“I couldn’t help it, I was head over heels!”
“I knew the minute I met her that I’d marry her!”
“I don’t care what anyone else says, I love him!”
We tend to think of love as a whirlwind, swooping us up in an uncontrollable gust of fate and passion. But the truth is, falling in love is predictable. It’s easy. It’s mechanical. Or at least that’s what the experts say.
The summer after my sophomore year of college, I stayed in my college town to work. I met a co-worker (we’ll call him Kevin) and soon I found myself spending almost everyday with him, working long shifts. We’d work 8 to 10 hour days, sometimes full of idle time, which then led to idle chat, which then led to deep conversation. We quickly became accustomed to each other. We could communicate through glances and gesture. We spent so much time together; we literally didn’t even need to use words to talk.
The mere exposure effect, a theory that predicts people fall for those they spend the most time with, would suggest that Kevin would be a prime candidate for my affections (Bornstein, 1989). Proximity plays a huge role in the people we choose (or not) to love. When we are exposed to the same people regularly, we evaluate them more highly than those we rarely spend time with. Kevin and I were nearly tied at the hips, spending all waking hours working together and evenings hanging out since hardly anyone else was left in town.
We’d put on Pandora when cleaning at work, and when he put on his “Modest Mouse” station, I high-fived him over our shared taste in music. From there the similarities kept coming: we liked the same kind of movies, the same t.v. shows; we shared common views on friendships, family and relationships. The similarities were uncanny. We became best friends in a matter of weeks.
What I didn’t know at the time was that this was the beginning of a complicated courtship, and Kevin was falling victim to he birds-of-a-feather effect, a theory that suggests that we’re attracted to those we perceive as similar to ourselves (Brehm et al., 2002). These similarities range from likes and dislikes, values and parallel personalities (Neimeyer & Mitchell, 1988). Obviously, some traits are more important than others. For example, similar taste in music does not guarantee life-long happiness; if two people share totally different value systems, the relationship will dissolve eventually over fundamental differences. Likewise, small differences are easy to overcome if the couple shares similar values.
Romantic attraction has two more characteristics: physical attraction and resources. I would write about Kevin and I again, but I feel weird discussing my own attractiveness or amount of resources. Instead I’ll explain what these mean in terms of romantic relationships. Obviously, physical attraction is a huge indicator in predicting the blossoming of a romance. Resources, though, refers to the things we can offer to our partners: stability, money, care, sex, affection. If we perceive a person to have a lot of resources to offer, we’re more attracted to them (Kelley & Thibaut, 1978).
Unfortunately, while these four dimensions were enough to convince Kevin that we should be together, I never felt the burning passion or jittery butterflies that a person feels when they’re falling in love. So, maybe love isn’t as mechanical as the experts say?
What do you think? Is love too emotional to be this logical? Can the love you’ve experienced be explained by these phenomena?
Bornstein, R. F. (1989). Exposure and affect: Overview and meta-analysis of research, 1968-1987. Psychological Bulletin, 106, 265-289.
Brehm, S. S., Miller, R. S., Perlman, D., & Campbell, S. M. (2002). Intimate relationships (3rd ed.). Boston: McGraw-Hill.
Kelley, H. H., & Thibaut, J. W. (1978). Interpersonal relations: A theory of interdependence. New York: Wiley.
Neimeyer, R. A., & Mitchell, K. A. (1988). Similarity and attraction: A longitudinal study. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 5, 131-148.
