• Question: why and how are humans attracted to others?

    Asked by Keely-Beth to Sam, Rose, Maggi, Kirsty, Ben on 15 Jun 2017.
    • Photo: Ben Kenward

      Ben Kenward answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      If you mean sexual attraction, then there are two quite different answers which are both true. One answer is evolutionary. Imagine if your parents hadn’t been attracted to each other – then you wouldn’t have come into existence. By definition, any animal alive now (including humans) is the descendent of millions of individuals who have all been attracted to another member of the same species. If they weren’t, they didn’t have children and their genes didn’t stay in the gene pool. So we have it in our genes. The other type of answer is psychological – what are these genes to our minds? This is a more complicated issue, but what it boils down to is that the genes produce hormones and patterns of neural development and suchlike that, in combination with development in a normal environment, make us want to get it together with someone else. It’s very biological…

    • Photo: Kirsty Miller

      Kirsty Miller answered on 15 Jun 2017:

      Hi Keely-Beth 🙂 In evolutionary terms humans are attracted to each other so we will reproduce and continue the species – so the notion of attraction is so that we will pair up and have babies! Clearly we are a bit more sophisticated now, so there are lots of factors that are relevant such as societal factors that affect how many people, the type of people, the gender of people that we are attracted to. Ultimately attraction is very complicated (as you probably know!) but a lot of it probably does come from our basic biological instincts!

    • Photo: Rose Turner

      Rose Turner answered on 17 Jun 2017:

      From the evolutionary perspective, some research has shown that we are attracted to people using smell – it’s thought that this helps us to identify people who are genetically different to us (which is good for producing healthy offspring!) Also, research has consistently shown that we find facial symmetry attractive, though there is lots of debate about why. One view is an evolutionary one, that symmetry indicates health (and we want healthy partners so we can have healthy children). According to this view, asymmetry can indicate underlying infections and diseases during development and so symmetry suggests a very strong immune system. The other view is about perpetual bias, which is that, simply, the visual system can process symmetry more easily than asymmetry. In terms of this view, our preferences for symmetrical faces are no different than our preferences for other symmetrical objects – we also prefer symmetry in art.

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