Interpersonal attraction refers to positive feelings about the other person. It can take many forms, including liking, love, friendship, lust, and admiration. Many factors influence whom people are attracted to they include physical attractiveness, proximity, similarity and reciprocity.
There are a lot of cognitive theories that state the mental process behind attraction. We will be exploring four of them today.
But before you go further, try the following activity, it'll help you understand better.
THEORY ONE RECIPROCITY:
People tend to like others who reciprocate their liking. Psychology shows the more you feel welcomed and accepted by a person or group one is more likely to feel attracted or wanted. Example, when a child goes to school for 10 long years but leaves in order to join college that is completely new for the kid, he would look for people to reciprocate so that he can make new friends. If only new people try and take interest in being friends with him will he be able to open up and make new friends.
Physical Attractiveness is something that we all notice in the person who we have even made something as little as an eye contact with. Humans tend to judge other humans when seen for the first time. Although it may seem inappropriate or shallow to admit it, and although it is certainly not the only determinant of liking, people are strongly influenced, at least in initial encounters, by the physical attractiveness of their partners.
Now, to understand the process better there’s a theory proposed by Sternberg through which we understand love, passion and commitment in a much better way. Sternberg states that a healthy relationship will have all three components of love—intimacy, passion, and commitment—which are described as consummate love. However, different aspects of love might be more prevalent at different life stages. Other forms of love include liking, which is defined as having intimacy but no passion or commitment. Infatuation is the presence of passion without intimacy or commitment. Empty love is having commitment without intimacy or passion. Companionate love, which is characteristic of close friendships and family relationships, consists of intimacy and commitment but no passion. Romantic love is defined by having passion and intimacy, but no commitment. Finally, fatuous love is defined by having passion and commitment, but no intimacy, such as a long term sexual love affair.
THEORY II: POWER OF FAMILARITY:
Do the activity first-
“The more I see it, the more I like it”
There was an experiment conducted to prove the power of familiarity where people were given two tasks
People were either shown a beer ad or a water ad
Later on, a choice was given between beer gift card and coffee shop card.
Result: The people exposed to beer advertisements chose beer gift cad over coffee shop card.
Studies have shown that we are attracted to what familiar to us, and that is repeated exposure to certain people will increase our attraction toward them. We are attracted to familiar people because we consider them to be safe and unlikely to cause harm. This doesn’t just apply to people we’ve actually seen before or to people who look familiar, but also to people who behave in ways that are familiar to us. People tend to like some particular things over and over again in order to love them, like listening to a particular genre of music. For instance, If friend A makes the friend B. listen to Gujarati folk but friend B. loves Spanish music which is completely different and friend B. must have never heard it, friend B. may have to listen to Gujarati folk several times in order to understand and like the beats. The more times friend B. listens to Gujarati folk the more will he get familiar to it and will start liking it, hence it is the same with people and relationships if a human is completely different from other human liking becomes difficult. Hence, one will look to have a relationship with similar and familiar humans just so that it increases liking for something for someone.
THEORY III: ATTRACTION- SIMILARITY MODEL
Activity time-
Similarity is one such factor that influences who we form relationships with. We are more likely to become friends or lovers with someone who is similar to us in background, attitudes, and lifestyle. In fact, there is no evidence that opposites attract. Rather, we are attracted to people who are most like us. Homophily is the tendency for people to form social networks, including friendships, marriage, business relationships, and many other types of relationships, with others who are similar. By forming relationships only with people who are similar to us, we will have homogenous groups and will not be exposed to different points of view. In other words, because we are likely to spend time with those who are most like ourselves, we will have limited exposure to those who are different than ourselves, including people of different races, ethnicities, social-economic status, and life situations. But there were several activities done to prove the attraction towards similar people, like we had an example in the first theory about a kid going from school to college and making friends, he is most likely to reciprocate only to people who he thinks are like him, same thing works with couples or rather love at first sight. People tend to like each other’s company maybe because they have a lot in similar like hobbies, fun activities or some common food. Hence, after having to get attention from the person people tend to find similarities in each other so that both the individuals are in their own comfort zone and happy space. Once the person finds his/her comfort zone one looks for familiarity and that’s what the next theory proposes.
THEORY IV:THE MATCHING HYPOTHESIS
Attempt the activity-
This is a theory of interpersonal attraction which argues that relationships are formed between two people who are equal or very similar in terms of social desirability. This is often examined in the form of level of physical attraction. The fact that people tend to end up with romantic partners who resemble them, however, does not necessarily mean that they prefer similar over dissimilar mates. There is evidence, particularly with respect to the characteristic of physical attractiveness, that both men and women actually prefer the most attractive partner possible. However, although people might ideally want a partner with highly desirable features, they might not possess enough desirable attributes themselves to be able to attract that individual. Because people seek the best possible mate but are constrained by their own assets, the process of romantic partner selection thus inevitably results in the pairing of individuals with similar characteristics.
Researchers found black beats traditionally sexy red as the colour of choice when it comes to finding love. The study builds on previous research into the use of clothing colour to increase attractiveness, which suggests that red increases the perceived sexual receptivity of the wearer, while black increases how fashionable the person is thought to be. Online dating users tend to choose partners who are more physically attractive than they perceive themselves.
Hence, all the four theories are interrelated to each other reciprocity, attraction, familiarity, and matching hypothesis of mental processes behind attraction.
All theories always have their strengths and weaknesses and same goes for all. To all my readers, see how much of it holds true for you.
Because attraction is the first step to a relationship. Good day peeps.
Comments
Post a Comment