ROMANTIC ATTTRACTION. Romantic attraction is an emotion that drives people to want a romantic relationship with a person of interest. Romantic attraction is defined broadly, meaning that it is not based on sexual contact. People do feel romantic attraction even though they are not experiencing sexual attraction. They are variety of theories that explain how and why people are romantically attracted to one another. This essay will focus on two theories, known as the interpersonal theory of attraction and evolutionary perspective. It will compare and contrast the two theories and will therefore highlight the strength and weaknesses of each theory. Both theories show to be useful in explaining romantic attraction, they both look into factors such as proximity, physical attractiveness, similarity and complementarity. Proximity interlinks the interpersonal and evolutionary theory, interpersonal theory states that research has shown that people which are physically close to each other, for …show more content…
The most fundamental limitation is that all fail to provide an account of why humans would be motivated in the directions placed. Why would humans prefer similarity, proximity and equality as a central point to attraction (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). The strength of the evolutionary perspective is supported by its argument on the most well-known theory, Darwins theory of natural selection. The theory emphasizes that men choose the most desirable partners to mate with so that they may be able to conserve and pass on the most desirable gene pool (Greyling, 2009). The second limitation for evolutionary theory emphasizes on the fact that, the stated theories of mating lack complexity and sophistication. It assumes matching or selection of mating partners takes place in a single process that lacks connectivity to other possible phenomenon that attraction may also be derived from (Buss & Schmitt,