Most of us know that the ability to create rapport with different types of people can be a very valuable skill. I think there’s more than enough information on that topic, but there are certain skills that are kind of “subcategories” of building rapport. The one I want to share with you today is the art of revealing similarities.
You’ve probably heard the phrase “opposites attract” many times before. However in reality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. People like other people that they feel are in some way similar to them. When we discover similarities that other people share with us, we feel more connected and in tune with them, which is why revealing similarities is such a strong component in building rapport.
Similarities also have the power to gain compliance. The following study conducted by Jerry Burger that I found in Nick Kolenda’s book “Methods of Persuasion: How to Use Psychology to Influence Human Behavior” , demonstrates the increased likelihood you’ll have in getting someone to agree to something once you’ve established some type of similarity with them.
To examine the impact of revealing any similarity, Jerry Burger and his colleagues (2004) told people that they were conducting an experiment on astrology. During the astrology-related tasks, participants discovered that they shared the same birthday with a fellow participant (who was actually a confederate working with the researchers). The researchers wanted to see if that incidental similarity would make that person more likely to comply with a request from the confederate.
When people believed that the experiment was finished, they left the room
with the confederate and walked down the hall together. While walking, the female confederate asked the participant if he would help her with her English assignment. What was the assignment? She needed to find a student who would review her 8-page essay and write a 1-page critique of her arguments (very far from an enticing request). However, the researchers
found that people who discovered that they shared the same birthday with the confederate were significantly more likely to help with that demanding request.
It was also observed in a later experiment conducted by Burger, that the degree of rarity your shared similarity has, directly correlates to the amount of compliance you will receive. For instance, if you were to meet someone that shared the same eye color as you (lets say the color is brown), it would definitely be a similarity that the two of you share, but since brown is such a common eye color, the degree of compliance you would probably get would most likely be fairly low. However, if the two of you both had Heterochromia iridum (which just means your eyes are different colors) you would probably see a dramatic increase in the amount of compliance you would receive from them. To take it even further, their likelihood of cooperation would increase even more if you both had a brown right eye, and a green left eye. The more rare the shared similarity is, the more compliance you can expect to receive.
Now Im not saying that if you have a rare similarity with someone else, you can get them to do anything you want, but it does improve your chances. After you’ve established a similarity with someone, you should continue building rapport with them before you try to gain their cooperation. This will improve your chances of getting them to agree to something, and make your use of this technique less obvious. If you don’t have some extremely rare similarity with the other person, try and dig up as many similarities as you can. The more you share in common with them, the better your chances are of gaining their compliance.
