Birds of a Feather Feel Together: Emotional Ability Similarity in Consumer Interactions

• Main Authors: Kidwell, Blair, Blocker, Christopher, Kidwell, Virginie Lopez, Mas, Erick
• Format: Conference Proceeding
• Language: English
• Subjects: Communication
• ISSN: 0098-9258

Emotional ability (EA) similarity reflects a deep-level of interpersonal similarity, beyond physical features and personal characteristics, and captures the ways that individuals jointly process emotional information and communicate on the same wavelength. Results from three studies reveal that EA similarity enables individuals to communicate with ease, which in turn, fosters easy and effortless interactions, and thus greater relational success that endures past initial interactions. Mas et al's findings challenge the received notion that higher EA is uniformly likely to create ideal outcomes for interacting with others. Rather, results indicate that people with similar EA communicate on a similar wavelength, "get along" better, make better joint decisions, and are more likely to form enduring relationships. Notably, they find that EA similarity accounts for outcomes beyond commonly measured forms of similarity, attractiveness, familiarity, and friendliness. Collectively, these three studies provide evidence that birds of a feather not only flock together, but more precisely, feel together, and that consumer interactions must consider, at least in part, the role of EA similarity.