Love as Psychological Interpersonal Attraction

The chapter discusses a variety of psychological factors that influence attraction. The chapter describes love as a psychological attraction, focusing on the qualities, intensity, and strength of emotions. Affectionate, passionate, obsessive, para-social, and romantic attraction are several types of psychological attractions defined here. Then, the chapter describes the dialectics of psychological similarities and differences between individuals determining the types of attraction. The dialectics of happiness and unhappiness, attraction and repulsion, create the appealing bittersweet nature of love as an attraction. Proximity, reciprocity, and the dynamics of interpersonal interaction also determine psychological attraction. The psychological dynamics of interpersonal attraction involve certainty, the need for closure, familiarity, and stability on the one hand and uncertainty, novelty, and instability on the other. Transformations of psychological arousal, such as arousal and excitation transfers, the extrinsic arousal effect, and the opponent process, can inspire interpersonal attraction. The chapter shows how autonomy and interdependence between individuals generate their attraction to each other. The desires for psychological union, complementarity, and self-expansion become the ultimate drivers of interpersonal attraction. The two last sections review the findings, which demonstrate the role of personality traits and rational and practical motivation in interpersonal attraction. In this context, the author presents attraction theories that are based on the motivating roles of reinforcement, exchange, and reward.