Attraction

• Examine biological, psychological and social origins of attraction
• To what extent do biological, cognitive and sociocultural factors influences human relationships
• Evaluate psychological research (that is, theories and/or studies) relevant to the study of human relationships

Everyone experiences attraction at some point in their life. But what is it that makes us attracted to another person? This essay will examine the biological, cognitive and sociocultural origins and explanations of attraction.

The biological factors that I will be examining is hormones, effects of neurotransmitters and evolutionary origins, and how they influence attraction.

Modern research has discovered that two hormones help to increase the bond between lovers. These are oxytocin and vasopressin. Oxytocin is a powerful hormone released during sex, which tends to deepen and intensify feelings of attachment. It is also released during childbirth, to help secure the bond between mother and baby. Pederan and Boccia studied rats and found that oxytocin leads to a shift in the mother's focus from grooming herself to grooming the rat pup. Winslow et al found that when animals were injected with vasopressin, they tend to form stable pair bonds and have more sex than neccessary. When male animals were given a drug that suppressed vasopressin, they lost their devotion to their mates and no longer tried to protect them from potential suitors. This shows that vasopressin plays an important role in the commitment of relationships. Both studies show that oxytocin and vasopressin are strong hormones involved in bonding. However, because this study was done on humans, it is difficult to generalise to humans. Also, the way in which animals show love may be interpreted differently by humans.

Neurotransmitters also explain why we are attracted to others. Chemical substances in the brain make us obsessed, addicted, or in love with a specific person causing us to alter our behaviour. Mazaritti studied 60 individuals: 20 were men and women who had fallen in love in the last 6 months; 20 others had suffered from obsessive-compulsive disorder; and the other 20 were healthy individuals who were not in love (control group). By analysing blood samples from the lovers, Mazaritti discovered that low serotonin levels in new lovers were the same with those with obsessive-compulsive disorder. The study established a possible connection between romantic love and low levels of serotonin in the blood.

Though research on biochemistry helps us to explain what is happening to an individual when falling in love and forming attachments, it doesn't explain why we find some people more attractive than others. Evolutionary theories argue that the purpose of attraction is to procreate, to ensure that an individual's genes are passed on to the next generation. Buss et al found that in all cultures in the world, men generally desire younger woman as they are more fertile and therefore can bear more children, whereas woman desire older men as they have more resources for protecting each other and the offspring. Clarke and Hatfield found that men are more likely than woman to accept casual sex. This is because, from an evolutionary view, it is less risky for a man and they can pass on their genes and produce more offspring. However, a woman can only carry one child at a time and it is to her best advantage to make sure that she is given as much protection as possible for each offspring. Thus, woman are more selective when it comes to picking a partner for sex than men.

Wedekind wanted to see if body odour plays an important role in attraction. He tested the role of genes related to the immune system in mate selection. MHC genes are co-dominant, meaning that both sets of inherited genes have an effective on the child's immune system, so the more diverse the MHC genes of the parents, the better the immune system of the offspring. He recruited a group of 49 women and 44 men, with a wide range of MHC genes, and gave each men a clean t-shirt to wear for two nights. They were not allowed eat spicy food and had to use odour-free soap and aftershave. After the men returned the shirts, Wedekind put each shirt in a cardboard box with a sniffing hole at the top. Women were asked to come back at the mid-point of her menstrual cycle, where her sense of smell is at its strongest. They were presented with a different set of seven boxes. Three of the seven boxes contained t-shirts from men with similar MHC genes to women, the other three contained t-shirts from men with different MHC genes and one contained an unworn t-shirt as a control. The women were then asked to rate each of the seven t-shirts as pleasant or unpleasant. The women were more likely to prefer the scent of men with dissimilar MHC. According to Wedekind, choosing mHC-dissimilar mates serve three purposes: increasing fertility, producing healthy offsprings and reduce the risk of genetic disease. This explains why some women find a certain odor as absolutely beautiful or extremely dreadful. No one man spells good for everyone - it depends on who is sniffing him. However, this only explains a woman's attraction to men, but does not explain a men's attraction to woman.

Apart from biological factors, cognitive factors may also explain the origins of attraction. The attraction-similarity model suggests that we usually want to perceive our friends and partners that are similar to us, therefore we are more attracted to those that are similar to us. Market et al investigated the extent to which similarity is a factor in the way people choose partners. Using questionnaires, the researchers asked a large sample of young people to describe their ideal romantic partner. They were then asked to describe themselves. The results showed that the way people described themselves were similar to what their ideal partner was like. The study confirmed that people want partners who are similar to themselves. However, because the results were based on questionnaires, it may not be reliable as there is the problem of social desirability bias, which is where people want to make themselves sound better. But because this study was conducted on a relatively large sample, this enhances the validity of the study.

Self-esteem may also a play a role in relationship formation. Kiesler et al carried out an experiment where they administered a fake IQ on a group of men. They were then given fake scores. One group of men were told that they had scored off the charts - the best they had ever seen. Another group were told that there must have been a mistake with the IQ test because they had scored abnormally low. After the scores were given, the individual men waited in a waiting room for their pay for taking part in the study. During that time, a very attractive woman walked into the room. The experimenters wanted to see if the participant's self-esteem would affect their willingness to engage in discussion with the attractive woman. They found that men who had "high IQ scores" and therefore high self-esteem were more likely to engage in conversation with the woman much more quickly than men who were given low test scores. However, there are some limitations to this study in that attractiveness is very subjective. Some men may not find her attractive enough to talk to her, or different men prefer different types of women.

The cognitive analysis of attraction can also, to some extent, explain sociocultural factors in attraction. It seems that people prefer similarity in a partner, as well as a partner who can contribute positively to their self-esteem.

People who live close to one another tend to be similar and so probably also have the same social and cultural norms of what is attractive in a partner. Proximity refers to the physical or functional distance between individuals and suggests that the smaller the distance separating the individuals, the greater the chance of attraction taking place. Festinger et al studied student friendship patterns in university campus housing and found that the students were most friendly with those living next door, less friendly with those living two doors away and least friendly with those living at the end of the corridor. Likewise, Bossard found that couples in Chicago who lived within one block of each other were more likely to get married than those who lived two blocks apart. People prefer stimuli that they have seen more often. Close proximity clearly increases the chance of repeated exposure, which may lead to familiarity and a sense of trust. This theory might explain why long distance relationships hardly work and that people often fall out of love when they don't see their lover as often.