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The importance of common tastes and interests for creating a harmonious union is obvious. But usually we mean love for the same phenomena, people and objects. It turns out that shared dislike or even hatred brings partners together no less effectively.
Checked on life experience: the expression of negative assessments often brings the one who expressed them the sympathy of others. Say, at a party among unfamiliar people, you declare that you can’t stand the artist whose music is currently playing. If at this moment there is at least one person nearby who shares this attitude, then you are guaranteed not to feel lonely for the rest of the evening: you will make a new good acquaintance, and possibly a friend. Moreover, it is interesting that if you, on the contrary, admired the performer, nothing like this would happen – even if everyone around also sincerely admires him.
Why? Because Negative attitudes have an almost magical ability to bring people closer together. And if you and your loved one do not like Grigory Leps, boiled onions or dark beer together, you are very lucky. Your alliance has an excellent chance of being stronger than partnerships in which there is no such unanimity.
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- About the benefits of “bad” emotions
Psychologists make a lot of efforts to unravel the unifying nature of hostility. For many years, studying it, for example, the American researcher Jennifer Bosson (Jennifer Bosson). In one of her experiments, she invited students to fill out questionnaires, indicating their favorite and least favorite teachers (risking their own name in the second list!). The study participants were then told who matched them in preferences. And then the scientists watched how the relations between students in the group developed. As a result, it was not those who loved the same professors who communicated with each other most closely and naturally, but those who hated the same ones.1.
Part of the result can be explained by the fact that people who are not afraid to express negative assessments are often perceived as more sincere, which causes sympathy. Especially if you yourself do not like the same thing as them.
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- Is it better to hide vivid impressions?
In partnerships shared dislike of something contributes to more conflict-free communication. Imagine that you and your loved one are invited to a karaoke party. “Why did you agree without consulting me?” “Why did you refuse without consulting me?” – far from a complete list of claims that absolutely any of your actions can cause. But if you both hate karaoke, then the situation is solved simply automatically. The same applies to broccoli bought for dinner, and offers to watch the next Formula 1 round on TV instead of a movie, and much more. (However, according to the observations of psychologists, the dislike not for the same dishes and ways of spending leisure time, but for the same people is especially close.)
Perhaps it is also the fact that negative emotions are often more intense than positive ones. That is why the opportunity to separate them is a stronger impulse towards rapprochement. However, psychologists have yet to prove this. For now, however, we must rely on empirical experience.
1 J. Bosson, J. Weaver «I feel like I know you: Sharing negative attitudes of others promotes feelings of familiarity». Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 2011, 37.