Dating often starts with finding someone you like who is also interested in you.
It can be a spark you feel when catching that person’s gaze from across the room or the excitement after making that person laugh with a silly joke. It can be about the way they look or the emotions they evoke within you.
All you know is that you want to spend more time with them and get to know them better.
What you’re experiencing is called attraction, and knowing how to nurture it gives people an opportunity to begin the most beautiful of love stories.
Attraction in Science
The science behind attraction falls under social psychology, which is the study of a person’s mind and behavior in relation to other people.
According to American psychologist David Buss, the universal standards of attraction are “fundamentally anchored in adaptive problems that men and women have to solve in mate selection.” This means people tend to find attractive qualities that make a person an ideal candidate for procreation.
Simply put, you are drawn to someone who makes you want to settle down and start a family.
When you meet and interact with someone you're attracted to, your brain produces hormones that make you feel good and enlivened. These chemicals are associated with things like pleasure, adrenaline, and the desire for connection.
You feel these sensations when you’re with someone who has a well-proportioned body or a captivating eye color. You can also be drawn to a particular sense of humor or the way someone carries themselves when they’re kind or confident.
There are different ways for a person to be attractive, which means there are also plenty of ways for you to inspire attraction in somebody you’re interested in.
Types of Attraction
Though attraction is a vital part of how people form and maintain relationships, it isn’t always easy to qualify.
An article by Healthline stated that it can take many forms, with some people experiencing more than one type simultaneously. There are feelings that you get when you’re around a person you want to befriend, and there is also a specific kind of attraction that you exclusively experience in the presence of the person you’re in love with.
Learning about these nuances can help you not just understand your dating preferences but also have a good grasp of how you can accommodate them.
Physical Attraction
This type of attraction is the reason behind people being drawn to someone’s appearance.
It’s also why you’re partial to certain physical features like hair color or body type. The more appealing a person’s looks are to you, the more intensely you want to touch or be near them.
Physical attraction is often further divided into two types: aesthetic and sexual.
When you think someone is pretty or you take pleasure in looking at their face but you don’t necessarily want to date them, then what you can be feeling is aesthetic attraction. This is a common experience when admiring celebrities or random strangers.
However, if your appreciation for someone's body comes with arousal and the desire to take them to bed, then the attraction you’re experiencing can be sexual in nature.
Sexual attraction is also closely associated with human biology and the instinct to reproduce. Features like wide, childbearing hips or a symmetrical face can be attractive because they indicate good health and genes — things that are considered an advantage in terms of evolution.
Emotional Attraction
If you’re interested not just in someone’s looks but also in their personality, then emotional attraction is involved.
This is where emotions and sentiments come into play. When you’re getting to know someone on a much deeper level, you can find yourself admiring their humor or the way they look at the world.
When a person is emotionally attractive to you, they seem easy to talk to and be vulnerable with. This feeling is usually the basis of people’s most meaningful relationships.
Closely related to this is intellectual attraction, which is when you’re drawn to someone’s intelligence and how they think. When you enjoy picking their brain and asking about their opinions on mentally stimulating topics, you can be on the same wavelength, making it easier for you to understand each other.
Liking someone beyond their physical attributes is often considered a higher level of attraction, from which you can start a deeper connection that is the basis of long-term commitments and even love.
Romantic Attraction
Seen as a combination of all types of attraction, this feeling is what you experience when you fall in love and want to pursue a relationship with someone.
To be romantically attracted is to yearn for intimacy and long-term commitment.
You want to be with someone and do with them the usual things that couples do. You want to make them happy and perhaps even marry them someday so you can share a home, start a family, and spend the rest of your lives together.
What Makes Someone Conventionally Attractive?
Since a person’s physical appearance is the first thing you see when you meet them, physical attraction is often the first step in many romantic journeys.
Beauty is subjective, and not everyone will have the same preferences when it comes to physical features that they find attractive.
However, there are also social norms that set specific beauty standards. Popular media and even a country’s culture and traditions can dictate which qualities are seen by the majority as more appealing than others.
For both men and women, being conventionally attractive is a huge advantage when you want to make a lot of people like you in order to find someone special.
Attractive Women
A common image of an attractive woman tends to include long and luscious hair, great skin, wide hips, and shapely legs. There’s a reason for this.
According to a study about human perception published in the journal Behavioral Sciences, evolutionary biology plays a role in determining which qualities make a woman beautiful.
Men seek partners with good genes as part of a reproductive strategy. They are also inclined to see estrogen as something that drives female beauty, with 95% of men believing that feminized features are more attractive.
Youth is another component of attractiveness. Since women tend to lose fertility with age, younger women in their prime are also seen as ideal partners.
If a lady is young, healthy, and has the capacity to be a good mother, then she is likely considered to be conventionally attractive according to most beauty standards all over the world.
Attractive Men
Men, on the other hand, inspire physical attraction with a slightly different set of traits and qualities.
Asking people to picture a conventionally attractive guy would often result in someone tall and well-built. Physical signs of strength are appealing because it means a man is capable of protecting and providing for his partner and their future family.
However, it seems that being in their prime is not as important for men as it is for women.
Based on the same research featured in Behavioral Sciences, women actually prefer less testosterone in a long-term partner. Age is also an advantage, since with it comes experience, making older men more attractive to women who want a knowledgeable and competent husband.
So even though traits that show physical strength give men an upper hand, it’s still more important to prioritize your capacity to be a reliable provider if you want to attract women who are interested in mature and serious commitments.
The Law of Attraction
After finding out how attraction works and what makes people attractive, the next step is figuring out how to turn yourself into an ideal partner for the person you’re interested in.
One concept that can be useful for this is the law of attraction.
It talks about the notion that thinking positive thoughts can help you achieve positive results in your endeavors. Rooted in the idea that “like attracts like”, this belief encourages people to embody the kind of life they want.
When it comes to dating and relationships, the law of attraction simply means you must have faith in yourself and all the things that make you a partner that someone would want to have.
There may be factors that are beyond your control, like physical features you can’t change or circumstances that you can’t get out of, but that doesn’t mean you can’t do everything in your power to find the love that you want.
Taking the reins of your romantic journey often involves going out there and taking risks because you know that success is all but inevitable. You just have to do your best and believe.
Should You Take an Attractiveness Test?
Being proactive with your love life usually requires a lot of preparation and knowledge of what you have to work with.
If you want to know what qualities you possess that can encourage attraction in others, you can try taking an attractiveness test.
How It Works
There are different kinds of tests that can tell you how attractive you are according to certain standards.
One example is the Facial Harmony Test. It measures how proportional your face is based on the ratios and distance between your facial features. The more balanced your face is, the higher your score will be in terms of facial harmony.
Someone with a good facial harmony score is considered very attractive according to this method.
There are other tools that focus on the overall symmetry of your physical appearance. The closer you get to ideal propositions like the Golden Ratio or the neoclassical canons proposed by 17th and 18th-century artists, the more aesthetically pleasing you’re considered to be in the eyes of other people.
How It Can Help You
There’s no harm in trying out a few attractiveness tests to see how you fare on computer tools that analyze physical appearance according to mathematical models and algorithms.
The results you get can give you insight not just into how others perceive you but also the standards that contribute to how attraction works between individuals.
What’s important is that you refrain from having unrealistic expectations of yourself and of dating in general based on these tests. At best, an analysis of your physical features can provide you with suggestions on how to highlight the qualities that you already possess.
You must not let any beauty standards make you feel insecure because at the end of the day, your appearance is only one aspect of your overall appeal as a romantic partner.
Attraction in Online Dating
Since dating has evolved with modern technology, it’s also useful to know how you can stand out when meeting people on the internet.
According to anthropologist Mathew Gagné, attraction and information pair well in the digital age. With dating sites and apps, people are urged to focus more on their “love map” or that conscious and unconscious list of dating criteria that everyone has.
The parts of your brain that are associated with romantic feelings are activated when you meet someone who fits your love map. This means you have to learn how to take advantage of technology to have a successful dating experience.
Being Attractive in Text Messages
Talking to someone you like through text messages is both easier and harder than doing it in person.
Some people are more comfortable with expressing themselves through words, while others prefer hearing someone’s voice and seeing their facial expressions.
To chat and attract a person online, you can apply the same best practices for when you’re making conversation offline. The key is to be sincere and engaging when getting to know someone you’re interested in.
Be attentive, and don’t hesitate to give genuine compliments. Having a great sense of humor and being open about yourself can go a long way in inspiring attraction even when you only have words in text at your disposal.
Being Attractive in Phone and Video Calls
When you can have phone and video conversations, getting to know and connecting with someone can be more convenient.
The way you talk and express yourself through your face and gestures tends to have a lot of impact on other people. Things like voice, eye contact, and facial expression are crucial factors in how attraction develops between individuals who are interested in becoming romantically involved.
To impress someone during a phone call, make sure that you speak clearly. It also helps if you let your emotions reflect in the way you speak, so the person on the other end of the line knows when you’re excited, curious, and enjoying yourself.
For video calls, it pays to be as neat and presentable as you’d be when you’re interacting in person. Learning about things like proper lighting and how to identify your best angles on camera can also be a huge advantage.
There are only a few differences between a video call and an actual offline conversation, so if you’re prepared for the former, you will have little trouble being successful when you finally meet in person.
How Attraction Nurtures Love
Love can bring people together in a number of different circumstances.
However, each unique connection begins with a spark of interest that grows into attraction. It is the foundation of all romantic relationships — the dawn of many lifelong commitments and partnerships.
To find the love of your life, it’s vital that you understand how attraction works and what role it plays in dating.
When you have a good grasp of what you want, it becomes easier to embody the kind of partner that someone special may also be looking for.
References
Abrams, Mere. 2021. “What Are the Different Types of Attraction?” Healthline. https://www.healthline.com/health/types-of-attraction.
Gagné, Mathew. 2023. “How Dating Apps Mediate Attraction – SAPIENS.” Sapiens.org. https://www.sapiens.org/culture/dating-apps-mediate-attraction/.
Paris, Wendy. 2017. “Why We Want Who We Want.” Psychology Today. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/articles/201707/why-we-want-who-we-want.
Yarosh, Daniel B. 2019. “Perception and Deception: Human Beauty and the Brain.” Behavioral Sciences 9, no. 4 (March). https://www.mdpi.com/2076-328X/9/4/34.