Interpersonal attraction.

-Interpersonal Attraction-


Interpersonal attraction is the attraction between people which leads to friendships and romantic relationships. In a colloquial sense, interpersonal attraction is related to how much we like, love, dislike, or hate someone. Interpersonal attraction can be thought of as a force acting between two people tending to draw them together, and resisting their separation. According to a personality psychologists' view, interpersonal attraction is a person's qualities that tend to attract by appealing to another person's desires.

When measuring interpersonal attraction, one must refer to the qualities of the attracted as well as the qualities of the attractor to achieve predictive accuracy. The study of interpersonal attraction is a major area of study in social psychology. They suggest that to determine attraction, personality and situation must be taken into account. Repulsion is also a factor in the process of interpersonal attraction, one's conception of "attraction" to another can vary from extreme attraction to extreme repulsion.

Many factors leading to interpersonal attraction have been studied. The most frequently studied are:

Physical attractiveness
Proximity
Familiarity
Similarity
Reciprocal liking
Reinforcement