Remember grade school and wanting to always sit next to your best buddies in the classroom, at the lunch table, or on the school bus? Perhaps you even started dressing alike or wearing your hair the same way. A new study suggests that maybe our seating preferences don't change all that much as grown-ups.
Like birds of a feather, people sit or said they would sit closer to others who were physically similar to themselves, finds research in the Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin. Way past our playground years, we still want to be nearer to people most like us, particularly those who we bear some resemblance to.
The idea that like attracts like is not a new one: Research in social psychology suggests that romantic couples tend to choose mates of a similar level of attractiveness -- although you likely know folks who clearly married up. You may even relate more to a child who has similar facial features to you -- your mini-me.
Some Canadian researchers wondered whether the idea of "similarity attracts" would apply to people's physical characteristics when it comes to their seating patterns, a common social occurrence.
In one experiment, they observed more than 350 students seating choices in a college computer lab over a three-month period. Scientists found that students who wore glasses were more likely to sit next to another student wearing spectacles and also closest to members of the same sex.
In a second test that observed 14 different classrooms and more than 2,200 students, undergrads were more likely to sit next to students of the same sex and race, but also closest to those who wore glasses (if they did, too) and had a similar hair length and hair color to their own.
"Demonstrating that similarity attracts even for comparatively minor physical traits like glasses-wearing was perhaps the most surprising result," says Sean Mackinnon, a doctoral student in psychology at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia.
While the first two tests of seating choices were observed among students who likely knew one another, the researchers did another experiment among strangers to see if people behaved differently.
They planted a woman who was in on the research into a room of 72 strangers. The woman was Caucasian, considered to be of average attractiveness, had short brown hair and hazel eyes, and a normal weight. For half of the experiment she wore glasses and half of the time went without them.
The people who sat closest to the female "research confederate" were the same sex, race, and had the same level of attractiveness as judged by independent raters.
People can choose to sit somewhere for any number of reasons, explains Mackinnon, the study's lead author. "It's just that, on average, people sit by physically similar others more often than expected by chance alone."
He says that practically speaking this helps social scientists understand why people end up in relationships with similar people more often than chance.
Another reason we gravitate toward physically similar people is because we believe they may share similar attitudes and beliefs. And while Mackinnon admits this is a basic part of human nature, this particular effect is "probably not deliberate or even necessarily conscious" although it can limit the opportunity to form relationships with people less like you.
Think about it: Have you noticed any personal tendencies in your seating situations -- on a park bench or public transit?