There’s a biology professor at my local community college who starts each term with a warning to his students: choose your lab partners carefully, you just might end up married to them. As it turns out, I’m part of the reason for that warning.
As we learned this week, the proximity effect has a major impact on the forming of friendships, and I can personally attest to the truth of this. Sometime during the first week of intro biology, I fell into conversation with someone in the row just behind me, completely unaware that I’d just met my future wife, and we became lab partners for the simple reason that we just couldn’t stop talking to each other. The more we talked, the more we found we had in common, and a friendship swiftly formed, though it seems everyone but us (professor included) had noticed there was more to our connection. Someone from a different section came to our lab and was quick to ask if the two of us were dating; I found out years later that if I’d gone with my first instinct and said, ‘No, but it’s because she hasn’t asked me yet,’ she would in fact have asked me out on the spot. Alas, I was nowhere near that confident.
Fast-forward three years later, we had lost contact until I came home from a sixteen-hour shift to an e-mail from her, and within a few weeks, we had finally gotten our act together to acknowledge that yes, we’d fallen for each other. More to the point, those feelings hadn’t gone away, and we were done wasting time: eight months later, we were engaged. Just for fun, we decided to pay a visit to our biology professor to tell him the story, which is when we found out that we weren’t the first: we were the fifth pair of lab partners in his lectures to end up engaged/married. As this was over a decade ago, I’m sure that number is in double-digits by now.
Our textbook defines the proximity effect as ‘the tendency for physical and psychological nearness to increase interpersonal liking’. (Gruman et al, 2017) Our conversation likely began due to sitting near each other, then our bond grew as we discovered the things we had in common, especially as some of those things are niche interests like medieval history, swordfighting, and nature hikes. Working together as lab partners gave us a common goal and laid the foundations for our whole relationship, which is as equal partners and very much a team. Sixteen years and two children later, it’s amazing to look back and realise that it all depended something as simple as where two people chose to sit in a classroom.
Take care who you choose as a lab partner: you may just be choosing your future spouse.
References:
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
I loved reading your love story! Believe it or not, one of my college roommates just got married to her old biology lab partner over the summer as well. She was actually dating another guy when they first met in class, so they started as friends too. Eventually, it came to a point that she could not get this boy from class out of her head and broke up with her now ex, knowing she was going to marry her now husband one way or another. Unknown to her, he had been telling his roommates for over a year that he was just waiting for them to break up so he could marry her, and that’s exactly what happened. It is especially interesting to look at the proximity effect in this case. They had many of the same classes together and spent a lot of time together because of this. In contrast, my roommate’s at-the-time-boyfriend was not in her major and they did not share classes. Although I will say my friend’s husband is much better suited for her than her ex, I do believe that this physical and psychological nearness to each other, by studying the same subjects together, increased their interpersonal liking, which ultimately led them to marriage (Gruman et al., 2017).
Reference:
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
What an awesome way to meet your person! Also, it must be great to share fond memories of college and how you both learned and grew when you were younger. Obviously there was some initial electric attraction; “the very term attraction suggests almost a force of physics, powerfully drawing you to another person, regardless of your conscious wishes or circumstances” (Gruman, et. al., 2017). It is also obvious that the proximity affect was a huge part of how you two met and began your relationship. The proximity affect is being physically near another person, which gives you the opportunity to have more interaction and to get to know one another (Gruman, et. al., 2017). Having that regular interaction allowed both of you to spend more time together and share common interest and build attraction. This must have built a solid foundation for your relationship. What a great way to start a relationship that has become very successful!
Reference
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
What a great story! When reading the chapter on relationships I too came to think about the many relationships and friendships that came about due to the proximity effect. It really makes you wonder about one of life’s great mysteries- fate vs. choice. However, maybe two things can be true at once! Reading your story also made me think of the familiarity effect that we read about in our chapter reading. This effect explains how frequent contact with a person typically increases positive affect as long as there is no preexisting judgment (Gruman et al, 2017). It sounds like once your conversation kicked off psychology was on both of your sides!
It is fascinating that your example here also agrees with our chapter reading where it is shared that the proximity effect can have lifelong impacts (Gruman et al, 2017). We see in your example that not only did this effect remain strong even after the two of you went your separate ways, (three years with of time!) but it has been strong enough to carry you through your entire relationship now going on 16 years! Congratulations to both of you, I wish you many more years of love and happiness!
Reference
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
This is a great love story! That is awesome that you met your wife in biology class and connected. This story reminds me of the similar-to-me effect. This theory from the module is that individuals get along with others who tend to look and think the way they do. You and your wife have many similarities, such as a love of medieval history, sword fighting, and hiking.
The conversation struck between you and your wife because you were sitting close to each other in class, and your connection grew because of the connections both of you shared. This is what the proximity effect is, and the fact that both of you were sitting close to one another increased your interpersonal liking. Gruman (2017) expresses that if you want to meet people and form relationships, try to secure a living space that puts you around more people. This way, people can enjoy the social benefits of situational influence.
References:
Gruman, J.A., Schneider, F.W., & Coutts, L.A. (2017). Applied Social Psychology: Understanding and Addressing Social and Practical Problems. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.