The Science of Attraction Quotes

“Women want the sense of trust and safety that comes with being emotionally intimate with someone, and this allows them to open up sexually. Men may misunderstand this, because it’s not how they themselves think. A man may consider emotional intimacy a poor substitute for sex, or something that only builds after sex, or simply something irrelevant that gets in the way.”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“Takeaways: We often think we know what we want based on singular experiences, stereotypes, or simple social pressures. But we are typically very, very wrong. In fact, most of the time, we are just making educated guesses. Psychological distance is deceptive, and we often confuse what we want with what benefits us from a self-interest standpoint. In reality, what we do know is simply what we don’t want. This is not the same as wanting the opposite of what we don’t want. Despite our own internal confusions, there are certain scientifically proven traits we do seek in mates that are more”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“Gender-specific triggers. Though arousal is universal in some ways, it can also be incredibly nuanced. There is a very marked gender difference in the basics of arousal—the hows and whys, even. Researcher and author Emily Nagoski discovered through various studies that men are spontaneously aroused, while women become aroused in response to something. It means that men spontaneously have the desire to have sex, and women have that same desire only in response to that man. This is the cause of what many couples consider mismatched libidos—the man will be the only one”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“There are a few factors that influence psychological closeness: Temporal distance—time Spatial distance—proximity Social distance—interpersonal similarity Hypothetical distance—how likely you imagine something to be When we put the construal-level theory into the dating context, it confirms everything we knew and the prior studies found.”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“The problem many people have with arranged marriages is obvious: the commitment and intimacy are there, but the passion can be lacking. With Western-style love marriages, the trouble is that there can be buckets of passion and intimacy, but difficulty around commitment. For Sternberg, a successful relationship is inevitably one that scores highly on as many of these scales as possible—i.e., one that is”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“If you barely know someone, you know you will need to invest considerable effort, and this is the type of effort most “love” marriages don’t have—because they don’t necessarily see the need to. It’s amazing”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“More successful and happy couples have open lines of communication. They can more easily deal with such issues in a productive manner because they don’t overreact or inject emotion into the issue. Their focus on commitment makes them focus on being solution-oriented. If you imagine that your marriage is indeed forever and for life, then you might as well attempt to find a solution as soon as possible instead of suffering with your problem for decades”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“When a partner looks at the marriage more like a partnership or business relationship, they put more focus into making it work. They don’t see leaving or divorce as an option and are thus committed to solving issues and compromise. Having disagreements or lacking that spark are not seen as legitimate reasons to end a relationship, whereas they may be the nail in the coffin for love marriages built on attraction and love alone. This tendency to look into the future and get around problems before they appear gives arranged marriages a strategic advantage that passion-based relationships do not have.”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“Friendship = Proximity + Frequency + Duration + Intensity.”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating

“This was proved in a study by Parker and Burkley. One group of women was presented with a photograph of a handsome man and told he was single, while another group of women was presented with the same photograph and told he was married. Fifty-nine percent of the women were interested in pursuing the single man, but ninety percent wanted to pursue the married man. We want what is unavailable to us, especially if we see other indicators of its value and demand. In a vacuum, we may want only what we want, even if no one else wants it. But if someone or something is wanted by many people, then we want it even more. We want to discover for ourselves why they are so desirable and ensure we’re not missing an integral piece of information.”
― Patrick King, The Science of Attraction: What Behavioral & Evolutionary Psychology Can Teach Us About Flirting, Dating, and Mating