Thread: Initial attraction

Initial attraction.

Whether you are male or female, whenever we see someone of the opposite sex for the first time, our initial response is to check the person out to see how sexually appealing they are. Everyone looks different. My question is what creates or causes this initial attraction? In the animal kingdom it is scent, we seem to be (to the best of my knowledge) the only animal who uses eye-sight to guage sexual worthiness.

many animals use sight and sounds to attract a mate. generally the colorful or more pronounced male tries to encourage the less colorful and plane female. the smell part comes from those that go into heat, so to speak as a dog.

first or initial image of a person to another, means a lot. conversations will continue this joining or put an end to it. smell however is a human response to another human, in many cases.

fish and most animals are as turned on by temperatures as well. these all relate to sexual drives, which has little to do with friendships and such, but this would be hard to estimate in animals...

Generally, even if we are not attracted to someone, we can tell they are attractive due to simple things like a symmetrical face, good hip to waist ratio etc, which all indicate that the person has good qualities from an evolutionary point of view. For example women with perfect hour glass figures have the best bodies for child birth.

As to why we are instantly drawn to certain people is a little bit more complicated and still isn't completly understood. I think the main part of it is that we all unnconsciencely look for certain qualities through peoples face and body language that match our own. This is why when looking at couples, more often then not they have very similar facial features.

As well as this, apparantly statisticallyy we are all attracted to people who look like our parents and who have pheremones most similar to our mothers. Its all a bit speculative though.

Humans do actually choose partners with scent.... but unknowingly. I read a study that showed that we always pick partners with a different HLA complex to our own. HLA is related to the immune system and if children are heterozygous they would have an improved protection against more diseases/viruses/illnesses etc.

Originally Posted by Molecular

Humans do actually choose partners with scent.... but unknowingly. I read a study that showed that we always pick partners with a different HLA complex to our own. HLA is related to the immune system and if children are heterozygous they would have an improved protection against more diseases/viruses/illnesses etc.

Not always, and some research suggests that various ethnic groups may prefer different levels of variation from themselves. It plays a role but the nature of that role isn't completely clear yet.

Originally Posted by paralith

Originally Posted by Molecular

Humans do actually choose partners with scent.... but unknowingly. I read a study that showed that we always pick partners with a different HLA complex to our own. HLA is related to the immune system and if children are heterozygous they would have an improved protection against more diseases/viruses/illnesses etc.

Not always, and some research suggests that various ethnic groups may prefer different levels of variation from themselves. It plays a role but the nature of that role isn't completely clear yet.

Sorry, I didn't mean always. Just trying to type too fast :P. I think that lynx deodorants could be part of the cause of all these divorces we keep seeing lol.