Page 14 - Demo

12Chapter 1Attraction as a motivational stateImagine a day with no emotions. Not feeling happy upon seeing your partner, excited when your favourite team wins or disappointed when you missthe train. Some would consider this a relief, whereas others a horrific scenario. But despite their initial reaction, all would eventually realize thatemotions help us make sense of the world around us. Emotions guide us.Our emotional responses inform us about what we should attend to, whetherour decisions align with our goals, and prepare our action response plan(Frijda, 1986). The influential somatic marker hypothesis (Damasio, 1994,1996), also illustrates that emotions, reflected in physiological changes, actas markers that ultimately influence decision-making. Therefore, emotionsare crucial in navigating our social environment.Emotion and motivation go hand in hand (Both, Everaerd, & Laan,2003). Indeed, humans want to act upon seeing stimuli associated withreward or threat (Schultz, 1998). Typically, stimuli associated with rewardtrigger an approach behaviour, whereas stimuli associated with a threat,an avoidance behaviour (e.g., Lazarus, 1991). One of the emotional statesassociated with reward is sexual arousal. For example, a common reactionupon seeing someone we are attracted to is that we might direct our attentiontowards them and try to be as physically close to them as possible. In otherwords, experiencing attraction leads us to increase our proximity to another(Montoya, Kershaw, & Prosser, 2018).In the sections below, I outline how attraction influences attention, socialperception, physiological and behavioral mimicry, and bond formation.Attention toward mate-relevant informationAttention is necessary for navigating our environment. Attention acts asa gatekeeper, ensuring that crucial information receives further processing,while simultaneously filtering out distracting information (e.g., Posner, 1980;Yantis & Jonides, 1990). Attraction also influences attention. Recent studieshave also shown that attractive stimuli capture attention, and the level ofcapture is also associated with trait levels of sexual desire (Prause, Janssen,& Hetrick, 2008).Attractiveness (i.e., attractive targets presented as stimuli) modulatesour attention (Sui & Liu, 2009). This is not surprising, given that visual attractiveness influences our partner choice (Asendorpf, Penke, & Back, 2011;Sidari et al., 2021; Roth, Samara, & Kret, 2021a), a decision that can heavily impact our well-being (Soons, Liefbroer, & Kalmijn, 2009). Like otheranimals, humans orient their attention to attractive individuals (Grammer,Fink, Møller, & Thornhill, 2003). Previous research has consistently shownthat attention is captured and held by attractive faces (Lindell & Lindell,Iliana Samara 17x24.indd 12 08-04-2024 16:34