Sympathy is half a step to love. Deep sympathy

One of the strongest desires of every person is to be attractive to others. It arises even in childhood, when the baby wants to please his parents, friends and acquaintances. Over time, this feeling extends into adulthood. For everyone, sympathy is approval, support, affirmation in society. But why do we experience it, on what does it depend?

What it is?

All living beings feel something. For the simplest, these are ordinary innate instincts: hunger, pain, fear. More developed animals experience a greater range: affection, habit, which can be observed in pets. Dogs and cats show emotions quite clearly, demonstrating the joy of meeting their owner.

Scientists say that even plants understand good and bad attitudes towards themselves. But man remains the most complex creation of nature. His range of feelings is not limited to instincts. People sometimes experience several emotions at the same time: joy, bitterness, happiness, sadness, love, anger, disappointment. And all this manifests itself to varying degrees, at different moments in life.

Liking is feeling good about someone or something. It manifests itself in the form of friendly communication, special attention and sometimes even admiration.

As much as each person is unique, the reasons for this feeling can be so different. Sometimes we ourselves are unable to explain such an attitude.

Why does sympathy arise?

Each individual case of manifestation of this feeling has its own reasons. For example, personal sympathy is acceptance of another person, a good attitude towards him. It can be based on external data, when a person is physically liked: a beautiful face, a fit figure, expressive eyes or a bewitching smile.

In addition, sympathy can arise on the basis of internal qualities, when a person is attracted by his character, attitude towards other people, sociability or sense of humor.

Communication with an object that we like is always pleasant and easy. Time spent together does not cause bad associations and always passes calmly.

Every day we come across the concept of social sympathy. This is a positive attitude towards sellers, people on public transport, and those whom we meet by chance.

Similarity is of great importance, and not external, but internal. The more we see ourselves in a person, the more we sympathize with him. Another unifying factor is proximity. For example, a common place of work, residence, visiting the same sections, common hobbies.

Please note that if when communicating with a person you often smile or laugh, it means that your contact with him has been established, and sympathy has already arisen between you.

Antipathy

The opposite in sensations and meaning is antipathy. Its occurrence is also due to many internal and external characteristics. If sympathy is something positive, then this feeling evokes completely different emotions.

If we turn to the interpretation of the word, it is hostility, even disgust, towards someone or something. Like a positive feeling, it sometimes arises out of nowhere, unconsciously. We have not yet had time to get to know each other better, but the first gestures, words, appearance can provoke the emergence of an internal negative attitude.

Communication with people we don’t like is usually kept to a minimum. There is no desire to meet, call each other, or even spend time together.

The initial feeling of hostility may fade over time. For example, when you get to know a person from the other side, and a completely different image is revealed to you. Quite often, our best and closest friends did not arouse our sympathy in the first stages of acquaintance. But sometimes a negative feeling only strengthens and becomes a belief that is almost impossible to get rid of.

The power of a glance

At the moment when a person experiences this or that feeling, he unnoticeably changes his behavior. Insignificant, in small details, however, if you look closely, you can see them.

You can tell that a person likes us even by looking at us. If they look at you furtively, they quickly look away. At such moments, people experience possible failure, they do not know the response and therefore are in no hurry to take the first steps. Some still dare to meet the gaze of the object of sympathy, but there is no hint of negative emotions or hostility in their eyes.

Men and women look at the person they like differently. If we talk about the stronger half, then they are not afraid of making eye contact; after examining the face, they lower their gaze to examine the area of ​​the chest and hips, so to speak, to evaluate the woman completely.

For the weaker half of humanity, signs of sympathy are something like voyeurism. A woman watches a man when he does not see her. For her, meeting eyes is both exciting and very important. This is why girls usually start looking up, as if anticipating a special moment.

Voice of Gestures

Gestures are of great importance for analyzing human behavior. As noted above, external manifestations of sympathy differ between men and women. The latter have a wider and more varied “arsenal”, but there are also universal gestures.

If a person is not sure about the object, then his expression of sympathy will be very cautious. Accidental touches usually cause fear, because a person is afraid that he will not be able to cope with his emotions and will reveal his feelings.

More courageous and self-confident individuals, on the contrary, strive to attract as much attention as possible with the help of gestures.

Men often choose an open position, sticking their leg out to the side, placing their hands on the abdomen or tucking their thumbs into a belt. The main focus is on the genital area. This is how the male shows that he is ready for a relationship.

A woman's gestures are more varied: playing with her hair, showing her wrist, shaking her leg if she is sitting. In an informal setting, sometimes the most revealing poses and movements are used.

Sympathy and love

These two feelings are similar; they evoke positive emotions in us. But the difference is quite noticeable. We can say that sympathy is the first step towards a more serious feeling; it is the basis.

With the person we like, it’s a pleasure to spend time, communicate, and do common things. But if we are in love, then all thoughts and aspirations are directed towards the other person. You want to be with him all the time; desires for physical intimacy arise: hugs, kisses, walking together hand in hand. This is a strong feeling that fills us with energy, especially when it is mutual. I want to jump, dance, sing, send a feeling of joy into the Universe.

It cannot be said that sympathy is love or infatuation. But without it nothing like this can develop in us. This is the driving force that unites kindred souls.

Sympathy in psychology

Many years of research have established a number of reasons why sympathy or affection for something or someone arises. One of the main factors is physical attractiveness, the role of which we will consider below. But what should those who do not stand out for their bright appearance do?

Scientists have noted that sympathy is a feeling that can develop over time, regardless of our preferences. Advertising does something similar to us. We don’t yet know the taste of the two chocolate bars, but we already prefer the one we saw more often on TV. This is recognition. Even the experimental rats showed greater affection for the music of the composer whose masterpieces were heard more often.

Exactly the same thing happens in the social environment. The person we see often becomes more attractive to us.

Attractive appearance

Experiments with people have shown that physical characteristics play a large role in the formation of sympathy. This is due to the fact that by surrounding ourselves with more beautiful people, we acquire higher reviews in society, a certain status and attitude towards ourselves. However, it was noted that if you appear in society with a more attractive partner or boyfriend (girlfriend), you can receive low reviews of yourself. All this happens because of the comparative attitude. Against the background of a more beautiful person, we get lost.

Remember that mutual sympathy is a relationship built not only on physical attractiveness. This is unity by common goals, interests, similarity of character, views and life priorities.

conclusions

You need to understand that sympathy is a feeling thanks to which we can exist favorably in society, make acquaintances, partnerships and friendships. This is the basis for falling in love and love.

To feel more confident and comfortable, you need to be able to express yourself, present yourself, and make people sympathize. But this can only be achieved by remaining yourself, developing positive qualities in yourself, such as goodwill, openness, honesty, decency, reliability, and the desire to listen. And only then can we expect goodwill and a budding, strong friendship from the other person in return.

How often do two people become confused about their feelings for each other? It doesn't matter whether they are friends or lovers. The line in close relationships is so blurred that it is often difficult to understand the true state of affairs. Because the very concepts of friendship and love are very similar. Both are based on mutual sympathy, and the main thing here is not to confuse true feelings and not make mistakes that could destroy all the good things that arose between two people.

Liking, friendship, infatuation, love - usually this is a consistent course of many close relationships. Very often they stop at friendship, without developing into anything more serious. And it happens that what should have remained just friendship, two people try to artificially change and look for love where it was not originally intended, which leads to serious disappointments on both sides.

And to avoid such situations, you should initially set your priorities correctly and sort out your feelings. Of course, this process is very difficult, because feelings rarely lend themselves to any specific definition, and even professional psychologists are sometimes unable to figure out which feeling lies, by definition, in any specific relationship. There is even a fashionable phrase among modern youth, which very accurately defines such situations - “over-friendship - under-relationship”.

And here the most important thing is to take a sober look at this relationship, look inside yourself and the other person, and unbiasedly, and often ruthlessly, draw conclusions - what exactly brought them together and what specific motives support this connection. Is it a desire for communication and spiritual intimacy, or intimate attraction and romantically colored dizzying meetings.

Liking and falling in love are not necessarily interrelated. Often it is simply a commonality of interests between two people and nothing more. It’s only in times of shortage of spiritual communication that one can very often confuse simply sympathy and nascent love. And to best understand your feelings, you need to take a closer look at these relationships.

Is there jealousy present in them? Are there desires for happiness and concern for your partner? Or are your personal interests more dominant? That is, in order to distinguish precisely love from friendship, you must first understand what guides actions - the desire to be with this person and communicate, or the desire to possess him in any situation. You don't go to bed with a friend when he's drunk and dirty. They will simply help a friend, but you hardly want to be with him. But the feeling of love washes away such nuances and completely changes the attitude. So, first of all, you should understand your aspirations and motives.

It is interesting that many couples create marriages precisely on the basis of friendly relations. Of course, such unions can be strong and durable, but they are destroyed in an instant without any regrets when one of the partners meets true love.

Sympathy, infatuation, love... How I want the relationship to develop in exactly this sequence and without pitfalls. And despite the fact that very often the lines are washed away and friendship becomes love and vice versa, a careful and sensitive attitude towards each other will help you avoid many problems and mistakes, and accordingly develop your relationship in the right direction.

So, how do you understand 💍 love 💍 or sympathy? Actually, this question is really complicated. It is not easy to understand and make the right decision. Love does strange things to us sometimes. But sometimes sympathy can be too strong. How to determine whether it is love or not. And if this is sympathy, is it worth letting it develop into something more? How to understand exactly what feelings arose and what they will lead to?

In fact, everything is not as complicated as it might seem at first glance. Love sometimes arises from sympathy, and we don’t even understand when exactly it happened. It happens that a person seems to be just a friend. He is pleasant, sweet, reliable. You want to be close to this person, but there is no sexual attraction to him. For the time being, for the time being. And then everything suddenly changes. The man suddenly ceases to be just a pleasant friend for the girl. He is handsome, interesting, he can help and protect. There is a masculine quality to it. But, if a woman sees all this, can her feelings really be called love?

Of course not. In fact, there is a very thin line between our feelings. Sometimes, we ourselves do not realize when we cross it. Perhaps we can understand what we are experiencing if we ask such a serious question: can I live without him? Moreover, you don’t need to allow yourself to answer: perhaps. If a woman understands that she can let go of a man, it means that he is a friend, a brother, a person she likes. Love is when there is a feeling that it is truly impossible to live without a person. No matter how much I would like this. Even if you let such a person go, sooner or later you still start thinking about him, dreaming and wanting to meet him. Moreover, these desires are by no means only platonic. And you should not be afraid of such a reaction to your love object. This is absolutely normal, because when we experience strong emotional feelings of love for a person, we begin to desire him and nothing can be done about it.

Probably, sympathy can also be accompanied by similar feelings. But the difference is that with sympathy, these feelings are quite easily suppressed and forgotten. When love comes to a person, no matter how much he wants, he simply cannot forget about someone for too long and desires this person, no matter how much he wants to stop.

What else can you say about sympathy? Sympathy is most likely a more friendly feeling. Testing him for a person, we begin to look for a friend, comrade-in-arms, brother in him. If we see that he does not feel love for us, then we treat this quite calmly. Of course, it can be a little unpleasant, but, in any case, this feeling quickly passes. But when it comes to love, then rejection and rejection of feelings irritates, angers and offends. A person wants his feelings not only to be understood, but also accepted. When this does not happen, he begins to worry, become depressed and withdraw into himself for a long time. There are times when people, on the contrary, begin to splash out their emotions on everyone around them. But, be that as it may, it is worth noting that a person who experiences love will be very worried and nervous if his love is not accepted.

Loving people differ from those who simply sympathize in that they are really ready to do a lot for the object of their love. This also applies to his personal qualities and character, as well as appearance. If a loving person sees that his loved one does not like something, he will try to change himself in order to be appreciated and understood.

It’s good when these changes lead to a person becoming truly better, more beautiful and smarter. But there are often cases when, for the sake of love, people do completely meaningless things. They change themselves and do not understand that these changes only lead to destruction. Yes, love does not always create. Sometimes it can destroy, and so much so that later it is too difficult to return everything back and remind a person of who he was originally and what he lived for.

But, nevertheless, this is precisely the feeling that is called real. For the sake of someone we sympathize with, a person will never try to radically change himself, to become older, smarter and braver. This situation can be modeled in different ways. But the essence will always remain the same. Love differs from sympathy in that for the sake of love we are ready to go to the end. But with sympathy, everything is a little different. Yes, we can try to do quite a lot for the person we like. But, nevertheless, when we understand that we are doing something wrong or simply cannot cope, then we simply give up our idea and begin to live as we lived. But a loving person may not stop even when everyone says that his behavior is practically inadequate.

Love and sympathy are those feelings that have the same root. But at the same time they develop completely differently. Of course, not all people can quickly and adequately determine what exactly he is feeling. But, often, many people need to understand what he feels and how to live with it further. In fact, no matter how much we talk about theory and talk about logic, everything can only be understood if we dare to listen to our heart and intuition. If we do not forbid ourselves to feel or, on the contrary, do not force ourselves to feel more than what is in our heart, it is easy to determine exactly what emotions we are experiencing. When there is only sympathy, a person will never fall asleep and wake up thinking about this person. He will never cry just from the thought that he hurt a person and does not know how to correct this situation. In fact, love has many different manifestations. But nevertheless, she is real. We all just love differently. And if, looking at someone, we understand that we simply cannot live without this person, no matter what happens, even the end of the world, then this is exactly what love is.

Sympathy- this is a feeling of stable emotional attachment that unconsciously arises between people who suddenly realize that they are similar to each other, to a greater extent internally, and as a result, externally.

Feeling of sympathy- common hobbies, interests, sense of humor, worldview, attitude to life, external similarity - these are all means that fuel the sympathy of one person for another.

To evoke a reciprocal feeling of sympathy, it is necessary, first of all,

• show your interlocutor that you like him. Meet him with “burning” eyes, smile. Let him think that your joy is directly related to his appearance. Show sincere interest in his personality, ask questions, react to his answers, share your secrets yourself, pointing out the exceptional significance of this person’s opinion.
• When making eye contact, “fantasize” and concentrate on the interlocutor. Imagine him in the most comfortable or impressive situations that evoke feelings of bliss or delight (for example, relaxing on the shore of an azure ocean or a “star” on the carpet). Fantasize, don’t skimp on images and bright colors. Each time he will feel more comfortable being around you.
• Concentrating on your interlocutor, study him, examine him, mentally praising him with your gaze. It would be a good idea to remember the color of your friend’s eyes and note for yourself its unusual shade and depth. Due to slightly prolonged eye contact, the interlocutor will definitely feel your sincere interest and genuine interest.
• Having previously won over a person, you should not stop there. Try to “tune into the wavelength” of your interlocutor, study his manner of speaking, grimacing, moving, “mirror” him, as if by chance repeating words from his vocabulary after him, as well as copying some elements of his behavior. And you will notice that you will become more attractive to the person, the feeling of sympathy will increase. After some time, you may notice new details in his behavior, copied from you.

Don't forget to share your joy and positive emotions.Problems and negative statements tire a person. Cheer him up, make jokes. While you're having fun reacting to an anecdote, don't forget to look into the person's face, maintain eye contact, and generously share your emotions with them.

We love not only those with whom we are rewarded, but also—according to the second version of the “reward principle”—those we associate with positive feelings. According to theorists Donn Byrne and Gerald Clore (1970) and Albert Lott and Bernice Lott (1974), social conditioning creates positive feelings toward those associated with rewarding events. When, after a busy week of work, we relax near the fireplace, enjoying delicious food, drinks and music, we are likely to experience good feelings towards those who are next to us at that moment. We are much less likely to develop sympathy for the person we encountered while we were suffering from a migraine.

(- Ira, when I was sick, you were there, when I broke a rib, you were there, when I was penniless, you were also there!
- When I needed help, you were always there! - Then why do you treat me so badly?!
- Because you remind me of the most terrible events in my life!)
Whether we like or dislike people depends on what events we associate them with.

This principle of “associative sympathy” was tested experimentally by Pavel Lewicki (Lewicki, 1985). When a group of participants in one of the experiments, students at the University of Warsaw, were shown photographs of two women (Fig. 11.5, A and B) and asked to say which one seemed more friendly to them, their opinions were approximately equally divided. In another group of subjects, where the same photographs were shown after they interacted with a nice and friendly experimenter who looked like Woman A, the latter received 6 times more votes. During the next experiment, the experimenter behaved unfriendly towards half of the subjects. When they later needed to give their questionnaires to one of the two women, almost everyone tried to avoid communicating with the one who looked like the experimenter. (Perhaps you yourself can remember a time in your life when you reacted well or poorly to a person just because he reminded you of someone.)

Rice. 11.5. Sympathy by association. After communicating with a friendly experimenter, the subjects preferred a woman A who was similar to her. After communicating with an unfriendly experimenter, they tried to avoid a woman similar to her. (Source: Lewicki, 1985)

The fact of the existence of this phenomenon - associative sympathy or antipathy - is confirmed by other experiments. One study found that college students rated strangers more positively when the procedure was performed in a comfortable room than when it was performed in a hot, stuffy room (Griffitt, 1970). Similar results were obtained when assessing people photographed in elegant, luxuriously furnished, softly lit living rooms and in squalid, dirty, and cramped rooms (Maslow & Mintz, 1956). And in this case, as in the first, the positive feelings caused by the elegant surroundings were transferred to the people being evaluated. William Walster drew a very useful conclusion from these studies: “Romantic dinners, trips to the theater, evenings spent at home together, and holidays together never lose their significance... If you want to save your relationship, it is important that both of them have continued to be associated with pleasant things" (Walster, 1978).
This fundamentally simple theory of attraction—we like those who reward us and those we associate with rewards—helps explain why people everywhere are attracted to those who are kind, reliable, and sympathetic (Fletcher et al., 1999). ; Regan, 1998; Wojciszke et al., 1998). The reward principle also helps to understand why certain factors influence human relationships.
- Territorial proximity is certainly a “reward”. It takes less time and effort to reap the benefits of friendship if your friend lives or works near you.
- We like attractive people because we see them as exhibiting other desirable qualities and because we benefit from being associated with them.
- When others' points of view coincide with our own, we feel rewarded because we believe that we too are sympathized with. Moreover, people who share our views help us to establish ourselves in them. We especially sympathize with those who have been successfully “converted” (Lombardo et al., 1972: Riodan, 1980; Siegall, 1970).
- We like it when we are liked; and we love to feel loved. Consequently, sympathy is usually mutual. We love those who love us.

Summary

We examined four very important factors on which the emergence of friendship or mutual sympathy depends. The most significant circumstance on which the emergence of friendly relations between any two people depends is their territorial proximity. Thanks to it, frequent meetings and contacts become possible, which allow us to find common ground and feel mutual sympathy.
The second factor that determines initial attraction is physical attractiveness. The results of both laboratory and field studies involving blind dates indicate that university students prefer attractive people. However, in real life, people tend to choose as friends and spouses those whose external attractiveness matches their own (or those who compensate for the lack of it with some other advantages). Positive perceptions of beautiful people determine the stereotype of physical attractiveness - the idea that beautiful cannot be bad.
Mutual sympathy is favored by the similarity of attitudes, beliefs and moral values. The kinship of souls leads to mutual sympathy; opposites rarely meet. In addition, we tend to be friends with those who like us.
A simple principle helps explain the mechanism by which these factors influence our mutual liking: we love those whose behavior somehow rewards us, or those who we associate with rewards.

Love

What is love"? Can passionate love last? If not, then what feeling replaces it?
Love is a more complex feeling than affection, and therefore more difficult to measure and study. People dream of love, live and sacrifice their lives in the name of love. However, psychologists began to seriously study it only a few years ago.
Most researchers have studied what is easiest to study—how two strangers react to each other during brief interactions. What influences the emergence of our sympathy for another person - territorial proximity, physical attractiveness, spiritual kinship, his sympathy for us and other rewards that a relationship with him brings us - also affects our long-term, close relationships. This means that the impressions young people quickly form of each other while dating provide some insight into their long-term future (Berg, 1984; Berg & McQuinn, 1986). If this were not so, if romances in the USA were only an accident and arose “without any regard” for territorial and spiritual proximity, then most Catholics (of which there are very few in the USA) would marry Protestants, most blacks would marry whites, and marriages between college graduates and someone without even a high school education would be as likely as their marriages with each other.
So you can't discount your first impression. Nevertheless, a long-term love relationship is not a simple intensification of mutual sympathy that arose during acquaintance. That is why social psychologists have switched their attention from studying the feelings of mutual sympathy characteristic of first meetings to the study of long-term close relationships.

Love and passion

The first step in the scientific study of romantic love, as in the study of any other variable, is to decide how to define and measure it. We know how to measure aggression, altruism, prejudice and sympathy, but how to measure love?
The same question was asked by Elizabeth Barrett Browning [Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806-1861) - English poetess. - Note. transl.]: “What is my love for you? There's a lot in it. I’ll count now.” Social psychologists have counted many components. According to psychologist Robert Sternberg, love is a triangle, the three unequal sides of which are passion, intimacy and fidelity to commitment (Fig. 11.6). Drawing on the ideas of ancient philosophy and literature, sociologist John Alan Lee (Lee, 1988) and psychologists Clyde and Susan Hendrick (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1988) identified three main love styles: ero (passion and self-disclosure), ludus (non-committal game) and storge (friendship). Just as all the colors we know are the result of mixing in certain proportions the three primary colors, so the “mixing” of these primary styles gives secondary love styles. Some love styles, and especially eros and storge, are a source of exceptionally high satisfaction of partners with their relationships, which cannot be said about ludus (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1997).

Rice. 11.6. Robert Sternberg's concept that love is a combination of three basic components, and the type of love is determined by their relationship. (Source: Sternberg, 1988)

Some elements are inherent in all love relationships: mutual understanding, mutual support, the desire to spend as much time as possible with your partner; others - only to love relationships of a certain type. A person experiencing passionate love expresses it physically: his eyes indicate both that he is delighted with his partner and that he considers their relationship exceptional. That this is indeed the case was proven by Zeke Rubin (Rubin, 1970; 1973). He developed a kind of “love scale” and used it in an experiment in which hundreds of loving couples from the University of Michigan participated. Through one-way mirror glass, Rubin observed the participants in the waiting room, paying attention to the eye contact between the low-loving and high-loving couples. The conclusion he came to will not surprise you: “strongly in love” couples gave themselves away by looking into each other’s eyes for a long time.
Love-passion- this is an exciting and strong feeling. As defined by Ellen Hatfield, it is a state of “an irresistible desire to connect with another person” (Hatfield, 1988, p. 193). If the feeling is mutual, the person is filled with joy and lives life to the fullest; Unrequited love-passion gives rise to despair and a feeling of hopelessness. Like other forms of emotional arousal, passionate love is like a roller coaster ride, with ups and downs, from feelings of great happiness to equally intense sadness. “No one feels as vulnerable to suffering as he who loves,” Freud said. The thoughts of a person experiencing love-passion are focused on the object of his feelings. Robert Graves expressed this thought this way: “He is all tense waiting for a sign, waiting for a signal.”
Passionate love is the feeling you think you experience not only when you love someone, but also when you are “in love.” According to Sarah Meyers and Ellen Berscheid, saying “I love you, but I'm not in love” means: “I like you. I don't care what happens to you. I think you are wonderful. But I don't feel sexually attracted to you. My feeling is storge (friendship), not eros (passion)” (Meyers & Berscheid, 1997).

Love-passion theory

Reflecting on the nature of love-passion, Hatfield draws attention to the fact that any state of excitement can result in one of several emotions, and which one depends on what exactly we attribute the excitement to. Any emotion affects both the body and the soul: both excitement and what we attribute it to. Imagine that your heart is pounding and your hands are shaking. What does it mean? Are you scared? Are you nervous? Or maybe you are happy? Physiologically, these emotions are very similar. Therefore, in a euphoric situation, arousal can mean joy, in a hostile situation it can mean anger, and in a romantic situation it can mean passionate love. From this point of view, love-passion is a psychological state that is a consequence of biological arousal caused by a person attractive to us. If it is true that passion is a state of excitement called “love,” then everything that excites a person should enhance the feeling of love. Participants in some experiments, college students who were sexually aroused by reading or watching erotic material, showed increased interest in the opposite sex (they rated their girlfriends higher on the “love scale” when describing them) (Carducci et al., 1978; Dermer & Pyszczynski, 1978; Stephan et al., 1971). Supporters two-factor theory of emotions, created by Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer (Schachter & Singer, 1962), argue that when perceiving a woman, aroused men can easily make the mistake of attributing part of their arousal to her.
According to the two-factor theory, arousal from any source increases passion as long as there is no barrier to attributing some of that arousal to the romantic stimulus. Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron invited male students at the University of British Columbia to participate in an experiment to study learning (Dutton & Aron, 1974, 1989). After they had all met their attractive partners, some of them were frightened by the message that they would undergo a "very painful" electric shock. Before the experiment began, the researchers asked subjects to fill out a short questionnaire, citing that they "needed information about their current emotional and mental state, since this often affects the performance of learning tasks." The responses of excited (scared) men to the question of how much they would like to kiss their partners and ask them out on a date indicated that they were more attracted to these women.
<Выброс в кровь адреналина, характерный для всплесков самых разных эмоций, усиливает страсть. (Этот феномен можно было бы назвать «усилением любви благодаря химии».) Элайн Хатфилд и Ричард Рапсон,1987>

(- When you are not sure of your feelings, sister, listen to your own heart. If it beats evenly and slowly, it means you were mistaken and you don’t need this guy)

Does this phenomenon also occur in real life? Dutton and Aron asked an attractive young woman to approach the young men after they had finished crossing a narrow, rickety bridge about 137 meters long that hung about 70 meters above the rushing Capilano River (British Columbia) (Dutton & Aron, 1974) . The woman asked each man to help her fill out the questionnaire. When he finished work, she wrote down her name and phone number and told him that he could call her if he wanted to know the details of the project she was working on. Most took the note, and half of those who took it called her. In contrast, men who were approached after they had finished crossing a shorter, safer bridge and men who were approached after crossing a suspension bridge rarely called. It can only be repeated that physical arousal enhances romantic feelings. Thriller movies, roller coaster rides, and exercise have similar effects, especially when it comes to feelings for those we find attractive (Foster et al., 1998; White & Knight, 1984). The same is true for married couples. The best relationships develop between those spouses who have experienced exciting events together. Spouses' satisfaction with their relationship also increases after they complete a task together in a laboratory setting, and the effect of a stimulating task (roughly equivalent to running in pairs on hands and knees, with one runner's leg tied to the other's) is more noticeable than the effect of any calmer task ( Aaron et al., 2000). Adrenaline causes a “rush of love” to the heart.

Different views on romantic love