• Question: what makes two people attracted to each other

    Asked by Aria to Paul, MarthaNari, Jonny, Hannah, Alison on 18 Jun 2015.
    • Photo: Martha Havenith

      Martha Havenith answered on 18 Jun 2015:

      Oh wow, I’m sure we’d all love to know that precisely! 🙂 Here are a few factors people have found to play a role so far:
      Of course, a big part of attraction happens without us being aware of it. Basically, our brain is really good at secretly checking if someone would be a good partner to have children with, without us realizing we’re doing that. For example, when we kiss someone, we can apparently use the other person’s saliva to analyze if their immune system is different from ours. The more different the better, because potential children would have the benefit of both immune systems. Similar things happen with smelling a person’s scent to find out their hormone balance. One crazy consequence of this is that couples are more likely to break up when they switch from the pill to a different form of birth control, because the hormone balance changes, so the partners might suddenly find each other less attractive than before.

      Of course,there are also more conscious/obvious factors. We seem to prefer people who mirror us in some ways. People with similar political views, even people with similar names and faces. For example, there are more couples whose names begin with the same letter than their should be by chance – that one always really puzzles me.

      I’m sure I’m missing out on loads of other stuff. Hopefully the other scientists will add more! I think it’s important though that these findings just explain who we are attracted to in the first place – they’re not a great guide on who would actually make an awesome partner. 🙂

    • Photo: Jonny Brooks-Bartlett

      Jonny Brooks-Bartlett answered on 19 Jun 2015:

      Martha answered this brilliantly so I’m not going to even try and give a better answer.

      Perhaps cupid’s bow and arrow…………. ok maybe not but I truly don’t think anyone really knows for certain

    • Photo: Alison Whitaker

      Alison Whitaker answered on 19 Jun 2015:

      Martha’s answer is great – I suppose I will add something that I find interesting about attraction, and that’s how in someone’s face people tend to go for the ‘most normal’. By that I mean people with the most symmetry and less variance in their features. It’s a bit odd, because we think of these people as out of the ordinary, but actually on a spectrum of where features are positioned on a face, they would be the perfect average. We are also more attracted to people if their pupils are dilated (i.e. a bit bigger). This happens naturally when we feel attracted to someone, or are in low lighting (or you are having a manic episode – perhaps less attractive) and is another hint that most of what makes us attracted to someone is happening subconsciously and we are responding to each other in ways we aren’t fully aware of.

    • Photo: Paul Brack

      Paul Brack answered on 26 Jun 2015:

      Even more detail here: http://people.howstuffworks.com/love2.htm

      I think a really interesting thing from this website is the idea of pheromones, or that smell is important in love. Apparently women tended to choose men with immune systems most different to their own when asked to pick which bloke they preferred by er smelling their sweaty t-shirts. Children of parents with two different immune systems tend to be healthier, so again this ties into the healthy offspring motivator for love again.

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