Chapter 4: Attraction/Relationships
4 – Attraction and Relationships
Introduction
Think about your social world….friends, family, classmates, and intimate relationships in your life. How have these relationships shaped you into the person you are today? How do social relationships and social support influence us? What about dating—how do we tend to choose a mate? Do opposites indeed attract or are we more attracted to those who are similar to ourselves? In this section, we will review the importance of social relationships and social support and examine the various factors that influence social relationships and attraction. After completing the readings in this section, you will be able to do the following:
Learning Objectives
- Understand the importance of friendships and social support on our overall health and well being
- Understand and describe various factors that contribute to attraction
- Examine the impact that our physical state may have on our feelings of social connectivity
- Understand what attracts us to others.
- Review research that suggests that friendships are important for our health and well-being.
- Examine the influence of the Internet on friendship and developing relationships.
- Understand what happens to our brains when we are in love.
- Consider the complexity of love.
- Examine the construct and components of social support.
Friendship and love, and more broadly, the relationships that people cultivate in their lives, are some of the most valuable treasures a person can own. This module explores ways in which we try to understand how friendships form, what attracts one person to another, and how love develops. It also explores how the Internet influences how we meet people and develop deep relationships. Finally, this module will examine social support and how this can help many through the hardest times and help make the best times even better.
The importance of relationships has been examined by researchers for decades. Many researchers point to sociologist Émile Durkheim’s classic study of suicide and social ties (1951) as a starting point for this work. Durkheim argued that being socially connected is imperative to achieving personal well-being. In fact, he argued that a person who has no close relationships is likely a person who is at risk for suicide. In other words, suicide tends to be higher among those who become disconnected from society. What is interesting about that notion is when people are asked to describe the basic necessities for life—people will most often say food, water, and shelter, but seldom do people list “close relationships” in the top three. Yet time and time again, research has demonstrated that we are social creatures and we need others to survive and thrive. Another way of thinking about it is that close relationships are the psychological equivalent of food and water; in other words, these relationships are necessary for survival. Baumeister and Leary (1995) maintain that humans have ba