The Sims 2/Interests

In The Sims 2, interests are key in building a friendly relationship faster. This article explains how to best utilise them to your advantage.

Interest Basics
There are 18 interests in The Sims 2. These interests have five icons each. Each of these icons are displayed in the interests section of the simology panel. Interests are important in relationships because of the Chat interaction. If you want to make friends, this interaction will most likely make up the bulk of your efforts. Other friendly interactions may raise relationships at first but they weaken in strength after each time you do that social. When sims chat, they randomly choose an interest and display one of it's icons. High level interests are more likely to be chosen as the topic. How the sim responds depends on the gap in level of interest. A small gap in that level will give 5 daily, a medium gap will give 2, and a large gap will subtract 1 point. This is why it is easier to build a friendship with sims of similar interests.
 * Animals
 * Crime
 * Culture
 * Entertainment
 * Environment
 * Fashion
 * Food
 * Health
 * Money
 * Paranormal
 * Politics
 * School
 * Sci-Fi
 * Sports
 * Toys
 * Travel
 * Weather
 * Work

As a strategy, you can check each sims interests in their simology panels. For visitors, you can go into their houses and check there. For NPCs you'll just have to guess, although Nightlife comes with the Ask...What are your interests? social. When you've recorded their interests, initiate a conversation. You can then control what topics they talk about by clicking on your sim and selecting Change Topic

Changing Interests
There are two ways to change interests in The Sims 2.
 * Magazines. Each magazine can increase your sims interest in three topics. Note that when interest in one topic is increased, your sims will lose interest in another topic. Sims cannot have maximum interest in all topics.
 * Sharing Interests. Sims can gain interest from other sims with the Talk…Share Interests interaction. However, the interest is random and out of your control. Like in magazines, sims will lose interest in one topic and gain interest in another.