Think about the filters you use to eliminate people from consideration as potential romantic partners. What characteristics or behaviours lead you to judge others as unattractive? Does Duck's theory make sense to you? Have you ever eliminated someone by using a sociological or pre-interaction cue only to reconsider them based on interaction and cognitive cues?
I don't think I could do a long term relationship, I feel the stress of distance could take a toll on both people and the romantic relationship, thus this part of sociological or incidental cue would be hard, and make a potential mate less attractive to me. Although it would be a different situation if we were already dating before the distance. This also is the case with physical proximity, but someone too close becomes unattractive to me as well. I don't like someone to around all the time, I need my space. Pre-interaction cues plays a role as well. I may look for a guy who physically takes care of himself, but not too much (I don't like big muscles.) I agree with what it says in the book, the old expression "you never get a second chance to make a first impression" really is true. The most important cue for me to weed out potential romantic partners is the interaction cue. If I cant not hold a stimulating conversation with someone, they become extremely unattractive to me.
Ducks theory states that we use filters to judge how close we want to become while we weed out potential partners through every filter. So I completely agree with him. We may not knowingly be using these filters, but when you stop and think about it, we all do at some point or another.
When it comes to eliminating someone based off pre-interaction cues, I am sadly guilty as charged. I may not consider a guy because he isn't my typer, or he looks like "a dumb joke", but when I interact with him he may completely prove me wrong.
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I enjoyed reading your post as you made quite a few good good points regarding this topic. When it comes to pre-interaction cues, I believe that most if not all of world's population does this as it is simply part of our human genetic code. Most of us look for the "complete package" and if one is off (looks, intelligence, etc), we start to think of reasons why this person is not right for us.
ReplyDeleteI also agree on the physical proximity point, as it is always helpful to set guidelines. For myself, pre-interaction cues such as the way a person looks, what they are wearing, who they are hanging out are all important cues and can save you a lot of time.
Great post again.