17.08.2022
When we say that we like or love someone, we are experiencing interpersonal attraction -the strength of our liking or loving for another person. There is a large literature on the variables that lead us to like others in our initial interactions with them, and we’ll review the most important findings here (Sprecher, Wenzel, & Harvey, 2008).
Although it may seem inappropriate or shallow to admit it, and although it is certainly not the only determinant of liking, people are strongly influenced, at least in initial encounters, by the physical attractiveness of their partners (Swami & Furnham, 2008). Elaine Walster and her colleagues (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, & Rottman, 1966) arranged a field study in which college boys and girls were randomly paired with one another at a “computer dance.” After the partners had danced and talked for a couple of hours, they were interviewed separately about their own preferences and characteristics as well as about their perceptions of their date. Walster and her colleagues found that the only important determinant of participants‘ liking for their date was his or her physical attractiveness.
Perhaps this finding doesn’t surprise you too much, given the importance of physical attractiveness in popular culture https://besthookupwebsites.org/the-league-review/. Movies and TV shows often feature unusually attractive people, TV ads use attractive people to promote their products, and many people spend considerable amounts of money each year to make themselves look more attractive. Even infants who are only a year old prefer to look at faces that adults consider attractive rather than at unattractive faces (Langlois, Ritter, Roggman, & Vaughn, 1991). Více