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ChangingMinds Blog! > Blog Archive > 16-Nov-14

 


Sunday 16-November-14

The good guys and the bad guys: birds of a feather?

Birds of a feather flock together, as they say. People with common interests, values and so on, are attracted to one another and will generally be more likely to make friends. This is more true than the contrary principle where opposites attract. Certainly, there are odd couples that we meet that strangely seem to work, but by and large the birds principle is far more common.

In an interesting spin on this, I was reading recently an article on the Colloquia site that describes a practical experiment where people diagonosed with various psychoses lived together in various configurations in London during the 1970s. Besides the alarming ways that people behaved in this (when you have a different reality, then your norms can be way different to more common social values), I was struck by an interesting pattern. What happened, apparently was that:

"The tendency seemed inevitable that if there were two houses one of them would become the good, clean, happy healing house and the other the bad, dirty, unhappy mad house. This phenomenon occurred several times as we moved from house to house."

Is this a 'birds of a feather' effect? Do the mad, bad or otherwise more dysfunctional people tend to join forces, while those who are happier and nicer band together. Is it something that may also be seen elsewhere in society where criminals associate with one another, or where gentle folks shun their noiser compatriots? It seems possible.


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Site Menu

| Home | Top | Quick Links | Settings |

Main sections: | Disciplines | Techniques | Principles | Explanations | Theories |

Other sections: | Blog! | Quotes | Guest articles | Analysis | Books | Help |

More pages: | Contact | Caveat | About | Students | Webmasters | Awards | Guestbook | Feedback | Sitemap | Changes |

Settings: | Computer layout | Mobile layout | Small font | Medium font | Large font | Translate |

 

 

Please help and share:

 

Quick links

Disciplines

* Argument
* Brand management
* Change Management
* Coaching
* Communication
* Counseling
* Game Design
* Human Resources
* Job-finding
* Leadership
* Marketing
* Politics
* Propaganda
* Rhetoric
* Negotiation
* Psychoanalysis
* Sales
* Sociology
* Storytelling
* Teaching
* Warfare
* Workplace design

Techniques

* Assertiveness
* Body language
* Change techniques
* Closing techniques
* Conversation
* Confidence tricks
* Conversion
* Creative techniques
* General techniques
* Happiness
* Hypnotism
* Interrogation
* Language
* Listening
* Negotiation tactics
* Objection handling
* Propaganda
* Problem-solving
* Public speaking
* Questioning
* Using repetition
* Resisting persuasion
* Self-development
* Sequential requests
* Storytelling
* Stress Management
* Tipping
* Using humor
* Willpower

Principles

+ Principles

Explanations

* Behaviors
* Beliefs
* Brain stuff
* Conditioning
* Coping Mechanisms
* Critical Theory
* Culture
* Decisions
* Emotions
* Evolution
* Gender
* Games
* Groups
* Habit
* Identity
* Learning
* Meaning
* Memory
* Motivation
* Models
* Needs
* Personality
* Power
* Preferences
* Research
* Relationships
* SIFT Model
* Social Research
* Stress
* Trust
* Values

Theories

* Alphabetic list
* Theory types

And

About
Guest Articles
Blog!
Books
Changes
Contact
Guestbook
Quotes
Students
Webmasters

 

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© Changing Works 2002-
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