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Showing posts with the label proximity

What effect does seeing people a lot have on us?

There are certain people in our lives whom we see on a daily basis, or thereabouts -- from our coworkers to the mailman to our partner. But just what effect does seeing these individuals every day have on us? Do they become more endearing to us over time, or do we eventually grow tired of seeing them? While the dynamics of the relationship comes into play (e.g., a toxic vs. caring boss, a fruitful marriage vs. a lousy one), the answer, according to social psychology, is both. In the 1960s, Robert Zajonc coined and demonstrated the mere exposure effect. As the name implies, mere exposure creates a positive bias toward a stimulus. The effect explains why you might find yourself humming a song you loathed the first time you heard it. The propinquity effect is the mere-exposure effect when applied to social contexts. In other words, we become friends with people in terms of functional or spatial proximity. In one study, residents of an apartment building were four times more li...

Why people drift away from us

Sometimes it's hard to accept the fact that certain people whom we were once very close to know nothing about our lives anymore. I've noted the reasons why people can drift apart in other posts. Some of those include: A major life change (marriage, kids, etc.) Someone moves far away A job change that places major demands on the person  One person begins to hang out with a different crowd When both people experience such lifestyle changes simultaneously (e.g., both graduate from college at the same time), the changes don't feel nearly as drastic, and the adjustment process can is almost seemless. But when only one person changes course, the other is often left with a major void in his or her life. This happened to me a few years ago. My closest friend -- the best man at my wedding, in fact -- moved to a city 5 hours away from me. Though we see each other occasionally, our friendship hasn't been the same since. If I'm lucky, I'm able to get ...

Why you may or may not miss high school/college

Our high school/college days seem well behind us, don't they? There are certainly things most us might miss about that time of our lives, including: Having a busier social life than we do now: People go in different directions after high school, causing us to lose contact with many of our closest friends. And though we may be able to keep in touch with a few, things are never quite the same. Proximity plays a huge role when it comes to friendships. It was so much easier to maintain them when you knew you'd see your buddies every day in gym class or Home Ec. Once you graduate from college and have bills, work, and other priorities to worry about, an active social life no longer takes precedence. Once we hit our 30s and 40s, we can consider ourselves lucky if we have three people we can call true friends. Being closer to family members: For most of us, our high school years comprise the last stretch in which we'll ever live at home with our parents. While living at ho...

Something people overlook that can make or break a relationship...

We know that trust and communication are essential to any relationship; I've elaborated on that in prior posts. But here's an oft-overlooked element on which relationships also depend for survival, and one I studied in depth in most of my psychology classes: proximity . Dictionary.com defines proximity as "nearness in place, time, order, occurrence, or relation." Have you noticed that the people you're often closest to at work or school are those who sit near you? Or that your closest friends are usually the ones who still live in the same city as you do? This should come as no surprise to us. Proximity is like a special glue that holds the relationship together. The closer we are to other people, the more likely it is for us to bond with them. Once someone in the relationship moves -- whether to a different cubicle at work or to a different home or city altogether -- the relationship tends to suffer. Once you create distance between yourself and someo...