Reciprocal liking

Feelings of admiration, affection, love, and respect are characteristics for reciprocal liking between the two individuals.

Elliot Aronson and Phillip Worchel conducted the study, which required pairs of participants to have a simple conversation with one another.

[8] Experts have claimed that when people select potential mates, they look for someone whose status, physical attractiveness, and personal qualities are about the same as their own.

[9] There have been years of research that have established many principles of attraction, one being an experiment by Aron and his colleagues, conducted in 1989, that found that most people repeatedly mentioned reciprocal liking, personality, and appearance as factors that influenced them to fall in love.

[11] Reciprocal liking can be indicated non-verbally,[12] such as through body languages (for example maintaining eye contact or leaning forward).

[13] Aron et Al (1989) reported that in their sample of Canadian college students who recently fell in love, approximately 90% of them mentioned some indicator of thinking that the other person was attracted to them and the study also showed that maintaining eye contact was the most common clue.

There are two psychological reasons as to why this seems to happen, the first being social pressure and the other being the set of assumptions people tend to make about those who are similar to themselves.

[17] Nathaniel Branden stated that "self-esteem creates a set of implicit expectations about what is possible and appropriate to us", and further said that "one's reality confirms and strengthens one's original belief".

[21] The ethic of reciprocal liking is adopted by nearly every major religion, and if this were to stop human culture would not be able to prosper because people routinely exchange goods, services, and other things with one another.

[22] On the other hand, it has been proven that there seems to be no signs of romantic love in some cultures such as some non-western countries based on anthropologists and historians.