There are many different terms and phrases used to describe the ideal setup for the perfect relationship. “Opposites attract”, “Birds of a feather flock together.” But the reality of it isn’t as simple. These phrases are often used to over-simplify the often complicated emotional attachment we have with others as well as dumb down any psychological aspects of our attraction to others. The reality of relationships is that it truly isn’t that simple.
The phrase “Opposites attract” is used meaning that people with very different beliefs/interests will be drawn to one another. This may be true for short-term relationships, but in the long-term those differences will cause conflict and negativity. (Nelson, 2018) The differences that someone has is attractive due to the excitement of seeing something different, or experiencing a different lifestyle/interest – but if someone truly doesn’t share the same interests, beliefs, and thought processes it will only lead to the end of the relationship.
“Birds of a feather flock together” is the over-simplification of the belief that people who share more values, thoughts, and interests will be brought together. In most cases, for long-term relationships this is the truth. However, rather than the interest stemming from the things in common – it could be the lack of chances of conflict that allows the relationship to thrive. The psychological term for birds of a feather is the similar-to-me-effect. This effect states that individuals get along with others that think and look like they do, however, like all things pertaining to attraction – there are outliers.
Attraction is extremely complicated and has many variables, however psychologically the desire for the similar-to-me-effect in romantic partners is the easiest explanation. Being able to share the same hobbies, interests, beliefs, thoughts, and even looks with someone allows a relationship to experience life as a pair rather than two individuals that will inevitably have conflict if things weren’t so similar. Relationships differ across many cultures and areas within the United States. Different customs, upbringings, and social settings can heavily influence what someone seeks in another partner. The psychology behind relationships is determined both by desired evolutionary traits (physical fitness for example), and cultural reinforcement.
References
Nelson, A. (2018). Lesson 12 Relationships/Every day life, Attraction. Retrieved November 11, 2018. https://psu.instructure.com/courses/1942493/modules/items/25002553
Schneider, F.W., Gruman, J.A., & Coutts, L.A. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems-2nded. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
You make a good point. It makes sense that people with similarities would “flock” towards each other. There are a lot of factors that go into mate choice, and having clashing traits seems like it would be quite the issue down the line when trying to build a life together. But like you said, there are a lot of factors that are involved in this. In fact, during my research for my blog post, I found that for certain groups of people, namely online gamers, physical attractiveness wasn’t the most important factor when it came to choosing relationships; rather it was social and task performance that were the desired traits (Coulson et al., 2018). I think that can be linked to your post in the sense that these people are bonding over a commonality that they share, and they enjoy when others perform well at that task, specifically gaming. Perhaps it would be difficult if a gamer were to have a relationship with a non gamer because one would want to spend all their time playing, while the other may want to go around and do things in real life. Just an example of how opposites might not attract, like you said.
References:
Coulson, M. C., Oskis, A., Meredith, J., & Gould, R. L. (2018). Attachment, attraction and communication in real and virtual worlds: A study of massively multiplayer online gamers. Computers in Human Behavior, 87, 49-57. doi:http://dx.doi.org.ezaccess.libraries.psu.edu/10.1016/j.chb.2018.05.017
Another way of looking at attraction is understanding the role that proximity and familiarity play in it. The proximity effect is a great concept to use in explaining the connection between attraction and the frequency in which two people interact. The proximity effect is the tendency for physical and psychological nearness to increase interpersonal liking. (Schneider et. al, 2012) Proximity involves being near or accessible to another person and familiarity refers to recognizability based on long or close association. Combining these two definitions makes it a bit clearer how they work together to influence attraction. The closer in proximity individuals are, the more likely they are to come into close contact with each other. The more close contact (exposure) that they have, the more familiar they become with each other. Frequent contact then increases the perceived similarities between the two. All of these factors combined work to affect the level of attractiveness people feel for others. This explains the concept of “Bids of a feather flock together”.
I can use a personal example to better explain how the concepts work together. I have become close friends with one of the people I work with. When she first began working with me, she was a stranger. I wasn’t initially attracted to her, but as time progressed, and I had frequent interactions with her, I began to figure out we had a lot of things in common. We started out as strangers, without any pre-existing judgments on each other. Due to our close proximity in the workplace, we had constant exposure to each other, which made us more familiar with each other. As we became more, familiar with each other, we realized we had many of the same interests and we shared many of the same ideals. Now, we hold conversations daily speaking about a host of topics. Our attraction, while not necessarily physical, was built through our close proximity and increased familiarity with each other, thus illustrating the mechanics behind the proximity effect.
Schneider, F.W., Gruman, J.A., & Coutts, L.A. (2012). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems-2nded. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.