15. The Psychology of Attraction

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Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome back to the Psychology of Your Twenties, the podcast where we talk through some of the big changes and transitions of our twenties and what they mean for our psychology. It has been a while. I took some time off to do my final week DAMS, and I have officially finished my degree, which is super exciting a little bit nerve racking as well. I think next week I really want to do an episode on like the psychology of life transitions, because I think it would be quite interesting to kind of discuss, especially as I prepare to move cities, say goodbye to camera stop, my new job, all of those things. Yeah, it feels like adulthood is really beginning, and it's a period it's pretty full of like nostalgia for like my first year self excitement, nerves. But that's next week. For this week's episode, I'm pulling something from the archives. We're going to talk about the psychology of attraction. So I did a lot of research into this a few weeks ago, but never got around to recording it because I was obviously stressed. But today is the day. I've just been really fascinated by what creates attraction as a single person, and why we like certain people and don't like others, especially in our twenties when it seems, you know, everyone is having these flings and these attraction than these crushes to people, and we go out to clubs and you know, we meet people and we have this spark. So what kind of creates this so called spark From a psychological perspective, We're going to explore the answer to that. But I wanted to take more of a social psychology approach rather than biological as we traditionally hear about. You know, obviously we can't really talk about attraction without talking about the neural and hormonal origins. But I want to discuss more so how attraction for in a social environment, for romantic partners obviously, but also friendships as well, while we attracted to certain people and not others. Okay, So there is this theory often flaunted by the skeptics of love that attraction is merely chemical, love is merely chemical romance, all of those things. It's quite like a biological reductionist approach that we can explain everything based on what neurotransmitters of release, what hormones are released in those kind of things, and attraction occurs because of hormones mostly related to procreation and sex, that are released when we see someone who arouses us or meets our preferences or our love map, which is something I'm going to discuss a bit later, and it's attracted like that instantaneous attraction. It's often associated with high levels of serotonin and estrogen for women and testosterone for men, and we find people initially attractive because of what is unlocked in our brains and bodies. Also, when I was researching this, for the women who are listening or for those who identify as female or who have periods, it's really interesting because you're more likely to find people attractive during certain periods of like your menstrual cycle. So right after you like finish your period, before you begin to opulate, before you're like most fertile, I guess that's the period where you're most likely to experience like attraction, which is really interesting, and that drops off after you've ovulated towards like when your period's about to start. So attraction can be caused by things like physical appearance obviously, but also other factors like smell. So a study that was done this year actually well was published this year found that women with certain sense are more attractive to men. So turns out that we are most appealing when we have high estrogen and low progression levels, which is, like I said, more more ovulating. And this balance of hormones indicates high female fertility, which is a huge kind of driver of attraction. I feel like when we're thinking about it from a sex perspective or a mating perspective, And the research is explained that it makes sense that men find women more attractive while they're at this stage because of that instinct to mate into career offspring. Another one, another factor that also has a big kind of role to play an attraction is a voice. So another study a few years ago, so a bit outdated, but it found that women prefer men with low voices. And there could be something inherently biological in this, as deeper voices have been linked to producing healthier children in the While lower pitch is associated with being bigger, it might also indicate greater testosterone levels if your voice is low, which is really interesting, so smell, voice, all of these things that we initially get from someone when we first meet them, and other factors that kind of create that rush of serotonin that a company's attraction may be certain features like muscles and how tall you are, if you have good skin, facial traits, tan skin posture, all of which can be indicative of someone's fertility obviously, but also the capacity to protect, to care, and to nurture. So although like instant attraction might be biologically based, it's also influenced by a number of social and environmental factors that more so allow love and other feelings of attraction, but more than that to kind of blossom. Okay, but now moving on to what leads to attraction and friendship beyond that initial spark, that initial first glance, love at first side thing. So there are four factors that psychologists often identify as leading to attraction. So that's proximate, physical attractiveness, which we've kind of or discussed, similarity, and liking those who like us. So proximity is probably the strongest predictor of attraction. The more we kind of see and interact with a person, the more likely we are to become friends with them or to become attracted to them. This is really interesting. There was a study that you know, this was a theory at person and there was a study done to kind of confirm this hypothesis, and it was done at the Westgate House community at MIT, so it's like a college basically, And they tracked attraction, relationships, and friendship formation amongst people at various apartment buildings and apartment rooms, and residents had been assigned their apartments at random, which is great, you know, random allocation makes an experiment a lot more generalizable, yes, more valid, more reliable. But research has asked the participants to name the people that they were most attracted to, and they're three closest friends within the living quarters. Sixty five percent of them named people who lived in the same on the same floor, so all people who even lived in the same apartment because it was shared. Forty one percent of them said next door neighbors, so those right across from them. Twenty two percent said two doors down, so you can kind of see as they get farther away, the rate of attraction or friendship kind of drops off. And then ten percent of them said the opposite end of the hallway. So it kind of seems that attraction and the level of friendship that we have towards people, or how attracted we are of them as a person is related to just the physical distance between people, but it's not just like the physical distance. It's also functional distance. So if there are features in your life or where you're living that make it more likely that you will become close to someone will interact with them, that also creates attraction. So if for example, people are living on the same pathway or someone who's living at the bottom of the stairs where you have to pass by every day, they also have a greater chance of meeting people and building those friendships, but also that attraction with people that they meet. So the proximity effect, it does seem largely to be due to mere exposure sore exposure effect. It's basically the tendency to rate stimuli more positively after you've been exposed to them repeatedly. So in the case of attraction, you rate someone as more attractive or you're more interested in them the more that you're exposed to them. So we see, the more we see people, the more familiar we become with them, the more likely we are to be attracted to them, to become friends with them, to pursue something with them, And obviously, like there are limitations, like if the persons really mean doesn't really matter how close they are. It's probably worse if they're closer to you and you don't like them. But in general, proximity effect does seem to kind of hold up. And it's also to deal with familiarity. It builds affection and liking. So the more exposure, the higher frequency of exposure, the more favorable you are. So that is one of those core things that relates to who you find attractive. It's how close you are distance wise. The second one that we talked about that I noticed was similarity, and this really fuels growing relationships and attraction to someone. So it's not just the physical distance, but it's the match between our interests, our attitudes, values, backgrounds, or personality and those of another person. So if you share things in common, you're more likely to find someone attractive, and the more likely a relationship is to evolve. Research evidence really strongly supports its similarity draws people together. I feel like it's a bit of a no brainer. So you don't think about your friends or the person you're in a relationship with, or someone that you like, you're more likely to share common attitudes. You'll have things that you like in common. For example, if you like bike riding, obviously you're going to people more attracted to someone who shares that interest. Yeah, so if you share things in common, it kind of makes sense that attraction will evolve, especially because I guess people who are similar to us will like the same things as us. But also they validate our own characteristics and beliefs, so they provide us with this feeling that we are right, that what we like is right, how we feel is right, and that's really important for our self esteem, which is why we might be attracted to them because they validate us. And we also tend to make negative and automatic inferences about someone who disagrees with us on an important issue or who dislikes the things that we like, because that kind of provides a bit of hostility or kind of I don't know, push back towards what you think is good in the world and is so powerful you know, liking someone though, if you just like who they are, that it can make up for an absence of similarity. So things, you know, having things in common is important, but if you just really like someone, sometimes that doesn't even matter. And this is where the principle of reciprocity comes in. So we like people who like us, which kind of links back to that self esteem self awareness hypothesis. Reciprocal liking sometimes occurs because of a self fulfilling prophecy. So when we expect people to like us, or we think that they like us, that elicits more favorable behavior from us, which means they're more likely to be favorable or kind to us back. So, there was a study done I think in the eighties, right when like attraction psychology was starting to take place, and basically, these two guys, Curtis and Miller, they got these college students to participate in pairs, and the pairs both members of the pairs they hadn't met each other before, and one member of each pair was selected randomly to no certain information that the other student either liked or disliked them. Obviously, this wasn't based on anything. The research has made it up, so they kind of like manipulated the experiment. So one member of the pair was told, Oh, yeah, this person that you're meaning today they really like you or they've heard about you, and you know, maybe in another pair, the research would be like, oh, they actually dislike you. I don't think that you guys will get along. So those who believed that they were liked initially, they behaved more positively, they disclosed more, disagreed less, and behaved just in general more warmly to their partner, whereas those who believed they weren't liked actually ended up getting along with the person a lot less, even if initial personality tests or interest tests had proven that they actually had quite a lot in common. So the partner kind of mirrored that of the other member of the pairs. So if you thought someone wasn't going to like you, probably weren't going to be as warm to them because you were initially hostile or vigilant against an attack against your sense of self. This is obviously, maybe not obviously, but interestingly moderated by self esteem. So people with a negative self concept, so they don't really like themselves, they don't see themselves very favorably, They respond quite differently in this experiment, which the research has noticed, and would prefer to meet someone who has criticized them before, who the researchers said didn't like them. If someone is it's friendly to them, and you have a negative self concept, then that behavior kind of appears unwarranted because you believe that you're not a good person, and they may not respond positively, So that reciprocation is a huge of attraction. Liking someone who likes us. It makes a lot of sense, obviously. The big one, the one that most people probably think about in terms of attractive, in terms of attraction, is just physical attractiveness. You know, you just find certain people hot, you like what they look like, I guess, and you know, the research checks up against that. Men and women both prefer attractive partners and are more likely to say that they're more attractive or they have greater attraction towards them physically and greater arousal if that person is traditionally attractive. This is one of the best indicators of whether someone would like to date someone, so people they often attribute positive qualities to those who are more attractive. My friend Meg and I were talking about this other day, how attractive people have it so much easier because I think people presume that physically attractive people possess other socially desirable traits as well, because it's indicative of so much more. And our culture kind of promotes this stereotype in less than subtle ways. You know, bad characters and movies they're often ugly, whilst the good ones are beautiful like Cinderella and snow White. They have perfect skin, beautiful bodies, and so we see them as good, whereas those that are ugly we see them as unhealthy. We see them as cruel what we see them as bad, and this has like a lot of research behind it. People really want to hate on attractive people. Will not really hate on attractive people, but they want to know why they kind of get further ahead in life, I guess. So here's a few examples of how this attraction or attractiveness creates attraction or liking someone. So teachers, they often judge attractive students are as more intelligent and unattractive students adults, and nurses who are in pediatric wards they often punish unattractive children more harshly. This study in Texas showed that a judge is more likely judges just correlationally set lower bales and smaller fines for attractive suspects. Attractive people make more money, they get better job ratings from their bosses, and this one is really interesting in terms of attachment and childhood development. Parents they spend more time looking at attractive babies and attractiveness of babies if the baby was really cute was linked to health and treatment in ICU. So nurses and doctors not to say they're biased, this is obviously very implicit, but they tend to spend more time nurturing and caring for babies that look attractive, that look cute. So even in early life, it's really good to be good looking. You know, there's just other things as well. Like attractive people, they're more seen as relaxed and outgoing, and that's a huge thing for attraction. If you think that someone has all of these desirable traits from looking at them, obviously that attraction is going to blossom pretty quickly, and it does create kind of a self fulfilling prophecy. So because attractive people are more valued and favored even from birth, this causes them to develop greater self confidence, and if they're more liked, they might want that feeling to continue. So what ends up happening isn't they get more opportunities they're more valued, so that those other kind of attributes and skills and behaviors that make someone attractive or likable develop from that, And just in terms of like general attractiveness, it's really interesting to note that there is like a lot of cross cultural consistency in terms of body features and what kind of people we're going to find attractive just from the surface level, so across different cultures. Women, in terms of their facial structure, we like people with large and widely separate eyes, small nose, small chin, but also wide cheekbones and narrow cheeks. So if you think about like the traditional model, like the Kendall Genners of the world, they have all those features. Men, on the other hand, very different. We want a square jaw, we want small eyes, thin lips, bushy eyebrows, those kind of things, and a lot of people from different cultures agree on what it's attractive in a face. There's been so many studies that have shown that people across the world find the same types of faces very very attractive, and even infants show this. They prefer the same photographs of adults and they're often the attractive adults, which I think is really interesting in terms of whether attraction to certain features is maybe even biological and link to that health and well being kind of perspective. So attraction towards physical features maybe where the idea of love at first sight has come from. We see it in movies and in books. It's a classical archetype of love, of seeing someone and falling in love with them knowing the other one. But is this really real? Is this a real thing? I think a more important mechanism by which humans become captivated by someone is due to your love map. This was a concept created by a sexologist called John Money, very good name. So long before you fixate on a specific person that you find attractive for various reasons, you've developed a map. It's kind of like a template within your brain that determines what arouses you sexually, what drives you to fall in love with one person rather than another, what drives you to be friends with one person rather than another, to find someone attractive basically, And these love maps, they vary from from one individual to the next. So some people get turned on you by a business suit or a doctor's uniform, large boobs, more feet, laughter, It's all kind of varied, but that averageness and that kind of notion of symmetry still wins out. So in this one study, these psychologists selected thirty two faces of Caucasian women only, and using computers, they averaged all of their features, and then they showed these images to college peers, and of the thirty two photographs of real female faces, only three of them were rated as more appealing than these mixed photos of all the averaged features. So that's really interesting. This kind of idea of averageness and symmetry is really important, and they don't really know why. Obviously the world does not share the same sexual ideals of Caucasian students from some university in America. But like I said, despite widely dissimilar standards of beauty and sex appeal, there are some of those common traits, like the symmetry of the face, the small nose, the large eyes, good complexion. People are also drawn to partners and attracted to people who they regard as clean, which makes sense because you don't want to date someone who has poor hygiene that is really gross. And men, in most places, they generally prefer plump, wide hipped women to slim ones. Women prefer broad shouldered men. So it looks really count in attraction, and so does so does money, which makes sense. Obviously the initial attraction, you might not be able to determine how much someone is worth, maybe by the value of their clothes or something like that. But if you find out that someone has a lot of money or pretty well off, you could become more attractive to them. And this is seen from rule Zulus to urban Brazilians. You know, Caucasian people in Wyoming, men are attracted to young, good looking women, while women are drawn to men with property and money. And these like male female appetites, they're probably in a you know, it's in a male's genetic advantage to fall in love and be attracted to a woman who provides and who could produce viable offspring, and it's in a woman's biological advantage traditionally and from an evolutionary standpoint to be attracted to a man who can help her support a young family or offspring. This can influence love at first sight because we're often immediately captivated by characteristics that fit our love map and feel an insane attraction to that person if they kind of check off things that in our brain circuitry we know would make us happy and arouse and give us that stone and rush. And then I think the other thing is we also create expectations for this person that we have this instantaneous attraction for, and when people meet those expectations. It's a self fulfilling prophecy that makes you kind of feel like you've loved them since the beginning, since you first laid eyes on them. Another important consideration in terms of love at first sight or attraction is that it might have a critical adaptive function amongst animals and including humans. So during the mating season, a female squirrel, for example, needs to breed, and if she sees a healthy squirrel who probably doesn't fit her love map, but maybe the biological physical map of what is a good partner, she really shouldn't waste any more time. She should size him up, see if he's right, and if he looks suitable, she'd probably grabbed the chance to copulate. She needs to have babies. That's what her instinct is driving her towards. So perhaps love at first sight it's no more than an inborn tendency in many creatures that has evolved to spur the mating process. And then among our human ancestors, what has been animal attraction involved into a human sensation of infatuation at a glance and love at first sight. So we've talked about proximity, we've talked about similarity, reciprocal feelings. What else physical attractiveness, But then there's familiarity, and this might be the most important factor that kind of runs through them all. When research participants raided the attractiveness of faces, they rated the faces that most matched or looked like their own as the most attractive. This is because people who are similar to us will also feel familiar to us, and it's reciprocal liking again, people who look like each other. If we see someone a lot, then we begin to understand their face. They've become familiar to us, and that makes us feel comfortable and it makes us feel acknowledged in some ways invalidated, which I just think is really interesting, like how that kind of comes about. How we you know, people who are familiar are more attractive because of that proximity, but also as we become to understand their facial features and feel a sense of comfort around them. So let's jump into some theories of interpersonal attraction, which has kind of been coming towards this. So there are a few. The first one, the most prominent idea in psychology is social exchange theory. This is the idea that people's feelings about attraction and a relationship depends on the perceptions of rewards and costs, the kind of relationship they deserve, and their chances for having a better relationship with someone else. We really want to find the best relationship that we can get, so the rewards that we might kind of weigh up when we first find someone attractive are the positive, gratifying aspects of a potential relationship that make it worthwhile. This might include things like status and physical attractiveness or money as we were considering before. But then there's the costs, and all friendships and relationships they have some costs. However, if rewards at wig costs, will probably pursue that person we find attractive. And this is all dependent on comparison level relative to expectations experience alternatives. If a relationship doesn't match our comparison level of what we expect, we will be unhappy, and it really depends on our point of view. People with a low comparison level, they're more likely to stay in costly relationships, which is quite sad. Like if you don't believe you can do better, that first person you find attractive might just be the one and you might just stick it out with them. There's another idea of equity theory, and this is the idea that people are happiest in relationships where they initially feel attracted to someone when the rewards and costs experienced are shared by both parties equally. So basically what that means is neither one is giving too much. You know, you're not going to be attracted to someone who never texts you back WoT maybe you will, or who makes you feel like they don't want you there or that they don't like you. We're going to be attracted to some one who gives as much as we give into a relationship, and equitable relationships, they're the most happiest and the most stable, and it's a pretty powerful social norm equity. We want people want both people to benefit equally, and people kind of prefer to be the one who benefits more so it's more of a problem for those who are underbenefited. So making sure that it's an equal kind of standing is really good for those long term relationships. Let's try to break down that cycle of long term loving relationships because we have that initial intense liking stage of attraction and that's called passionate love, but that kind of moves on to companion love as we know someone more when that initial attraction, that excitement, that spark begins to fame. So starting with passionate love, it's kind of been what we've been talking about this whole time. It tends to refer to attraction and love that's characterized by high arousal, intense attraction, and fear of attraction. The important aspect is that the person has to attribute arousal to the right target for passionate love to emerge. So sometimes we can confuse arousal and love, and this is called excitation transfer. Excitation transfer. I don't think many people it's not really like a big theory in psychology, which I'm kind of surprised about because it makes a lot of sense, and it comes from this study called Love on the Bridge. So there's two bridges. One bridge has a tendency to tilt and sway and feel unstable and kind of shake around, and the other bridge feels a lot safer, it does not sway, it's not that high up, it's made of concrete, it's very stable. The first bridge, obviously is going to generate a lot more arousal. So we have these participants, male participants, and they were approached on either of the bridges by an attractive female experimenter, and that experimenter they asked the participant to tell them a story about a relationship, and in the suspension bridge condition, where there's a swaying in an unstability, the men wrote more sexual stories and were more likely to call the experimenter to see if their date with this attractive female confederate went well. However, those in the controlled safe bridge condition wrote significantly less sexual stories and only thirteen percent of them called the experimenter, So this is evidence of excitation transfer. Participants on the unsafe bridge were more aroused, but attributed this arousal to meeting the woman, not the bridge, whereas those on the safer bridge didn't feel that same level of physiological arousal. So kind of what this all comes down to is romantic love. We have that attraction, but how does that create romantic love? Interestingly enough, a lot of research has been done into this, and romantic love seems to have a lifespan. Passionate love has a lifespan. More like it that attraction's only really going to last eighteen to twenty months. So you know, if you're lucky, you've got like a year or two years, sorry, like a year and a half two years of that attraction and after that, when relationships do last, companion love appears to be what really sustains a relationship. And this refers companion love, This refers to affection we feel for those whom our lives are deeply entwined to. It's a secure, trusting partnership. So most common responses amongst married couples have been together for more than fifteen years when asked about how they're marriage lasted is that their partner is their best friend or they like their partner as a person. So what enables these kind of close relationships to form. That is what we are going to discuss in this next segment. I guess okay, So there are three important factors that enable close relationships. Number one attachment style. Number two equity, which we kind of already talked about. Number three is self disclosure. Starting with attachment style, so attachment theory, it's really really popular these days in pop culture, but it suggests that a particular weekly learn a particular attachment style as infants from our caregivers, and this kind of becomes our working model. And what attraction and relationship should look like later in life. There's kind of a bit of debate about how many there are, but I think they're therefore so secure. This is rooted in trust and marked by intimacy. Preoccupied, it's marked by someone's own sense of unworthiness and anxiety within a relationship we have dismissive. This is an avoidant relationship marked by distrust for others and fearful. And it's an avoidant relationship marked by a fear of rejection. So those with secure attachment styles are most successful in romantic relationships where attraction has initially formed or passionate love has initially formed. They also appear to have more enduring relationships and they report more satisfaction. It's important, though. I think we see a lot of like tiktoks and Instagram reels, and it's everywhere about what your attachment style is, and it's not predictive. It is in part determined by the person you're with, their behavior and the state of your relationships. And human brains are also plastic, so you can change what your attachment style is and unlearned schemers or things that you've learned from your parents or other caregivers or people around you equity. So this is a condition under which the outcomes that people receive are proportional to what they contribute to a relationship. So people in a stable, long term relationship, they're unconcerned with short term equity and tend not to keep track of what they're giving and receiving. And this is a really healthy long term equity strategy. If you're not keeping track of who's giving more, you often tend to be happier because it always comes around. Finally, self disclosure, and this is the thing I kind of find most interesting. So this kind of refers to feeling intimate aspects of oneself to others, and this really creates greater attraction in a more deep attraction and connection. So in persistent, growing relationships, partners often show increasing self disclosure, and this seems to be driven by principles of disclosure reciprocity, and the tendency to match each other's level of self disclosure. Attraction, Like we've discussed, it builds from biology, but it is molded by our environment, and we can eventually create long lasting, stable love from that initial spark if we follow kind of some of those almost rules of equity and self disclosure and trust. But I just think it's really interesting. You know, we've kind of investigated and talked about that initial feeling and that hormonal rush you know, due to voice and drew to smell and due to attractiveness. But then when we add in factors like proximity and familiarity, reciprocity and similarity, it shows that, you know, it's kind of almost deterministic who we fall for, who we find attractive. It's probably you know, someone you live close to, someone you see a lot, someone who you have things in common with, someone from your neighborhood. So we may not have as much choice as we think. Anyhow, I hope that episode was informative. I hope that you've learned something about maybe your type, your love map, what makes you attracted to certain people and not to others. And I think that's super important. In our twenties, we're attracted to a lot of people, people are really attractive, we're ruling the bang because I don't know, it's that time. So knowing like why you fall for those certain people is really important, I think, or just interesting to know, Like next time you find yourself having a crush, think about some of those factors that we've talked about. You know, it's just because they're like your next door neighbor, or just because you're both like Star Wars or something like that. Obviously not to be taken too seriously. I'm not a professional, but I hope that you enjoyed this episode. And yeah, I'm back on the pod cast grind, so more episodes are coming in the future. I think next week we're definitely going to talk about the psychology of life transitions, which is a huge thing for your twenties, and yeah, that anxiety around it as well. And if you like this episode, remember to subscribe the podcast. It's on Apple, Spotify, Google, so many other places. And thanks to all the support and thanks for bearing with me while I had a little break. Can't wait to record a few more things soon, and thank you for listening.