This essay starts with the story of a girl who was shocked by the idea that someone might not like her. The author argues that we would all be happier if we accepted the dislike of others without taking offense because “liking” or “disliking” is a “mysterious” emotion.

She claims never to have read a book on the subject of likes and dislikes and concludes that there is no good explanation for feeling one way or another about a person. A quick Google search shows that there has been quite a bit of thought on the subject in the 70 years since she wrote her essay. Most of it boils down to the belief that we like people who make us feel good about ourselves and dislike people who make us feel bad.That makes sense to me.

I’m happier if I concentrate on the people who like me and try to avoid the people who don’t. How about you?



Once in the question-and-answer period after I had finished a talk at a woman’s college, a girl asked me: “How do you stand it when some reviewer tears one of your books to pieces? It would just slay me to have such hateful things said about me.”

Feeling that her question was easy to answer, I began with bland assurance: “Well, of course no writer would pretend it is pleasant to read a severely unfavorable criticism. But nobody can expect to be liked by everyone. The very same traits which make some people enjoy having you around will make other people hate the sight of you. Take your own personal life. You know well enough that not everybody who knows you likes you. You must have noticed—“

I was halted by a strange expression on her young face. Her eyes widened; she perceptibly paled. It was borne in on me, with a horrifying impact, that never before had it occurred to this 19-year-old child that anyone could dislike her—not her! For a moment I was far too embarrassed to speak. And as I looked from one sober young face to another I knew that I had broken dreadful news to them all.

Those girls should, for their own good, have learned that long ago. Yet the thought came to me that day, and I have had it many times since, that none of us really understands the phenomenon of personal likes and dislikes. It is ever present in our daily life, familiar to all adults, and yet it is an unsolved mystery.

The first day in school a new teacher faces a group of children, all unknown to her. The children face an adult they have never laid eyes on before. The teacher writes a few sentences on the board, gives a few directions, and then they all march off to the first school assembly. But already most of the children know whether they “like Teacher” or not. And already the teacher has thought, “That freckle-faced boy and the girl with very short hair in the back—I’m going to enjoy having them in the class.”

Take the case of a person who has just undergone an operation. Even before the ether fumes are cleared from his head he likes some and dislikes others of the nurses coming and going in his sickroom. He has not seen them long enough to know anything about their qualities. He simply makes up his mind that he likes the sandy-haired one best. On the other hand the man in the next room fighting his way out of ether, may whisper to the doctor, “Keep that sandy-haired nurse away! She gives me the jitters. I’d rather have the little fat one.”

As you look around you at people in streetcar or ferry or drugstore, why do you like some and dislike others?

These first-impression preferences often change as mysteriously as they appear. Only the most stubborn insist that they never modify a first like or dislike. But when one’s likes and dislikes settle down to permanence, they are as inexplicable as ever. This fact is so disconcerting to logic and common sense that most people refuse to admit it. We bring up all sorts of things as reasons for our feelings. We say, sweepingly, “I like Peter because he’s cheerful. I always like cheerful people.” But even as we speak we remember (if we are honest) that So-and-So is cheerful and we have often wished he’d wipe that silly grin off his face. The simple point is that we like Pete and so we like his being cheerful’ we don’t like So-and-So and hence we dislike his cheerfulness.

And don’t claim for one instant that you like anybody for his virtue, or dislike him for his faults. How many devotedly good people have rubbed you intolerably the wrong way? And how many times have you confessed, “Well, I know he doesn’t pay his debts and is always getting out from under his responsibilities—but darn it all, you can’t help liking the fellow.”

Moreover, our likes and dislikes are cheeringly free from the self-interest motive. The sick man who murmurs he’d rather have the sandy-haired nurse hasn’t any idea that she can give him better nursing. The child who, gazing at the new teacher, finds mysteriously rising in his ignorant little heart a liking for her hasn’t the least idea that she can teach him more geography and arithmetic than another. He doesn’t like her because he can get more education out of her. Goodness gracious, no! He just likes her.

Much unhappiness, irritability and vain regret could be put out of our lives if we would but recognize that any universal phenomenon is bound to apply to us as well as to everybody else. It is childishness not to recognize this. Yet I have a notion that many a sensitive clergyman, many a lawyer, doctor, merchant, suffers from a shock not unlike that which paled the cheeks of my college girl when he sees dislike in the eyes of someone looking at him — even someone he secretly dislikes himself. If we could accept such shocks as philosophically as we accept the weather — and for the same reason, because there’s nothing anybody can do about them — how much more inner peace we might have! We might learn to protect our self-respect by taking pains always to act with fairness and thoughtfulness to the occasional person who is so inhuman as to feel for us the dislike we feel once in a while for someone else. Beyond that, the best thing is just to take it as we take a wet day, aware that fussing about it only makes things worse.

Although the problem of likes and dislikes concerns us every minute we are in the presence of others, it is never seriously discussed by doctors, psychologists, clergymen, or anyone else among those who undertake to help us to understand life in order to manage it with intelligence. Did you ever see a reputable book on this subject? I never did. A few commercially minded people make money by teaching us tricks which will help us give an imitation of likability and hence perhaps sell more goods or more insurance. But that is about all.

The poets, more than other human beings, have here occasional deep divinations of truth. They have at least recognized the existence of this mystery. Elizabeth Barrett goes deep with the sonnet beginning:

If thou must love me, let it be for naught

Except for love’s sake only. Do not say

“I love her for her smile—her look—her way

Of speaking gently—for a trick of thought.”

Later she repeats with passionate insistence “love me for love’s sake.”

But it was no poet at all, only an irreverent student in a classroom a century or so ago, who produced a bit of doggerel so folk-perfect an expression for a universal human experience that his four lines bide him to become immortal:

I do not like thee, Dr. Fell,

The reason why I cannot tell,

But this I know and know full well—

I do not like thee, Dr. Fell.



My thoughts

Here's a few quick summaries of what I found on the internet related to "why do we like some people and not others?"

A Psychological View

Self Concept Motivating Model and the Effect on Relationships

From the self concept perspective, we are attracted to people that make us feel good (we are in a positive affective state when we interact with them). Self Concept Motivation theory predicts that the greater degree to which an individual affirms our self concept, the more we like them and the more we are attracted to that individual. Likewise, we avoid and tend to dislike invalidators with whom we come in contact.

An Evolutionary View

First impressions have a practical purpose: In the animal kingdom you can’t spend three months discussing your résumé; you need to make quick decisions about who to trust and who not to trust.

Mystical View

When you find yourself liking or disliking someone it is because you are picking up on the vibrations that person is emanating at that given time. The sum total of the vibrations we send out at any given time are referred to by some ancient teachings as  "states" of Be-ing-ness.  People who match our "state" at any given time make us feel good about ourselves. We feel a sense of ease around them. Those people who vibrate states opposite to ours at any given time make us feel bad or uneasy.  The people who reflect back to us the "positive" aspects of our "state" at any given time are fun and exciting to spend time with and those who reflect back to us the "negative" aspects of our "state" at any given time give us much anxiety, unease, pain and stress. But we may find ourselves drawn to them because we need them to focus the light on where we need growth and maturity (if we are open to the opportunity for growth and maturity). Generally speaking, all healthy relationships require at least some measure of physical, mental, emotional, soul and spiritual “state” compatibility.

Sociological View

We are more likely to like people we are physically close to in our work, school, and personal lives. This effect of proximity gives way to another reason why we like certain people: familiarity. The more often we see a person, the more attractive and desirable we see them. This leads into another concept: similarity. We are more likely to like those with which we share similar qualities. This leads into another concept: similarity. We are more likely to like those with which we share similar qualities.



Humor circa 1950

No amount of coaxing could persuade our 16-month-old son to take his medicine in any shape, form or fashion. In utter disgust I gave up and left the room. When I came back, I stared in amazement, for there stood my son gleefully opening his mouth for it.

My husband had solved the problem by mixing the medicine with orange juice, putting it into a water pistol and shooting it into him!

- Mrs. Hobby Stripling in Atlanta Journal and Constitution Magazine