
analogy Analogy (from Greek ''analogia'', "proportion", from ''ana-'' "upon, according to" lso "against", "anew"+ ''logos'' "ratio" lso "word, speech, reckoning" is a cognitive process of transferring information or meaning from a particular subject ( ...
.


Transformational approaches

Transformational accounts of similarity were developed to evaluate similarity independently of the type of mental representation. On this view, any mental representation can be transformed into another mental representation through some series of steps. For any representation system and set of transformations, it is possible to define the shortest set of steps (i.e., the shortest program) that will transform one representation into another. The shorter this minimal program, the more similarity the pair of concepts. found some evidence against this view, showing that the number of steps to transform the colors and shapes of geometric objects does not predict people's similarity judgments for those objects.


Social psychological approaches

In social psychology large amounts of empirical evidence indicate that similarity breeds liking; this is known as the similarity effect. Similarity refers to personality, attitudes, values, interests, and attraction shared between to individuals. Similarity is closely related to Bryne's social psychology model of
interpersonal attraction Interpersonal attraction as a part of social psychology is the study of the attraction between people which leads to the development of platonic or romantic relationships. It is distinct from perceptions such as physical attractiveness, and invo ...
(1961) which is determined by four variables:
propinquity In social psychology, propinquity (; from Latin ''propinquitas'', "nearness") is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. It refers to the physical or psychological proximity between people. Propinquity can mean physical proxi ...
(how our environment and situation play a role in determining how often and to what degree we come in contact), need for affiliation, overt stimulus characteristics (refers to the observable attributes of an individual that serve to elicit positive or negative responses from others), and similarity. In short we determine our attraction or liking of another by positive and negative
reinforcement In behavioral psychology, reinforcement is a consequence applied that will strengthen an organism's future behavior whenever that behavior is preceded by a specific antecedent stimulus. This strengthening effect may be measured as a higher freq ...
s and our emotions concerning the matter. When Individual A receives positive reinforcement from individual B, A's attraction toward B, increases the reverse is also true. Attitude similarity has also been found to serve as a strong foundation for long lasting friendship. Friends who share a similar interest in activities where more likely to perceive similarity and liking then those who shared similar attitudes. An individual's perceived similarity with another has been proven to show potential for romantic relationships even though actual similarity was reported to be low. These findings explain that individuals are more likely to be attracted to those who they perceive to share similar activities with such as occupation and hobbies. Propinquity also explains the relationship between liking and activities, those with similar interests tend to put themselves into similar types of settings increasing their chances of interaction. As frequency of interaction between 2 or more people increases, the degree of perceived similarity and liking for one another increases eventually leading to long lasting relationships. Several explanations have been offered to explain in what way similarity increases interpersonal attraction ( like-prefers-like). First, people with similar interests tend to put themselves into similar types of settings. For example, two people interested in literature are likely to run into each other in the library and form a relationship (involving the
propinquity effect In social psychology, propinquity (; from Latin ''propinquitas'', "nearness") is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. It refers to the physical or psychological proximity between people. Propinquity can mean physical proxi ...
). Another explanation is that we notice similar people, and expect a relationship to be interpersonally validating and beneficial because of similar attitudes, behaviours and values. People are susceptible to making negative judgements about those who are 'out of group' than 'in group' from them socially, behaviorally or of different
morals Morality () is the differentiation of intentions, decisions and actions between those that are distinguished as proper (right) and those that are improper (wrong). Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of cond ...
and values. Specifically, the 'Big Five' personality trait dimensions (
extroversion and introversion The traits of extraversion (also spelled extroversion Retrieved 2018-02-21.) and introversion are a central dimension in some human personality theories. The terms ''introversion'' and ''extraversion'' were introduced into psychology by Carl J ...
, agreeableness and disagreeableness, openness and closeness,
conscientiousness Conscientiousness is the personality trait of being careful, or diligent. Conscientiousness implies a desire to do a task well, and to take obligations to others seriously. Conscientious people tend to be efficient and organized as opposed to ...
and apathetic, as well as mental stability and
neuroticism In the study of psychology, neuroticism has been considered a fundamental personality trait. For example, in the Big Five approach to personality trait theory, individuals with high scores for neuroticism are more likely than average to be moody ...
) are behavioural traits often used to assess similarity or dissimilarity in relationships.


See also

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Rapport Rapport () is a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned are "in sync" with each other, understand each other's feelings or ideas, and communicate smoothly. The word stems from the French verb which means liter ...
*
Similarity (philosophy) In philosophy, similarity or resemblance is a relation between objects that constitutes how much these objects are alike. Similarity comes in degrees: e.g. oranges are more similar to apples than to the moon. It is traditionally seen as an Relation ...


References

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