Attraction and The Misattribution of Arousal
Misattribution of arousal is the process whereby people make mistaken inferences about what is causing them to feel the way they do.
- Field experiment done by Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron (1974). In this experiment, Dutton and Aron had an attractive female experimenter stand at the end of either a scary bridge (which presumably increased participants’ arousal) or a safer bridge. After male participants walked across either bridge, the female experimenter asked them to fill out a survey and gave them her phone number to call if they had any further questions. The dependent variable was to see which group of men was more likely to call the woman. The men who walked across the scary (and arousing) bridge were more likely to call the woman, most likely because they misattributed their arousal from the bridge for arousal (and attraction) for the woman.
Read more about this topic: Attractiveness
Famous quotes containing the words attraction and and/or attraction:
“Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europe. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus.”
—Daniel J. Boorstin (b. 1914)
“War is thus divine in itself, since it is a law of the world. War is divine through its consequences of a supernatural nature which are as much general as particular.... War is divine in the mysterious glory that surrounds it and in the no less inexplicable attraction that draws us to it.... War is divine by the manner in which it breaks out.”
—Joseph De Maistre (1753–1821)