Interpersonal Attraction

Both personal characteristics and environment play a role in interpersonal attraction. A major determinant of attraction is propinquity, or physical proximity. People who come into contact regularly and have no prior negative feelings about each other generally become attracted to each other as their degree of mutual familiarity and comfort level increases. The situation in which people first meet also determines how they will feel about each other. One is more likely to feel friendly toward a person first encountered in pleasant, comfortable circumstances.

In social psychology, interpersonal attraction is the attraction between people which leads to friendships and romantic relationships. In a colloquial sense, interpersonal attraction is related to how much we like, love, dislike, or hate someone. The study of interpersonal attraction is a major area of study in social psychology. Interpersonal attraction can be thought of as a force acting between two people tending to draw them together, and resisting their separation. A person or a person's qualities that tend to attract do so by appealing to another person's desires. When measuring interpersonal attraction, one must refer to the qualities of the attracted as well as the qualities of the attracter to achieve predictive accuracy. Repulsion is also a factor in the process of interpersonal attraction, one's conception of "attraction" to another can vary from extreme attraction to extreme repulsion.

Many factors leading to interpersonal attraction have been studied. The most frequently studied are:

1. Familiarity
2. Physical attractiveness
3. Propinquity
4. Reciprocal liking
5. Reward/Reinforcement
6. Similarity

Proximity And Familiarity
What is the first determinant of whether or not we like someone else? Classic research by the late Leon Festinger and his colleagues examined the best friend selections among older college students and tehir spouses. In anaylzing the various factors that seemed to link students with those they linked most, only one emerged as a common denominator: proximity. Students who came to like each other lived closer to each other than those who did not.

The proximity effect -- the influence of physical nearness in increasing interpersonal attraction -- has since been extended to many environments and situations. Social popularity is also influenced by proximity; people who have more contact with others, eg. by living on the ground floor of a high-rise building, near an exit, or near a common facility like a laundry room -- are more popular than those who have less contact with others.

Research by social psychologist Robert Zajonc has identified the key variable in the proximity effect as the power of "mere exposure" or familiarity. The familiarity effect works with inanimate objects as well as humans. People can become fond of a landmark they once considered an ugly eyesore, simply through a process of getting used to it over time. As things and people become familiar, less novel, they become more predictable, and our uncertainty about them is reduced. In general, familiar people are attractive people.

Physical attractiveness
When people are described as "attractive", most of us assume that means "good-looking", although attraction is a process that can involve many kinds of appeal.

Research on interpersonal attraction has consistently concluded that we are attracted to good-looking, or physically attractive people.

One reason for physical attractiveness effect is the physical attractiveness stereotype. Physically attractive people as a cognitive "group" are considered to be attractive in other ways, such as in talent, friendliness, intelligentce, and conversational skills. In essence, most of us seem to believe that "what is beautiful is good". While good looks can help someone to succeed or make favourable impressions, follow-up research on some physically attractive people indictates that their only difference from average-looking people is that they may be more likely eventually to marry. Beautiful people do not appear more likely to be successful in other ways than the rest of us.

Similarity
By far the most consistent finding in analyzing interpersonal attraction is that we like others who are similar to ourselves. This similarity can be a quality of our intelligence levels, physical appearances(a trend known as "matching"), or especially our attitudes. Research on long-term relationships indicates that, the more alike two people are at the beginning of their relationship, the more likely their relationship will last.



Beauty And Love
Whenever Beauty looks,
Love is also there;

Whenever beauty shows a rosy cheek
Love lights Her fire from that flame.

When beauty dwells in the dark folds of night
Love comes and finds a heart entangled in tresses.

Beauty and Love are as body and soul.
Beauty is the mine, Love is the diamond.
They have together

since the beginning of time-
Side by side, step by step.