Glossary / Lexicon

Deutsch: Ähnlichkeit / Español: semejanza / Português: semelhança / Français: ressemblance / Italiano: somiglianza

Resemblance in psychology refers to the perception or recognition of similarities between two or more objects, concepts, individuals, or situations. It plays a fundamental role in cognitive processes, such as categorisation, pattern recognition, and social judgements, and is central to how individuals interpret and make sense of the world.

Description

In psychology, resemblance is an important concept for understanding how humans group and compare items based on shared attributes. It underlies cognitive mechanisms such as schema formation, where mental frameworks are created to organise knowledge, and analogy making, which involves identifying similarities between new and existing information.

Resemblance operates at different levels:

• Physical resemblance: Similarities in appearance, such as facial features or body language.
• Conceptual resemblance: Overlaps in ideas, meaning, or function, such as metaphorical comparisons.
• Behavioural resemblance: Similar actions or responses in comparable situations.

In social psychology, resemblance significantly influences interpersonal attraction, group dynamics, and stereotypes. For example, individuals often feel more affinity toward those who resemble themselves in personality, values, or appearance—a phenomenon known as similarity-attraction.

Resemblance is also studied in developmental psychology, where children learn to categorise and make sense of their environment by identifying similarities between objects or concepts. Furthermore, it plays a critical role in legal psychology, particularly in eyewitness testimony, where mistaken identity can occur due to perceived resemblance.

Application Areas

• Cognitive Psychology: Explores resemblance in pattern recognition, analogy, and decision-making processes.
• Developmental Psychology: Studies how children use resemblance to categorise and learn about the world.
• Social Psychology: Examines resemblance's role in attraction, group formation, and social stereotypes.
• Legal Psychology: Investigates the effects of resemblance in areas like eyewitness identification and jury decision-making.
• Clinical Psychology: Addresses how resemblance can lead to transference in therapeutic relationships.

Well-Known Examples

• Similarity-Attraction Effect: People are more likely to form bonds with those who resemble them in behaviour or beliefs.
• Prototype Theory: Categorisation based on resemblance to a prototype, such as a "typical" bird.
• Face Recognition: Identification of individuals through perceived resemblance to known faces.
• Analogical Reasoning: Solving problems by identifying resemblance between different contexts or cases.

Risks and Challenges

• Cognitive Bias: Over-reliance on resemblance can lead to errors, such as stereotyping or overgeneralisation.
• False Identification: In legal settings, resemblance between individuals can result in mistaken eyewitness testimony.
• Confirmation Bias: Tendency to focus on similarities while ignoring dissimilarities, reinforcing pre-existing beliefs.
• Misinterpretation: Resemblance can sometimes be superficial, leading to incorrect assumptions about deeper relationships.

Similar Terms

• Similarity: A broader term often used interchangeably with resemblance, focusing on shared attributes.
• Analogy: A comparison based on resemblance in certain aspects between otherwise different things.
• Stereotype: A generalised belief about a group based on perceived resemblance among its members.

Articles with 'Resemblance' in the title

• Family resemblance: Family resemblance refers to Wittgenstein's contention that a category does not have a defining feature/essence that must be shared by all members of the category
• Law of resemblance: Law of resemblance is a law which according to Hume is the tendency for our thoughts to run from one event to similar events the same as what others call the Law or Principle of similarity

Summary

In psychology, resemblance refers to the recognition of similarities between entities and is a key factor in cognitive, social, and developmental processes. While essential for learning and decision-making, it also presents challenges such as biases and misinterpretations, making its study critical for both theoretical and practical applications.

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