The Science of Attraction: 7 Ways to Find the Spark

Whether it's a guy at the gym, supermarket at work or online. What's the key to sparking attraction? Today on the Love Strategies podcast, I'm sharing seven science backed ways to boost attraction. A little while back I did a science of flirting pod that ended up being one of the top five most popular podcasts we did in all of 2024. So I'm back today with the Science of attraction. I'm Dr. Gary Lewandowski, Chief love scientist at Love Strategies. I'm an award winning teacher, professor, speaker, I'm an author. I've been writing about the psychology of relationships for years. At this point, over 10 million people have read my articles, watched my TED talk. I've been studying relationships for over 20 years. So I'm a relationship scientist who talks about research, but does some of my own as well, including research on attraction. And so today I'm going to share insights on the golden rule of attraction. Whether opposites really do attract. Should you play hard to get ways the situation or context impact attraction? And how important is personality? Or is attraction really all just physical? What I like about this topic is so many people mistakenly believe that attraction is an all or nothing phenomenon. Either you have it or you don't. But the truth is attraction can build. It's malleable, which means we can influence it. There's a lot of factors that go into attraction. I'm a social psychologist by training, which means I focus a lot on how the context people around us influence our behavior, often in ways that we don't really realize is happening. So the good news is that means you're not stuck. There's a lot of levers to pull, buttons to push. There's a lot of things we can do. So the only thing holding you back is really just not knowing which are the right buttons. And so I don't know who's ready to push some buttons. Let's, let's talk about seven ways to find the spark using the science of attraction. Number one. I'm starting off with number one and I'm calling this the golden rule of attraction because this is one of the most widely studied sponsors studied aspects of attraction because it's just that important. And so if you want to facilitate attraction between you and somebody else, the golden rule is be as similar as possible. The more the better. Literally the more the more similar you and the other person can be, the better off you are. It gives you a lot to talk about. It gives you common ground. You like you, someone else is a lot like you. So you're gonna like them as well. And so similarity in what ways? I would honestly say all the ways. As many of the ways as you can possibly think of. What we know specifically from research is a couple things really matter. Key, demographics, age, ethnicity, where you grew up. Like having a common background is important. Also things like your values, feelings about politics, religion, the importance of marriage, your thoughts about kids and raising kids, big life philosophy things. All of that stuff matters. But again, I'm just going to say it, say one more time, like, all the more you and your partner can be similar, the better. Now here's an interesting wrinkle. There's this differentiation between your actual level of similarity and your perceived level of similarity, which is. Okay, so actual is pretty straightforward. It's like, how alike are we in reality? If I like X, Y and Z, do you also like X, Y and Z? Are we aligned? That's, that's actual similarity. Perceived is. What do you think? Like, I mean, do you think we're similar? Even if we're not similar, it. Do you think we're similar? And so researchers have looked into this in a study from 2008, found that actually both matter. So it's not just how similar you are in reality, but it's how similar you think you are. That said, having studied relationships for a very long time, and I talk about this in the course I teach at the university, is when in doubt, if you have to, just between perception and reality, perception matters more. What you think is going on in your relationship is actually what dictates your behavior, thoughts and feelings more than the reality. So what is, what does that actually mean? I mean, this goes both ways, this perception of similarity. A lot of times early in a relationship, if you really want that relationship to go well, you think you're a lot more similar than you actually are, right? Like, you had that amazing new relationship. Like, oh my God, everything's amazing, perfect, perfect, perfect. We're the same, same, same on everything. And like, it's easy to think early on when you don't have all the information, but it's that perceived similarity that's propelling that relationship forward. It can go the other way too, though. Like, maybe you're a little bit avoidantly attached and so you're perceiving a lack of similarity when you're actually in reality a lot more similar than you're given, given the relationship credit for. And so if you really think about it, and this is this, like I said, a rule for all facets of relationships, but pay attention to perceptions, perceptions really, really matter, right? And so, golden rule of attraction number one, similarity is, is key. Now, one of the things I said in there is that the more similar, the better. And I would bet, because I've heard this before, many of you thought, as I said, that the more similarity, the better. You, you thought something along the lines of like, wait a second, but I don't want to date my clone. I don't want to date someone who's exactly like me. That sounds bad. Boring. True. I get it, right? I get that feeling like if they're 100% the same, I don't want to just date another version of me. And so the number two way to find the spark is getting this idea of opposites attract straight, right? Because a lot of people say, oh, I don't want to date my clone. That sounds boring. I don't want to date somebody so similar. I want someone who's opposite than me. That's amazing. So here, here's the truth about opposites attract. Opposites attract. At first, it's intriguing. It's different, right? Someone's got different thoughts, opinions. It's like, huh? Why do they think that they're a little bit cute? So you're, you're willing to stick around to find out what they think. But here's the truth. Opposites attract at first, but then they attack those opposite things. Those are the source of friction, conflict, disagreements, arguments, trust, drama, right? It's, it's all there in the ways that you're opposite. I would also suggest that you're not as opposite as you think you are, right? Like, so you and your partner have a lot of traits. Some of those things are similar. Some of those things are opposite. You're going to notice the opposites because they're uncommon. And they also tend to be the points of friction. The 98% of the things you have in common you take for granted and just you don't even notice. You're the similar age, similar background, a lot of those things I mentioned earlier. But it's the few couple things that are different, where you're like, yes, see, we're totally opposite because we have disagreeing opinions about the best kind of music. I like country, they like hip hop. We're totally opposite. You're not totally opposite. You both like music. You have a slight preference difference that doesn't make you totally opposite. And think of it this way, right? You don't actually want a true opposite. This is a true opposite, right? So imagine you are extroverted, you're active, and you Love the beach. What's the true opposite of that? If you're extroverted, active and loves the beach? The opposite is a guy who's introverted, a homebody who hates the beach. Tell me that doesn't sound like a match made in heaven, right? That's a horror show. Horror show. You want to go out and talk to people, not him. He wants to stay at home, doesn't want to do anything. You love going to the beach. He dreads every miserable grain of sand experience that he has along the way, right? It just will be an never ending source of conflict. Because even if you love the beach, you, you know he hates it. And he's like, no, no problem, babe, I'll go with you to the beach. Part of you knows he doesn't really want to be there. You know what that does to your joy? It kills it a little. Like, it just kills it a little. And so, you know, you might say, oh, you don't have to go. No, but I want to. It's just, you're, you're going to have conflict, right? You're just going to have, and I'm not saying like an all out fight about things, but it's just. Imagine a different world where you're, it's all about similarity. And you love the beach and he loves the beach. Aha. Now that sounds like a good relationship. Here's the thing with being opposites. You don't really want an opposite. What you really want is novelty, right? And so you don't have to both like opposite types of music. You can both like country. That doesn't mean that you're boring. You can both enjoy the same things, but maybe you like slightly different artists, right? Maybe you, you know, one person likes country, one person likes Taylor Swift. And then you can debate like this, is Taylor Swift really country or not? Like, is she authentically country or fake country? Like you can have, like that creates a little novelty. It creates a little something to talk about. Um, think about. You don't want somebody who's opposite in a desire to travel. You love traveling. The opposite is someone who hates traveling. Terrible. Instead, you want to both like to travel, but have slightly different preferences about how you like to travel, right? Different areas of the world you like to go to, whether you like to go far or near, you know, what kind of vacations. Maybe, maybe you're a cruise ship kind of girl and he's an all inclusive resort kind of guy. I feel like you can meet in the middle there. Like there's some, there's some things there that are opposite enough, but with a solid foundation of similarity. And so what this really brings up is it's not opposite that we really want. What we really want in the research shows we want desirable differences. And so the research shows we want differences in somebody in a way that's aspirational for us, right? It's. It. They have. They're different from us in a way. That's a trait we aspire to have. Grow, change, improve. Right? And so here's. Here's an example, right? You're currently super predictable, kind of buttoned up, right? Reserved. But you want to be more adventurous. So a guy who seems adventurous, who's the opposite of your current state of being super predictable and buttoned up, that adventurous, outgoing, unpredictable guy is going to be appealing because he has traits you aspire to have. So you want to be more outgoing, more humorous. You will look for people who have those traits. Now, I mean, I guess maybe, I don't know, technicality. That's opposite, but probably not opposite in the way that we originally were, in the way we were originally thinking about this. So when you think opposite, think what I'm really looking for is novelty and desirable differences. And I'll just tell you, I like both of those traits because those novelty and desirable differences are both keys to personal growth. And I think some of the best relationships you could ever have are the ones that help you grow as a person. So, all right, number three, way to find the spark. It's just that this basic fact, we like what we're near. And so the nerdy psych term for this is the principle of proximity, right? We need to be each other to get to know each other. Now, some of this gets muddled up with tech and our ability to feel near each other from a text or a snap or, you know, a message or, you know, something on a dating app. We can feel near each other, but we really want physical proximity. There's something about being physically close to somebody that actually, like, lingers and follows up into a sense of emotional closeness. And so this is why we tell our clients all the time, get off the apps as soon as you possibly can. The apps are there for you to find somebody. See if, like, some things, some basic boxes are checked in terms of. Of what you're looking for. See if you know who they seem. They seem like they are on their profile matches how they're conversing with you. But go meet them in person as soon as possible. The other thing related to proximity that we recommend to Our clients is we don't recommend long distance relationships, especially not early on to start, because you're missing something in the development of your relationship if you're not able to spend time together. There's just something about needing a base level quantity of moments together to then facilitate a quality of connection. And so it's really tough to get relationships started long distance. Again, I, I will tell Satan. It's not impossible, but it's definitely, you know, dating on hard mode. If, if you're starting relationships with guys who live an hour away. And every, every time you get together, it's. It's like this arduous task of travel and distance and traffic and, and all that kind of stuff. All right, so number four, we like we what we see. And so in psychology, we call this the mere exposure effect. The more you see something, the more you like it, right? Advertisers know this, right? It's why you see ads for brands all over the place, even in places that doesn't make sense, right? Like, why do so many brands pay so much money to place their products in movies? You're not about to buy a lot of those products right there on the spot. But there's just something about seeing those things in those contexts that makes us like them more. And so one of the things I was excited about with, with this episode today, talking about the science of attraction, is just really diving into some of the classic and really cool studies in psychology that have taught us about these principles. So here's one of my favorite ones. This was a study where it was in the context of a large lecture hall. So you remember back to college, those large, huge classes you were in hundreds, sometimes several hundreds of people. I know when I was a grad student, I would lecture to an intro psych. There was like 500 people in there. It was this huge amphitheater. The thing about those classes is you didn't always know everybody that was in there. Like, you were just. They're so big, you really couldn't see everybody and just keep track of who all was in your class, right? And so what the researchers did in this context was they had some female confederates. So these were female research assistants that were basically part of the study who all had similar appearances, right? They're just, you know, kind of average attractiveness. They posed this students and they went to class. They didn't have any interaction with any students. They just went showed up to class. But the interesting piece was they had three. They had a couple different conditions, right? And so basically those female Confederates. The. The people who were part of the study. They either went to no classes, a few classes, or lots of classes. And then at the end of the term, students saw slides of the women and completed measures to see how they rated each person, each of the women's familiarity, how attractive they were, and how similar they thought they were to them. Now, here's the thing. The students didn't necessarily remember that these women that they were rating were in the class or not, right? It wasn't like, oh, I. I remember her. It was just the fact that they had. See, they must have seen them more, right? That the woman attended class more. The. Those women who attended class more, the research assistants, were rated as more attractive and more familiar. And so it's just, again, when it says mere exposure, it really is just merely being exposed to somebody. Just seeing them more often makes them more appealing. Um, which I think is fascinating. Right, Again, again, kind of goes back to that social psychology thing of, like, there's so much that influences our behavior, and a lot of it is stuff we have no idea that it's even happening. The other thing I think is interesting about both this mirror exposure and proximity is they both kind of harken back to evolutionary psychology in the sense that, like, why would somebody who's near us and familiar to us because we've seen them a lot. Like, why are they more likable? Why are they more attractive to us? And I think it's, you know, it goes back to this idea that, you know, what's familiar is safe. Right? Like, if. If I see you all the time and you're near me all the time, I generally don't classify you as a threat. It's like, oh, I know you. It's like, who do you see all the time, and who are you near all the time? Family and friends. Who's. Who's safe in. In a big scary world, who's safe? Family and friends. Right. And so it makes people seem more a part of the. In group when they're familiar from exposure and because they're near us, which. Which I think is kind of cool. Again, you know, one of the. One of those subtle influences that are. Are impacting us along the way in a way maybe we didn't. We didn't expect. So, number five, what's another principle? Science of attraction. Very simply, we like those who like us. Right? The nerdy term for this is reciprocity. And so if I find out you like me, it makes me like you more because look at that. Like, I like me. You are showing extraordinarily good judgment by also liking me. That is pretty likable. You must be a pretty good person. And so we think about reciprocity in psychology as this idea, like, attraction is the combination of how physically attractive somebody is, but also their likelihood of acceptance. Like, we don't want to get rejected. And so likelihood of acceptance is reciprocity. Like, if I know you like me, my likelihood of getting shot down, rejected, horribly, terribly embarrassed, goes down dramatically. If I'm not going to get rejected, it's easier to like you more, right? And so we want to make it clear. We want to boost the traction, right? Make it clear that you like somebody, so you want to boost those odds. So make it clear that you like them, that you're not going to horribly, terribly shoot them down and reject them. Make more eye contact. When you make eye contact, let it linger a little bit. Give a little smile, a little flirt. Break the touch barrier, Reach across, touch, right? Make it clear. Boost what we. We call it, like, boosting your signal. Make it clear to other people that you really do like them and you're interested. You know, you've. If you listen to this podcast at all, you've heard me say a lot, have a large welcome mat, right? Make it clear that you like them, and that's going to make them like you a whole lot more. And so this very much relates to this idea and a. A very common question both Adam and I get, which is, should you play hard to get? The simple answer, no, no, don't. We're not playing. Like, we don't. We don't want to. Never want to encourage anybody to play any kind of game. It's inauthentic to play games. And you don't want to make your love life a game, because games are about winning. And we want. We don't want to win a game. We want someone to like us for who we really are and have an authentic, real relationship. And so we should not play hard to get at all. Here's. Here's the one sliver of hard to get that is important that research shows is appealing about hard to get. We don't want the other person to be hard for us to get. Right? We like people that like us. We want reciprocity, right? We. Absolutely. That's true. What we like, though, is the idea that you are hard for everyone else to get except for me, right? There's something about me that is special, that it's hard for everyone else. Like, you turn down everybody else, but. But you're willing to give me a shot that is attractive. And so that's not playing hard to get. It's just being authentic to have some standards. Don't go out liking everybody. We don't like the person that likes everybody. Right. That's not attractive. We like somebody who's got some standards. Turn some people down, but we'll turn some people down, but is willing to give us a shot. Right? And so that's, that's the one way hard to get can work. All right, so number six, number six principle is we like others when we're aroused. Okay? It's not what you think. That arousal part's not what you think. Get your mind out of the gutter. It's not sexual arousal. It's just a general state of physiological arousal. So not sexual. It could be physiological arousal from fear, exercise, just being scared. Right? It's just anything that gives you this heightened sense of like your heart fluttering a little bit, feeling like a little nervous, a little bit of energy, a little bit of excitement. Arousals around like it just. Here's the, the crazy thing about this excitement. We get excited from good things and bad things. And the excitement our body feels is largely the same. The only thing that's different is how we label it. Right? And that's an important principle to understand for, for the study I'm about to share with you. And so that excitation is largely the same. The thing that's different is how we label it. And so this opens up the door for something we call the misattribution of arousal. Right? We talk about a non romantic sounding term, misattribution of arousal. But essentially we label the excitement we feel differently and misattribution means in this particular case, we're mislabeling it. And so one of the most famous studies in literally all of psychology and if you took intro psych in college, you probably heard about what is now colloquially known as the bridge study. The bridge study was done by Dutton and Aaron Art. Aaron happens to be my graduate school advisor. And so this study was, is, is one of the most famous studies on attraction, like I said, in all of psychology. And so essential. What they did was there's two bridges, one bridge, Capilano bridge, super high, shaky, windy sways back and forth. I would love someday to, to visit and cross this bridge myself. But from everything I've, I've heard Art talk about it, it's terrifying. Like it's terrifying to cross. It's very nerve wracking people. And so it's Terrifying and nerve wracking, which means you get a lot of arousal, right? Physiological arousal, a lot of ex excitement, right? Um, so they'd random guys crossing that bridge, right? And at the end of the bridge they'd encounter a research assistant, female research assistant, average attractiveness. Ask them a couple questions and then give her number to see, you know, just in case they had any follow up questions about the study. Okay, now that was one condition. Another condition was a low, sturdy, basic, boring bridge. Nothing, nothing fancy about it at all. Same exact setup though. Random guys crossing at the end. Female research assistant, Same, same scenario, gave them a different number, right? So that way they knew who called, if anybody called, which bridge they had, they had crossed. And I can tell you, I've run a lot of studies in 20 years of doing research on relationships, the percentage of people that call to follow up. And we always do this, right? We always give follow up information. If you have any questions, whatever, do you want to follow up? It's virtually zero percent. Almost nobody follows up. But what's interesting in the bridge study is the guys crossing the high shaky, scary bridge, they called. They called. So why, why are the high shaky bridge guys calling? Well, misattribution of arousal, right. They thought they, they felt all this excitement. They then encountered this woman and rather than realizing it was from the bridge, they misattributed it and thought that excitation was coming from her. Oh my gosh, I must really like her. She gave me her number, I should call her. I should probably call like. And so we can mistake where this excitement is coming from. And so, you know, how do you make this idea work for you? Exciting dates, do exciting things, meet men in exciting places, gyms, like you know, in the summer, carnivals, right, like all, anything where it's like fun. Like, I mean you go on dates, try to particularly those early, early dates. Don't just sit and have a boring cup of coffee every time, like go for a walk, like go do something like go ice skating, go, you know, whatever kind of get you, get you moving has a little bit more of that arousal, that physiological arousal going for it. Walking dates, go for a hike, you know, whatever, whatever it happens to be just like kind of get moving a little bit because that physiological arousal can transfer over and it's, you know, help helps make things just a little bit more exciting. And we know excitement is an important component to attraction. All right, so that brings us to number seven, the last science of attraction. Way to find a spark. And number seven principle is, and I save This, I save this for last because I'm not gonna lie, this is my absolute favorite one is personality goes along with way. And I'll tell you, this is my own study. This is my. The first study I ever did that got a ton of media attention, got mentioned in all kinds of magazines, and I did a bunch of interviews, which is like, that's not why I like it though. I like. You're going to see why I like it. But it's. I'll just preview it by saying, I love this because it's so incredibly fair. And so this was my own study. And so the fun thing about doing your own research is you get to base it on your own experience. And so I remember from dating, having the experience where you'd meet somebody, meet somebody, like, drop dead gorgeous, amazing. But then you talk to him and it's like, huh, Gosh. Like just there wasn't much there. And so I just always felt myself they became less attractive, right? That also had the opposite experience. Like somebody who was like, you know, not like stunning, but then you meet them and they're like super cool and they got more attractive. And so basically I did a study to test this, right? And so the basic idea here is you meet somebody, we'd have people rate a bunch of photos and let's say they, they rated somebody 7 out of 10 on attractiveness. Then we had a, a way of pairing a bunch of personality traits with that same picture, right? And so you read the rate this person 7 out of 10, you then learn great things about them. They're smart, they're funny, fun, super engaging, charismatic, cool, right? Now when you see that picture again, knowing that those traits go with that person, how do you rate their physical appearance? And what happened was that seven became a nine, a six became an eight. People became more physically attractive when you found out they had good personality characteristics. Awesome, right? So here's the other really awesome part, I think is it goes the other way too. So if you find out someone has bad traits, like, you initially see them and you rate them 9 out of 10, like, wow, they're, they're pretty attractive. But then you find out like, oh my God, they're like annoying and materialistic and dumb and just, they don't have a lot to offer or they're boring or whatever. Like now when you see them again, that person who was a nine is a seven, the person was an eight is a six, and so on. And so, come on, like, how awesome is that? Like, that is so it's not very Often in life or in research or in attraction that things feel fair. And that's why I love this, because what this study says is you want to become more attractive. You don't have to worry about going to the gym, dieting, makeup, any of that kind of stuff. You know what you got to do, Be a better person, right? You want to have people like you more and not find you less attractive. Stop being a terrible person. Like, stop having a bad personality. Like, work. Work on your personality, because that's going to go a long way towards making you more attractive. I would just say, too, you know, other. Other people have replicated this effect. It works with body attractiveness, too. And so super, super cool finding, right? And so you're not stuck, right? Just to wrap this whole thing up, I would just say, you know, overall, signs of attraction, the thing I want you to really take away from this is it's not this thing where you're attractive or you're not, right? You're not stuck with, like, oh, there's. There's nothing here. There's a lot of different things that influence attraction. And if you have a better understanding of what goes into it, there's a lot you can do to create sparks. So hopefully you enjoyed this podcast today. If you like this, please, like, follow and leave us a review and maybe we'll do some more science of blank types of podcasts in the future. All right, thanks, everybody.

So now you've reached the end of the podcast. Thank you so much for being here. And because you have proven that you are serious about attracting love, you wouldn't be listening to this podcast if you didn't feel that way. What I'd love for you to do is go to loveapply.com where you can apply for a complimentary love strategy session where a professional love strategist on my team is going to speak with you directly and be able to see whether or not our executive love coaching programs can be transformational for you and your love life. There's absolutely no fee whatsoever. All you got to do is head on over to loveapply.com schedule that session, and you could be speaking with someone on my team over the next couple days. All right, thanks so much. Talk to you soon.

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