Power of Love and Relationships

Power of Love and Relationships

Jennifer Ham

PSY 301

Instructor Salzman

April 17, 2015

Power of Love and Relationships

From the time we are children, we all notice relationships. When we are children we learn from our parents, grandparents, other family members and even strangers from seeing them interact with each other. With age we all learn how to have a good and healthy relationship. Not all relationships will last forever, but if both parties put forth the effort then they will. Loved ones and friends make our lives more meaningful is what most believe. With everyone we meat on a daily bases some we start new friendships with and others sometimes turn into a romantic relationship. Relationships depend on a lot of factors like compassion, the type of the love, attraction and much more. Relationships take work and has to be a partnership.

The factors of attraction can be identified as a person’s attractiveness, their personality and their similarities. People are usually attracted to someone who have the same values, interests and personalities. Looks also play a huge part in attraction, people seems to really latch onto someone who they have a physical attraction for. A relationship should not be only based off of physical attraction even though that is usually the first step in a relationship. One has to take the time to learn everything about the person to develop a strong bond. In our text it states that the “tendency to have greater liking for things we see often is the mere-exposure effect. The familiarity created by multiple exposures creates greater fondness for someone over time.”  (Feenstra, 2013) There are several factors of attraction which include proximity which is based on the attraction formed from how often we see someone and how close we get. Another factor is physical attractiveness, which plays a huge part in who we chose to be friends with or date. Association is another factor, which is the opinions of other people. Another factor is reciprocal liking which is when we feel liked by someone else. And then there is similarity which can be described as similar likes and interest which can be attitudinal or demographical.

As we all know when looking for a partner or long term relationship, we tend to lean attract towards people who we seem to have a lot in common with. We tend to say in our culture because we are comfortable with our culture and so are other members. We do this even though we have fewer chances of making new friendships, as stated by Schug, Yuki, Horikawa and Takemura. They stated that even “With fewer opportunities for new friendships to form, we tend to stick with friends who are not necessarily similar to ourselves but are close in geographic proximity” (Schug, Yuki, Horikawa, & Takemura, 2009).