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