Placeholder Content Image

‘Self-love’ might seem selfish. But done right, it’s the opposite of narcissism

<p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ian-robertson-1372650">Ian Robertson</a>, <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-wollongong-711">University of Wollongong</a></em></p> <p>“To love what you are, the thing that is yourself, is just as if you were embracing a glowing red-hot iron” <a href="https://archive.org/details/jungsseminaronni0000jung">said psychonalyst Carl Jung</a>.</p> <p>Some may argue this social media generation does not seem to struggle with loving themselves. But is the look-at-me-ism so easily found on TikTok and Instagram the kind of self-love we need in order to flourish?</p> <p>The language of <a href="https://theconversation.com/teaching-positive-psychology-skills-at-school-may-be-one-way-to-help-student-mental-health-and-happiness-217173">positive psychology</a> can be – and often is – appropriated for all kinds of self-importance, as well as cynical marketing strategies.</p> <p>Loving yourself, though, psychological experts stress, is not the same as behaving selfishly. There’s a firm line between healthy and appropriate forms of loving yourself, and malignant or <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-types-of-narcissist-are-there-a-psychology-expert-sets-the-record-straight-207610">narcissistic</a> forms. But how do we distinguish between them?</p> <p>In 2023, researchers Eva Henschke and Peter Sedlmeier conducted <a href="https://www.researchgate.net/publication/355152846_What_is_self-love_Redefinition_of_a_controversial_construct">a series of interviews</a> with psychotherapists and other experts on what self-love is. They’ve concluded it has three main features: self-care, self-acceptance and self-contact (devoting attention to yourself).</p> <p>But as an increasingly individualistic society, are we already devoting too much attention to ourselves?</p> <h2>Philosophy and self-love</h2> <p>Philosophers and psychology experts alike have considered the ethics of self-love.</p> <p>Psychology researcher Li Ming Xue and her colleagues, <a href="https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.585719/full">exploring the notion of self-love in Chinese culture</a>, claim “Western philosophers believe that self-love is a virtue”. But this is a very broad generalisation.</p> <p>In the Christian tradition and in much European philosophy, <a href="https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10848770.2020.1839209">says philosopher Razvan Ioan</a>, self-love is condemned as a profoundly damaging trait.</p> <p>On the other hand, <a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/2107991">many of the great Christian philosophers</a>, attempting to make sense of the instruction to love one’s neighbour as oneself, admitted certain forms of self-love were virtuous. In order to love your neighbour as yourself, you must, it would seem, love yourself.</p> <p>In the Western philosophical context, claim Xue and her colleagues, self-love is concerned with individual rights – “society as a whole only serves to promote an individual’s happiness”.</p> <p>This individualistic, self-concerned notion of self-love, they suggest, might come from the Ancient Greek philosophers. In particular, Aristotle. But <a href="https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/philosophy-stirred-not-shaken/201502/love-yourself-love-your-character">Aristotle thought only the most virtuous</a>, who benefited the society around them, should love themselves. By making this connection, he avoided equating self-love with self-centredness.</p> <p>We should love ourselves not out of vanity, he argued, but in virtue of our capacity for good. Does Aristotle, then, provide principled grounds for distinguishing between proper and improper forms of self-love?</p> <h2>Bar too high?</h2> <p>Aristotle might set the bar too high. If only the most virtuous should try to love themselves, this collides head-on with the idea loving yourself can help us improve and become more virtuous – as <a href="https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1057/9781137383310_6">philosophers Kate Abramson and Adam Leite have argued</a>.</p> <p>Many psychologists claim self-love is important for adopting the kind and compassionate self-perception crucial for overcoming conditions that weaponise self-criticism, like <a href="https://theconversation.com/clinical-perfectionism-when-striving-for-excellence-gets-you-down-43704">clinical perfectionism</a> and <a href="https://theconversation.com/how-many-people-have-eating-disorders-we-dont-really-know-and-thats-a-worry-121938">eating disorders</a>.</p> <p>More broadly, some argue compassion for oneself is necessary to support honest insights into your own behaviour. They believe we need warm and compassionate self-reflection to avoid the defensiveness that comes with the fear of judgement – even if we’re standing as our own judge.</p> <p>For this reason, a compassionate form of self-love is often necessary to follow Socrates’ advice to “know thyself”, says <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-015-9578-4">philosopher Jan Bransen</a>. Positive self-love, by these lights, can help us grow as people.</p> <h2>Self-love ‘misguided and silly’</h2> <p>But not everyone agrees you need self-love to grow. The late philosopher <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/news/2005/nov/29/guardianobituaries.obituaries">Oswald Hanfling</a> was deeply sceptical of this idea. In fact, he argued the notion of loving oneself was misguided and silly. His ideas are mostly rejected by philosophers of love, but pointing out where they go wrong can be useful.</p> <p>When you love someone, he said, you’re prepared to sacrifice your own interests for those of your beloved. But he thought the idea of sacrificing your own interests made no sense – which shows, he concluded, we can’t love ourselves.</p> <p><a href="https://www.jstor.org/stable/3751159">He wrote</a>: "I may sacrifice an immediate satisfaction for the sake of my welfare in the future, as in the case of giving up smoking. In this case, however, my motive is not love but self-interest. What I reveal in giving up smoking is not the extent of my love for myself, but an understanding that the long-term benefits of giving it up are likely to exceed the present satisfaction of going on with it."</p> <p>We often have conflicting interests (think of someone who is agonising over two different career paths) – and it’s not at all strange to sacrifice certain interests for the sake of others.</p> <p>This is not just a question of sacrificing short-term desires in favour of a long-term good, but a matter of sacrificing something of value for your ultimate benefit (or, so you hope).</p> <h2>Self-compassion</h2> <p>Hanfling fails to consider the role of compassionate self-love. While we might understand it’s in our interests to do something (for instance, repair bridges with someone we’ve fallen out with), it might take a compassionate and open disposition towards ourselves to recognise what’s in our best interests.</p> <p>We might need this self-compassion, too, in order to admit our failures – so we can overcome our defensiveness and see clearly how we’re failing to fulfil <a href="https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10677-015-9578-4">these interests</a>.</p> <p>Self-acceptance in this context does not mean giving ourselves licence to run roughshod over the interests of those around us, nor to justify our flaws as “valid” rather than work on them.</p> <p>Self-love, as promoted by contemporary psychologists, means standing in a compassionate relationship to ourselves. And there’s nothing contradictory about this idea.</p> <p>Just as we strive to develop a supportive, kind relationship to the people we care about – and just as this doesn’t involve uncritical approval of everything they do – compassionate self-love doesn’t mean abandoning valid self-criticism.</p> <p>In fact, self-compassion has the opposite effect. It promotes comfort with the kind of critical self-assessment that helps us grow – which leads to resilience. It breeds the opposite of narcissistic self-absorption.<!-- Below is The Conversation's page counter tag. Please DO NOT REMOVE. --><img style="border: none !important; box-shadow: none !important; margin: 0 !important; max-height: 1px !important; max-width: 1px !important; min-height: 1px !important; min-width: 1px !important; opacity: 0 !important; outline: none !important; padding: 0 !important;" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/205938/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-basic" alt="The Conversation" width="1" height="1" /><!-- End of code. If you don't see any code above, please get new code from the Advanced tab after you click the republish button. The page counter does not collect any personal data. More info: https://theconversation.com/republishing-guidelines --></p> <p><em><a href="https://theconversation.com/profiles/ian-robertson-1372650">Ian Robertson</a>, PhD Candidate (Teaching roles at Macquarie &amp; Wollongong), <a href="https://theconversation.com/institutions/university-of-wollongong-711">University of Wollongong</a></em></p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images </em></p> <p><em>This article is republished from <a href="https://theconversation.com">The Conversation</a> under a Creative Commons license. Read the <a href="https://theconversation.com/self-love-might-seem-selfish-but-done-right-its-the-opposite-of-narcissism-205938">original article</a>.</em></p>

Mind

Placeholder Content Image

"The opposite of wellness": Gwyneth Paltrow slammed over "toxic" daily routine

<p>Gwyneth Paltrow has been slammed online for sharing her "detox" wellness routine, making people question her definition of "wellness". </p> <p>The Goop founder appeared on the The Art of Being Well podcast with Dr. Will Cole, where she shared her insanely strict daily regime. </p> <p>The 50-year-old touched on a series of topics, including keyboard warriors and "conscious uncoupling", but it was her comments about her routine and diet that caused the biggest upset.</p> <p>A 40 second clip of the hour long interview has gone viral on TikTok, as Paltrow answered Dr. Cole's question: "What does your wellness routine look like right now?"</p> <div class="embed" style="font-size: 16px; box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; outline: none !important;"><iframe class="embedly-embed" style="box-sizing: inherit; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; border-width: 0px; vertical-align: baseline; width: 610px; max-width: 100%; outline: none !important;" title="tiktok embed" src="https://cdn.embedly.com/widgets/media.html?src=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2Fembed%2Fv2%2F7210104654460521774&amp;display_name=tiktok&amp;url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tiktok.com%2F%40dearmedia%2Fvideo%2F7210104654460521774&amp;image=https%3A%2F%2Fp16-sign.tiktokcdn-us.com%2Fobj%2Ftos-useast5-p-0068-tx%2F17cff0a159f0493eaee1639d24531142%3Fx-expires%3D1678921200%26x-signature%3D2lWmwOFgi5LyMZXZha769GLwnG4%253D&amp;key=59e3ae3acaa649a5a98672932445e203&amp;type=text%2Fhtml&amp;schema=tiktok" width="340" height="700" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen"></iframe></div> <p>The actress says, "I eat dinner early in the evening. I do a nice intermittent fast."</p> <p>"I usually eat something about 12 and in the morning I have things that won't spike my blood sugar so I have coffee."</p> <p>"But I really like soup for lunch. I have bone broth for lunch a lot of the days. Try to do one hour of movement, so I'll either take a walk or I'll do Pilates or I'll do my Tracy Anderson."</p> <p>"And then I dry brush and I get in the sauna. So I do my infrared sauna for 30 minutes and then for dinner I try to eat according to paleo - so lots of vegetables."</p> <p>She concluded, "It's really important for me to support my detox."</p> <p>The strict regime welcomed a flood of criticism online, as many questioned Paltrow's definition of the word "wellness". </p> <p>One shocked user wrote, "Is starving wellness?" while another added, "I feel light headed just listening to this."</p> <p>A third person simply said, "I relate to nothing in this video", while another outraged viewer wrote, "Is this wellness? Or is this punishment?"</p> <p>However, the criticism did not stop there as professional dietitians also weighed in with their own thoughts.</p> <p>Expert Lauren Cadillac created a duet with the clip on the video sharing platform to share her reaction to Gwyneth's revelations.</p> <p>In it, the nutritionist repeatedly rolls her eyes, shakes her head, and gasps before claiming "bone broth is not a meal."</p> <p>She concludes, "This is not enough food. Support you detox from WHAT?! You're not eating anything."</p> <p>Another nutritionist weighed in on her routine, simply stating, "This is not wellness. This is not health. This is clinically concerning and toxic behaviour, and it's horrific that it's packaged as new age wellness."</p> <p><em>Image credits: TikTok / Instagram</em></p>

Body

Placeholder Content Image

Toxic positivity: societal pressure to feel good could have the opposite effect

<div> <div class="copy"> <p><a href="https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-04262-z" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">A multi-national study</a> of 40 countries has found that the societal pressure to feel good is linked to poorer wellbeing in individuals. In almost all countries, experiencing pressure to be happy and not sad was related to more and stronger negative feelings, and stronger symptoms of depression, anxiety, and stress.</p> <p>Interestingly, this relationship was almost twice as strong in countries with higher national happiness, compared to those with lower national happiness – suggesting it may have downsides for some members of society.</p> <p>“The level of happiness individuals feel pressured to achieve may be unattainable and reveal differences between an individual’s emotional life and the emotions society approves of,” says lead author Dr Egon Dejonckheere from the Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences at KU Leuven, Belgium, and assistant professor in the Department of Medical and Clinical Psychology at Tilburg University in the Netherlands.</p> <p>“This discrepancy between an individual and society may create a perceived failure that can trigger negative emotions,” he explains. “In countries where all citizens appear to be happy, deviations from the expected norm are likely more apparent, which makes it more distressing.”</p> <p>The international team of scientists, including Australian researchers from the University of Melbourne, investigated how the perceived societal pressure to be happy predicts emotional, cognitive, and clinical indicators of wellbeing in a survey of nearly 7,500 people.</p> <p>Published in <em>Springer Nature</em>, the study then went a step further to evaluate the role of the nations’ global happiness levels on the relationship between societal pressure and wellbeing, using their World Happiness Index (WHI) scores.</p> <p>This score is taken from the <a href="https://worldhappiness.report/" target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">World Happiness Report</a> and is a measure of the average self-reported life satisfaction displayed by inhabitants of a particular country. Countries included in the study that were rated as having higher happiness in the World Happiness Index included The Netherlands and Canada, while countries rated with lower happiness included Uganda and Senegal.</p> <p>As a <a href="https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-a-cross-sectional-study-2794978#:~:text=A%20cross%2Dsectional%20study%20involves,one%20specific%20point%20in%20time.&amp;text=This%20method%20is%20often%20used,support%20further%20research%20and%20experimentation." target="_blank" rel="noreferrer noopener">cross-sectional study</a>, the researchers acknowledge that while these findings can highlight a correlation between these factors, it cannot prove causality. Nonetheless, they do suggest that changing societal discourse from promoting a one-sided embrace of emotions to one where people learn to appreciate the full scope of their emotional lives (both positive and negative), could have beneficial effects for people’s psychological well-being in the long run.</p> <p><em>Image credits: Getty Images</em></p> <p><em><!-- Start of tracking content syndication. Please do not remove this section as it allows us to keep track of republished articles --> <img id="cosmos-post-tracker" style="opacity: 0; height: 1px!important; width: 1px!important; border: 0!important; position: absolute!important; z-index: -1!important;" src="https://syndication.cosmosmagazine.com/?id=182523&amp;title=Toxic+positivity%3A+societal+pressure+to+feel+good+could+have+the+opposite+effect" width="1" height="1" data-spai-target="src" data-spai-orig="" data-spai-exclude="nocdn" /> <!-- End of tracking content syndication --></em></div> <div id="contributors"> <p><em>This article was originally published on <a href="https://cosmosmagazine.com/health/body-and-mind/toxic-positivity-societal-pressure-to-feel-good-could-have-the-opposite-effect/" target="_blank" rel="noopener">cosmosmagazine.com</a> and was written by Imma Perfetto. </em></p> </div> </div>

Mind

Placeholder Content Image

No, opposites do not attract

<p><em><strong>Matthew D. Johnson is the Chair and Professor of Psychology and Director of the Marriage and Family Studies Laboratory at Binghamton University, State University of New York.</strong></em></p> <p>Everyone seems to agree that opposites attract. Young and old people, happy and distressed couples, single folks and married partners – all apparently buy the classic adage about love. Relationship experts have written <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/opposites-attract-renee-baron/1103372924" target="_blank">books</a></strong></span> based on this assumption. It’s even been internalized by people who are on the hunt for a partner, with 86 percent of those looking for love saying they’re <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/147470490800600406" target="_blank">seeking someone with opposite traits</a></strong></span>.</p> <p>The problem is that what’s true of magnets is not at all true of romance. As I explain in my book, “<em><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.wiley.com/buy/978-1-118-52128-1" target="_blank">Great Myths of Intimate Relationships: Dating, Sex, and Marriage</a></strong></span></em>,” people tend to be attracted to those who are similar – not opposite – to themselves.</p> <p><strong>I love how you’re just like me</strong></p> <p>Whether people <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.72.3.592" target="_blank">really find opposites more attractive</a></strong></span> has been the subject of many scientific studies. Researchers have investigated what combination makes for better romantic partners – those who are similar, different, or opposite? Scientists call these three possibilities the homogamy hypothesis, the heterogamy hypothesis and the complementarity hypothesis, respectively.</p> <p>The clear winner is homogamy. Since the 1950s, social scientists have conducted over 240 studies to determine whether similarity in terms of <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0045531" target="_blank">attitudes</a></strong></span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://doi.org/10.1177/0146167291174010" target="_blank">personality traits</a></strong></span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.53.6.1052" target="_blank">outside interests</a></strong></span>, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-1031(81)90009-3" target="_blank">values</a></strong></span> and <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4560.1976.tb02485.x" target="_blank">other characteristics</a></strong></span> leads to attraction. In 2013, psychologists Matthew Montoya and Robert Horton examined the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407512452989" target="_blank">combined results of these studies</a></strong></span> in what’s called a meta-analysis. They found an irrefutable association between being similar to and being interested in the other person.</p> <p>In other words, there is clear and convincing evidence that birds of a feather flock together. For human beings, the attractiveness of similarity is so strong that it is found <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2009.01217.x" target="_blank">across cultures</a></strong></span>.</p> <p>Because similarity is associated with attraction, it makes sense that individuals in committed relationships tend to be alike in many ways. Sometimes this is called <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://doi.org/10.1177/0192513x12459020" target="_blank">assortative mating</a></strong></span>, although this term is more often used to describe the ways in which people with similar levels of educational attainment, financial means and <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://doi.org/10.2307/2786870" target="_blank">physical appearance</a></strong></span> tend to pair up.</p> <p>None of this necessarily means that opposites don’t attract. Both the homogamy hypothesis and the complementarity hypothesis could be true. So is there scientific support that opposites might attract at least some of the time?</p> <p><strong>Filling in my weak spots with your strengths</strong></p> <p>Love stories often include people finding partners who seem to have traits that they lack, like a good girl falling for a bad boy. In this way, they appear to complement one another. For example, one spouse might be outgoing and funny while the other is shy and serious. It’s easy to see how both partners could view the other as ideal – one partner’s strengths balancing out the other partner’s weaknesses. In fact, one could imagine the friends and relatives of a shy person trying to set them up with an outgoing person to draw the shy one out. The question is whether people actually seek out complementary partners or if that just happens in the movies.</p> <p>As it turns out, it’s pure fiction. There is essentially no research evidence that differences in personality, interests, education, politics, upbringing, religion or other traits lead to greater attraction.</p> <p>For example, in one study researchers found that college students preferred descriptions of mates whose written bios were <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.85.4.709" target="_blank">similar to themselves or their ideal self</a></strong></span> over those described as complementing themselves. <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167298243004" target="_blank">Other studies</a></strong></span> have supported this finding. For example, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0031699" target="_blank">introverts are no more attracted to extraverts</a></strong></span> than they are to anyone else.</p> <p><strong>Why are we so sure opposites attract?</strong></p> <p>Despite the overwhelming evidence, why does the myth of heterogamy endure? There are probably a few factors at work here.</p> <p>First, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.24.5.1315" target="_blank">contrasts tend to stand out</a></strong></span>. Even if the partners in a couple match on tons of characteristics, they may end up arguing about the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/acceptance-and-change-in-couple-therapy-andrew-christensen/1103810614?ean=9780393702903" target="_blank">ways in which they are different</a></strong></span>.</p> <p>Beyond that, there’s evidence that <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/h0044134" target="_blank">small differences</a></strong></span> between spouses can become larger over time. In their self-help book “<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><em><strong><a href="https://www.guilford.com/books/Reconcilable-Differences/Christensen-Doss-Jacobson/9781462502431" target="_blank">Reconcilable Differences</a></strong></em></span>,” psychologists Andrew Christensen, Brian Doss and Neil Jacobson describe how partners move into roles that are complementary over time.</p> <p>For example, if one member of a couple is slightly more humorous than the other, the couple may settle into a pattern in which the slightly-more-funny spouse claims the role of “the funny one” while the slightly-less-funny spouse slots into the role of “the serious one.” Scientists have demonstrated that, yes, partners <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://doi.org/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2001.tb00038.x" target="_blank">grow more complementary over time</a></strong></span>; while they may begin as quite alike, they find ways to differentiate themselves by degree.</p> <p>In the end, people’s attraction to differences is vastly outweighed by our attraction to similarities. People persist in thinking opposites attract – when in reality, relatively similar partners just become a bit more complementary as time goes by.</p> <p><em>Written by Matthew D. Johnson. Republished with permission of <strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><a href="http://www.theconversation.com" target="_blank">The Conversation.</a></span></strong></em><img width="1" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.com/content/88839/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation"/></p>

Relationships

Placeholder Content Image

Why opposites rarely attract

<p><em><strong>Viren Swami is a Professor of Social Psychology at Anglia Ruskin University. He is the author of Attraction Explained and The Psychology of Physical Attraction.</strong></em></p> <p>If you were brought up on a diet of Disney fairy tales, you might be forgiven for thinking that opposites attract. Beauty and the Beast, Cinderella, and The Little Mermaid all perpetuate the idea that the ideal partner is someone who has the opposite qualities to ourselves.</p> <p>But it’s not just Disney: the idea that opposites attract has completely saturated the film industry – think of the neurotic comedian who falls for the free-spirited singer in Woody Allen’s Annie Hall, for example. In fact, <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.2466/pr0.1991.68.2.647" target="_blank">one study</a></strong></span> found that almost 80% of us believe in the idea that opposites attract.</p> <p>But a <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797616678187" target="_blank">new study</a></strong></span> tracking people’s digital footprints – how they behave online – suggests this isn’t actually true in real life. And it isn’t the first time science has come to that conclusion. For decades, psychologists and sociologists have pointed out that the idea that opposites attract is a <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://eu.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-EHEP002362.html" target="_blank">myth</a></strong></span>.</p> <p>In fact, almost all the evidence suggests that opposites very rarely attract. The psychologist Donn Byrne was one of the first to study the impact of similarity on the early stages of relationships. To do so, he developed a method known as the “<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/62/3/713/" target="_blank">phantom stranger technique</a></strong></span>”.</p> <p>The procedure begins with participants completing a questionnaire about their attitudes on a variety of topics, such as the use of nuclear weapons. Next, they take part in a “person-perception” phase, where they evaluate a (non-existent) person based on their responses to the same questionnaire.</p> <p>Byrne manipulated the degree of similarity between the participant and the phantom stranger. His <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/getIdentityKey?redirectTo=http%3A%2F%2Fonlinelibrary.wiley.com%2Fdoi%2F10.1111%2Fj.1467-6494.1962.tb01683.x%2Ffull%3Fwol1URL%3D%2Fdoi%2F10.1111%2Fj.1467-6494.1962.tb01683.x%2Ffull&amp;userIp=81.107.169.219&amp;doi=10.1111%2F" target="_blank">results</a></strong></span> showed that participants reported feeling more attracted to people who held similar attitudes. In fact, the greater the degree of attitudinal similarity, the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/1/6/659/" target="_blank">greater the attraction</a></strong></span> and liking.</p> <p>To explain his findings, Byrne argued that most of us have a need for a logical and consistent view of the world. We tend to favour ideas and beliefs that support and reinforce that consistency. People who agree with us validate our attitudes and so <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=search.displayRecord&amp;uid=1972-08748-001" target="_blank">satisfy this</a></strong></span> need, whereas people who disagree with us tend to stimulate negative feelings – anxiety, confusion and maybe even anger – that lead to repulsion.</p> <p>Byrne’s early research was limited to similarity of attitudes, but other research has suggested that there may also be greater attraction to others who share similar <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.soc.27.1.415" target="_blank">sociodemographic dimensions</a></strong></span>. For example, studies have shown that <a href="http://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/653658">online daters</a> are more likely to contact and reply to others who have similar educational and ethnic backgrounds as themselves, and are of a similar age. However, Byrne’s <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/abn/65/4/246/" target="_blank">later research</a></strong></span> suggested that attitudinal similarity may be more important than sociodemographic similarity when it comes to relationship formation.</p> <p><strong>Complementary versus similar personalities</strong></p> <p>In the mid-1950s, the sociologist Robert Francis Winch argued that, when it comes to our personalities, what matters is not similarity but <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2088200" target="_blank">complementarity</a></strong></span>. Based on his studies of spouses, he suggested that individuals would be attracted to others who possess personality traits that they lack. An assertive woman, for example, would be attracted to a submissive man while an extroverted man would be attracted to an introverted woman.</p> <p>As it turns out, there is almost no evidence to support this hypothesis. <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/psycinfo/2009-07435-005" target="_blank">Studies of friends</a></strong></span> and spouses consistently find that two individuals are more likely to be friends and spouses if they are similar in terms of their personalities.</p> <p>This includes the <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0956797616678187" target="_blank">new study</a></strong></span> which looked at digital footprints of more than 45,000 individuals, rather than self-reported data about personality. The results of this study showed that people with similar personalities, based on likes and word choices in posts, were more likely to be friends. The association was even stronger between romantic partners.</p> <p>In fact, the idea that we are more attracted to similar others is incredibly robust. One <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0265407508096700" target="_blank">review of 313 studies</a></strong></span> with over 35,000 participants found that similarity was a strong predictor of attraction in the early stages of a relationship – finding no evidence that opposites attract. So strong is the relationship that some psychologists have even proclaimed the similarity effect as “one of the <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/2786372">best generalisations</a> in social psychology”.</p> <p><strong>Too much similarity?</strong></p> <p>But this isn’t quite the end of the story. Psychologist <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://aron.socialpsychology.org/" target="_blank">Arthur Aron</a></strong></span> believes that, while similarity is important, there may be some situations in which it can actually undermine attraction. He argued that people also <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1475-6811.2006.00125.x/full" target="_blank">have a need to grow and expand</a></strong></span> the self – and that one reason why we form relationships with others is because we can assimilate some of the qualities of our partners, which promotes such growth.</p> <p>The implication is that we will be attracted to others who offer the greatest potential for self-expansion – and someone who is similar in values and traits provides much less potential for growth than someone who is different. So, the model ends up predicting that dissimilarity can sometimes be attractive, especially if you believe that there is a good possibility a relationship will develop. <span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/Love-Expansion-Self-Understanding-Satisfaction/dp/0891164596/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&amp;qid=1490024451&amp;sr=8-1&amp;keywords=love+and+the+expansion+of+the+self+aron" target="_blank">Aron’s research</a></strong></span> using the phantom stranger technique would seem to support this idea.</p> <p>But of course, the picture gets more complicated when we consider how couples actually behave in real life. For example, when couples discover that they disagree strongly on some topic they often bring their attitudes into “<span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/psp/81/1/65/" target="_blank">alignment</a></strong></span>” with each other – becoming more similar to each other over time.</p> <p>So, if you’re single and looking, the advice from decades of scientific research is simple: stop believing that the right match for you is someone who has the opposite qualities to you. Opposites almost never attract and you’re much better off focusing on people who have similar qualities and attitudes to yourself, but who offer some potential for self-expansion.</p> <p><em>Written by Viren Swami. First appeared on <a href="https://theconversation.com/" target="_blank"><strong><span style="text-decoration: underline;">The Conversation</span></strong></a>. </em><img width="1" height="1" src="https://counter.theconversation.edu.au/content/74873/count.gif?distributor=republish-lightbox-advanced" alt="The Conversation"/></p>

Relationships

Placeholder Content Image

Reason buttons on men’s and women’s shirts are on opposite sides

<p>Anyone can instantly notice if they are wearing a dress shirt made for the opposite sex, as they suddenly find themselves fumbling with the buttons in a way that may feel slightly un natural for them. Since the early days of formal wear, men's shirts have buttoned the left side over the right, the women’s have buttoned the right side over the left.</p> <p>The reason? <em>Today </em>co-hosts Matt Lauer and Savannah Guthrie got to the bottom of things during the show’s “What’s Trending” segment, referencing the fashions and social climate of the 13th century.</p> <p>“Only wealthy women could afford to have buttons on their shirts, and if you were wealthy, you also had ladies’ maids. So having the buttons on the other side made sense, because it was someone else buttoning your clothes.”</p> <p>Did you know this fun fact? Or do you have an alternative answer? Let us know in the comments below. </p> <p><strong>Related links:</strong></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/15-stylish-seniors/"><em>15 stylish seniors you will love</em></a></strong></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/trick-to-loosening-tight-shoes/"><em>The trick to loosening tight shoes</em></a></strong></span></p> <p><span style="text-decoration: underline;"><strong><a href="/lifestyle/beauty-style/2016/06/80s-fashion-trends-making-a-comeback/"><em>15 fashion trends from the 80s that are making a comeback</em></a></strong></span></p>

News

Our Partners