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LOVE HATE
How Shared Hatred Helps You Make Friends
People form quick and close bonds over shared dislikes — especially when what they hate is another person
You’re meeting someone for the first time — a friend of a friend. She seems pleasant. She mentions her love of burrito bowls and HGTV. You like burrito bowls. You like HGTV. This seems like a person you can get along with. But then she leans forward and, lowering her voice, confides that your mutual pal has been driving her nuts lately. Five minutes of shit-talking later, and you feel like you have a new best friend.
Since at least the 1940s, social psychologists have recognized that shared opinions — negative, as well as positive — can facilitate bonding between two strangers. But it was always assumed that if two people don’t know each other well, sharing positive attitudes is the best way to form a relationship. Negativity is a turnoff as well as a faux pas — or so the thinking went.
But a handful of recent studies have turned some of this conventional wisdom on its head. Sharing negative attitudes with someone — and, in particular, sharing negative opinions about other people — seems to be among the quickest and most effective ways for two strangers to form a bond. If you want to cozy up to someone, there…
