Homophily, the tendency for people to cluster with similar others, has primarily been studied in terms of proximal, psychological causes, such as a tendency to have positive associations with people who share traits with us. Here we investigate whether homophily could be correlated with perceived group membership, given that sharing traits with other people might signify membership of a specific community. In order to investigate this, we tested whether the amount of homophily that occurs between strangers is dependent on the number of people they believe share the common trait (i.e. the size of group that the trait identifies). In two experiments, we show that more exclusive (smaller) groups evoke more positive ratings of the likeability of a stranger. When groups appear to be too inclusive (i.e. large) homophily no longer occurs, suggesting that it is not only positive associations with a trait that cause homophily, but a sense of the exclusiveness of a group is also important. These results suggest that group membership based on a variety of traits can encourage cohesion between people from diverse backgrounds, and may be a useful tool in overcoming differences between groups.

中文翻译：

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隐含的社区规模是否可以预测类似陌生人的受欢迎程度？


同质性，即人们与相似的人聚集在一起的倾向，主要是根据最近的心理原因来研究的，例如与与我们有共同特征的人建立积极联系的倾向。在这里，我们研究同质性是否与感知的群体成员资格相关，因为与其他人共享特征可能意味着特定社区的成员资格。为了调查这一点，我们测试了陌生人之间发生的同质性数量是否取决于他们认为具有共同特征的人数（即该特征所识别的群体的大小）。在两个实验中，我们表明，更排外（较小）的群体会对陌生人的好感度产生更积极的评价。当群体显得过于包容（即大）时，同质性不再发生，这表明不仅与导致同质性的特征呈正相关，而且群体的排他性感也很重要。这些结果表明，基于各种特征的群体成员资格可以鼓励来自不同背景的人之间的凝聚力，并且可能是克服群体之间差异的有用工具。