Common mechanisms underlying different types of attraction

Abstract

People are attracted to those (1) who share similar attitudes (similarity-attraction), (2) who like them (liking-attraction), and (3) who are physically attractive (physically attractiveness-attraction). Extant studies which largely studied these effects in isolation have shown the various mechanisms through which these differing types of attraction are generated. Understanding a common set of mechanisms underlying the three sets of attraction is both theoretically interesting and practically important.