Romantic Partner Research Paper

Words: 1180
Pages: 5

Over the course of this class, we came across many interesting topics but the most appealing to me was when we learned about social psychology. This is fascinating to me because although one says that they would like certain qualities in their partner, often times, who their partner is depends on various factors. Many times I see friends in romantic relationships were there is no chemistry and I wonder why are they still together. Within this paper, one will be able to see why we choose the romantic partners that we choose. By the end of this paper, I would like to be able to decipher what a good romantic partner would be. Not that I want to be a matchmaker but I would certainly want to know if a candidate could be Mr. Wrong. In this paper, …show more content…
Currently, there are many online dating sites. You simply sign up and answer a few questions about yourself and then your profile is created. But, this does not mean that the person who connects with you will be a match. The biggest problem that I see with online dating sites is that you are selecting partners based on what they are willing to share. In order to overcome this, potential partners should fill out a questionnaire that contains questions which one would find important. Going back to dating profiles, one usually posts a picture of themselves. Thus physical attractiveness has played an important factor in why someone chooses to say yes to another person. In online dating, physical attraction is the primary influencer in how you select your partner because people do not trust other people who do not have a picture in their profile. Even after all this, eventually one is going to have to meet if one is truly seeking an intimate relationship. This is when proximity becomes important because the closer that one is to each other, the more likely that your relationship will be successful. Certainly there are some exceptions to this but long distance relationships do not tend to work unless you have an open channel of communication. Most importantly though is that proximity between each other will allow for there to be visits between each …show more content…
In our textbook, Psychology in Modules, we gain an insight into some of the research that has been conducted. An example of this is of the women who fell in love with her mailman after her boyfriend sent her over 700 letters asking for her hand in marriage (Meyer, 2013, pg. 608). What we see here is mere exposure effect at work. Mere exposure effect is when one is constantly exposed to stimuli; they gain an attraction or liking towards that stimulus. In this example, the woman was constantly seeing the mailman who was delivering the letters to her house. Ultimately, the woman decided to get married to someone who was within a close proximity but also to someone who she frequently saw. In another study, similar results were found. Leon Festinger, Stanley Schachter and Kurt Beck conducted a study where they examined attraction. He took residents from MIT’s residential halls and asked them who were their closest friends. It was found that 40% of those residents said that their closest friends lived on the same floor as them (Brafman, 2011). Not only is proximity evident in this example, but we can also see mere exposure effect. The residents claimed that they knew and their best friends lived within the same floor as them. However, they also said that they did not know those