Familiarity Breeds Contempt

With So You Think You Can Dance Australia finishing, I can now concentrate on writing others things on this blog. As regular readers would know (I actually don't think there are many regualar readers besides a few friends, such as Anonymous but I'll just write it assuming some of you are secret stalking readers), I love analysing people and social behaviours of people. I think I'm a fairly observant person and hence can pick up little things that people do off guard that really shows their true self.

One of my favourite blogs is PsyBlog. I've been catching up on many of the articles and there a quite a few I want to discuss. I'll start off with the article that Familiarity Breeds Contempt.

Basically, the study shows that the more we know about people, the more we tend to dislike them. When given only a few details about a blind date for instance, we will like them as we can imagine they are a million things. But the more we know about them, we may find personality traits that we just dislike about them.

As we tend to dislike many more people that we meet throughout our lives than like people, what makes people continue to try and build relationships. Well, its because those relationships that do work are worth so much and we hold very dear. When you do find friends and loved interests who have traits that you really like, you can gain so much from those relationships.

Good friends are hard to come by. It is by chance that you will meet people, and there is an even smaller chance that you will like them. Even when you like them, there is again a smaller fraction that you will really get along with. Hence, with really good friends, I tend to have high expectations of them. I expect them to act and carry themselves how I would act. But that isn't how everyone works. Which means at times that I will be disappointed. I have to learn that everyone is different and I can't put my own expectations onto them. It is hard to accept but there is a reason that particular people are my friends, and it's not all because they are exactly like me. That would be boring. It's the fact that others are different and bring something else that I like that I am friends with them.

As I have written previously, you may not be friends with people forever, but for that moment in time, you're both travelling in the same direction and share something. Just make the most of that and be happy while it lasts.