13 Weird Psychological Reasons Someone Might Fall In Love With You

There’s no shortage of advice on where to meet the right person, how to make people like you, and how to build a successful relationship.

This post appeared on Business Insider.

Sometimes, though, people are attracted to each other for seemingly arbitrary reasons, such as what colour you wear or whether you have a pet.

What might influence someone to fall for you? We pored through research on the psychology of attraction and found some fascinating reasons why people fall in love.

If you do something thrilling together.

In 1974, Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron wanted to test the connection between sexual attraction and anxiety. In their study, published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, they placed men under two conditions. The first walked across a high, shaky bridge. The other was on a low, sturdy bridge. 

Afterwards, they met a female experimenter who asked them a series of questions and gave the men her phone number 'just in case.'

The men who met the woman after walking on the high bridge were more likely to call her than the men who met her on the low bridge. Psychologists call this phenomenon the 'misattribution of arousal.' The high bridge created a sense of arousal from the anxiety, but men mistakenly thought it was from the attraction to the woman.

This is why many people like to do exciting things on first dates, such as go to amusement parks, skydiving, or motorcycle rides.