Theories of attraction

We spent a pleasant few hours, until the arse lost all feeling and the back froze up in screaming protest, BBQing and gaming with our vanillas. It was mostly chatting about attraction theory; one of them at any rate. Well more its application in group dynamics.

There is this theory about how people choose someone most similar to themselves; in essence birds of a feather flock together. Now it seems quite logical in some ways. Most successful long term couples we know generally have tonnes in common. They chose someone with similar values to themselves and built on that commonality.

The thing is though it begs the question how did they find each other to begin with? Now one school thinks that it has something to do with a rating system. In fact they have conducted all sorts of experiments where people rate themselves from 1-10 and then they let them lose in a room full of the opposite sex. Generally people pair off with those they consider a similar ranking to themselves, though some will make a stab at those of a higher number.

There are many things that will affect how people rate themselves; self esteem is definitely one of them and of course self esteem is affected by many things in turn.  Those with very good self esteem will rate/ perceive themselves as a higher number. Where things go wrong is when a self rated 10 feels that they have ended up with a six, as was so clearly illustrated at that magical Christmas. Anyway you get the idea...

What we were talking about was the idea that in groups you always end up with the hot and the not and in a large group they have a tendency to cluster together. Now those with good self esteem might float around them and join in the peripheral, but the hot do not include them in their ranks by offering up a chair or anything of that nature. The nots on the other hand, though polite, do not make room for the hot. In fact they are actively considered competition and are treated as such... politely of course.

Our vanillas, lovely, bright inclusive people that they are (who regard each other as complete 10s) were mortified that some psychologist had thought up this explanation and experiments to begin with. There was a lot of squeaking about how they were attracted by people's minds and humour and, and, and...

Right up until confronted with photos and asked to rate them. They were in complete agreement as to the persons ranking...

Well at least, if they were that way inclined, they could agree to who they would be after :D