What's more attractive: someone who always liked you or someone who didn't find you attractive at first but changed their mind over time?
Psychology Today magazine made, based on scientific research, several conclusions about what is actually hidden behind the "psychology of attraction", i.e. how we choose emotional partners, and the results showed a significant influence of similarity, proximity, but also the importance of conquest.
Although the old saying goes that opposites attract, research has shown that similarity is much more important. Also, another factor that (most often unconsciously) plays a role in choosing a partner is proximity. Research has shown that people are more likely to be attracted to people they see regularly.
Researchers have also discussed that simply being in an exciting situation can increase attractiveness to others, and have explored how much influence beauty and classic stereotypes have on our definition of attractive.
Similarity
At the heart of attraction is the idea that we like to be with people who provide us with rewarding and positive interactions. A study on attraction assessed whether a better perception of others is related to how similar people are. To find out, researchers asked over 150 participants to read an attitudinal questionnaire purportedly filled out by another participant or what the researchers call a "fake stranger," and then rate their attraction to the fake stranger.
The researchers varied responses to manipulate how similar the fake stranger was to the participant. They found that the proportion of similarity is more important than the total number of similar attitudes - that is, strangers who look more like them are perceived as more "attractive". This study laid the foundation for hundreds of subsequent studies on the importance of similarity in attraction.
The importance of proximity
There is a saying that "you can choose your friends but not your family". However, it may be that your choice of friends or partners is not entirely under your conscious control either. In a classic study on friendship formation, researchers asked nearly 300 MIT university students to list their closest friends, reports klix.ba..
The researchers then looked at where said friends lived in the dorms. When someone lived one door away, there was a 41 percent probability that they were listed as a close friend. As the number of doors increased, the probability decreased.
This study shows the importance that proximity has on the formation of relationships, and based on this, psychologists have determined that it can lead to attraction and love relationships.
The power of conquest
What's more attractive: someone who always liked you or someone who didn't find you attractive at first but changed their mind over time? The study tested this, and as expected, participants were happy when the rating was positive from the start, but, surprisingly, they liked even more those who initially gave them a negative rating that eventually turned positive.
This finding demonstrates the theory that winning over people who made an initial bad impression is more important to us than having a relationship with someone who liked us all along.
What is beautiful is good
Most people assume that being physically attractive is a good thing, but this study showed just how good it can be. Students viewed images of men and women representing several levels of attractiveness. Based on the photo alone, they rated more attractive people as kinder, more open, more modest, more sensitive, more friendly, and more interesting.
But the positive perceptions did not end there. Participants also thought that more attractive people were those with better jobs, better marriages, and better lives.
These results demonstrate our strong bias towards physical beauty and the stereotypical beliefs we attribute to more attractive individuals.
Bonus video:
