Why are human beings attracted to one another?

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D. Hook                                                                             8/11/99

Why are human beings attracted to one another?

        

It is a fact that within all humans lies an instinct for sociability that often leads to the creation of long term emotional bonds, but it has been a source of controversy for years among psychologists as to why this is. This statement is qualified by the many, varied experiments that have been used to prove that a lack of companionship can have a number of negative effects. It has been shown to be a direct cause of reduced self-esteem and depression. Research shows that this question, however, is far from as simple as the title would suggest. The very concept of attraction can be divided into many parts, from professional acquaintances and peer groups all the way up to romantic involvement.

If then we want to be able to explain why humans are attracted to one another, we must first understand what we mean by attraction, how we would classify it and how (if at all) it can be divided. Attraction is the act of causing something to come closer or the arousal of a thing’s interest. In human terms this is merely the coming together of two people, and as such can be classified by the reasons for this teaming up. The first cause of attraction can be stated as the ‘propinquity effect’, or the simple case of proximity leading to interpersonal relationships. In a large number of studies, it was proven that a chance closeness of two people often led to friendships being formed. One example of this was an experiment carried out in 1967 by Priest and Sawyer. They questioned a group of American students living in College dormitories, and showed that roommates were twice as likely to be friends as they were with all other floormates. In turn floormates were more than twice as likely to be friends with each other than they were with all other dormitory residents. The same effect is also evident with primary school children, whose friends can be predicted via the register (due to seating plans). The strength and relevance of this effect was exemplified by a study carried out in 1978 by Berscheid and Walster. They showed that the further apart fiancées live the higher the chance that the engagement will be broken off. This suggests that not only is proximity a strong determinant in a relationship, but it may well also be an important founding principle.

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It has been suggested that this proximity effect is directly related to another determinant, familiarity. This is the concept that sheer exposure to people can cause a bond to appear over time. It seems that people tend to have an affinity for that which is familiar and therefore more comfortable to them. This is seen when a group is shown two prints of a photo of one member of the group (one normal photo, the other a mirror image) and asked which one they prefer. The friends always say the original whereas the subject will say the mirror image (as these ...

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