Interpersonal Attraction

The topic of Interpersonal attraction has a significant importance in the area of Social Psychology. Interpersonal attraction is basically the attraction between two individuals leading to friendship or romantic relationship. There are many reasons for this attraction including familiarity, similarity, proximity and complementarity. The primary reason for developing the interpersonal attraction is our affiliation needs. We as human beings can't survive in this world without having interaction with our fellow beings. We just can't avoid people. They are everywhere. So what's the reason that we are attracted to some other person by external force called as "Interpersonal Attraction".

Even social psychologists themselves are confused about the interpersonal attraction developing due to model of similarity and complementarity. It is obvious the people get attracted to other people of same age, cast, family background and nationality etc. Of course one enjoys one's life with the person who is just one's own image. The concept of 'self-affirmation' is a key term here. People are satisfied to get the desired response from their loved ones just according to their expectations. And in this way they get closer to them due to the increasing positive interpersonal attraction.

But on the other side, we can't deny about the 'opposites attract' formula. This is the reason why a girl attracts to the boy and an introvert attracts to the extrovert. This is the fact that people sometimes get bored of the people having same nature. Even physical appearance counts on this. According to some social psychologists, low self-esteem individuals specifically appeared more likely to desire a complementary relationship than high self-esteem people. They are attracted to people who complement to them because this allows them to maintain their preferred style of behavior.

Similarly the model of familiarity also fosters the likelihood of interpersonal attraction. People would like to get involved with the known and familiar faces than the strangers. Social psychologists did an experiment in which participants were shown photos of different faces. The number of times each face was seen was varied. The more people saw a face, the more they liked it.

And last but not the least; proximity also plays an important part in increasing the level of interpersonal attraction. People living closer to each other like in neighbors, they are more able to develop strong relationship than those living farther away to spoil their happiness and peace of mind.