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On Attraction and Love

• [article] Men and women are from earth, fool pt. III — 27 Sep 2024
  This book is basically, “men are terribly emotionally fragile, and they can make small steps to be better, but women need to just <em>stop bothering them with all their pedantry</em> and just let them be who they are.”
• [article] Men and women are from earth, fool pt. II — 20 Sep 2024
  I guarantee, no matter how sexy traditional gender roles are to you, that you do <em>not</em> want to be like Gray’s ‘men’.
• [article] Men and women are from earth, fool pt. I — 13 Sep 2024
  Not only is there is absolutely no difference between men and women in how they complain or offer criticism, but the ‘men’ Gray describe could be used as textbook example of people with social anxiety.
• [article] Explaining group dynamics — 29 Mar 2022
  Group dynamics are often thought to be a complicated thing to explore. But a 50-year-old model explains much of it with only three things: a need for Belonging, for Affection, and for Control.
• [article] On attraction and love — 13 Mar 2020
  Much is written on the subject of attractiveness. It has become synonymous with beauty. Attractive celebrities, attractive influencers, attractive art. And through this myopic lens, attraction becomes something ugly. Something that people have or do not have. Something to be jealous of. Something to be torn down. But it doesn’t have to be. It can actually be something very beautiful indeed.
• [article] The three reasons why everyone is so 'cliquey' — 5 Nov 2018
  The psychology of cliques has a pretty stereotypical pattern. It’s been well-described since the 80’s. There are three phases, and often they end in collapse.
• [article] Attractiveness might be more about the environment, than about you — 23 Aug 2018
  There are a number of things that occur naturally in our environment that can alter the attraction we feel for people. These things might seem small, but they have an outsize influence on our preferences for people.
• [article] Coming together - the pattern of friendship and love — 12 Jun 2018
  Making and keeping our connections to others remains one of the fundamental arts we learn in life. And having a stickybeak into other people’s relationships is one of the fundamental past times. But if there’s one thing psychologists are good at, it’s identifying patterns in the way people behave. In that spirit, this model describes the process of people coming together used in the counselling office and by counsellors people-watching over coffee that’s quite beautiful.
• [article] The most powerful way to get someone to like you, is to like them first — 23 Apr 2018
  One of our most powerful urges is to be liked. Strange to find, then, that one of the most powerful influences on our likeability is whether others think we like them—‘reciprocal liking’.
• [article] Sexual Attraction - What turns us on in others? — 20 Mar 2018
  Evolutionary psychologists have a perspective on sexual attraction that is discomfiting, but revealing.
• [article] How being clumsy makes you better looking (according to psychologists) — 6 Oct 2017
  If you’re anything like me (and here’s hoping you aren’t), then you might be delighted to hear that your inability to walk through life unaccompanied by the sounds of various clatters and clangings could actually make you look a little better looking in the eyes of others.
• [article] Why polygamy might be more natural than you thought — 8 Mar 2017
  Most theories of relationships centre on the idea that humans are well-suited for, and biologically disposed toward forming ‘pair-bonds’. But these traditional anthropological and evolutionary perspectives on sex are facing a growing threat from a more recent contender. The idea that human promiscuity is our natural state and community-style lovin’ better explains the state of our modern sexuality.
• [article] The Friendship Checklist — 20 Feb 2017
  Friendships are based on many of the same building blocks of intimacy as romance. In fact, up to a point, friends travel the same cognitive road as our lovers do. But friends can be more satisfying than our spouses, and more enjoyable, according to research. All this begs the question, what the hell is a friend and why are they so awesome?
• [article] Four ways to be attractive (and one you've probably overlooked) — 22 Jan 2017
  What is attraction? Usually, we just think of it as what turns us on. But interpersonal attraction is so much bigger than this. At its core, attraction is the inclination to chase the good feeling you get from someone else. It’s the word we use to describe what draws people together. And, it has aspects that are often overlooked.
• [article] How conversation sparks intimacy — 5 Aug 2015
  Conversation is obviously a source of intimacy. But you mightn’t expect it to be one of the predominant sources. Often we consider intimacy as a function of physical closeness. But intimicy is about relational closeness in any form. And conversation is an extremely powerful way to generate it.