For starters, a doppelgänger is a non-biologically related look-alike or double of a living person. In books and movies, it is sometimes portrayed as a ghostly or paranormal apparition and usually deemed a harbinger of bad luck.
Our prior knowledge of a person -- whether he/she has treated you well or poorly -- determines how you act toward that individual in the future. But research suggests that a person's track record may also affect how you treat people who look like the person in question.
In studies headed by Brown University neuroscientist Oriel FeldmanHall, participants played a money-sharing game with several "male partners" whose headshots appeared onscreen. (Players were lead to believe they were dealing with actual people, but the partners were virtual.)
As the study participants played, they discovered these partners were very trustworthy, somewhat trustworthy, or not trustworthy at all. Afterward, participants selected from among new faces for a second round of play. Little did they know the headshots had been digitally altered to range in their resemblance to those of the first partners.
The more a new partner looked like one who had been trustworthy, the more likely he was to be picked. And the more he resembled an untrustworthy partner, the more he was rejected.
What this study shows is that it's possible to elicit a template in your brain that makes it easy to categorize a person almost in knee-jerk fashion. So, if you happen to meet a guy at the gym tomorrow who physically resembles your reliable friend Tony, you may more apt to trust him. Or, on the flip side, you might bump into a woman at the mall who looks like your flake of a neighbor and not trust her to hold your place in line for you.
Researchers familiar with the studies speculate that other shared identifiers including names or professions may also play a role in steering our judgments.
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