Animal magnetism may be a more literal concept than it's
given credit for, according to a new study that finds that people are more
attracted to their romantic partners after playing with magnets.
The research is an example of a social priming effect, an
old idea in psychology that has recently become more controversial. The idea
holds that when people are "primed" or prompted to think about a
particular concept — such as physical magnetic attraction — it affects their
cognition in surprising ways.
In this case, the magnets may make the metaphor of love as a
physical force more prominent in people's minds, leading them to report closer
feelings with their partners, said Andrew Christy, a graduate student in
psychology at Texas A&M University and a co-author of the new study.
Social priming effects have become a battleground in social
psychology in recent years. The entire field is in the midst of a
"replication crisis," because scientists have failed to replicate the
results of many famous experiments when trying to repeat them. Social priming
studies have been some of the highest-profile failures: In 2012, researchers
failed to replicate one classic study of social priming, which found that
people walked slower after being exposed to words related to old age, kicking
off a firestorm of debate.
Today, some psychologists are unsure whether social priming
really exists; others think it does, but that the effects are subtle and very
context-dependent, making the effects hard to measure.
In the new research, Christy and his colleagues attempted to
guard against a false result by conducting their experiments twice, replicating
their own research. However, independent replication by other researchers will
be necessary to show that the magnetism effect truly exists, the researchers
said.
In the new study, researchers focused on the metaphor of
love as a physical force. They asked 120 students who were 18 to 22 years old
and who were either in relationships or had been in relationships within the
last few months, to fill out questionnaires about their connection with their
partners. Before they began, the students were told to take a "mental
break" by playing with blocks, putting them together and taking them
apart. Some of the students were given magnetized blocks that attracted each
other, while some had magnetized blocks that repelled each other, and some had
blocks without magnets.
The participants who played with the magnetically attracting
blocks reported greater attraction, satisfaction and commitment in their
relationships or recent relationships compared with those students given the
other two block types, Christy told Live Science.
"The nonmagnetic and the repel condition didn't seem to
differ from one another at all," he said.
So in their next experiment, this one with 150 students, the
researchers included only blocks with magnets that attracted, and nonmagnetized
blocks. The people who played with the magnetized blocks again reported greater
levels of attraction, satisfaction and commitment in their relationships than
those who played with nonmagnetized blocks, the researchers said in their
article, published May 26 in the open-access journal PLOS ONE...
Although the effects of the magnets on people's levels of
attraction and intimacy were larger than in the first experiment, the effects
on people's satisfaction and commitment were smaller, the researchers found.
The reason for those smaller effects may have been that the second experiment
took place later in the semester, and more students who originally reported
being in relationships had broken up, the researchers wrote. Thus, more
participants may have been remembering past relationships instead of thinking
of current ones.
Christy AG, Hirsch KA, Schlegel RJ (2016) Animal Magnetism:
Metaphoric Cues Alter Perceptions of Romantic Partners and Relationships. PLoS
ONE 11(5): e0155943. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0155943
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