In the Digital Age, what are we looking for in other persons? What causes attraction?

Key Factors in Attraction

1. Physical Attractiveness

• Is it "personality" or "looks" at the beginning of a relationship?
• Key factor early in relationship (according to the research) = physical attractiveness, esp. by males looking for females
• Matching hypothesis: we are likely to take as partners people who are roughly about the same level of physical attractiveness, e.g., married couples tend to be similar.

2. Similarity

• Do opposites attract? Not really.
  • Couples tend to be similar on many qualities: age, race, religion, SES, attitudes, intelligence, etc.
  • Friendship: similarities of SES, education, religion, ethnicity, occupational status

• Shared attitudes (attitude similarity), beliefs, and outlooks

• People become more alike in how they think (attitude alignment)
  

3. Reciprocity

• We like those who like us. By showing us that they like us, we tend to respond (reciprocate)
• Married & dating partners: Tendency to idealize the other partner, i.e., you have a higher estimate of the other than they have of themselves.
• Best relationships: focus on partner's virtues and positive factors rather than faults or negatives.

4. Some Other Factors (not in textbook)

• Proximity & physical closeness (including "mere exposure"): Individuals who are near one another and cross each others' paths on a regular basis are more likely to be attracted. Indeed, the simple experience of being exposed to another person for an extended period of time shows increased levels of attraction.
  

• Communication style: When confronted by stereotypical masculine and feminine communication patterns, both sexes preferred the stereotypical female communication style (i.e., empathy, support, sharing experiences, and asking questions; Wright et al., 2007).

• Behavioral Displays: Behaviors which develop rapport (= "a close and harmonious relationship in which the people or groups concerned understand each others' feelings or ideas and communicate well") and trust, particularly direct behaviors such as sitting/standing closer, talking, eye gaze, smiling, laughing, and mimicry (= making same facial & other gestures as the other; Montoya et al., 2018).

Perspectives on the Mystery of LOVE

              

Elaine Hatfield (U Hawaii, L)
Ellen Berscheid (U Minn, M)

Types: Passionate & Companionate Love

• Passionate Love => intense absorption or attention to the other including tender sexual feelings and intense emotions. This predominates in the beginnings of a marital relationship.
    
• Companionate Love => feelings of warmth, affection, trust, and tolerance toward another whose life is closely connected with one's own. This kind of love begins to predominate in a marital relationship which has matured. However, in long-term couples, there is still a relatively high degree of passion late in their relationship.
  

Love and Attachment

Do adult styles of relationship and love parallel patterns of attachment of infants and children?

Cindy Hazan (Cornell)

Phil Shaver (UC Davis)

Recall the attachment styles of infants and children Secure Avoidant Anxious (or Anxious-Ambivalent) In 1980s, Hazan & Shaver found parallels between adult relationship (attachment) styles and early parenting & infancy attachment styles. They found that adults recalled that the quality of their interactions as children with parents was similar in many respects to the ways in which they responded in current relationships.

Adult Attachment Style

YouTube Video demonstrating these styles in adulthood (4'19")

• Secure: Ease in entering into relationships, getting close to others, and trusting the partner in a relationship
• Avoidant: How comfortable person is with emotional intimacy and closeness in relationships. Highly avoidant adults find it difficult to get close to others, lack of intimacy
• Anxious (or Anxious-Ambivalent): Worried about being appreciated by partner. Highly anxious adults are reoccupied with love, expectation of rejection by their partner, jealousy, volatile relationship with partner. They do not feel that they can rely upon their partner and

Research has tended to support these findings:

• Securely attached adults => more committed, more satisfied, longer duration in relationships
• Anxious (-ambivalent adults) => greater swings (highs & lows) in their relationships; experience greater stress when in conflict with partner
• Avoidant => more casual sex which requires little psychological intimacy
• Avoidant & anxious-ambivalent adults do not seek out similar adults as partners

"Highly avoidant people are not always unsupportive, withdrawn, or uncooperative in their romantic relationships; instead, the defining attributes of avoidance are elicited by certain types of stressful situations, such as feeling pressure to give or receive support, to become more emotionally intimate, and/or to share deep personal emotions. Likewise, highly anxious people are not always clingy, demanding, or prone to engaging in dysfunctional conflict resolution tactics; rather, the prototypic features of anxiety are evoked by certain types of stressful situations, especially those that threaten the stability or quality of their current relationship" (Simpson & Rholes, 2017, p. 22)

 Culture and Close Relationships

• As evolutionary psychology finds and we have already discussed, individuals across multiple cultures tend to look for the same qualities in perspective mates, e.g., attractiveness, intelligence, etc.

• HOWEVER, the emphasis on passionate love in individualist Western culture is not universally found. Note that Western marriage on the basis of shared passion is an 18th century invention.
  

• Marriages arranged by families and other go-betweens are common in highly collectivist cultures. While there is certainly romantic love in collectivist cultures, this is a far less important factor in marrying. And, despite Western beliefs about how important romance may be, there is little evidence that arranged marriages in other cultures are less successful. 

Internet and Close Relationships

• Online social relationships have only been available for the last ten to twenty-five years (e.g., World Wide Web 1993, eHarmony.com 2000, Facebook 2004, YouTube 2005, Twitter 2006, iPhone 2007, SnapChat 2012)
• "Online dating has become the most common way for couples to meet in the United States… Fifty-two percent of Americans who have never been married say they have tried their luck with online dating…” (Sharabi, 2022)
  
• In the United States about one-third of marriages during 2005-2012 involved couples who originally met via the Internet (Cacioppo et al. 2013)

• Facebook
• Motives: we have a need to belong & need to present ourselves positively (= "impression management")
  
• The overall impact of Facebook and other social media on relationships is debated and mixed.
  
• Evidence for increased social interaction and positive, e.g., increased self-esteem, perceived social support, safe identity exploration, increased self-disclosure. BUT,
• Evidence for negative outcomes: cyberbullying, social isolation, and depression.

• Online Dating/Matching Sites (Match.com, eHarmony.com, OkCupid.com, etc.)
  
• Multiple online sites which argue that they apply scientific & statistically-generated "matching" algorithms to find who would best be matched with another.
  
• Most sites do not share their data and there are few studies showing whether a particular site or dating application either improves or inhibits positive social interaction.
  
• Like the results with Facebook, the research we do have suggests a mixed set of outcomes

• Adults tend to report having a positive experience via online dating sites (getting to know someone more easily, less pressure. Why? Perhaps because the matching algorithms do work. But, there may also be a "placebo" effect: "Sharabi (2021) uncovered a placebo effect in online dating, where people’s positive expectations for compatibility matching predicted better first dates regardless of how well the algorithms actually worked" (Sharabi, 2022)
  

• HOWEVER, there are regular reports of negative outcomes: people may lie about various personal characteristics (age, wealth, jobs); danger of financial exploitation with scammers trying to get funds from potential partners; and, unwanted sexual aggression electronically (forcing the sharing of explicit pics, etc.; Vanderweerd et al., 2016).
  

• Is there a difference in relationship outcomes for couples who initially met either in person or online? 
  
• An international study of couples in 50 countries found that "“participants who met their partners online reported lower relationship satisfaction and lower intensity of experienced love compared to those who met offline, with effect sizes ranging from small to medium” (Kowal et al., 2025, Abstract)
• Sharabi & Dorrance-Hall (2024) found a similar effect of lowered satisfaction in a US-based study, but suggested couples meeting online tended to be more geographically separated and were more socially marginalized than couples meeting in person.