Chapter.10 : Interpersonal Attraction
- Attraction takes many forms and emerges from many places.
o Interpersonal attraction is often on our minds and can be studied scientifically.
o Social psychologists even study dating Web sites.
- Many of our assumptions about attraction and falling in love turn out to be fake.
o Ex. Opposites attract
- Success rate for dates facilitated in dating websites is no higher than dates through old-fashioned routes.
- The compatibility analyses of dating websites don’t live up to their promises for a variety of reasons :
o We aren’t always accurate when it comes to predicting mate characteristics.
o Dating website algorithms focus on personality traits or other stable characteristics.
- Some of the basic principles of social psychology apply to the most intimae human processes.
o Sometimes a match online works out and sometimes it doesn’t.
, 10.1 : How do people decide whom they like and want to get to know
better ?
What Predicts Attraction ?
- The top of people’s lists for what makes them happy was making friends and having positive, warm
relationships.
o Absence of meaningful relationships with other people makes people feel lonely, worthless,
hopeless, helpless, and powerless.
- A central human motivation is self-expansion.
o Self-Expansion : desire to overlap or bend with another person, so you have access to that
person’s knowledge, insights, and experience and thus broaden and deepen your own experience
of life.
The Person Next Door : The Propinquity Effect
- One of the determinants of interpersonal attraction is propinquity or proximity.
o The people who are the ones you see and interact with the most are he most likely to become
friends and lovers.
o The striking thing about positive relationship between proximity and attraction, or the propinquity
effect, is that it works in a very narrow sense.
▪ Propinquity Effect : finding that the more we see and interact with people, the more
likely they are to become our friends.
- A classic study conducted in a housing complex for married students at MIT.
o Friendship formations among couples in various apartment buildings was tracked.
o Residents are assigned to apartments at random and they were all strangers.
o When asked to name their closest friends, 65% mentioned friends that lived in their same
building.
o Researchers also found that close friendship was indicated among same building :
▪ 41% of next-door neighbors
▪ 22% who lived 2 doors apart.
▪ 10% who lived on opposite ends of halls.
- Festinger and colleagues demonstrated that attraction and propinquity rely on physical distance and on
“functional distance”.
o Functional Distance : aspects of architectural design that determine which people you cross paths
with most often.
- Propinquity works because of familiarity or the mere exposure effects.
o Mere Exposure Effect : the finding that the more exposure we have to a stimulus, the more apt we
are to like it.
o Familiarity breeds liking. We typically associate positive feelings with familiar things.
o The more often we see certain people, the more familiar they become, the more friendship blooms.
▪ In the absence of negative qualities, familiarity breeds attraction and liking.
- Attraction takes many forms and emerges from many places.
o Interpersonal attraction is often on our minds and can be studied scientifically.
o Social psychologists even study dating Web sites.
- Many of our assumptions about attraction and falling in love turn out to be fake.
o Ex. Opposites attract
- Success rate for dates facilitated in dating websites is no higher than dates through old-fashioned routes.
- The compatibility analyses of dating websites don’t live up to their promises for a variety of reasons :
o We aren’t always accurate when it comes to predicting mate characteristics.
o Dating website algorithms focus on personality traits or other stable characteristics.
- Some of the basic principles of social psychology apply to the most intimae human processes.
o Sometimes a match online works out and sometimes it doesn’t.
, 10.1 : How do people decide whom they like and want to get to know
better ?
What Predicts Attraction ?
- The top of people’s lists for what makes them happy was making friends and having positive, warm
relationships.
o Absence of meaningful relationships with other people makes people feel lonely, worthless,
hopeless, helpless, and powerless.
- A central human motivation is self-expansion.
o Self-Expansion : desire to overlap or bend with another person, so you have access to that
person’s knowledge, insights, and experience and thus broaden and deepen your own experience
of life.
The Person Next Door : The Propinquity Effect
- One of the determinants of interpersonal attraction is propinquity or proximity.
o The people who are the ones you see and interact with the most are he most likely to become
friends and lovers.
o The striking thing about positive relationship between proximity and attraction, or the propinquity
effect, is that it works in a very narrow sense.
▪ Propinquity Effect : finding that the more we see and interact with people, the more
likely they are to become our friends.
- A classic study conducted in a housing complex for married students at MIT.
o Friendship formations among couples in various apartment buildings was tracked.
o Residents are assigned to apartments at random and they were all strangers.
o When asked to name their closest friends, 65% mentioned friends that lived in their same
building.
o Researchers also found that close friendship was indicated among same building :
▪ 41% of next-door neighbors
▪ 22% who lived 2 doors apart.
▪ 10% who lived on opposite ends of halls.
- Festinger and colleagues demonstrated that attraction and propinquity rely on physical distance and on
“functional distance”.
o Functional Distance : aspects of architectural design that determine which people you cross paths
with most often.
- Propinquity works because of familiarity or the mere exposure effects.
o Mere Exposure Effect : the finding that the more exposure we have to a stimulus, the more apt we
are to like it.
o Familiarity breeds liking. We typically associate positive feelings with familiar things.
o The more often we see certain people, the more familiar they become, the more friendship blooms.
▪ In the absence of negative qualities, familiarity breeds attraction and liking.
