Interpersonal attraction describes how and why individuals choose to enter relationships with others. It can encompass any type of relationship, however, this essay looked exclusively at romantic pairings. This essay critically evaluated studies associated with the variables influencing interpersonal attraction. These variables consisted of physical attraction, humour, attitude similarity and familiarity. Four studies regarding physical attraction and looking at the subareas of men and women, photographs and person to person attraction irrefutably support the argument that physical attraction has the strongest influence upon attraction. Balancing this, humour and attitude similarity were shown to have limited impact upon attraction while results
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Humour is one such variable which has long thought to have been associated with attraction and is a psychological response to a positive emotion provoked by amusement (Warren & McGraw, 2016). McGee and Shevlin (2008) studied the effect that humour has upon interpersonal attraction. This studied utilised a survey descriptive research design and asked participants to read a description of the target relating to humour and then answer a questionnaire indicating how attracted they were to the person. Participants consisted of 180 undergraduate students, with equal quantities of male and female with a mean age of 24 (SD= 3.2 years). This research shows that humour has a positive effect on attraction. In addition to this, Murstein and Brust (1985) conducted a humour test among 30 college couples (4 couples were married) using comic strips and found that humour was associated with how much they loved their partners. Although these two studies suggest a positive relation between humour and interpersonal attraction, the variable does not provide statistically strong evidence to determine the causation behind why people are interpersonally attracted to one another, due to humour's person-to-person …show more content…
Similar attitudes can mean people's values and interests align with each (Burton, Westen, & Kowalski, 2015) and can also influence how people choose relationships (Batool & Malik, 2010). Condon and Crano (1998) investigated this variable using a descriptive case study method where subjects (N=226) were asked to complete a survey regarding their attitude on several topics. The results showed that the relationship between similarity and attraction was influenced by how the subjects believed strangers were evaluating of them, therefore, results were limited and the results could show no concrete significance. In addition to this, Montoya, Horton, & Kirchner (2008) combined 313 laboratory and field investigations assessing the impact of actual and perceived similarity upon attraction. Initially, the lab results indicated that associations between both types of similarity to be a strong indicator of interpersonal attraction patterns. However, once the experiment was conducted in the ‘real world' similarity was not a statistically significant variable of interpersonal attraction, and did not lead to attraction in existing relationships. Evidence provided through these two studies suggest that in real world circumstances, attitude similarity has little effect upon interpersonal
Humour is one such variable which has long thought to have been associated with attraction and is a psychological response to a positive emotion provoked by amusement (Warren & McGraw, 2016). McGee and Shevlin (2008) studied the effect that humour has upon interpersonal attraction. This studied utilised a survey descriptive research design and asked participants to read a description of the target relating to humour and then answer a questionnaire indicating how attracted they were to the person. Participants consisted of 180 undergraduate students, with equal quantities of male and female with a mean age of 24 (SD= 3.2 years). This research shows that humour has a positive effect on attraction. In addition to this, Murstein and Brust (1985) conducted a humour test among 30 college couples (4 couples were married) using comic strips and found that humour was associated with how much they loved their partners. Although these two studies suggest a positive relation between humour and interpersonal attraction, the variable does not provide statistically strong evidence to determine the causation behind why people are interpersonally attracted to one another, due to humour's person-to-person …show more content…
Similar attitudes can mean people's values and interests align with each (Burton, Westen, & Kowalski, 2015) and can also influence how people choose relationships (Batool & Malik, 2010). Condon and Crano (1998) investigated this variable using a descriptive case study method where subjects (N=226) were asked to complete a survey regarding their attitude on several topics. The results showed that the relationship between similarity and attraction was influenced by how the subjects believed strangers were evaluating of them, therefore, results were limited and the results could show no concrete significance. In addition to this, Montoya, Horton, & Kirchner (2008) combined 313 laboratory and field investigations assessing the impact of actual and perceived similarity upon attraction. Initially, the lab results indicated that associations between both types of similarity to be a strong indicator of interpersonal attraction patterns. However, once the experiment was conducted in the ‘real world' similarity was not a statistically significant variable of interpersonal attraction, and did not lead to attraction in existing relationships. Evidence provided through these two studies suggest that in real world circumstances, attitude similarity has little effect upon interpersonal