Do I mirror your mood if we’re peas in a pod? : similarity and liking in the social induction of affect

The present study investigates whether similarity in personality traits between a sender displaying affect and a receiver observing it influences the social induction of affect. We hypothesized that exposure to a similar sender would foster concordant affective reactions, whereas exposure to a dissimilar sender would foster discordant ones. To induce affect, we used short videos presenting a sender displaying happy versus sad emotional expressions. To manipulate personality similarity, we used a software program to generate brief bogus descriptions of the sender based on the receivers' prior responses to personality items. Our results demonstrated that dissimilarity led to decreased liking and, as a result, reduced the tendency to react with concordant affect to a happy sender's emotional expression. However, we found no evidence supporting the induction of discordant affective reactions.