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Interpersonal Attraction

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Interpersonal Attraction
Interpersonal attraction can be defined as how and what attracts us to individuals. As a college student, I am constantly judging people by the first moment I meet them because I am frequently searching for friends and relations in my life. What sparked my interest to research this topic was my fondness for the opposite sex. I was curious as to what attracted to me to certain men and not others. Initially, I believed I was drawn solely to men from a physical attraction in an original engagement, but I found that there is more to this matter. Although physicality is a large degree of interpersonal attraction, research proves that there are several other determining factors playing a part in attraction on first encounters. The most profound principles I found underlying the first interactions are proximity, similarity, and physicality. It is our natural proclivity as human beings to decide whom we are drawn to even as infants. After much research from psychologists, I accumulated evidence explicating what necessitates interpersonal attraction for various people and its significance in every day life. We are constantly meeting new people, seeing new faces, and choosing whether we feel attractions to individuals consciously or not. Thus, the initial meeting of other people is very influential in the possibility of forming a general relationship and/ or attraction. Since interpersonal attraction is seldom discussed, I found the need to explicate in depth what it implies. In general, attraction is an individual's portrayal of positive attitudes and responses towards someone in a positive manner. For decades, scientists thought that attraction standards were culturally based, but recent studies in this past decade have proven that there truly are psychological means for what makes humans attracted to one another (Symons, 1995). This can come in the form of positive characteristics, positive emotions experienced, and/or positive actions. The


References: Bashton, F. (1992). Interpersonal Attraction. Social Psychology. Chicago: University of Chicago. Gilbert, D. (1998). The Concept of Attraction. The Handbook of Social Psychology. Vol. 2 (pp. 202-215). Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press. Hendricks, C. (1998). Cultural Aspects of Physical Attraction. Miami University. Retrieved February 2, 2006, from Icek, A. (1995). Attraction. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social Psychology. Vol. 2 (pp Johnson, M. (2000). The Theory of Attraction. Retrieved February 2, 2006, from http://www.colostate.edu/Depts/Speech/rccs/theory08.htm Kazdin, A. (2000). Attraction. Encyclopedia of Psychology. Vol. 1 (pp.317-320). Samter, T. (1996). Attraction. Retrieved February 2, 2006, from http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/psychology/attraction.shtml. Symons, G. (1995). Attraction. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall.

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