Attraction

Jierong Ma

Com 310

Melissa Framer

11 February 2016

Attraction

        Attraction. I’m here to give it to you straight, and help you attract the person of your dreams. Attraction draws people together, and relationship expert Dr. Guerrero defines attraction as “a motivational state in which an individual is predisposed to think, feel, and usually behave in a positive manner toward another person” (Guerrero, 54). Let me break down this academic talk. What Dr. Guerrero means is when one individual is attracted another, they often think about that person, seek attention from that person and act differently around that person. The reasons people are attracted to some individuals and not others are complex and dynamic, and hard to explain, but I’m here to help you out so you can leave my article feeling anew and ready to take science to reality. There are four motivations that trigger different types of attraction and they consist of physical, sexual, social and task. As many of us know including myself, attraction is uncontrollable, but hopefully I can provide a better understanding on why you feel attracted to someone.

        One type of attraction is physical, which is straight forward and self-explanatory. This is the most common attraction especially in today’s society. It is stated in the book, “physical attraction occurs when we are drawn to people’s look, whether it is someone’s body, eyes, hair, attire, or other aspects of a person’s appearance” (Guerrero, 54). For example, let’s say you go out with some friends at a bar, an attractive guy or girl with an athletic toned body walks by and all of a sudden you feel attracted to that person because he/she is fit. Personally, when I see a girl with a beautiful smile with clear white teeth, I get attracted to that person because of her smile and it is a bonus that she has perfectly white teeth. Every guy or girl out there looks for physical attractiveness from the opposite sex, even though some might say, “I don’t care about looks,” but that is never the case. Everyone cares about looks even if it is a small amount. Society has imbedded physical attraction into human minds that it is hard to overlook unattractive people. A research has shown that “personality is seen as a second component after physical attraction in dating, but it is theorized that males would choose to date based on the personality traits of their dating partner, and contrary to social expectations, females would prefer looks to personality” (Menadier, 114). Judging from this research, physical attractiveness goes along way because if men are looking for personality, but women are looking for physical appearances then it is safe to say that men must look good in order to attract women. So get into the gym, gentlemen. Physical attraction can lead to sexual desire. Which isn’t a bad bonus, right fellas?

        Dr. Guerrero explains another type of attraction is sexual, “which reflects the desire to engage in sexual activity with someone and typically is accompanied by feelings of sexual arousal in the presence of the person” (Guerrero, 54). In further detail, this means that a person notices someone that he/she want to have sex with. It is as straight forward as it gets and personally I have felt this way before especially under the influence of alcohol. For example, I was at a club dancing and I notice this amazing girl that started to dance near me. She was tall and she looked super sexy in that red dress and suddenly just looking at her dancing made me had sexual arousal from being near her. Don’t judge me, I know my readers have felt the same. Honestly every guy or girl have or will feel this way once in their life. A naturally evolutionary instinct to procreate, that we are sexually attractive to people that give us that desire. Sexual attraction can be resulted by encountering attractive people in social events.

        The next type of attraction is called social attraction. Dr. Guerrero defines this as, “social attraction reflects the feeling that we would like to “hang out” and be friends with someone” (Guerrero, 54). I am sure that many of us have experienced this situation before because that is how we make friends. We like to hang out with people that share similar interest and possess alike personalities. Personally, I like to hang out with people that are mature, educated, respectful, and humble. That is the type of person I am and when I meet someone for the first time, I look for these traits and if they have them then I would like to be around them more often and be good friends.  Social attraction can be related to task attraction, but have different meanings.