Attraction in Close Relationships

Interpersonal attraction—liking or positive sentiment—plays a fundamental role in human life. The experiences we have and the outcomes we receive in virtually all areas of our existence—developmental, educational, occupational, social, relational, physical, and mental, to name a few—are deeply and continuously affected by the sentiments, feelings, and attitudes we evoke in others. Indeed, the answer to the question of who likes/dislikes us, who loves/hates us, or who is merely indifferent to us determines not only the personal, interpersonal, and social opportunities and outcomes we receive, but also the quality and even the quantity of our very lives. Although interpersonal attraction permeates and influences all human interactions and relationships, it plays a particularly important role in the formation and development of voluntary close relationships such as friendships and romantic relationships. Voluntary relationships typically are born within an open interaction field in which each potential partner is relatively free to initiate (or refrain from initiating) the relationship; consequently, the development and continued survival of these relationships is heavily dependent on the partners’ degree of attraction to one another. Thus, most theoretical and empirical work conducted on interpersonal attraction and relationship development—and virtually all work cited in this bibliography—is focused on voluntary relationships (and may not be applicable to nonvoluntary relationships [e.g., parent-child, coworker, arranged marriage]). The first section of this article introduces general review articles and books that summarize the scientific literature on interpersonal attraction and close relationship development. The second section focuses on theories of attraction and includes citations for the early models that focused primarily on attraction between strangers in lab settings, as well as more general process-oriented models that explain attraction in initial encounters and throughout subsequent relationship development. The third section presents research on the general factors that have been shown to generate liking and spark relationship initiation and development (e.g., familiarity, similarity, responsiveness, desirable partner attributes, physical attractiveness, proximity, receptivity). The article’s remaining sections cover research exploring the communication of attraction (i.e., flirting), and theory and research on one important and extensively investigated type of attraction—love.