Chapter 11: Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others

Initial attraction depends on multiple converging factors: proximity and functional distance create opportunities for contact, and the mere-exposure effect demonstrates that repeated interaction increases liking independent of other qualities. Physical attractiveness operates through the physical-attractiveness stereotype, whereby people unconsciously attribute positive characteristics to those they find appealing. Contrary to popular belief, similarity rather than complementarity drives friendship formation, as people gravitate toward those sharing their values, attitudes, and personality characteristics. Reciprocal liking further reinforces attraction, though genuine approval proves more influential than ingratiation. The nature of love itself is multidimensional, conceptualized through Sternberg's triangular model incorporating passion, intimacy, and commitment. Passionate love represents intense emotional and physiological arousal that can be intensified through misattribution processes, wherein arousal from external sources becomes attributed to romantic attraction. Companionate love, by contrast, emerges as passion moderates into stable affection and dependable attachment. Long-term relationship stability depends on three critical psychological processes: attachment patterns formed in early childhood that create internal working models for adult relationships, equity whereby partners perceive fair balance between contributions and benefits, and self-disclosure governed by reciprocity effects that deepen emotional intimacy. The chapter concludes by examining relationship dissolution, noting that divorce rates vary significantly across cultural contexts and that successful long-term partnerships maintain substantially more positive than negative interactions, typically at a ratio of five positive to one negative encounter.