Association Bleeding
I wanna explore a theory of physical attractiveness that I’ve been thinking about. This probably doesn’t explain all of physical attractiveness, but it might explain at least some of it. Let’s say you become attracted to Person A. You fall in love with Person A’s features, and then the next time you encounter someone new—Person B, maybe—if Person B shares at least some features with Person A, you may develop an attraction to Person B.
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And here’s what’s interesting: The features that you once thought were neutral (or even slightly unattractive) in Person B might become ignored, as long as this person has other characteristics in line with Person A. Maybe Person A has big eyes, and Person B also has big eyes; but Person A has blonde hair, while Person B has brown hair. You don’t like brown hair per se; but it’s a natural feature that eventually becomes desirable because of its association to Person A’s features.
I think I’m borrowing from the concept of second-order conditioning (also known as higher-order conditioning), where a conditioned stimulus can be used to train an unconditioned stimulus, and then that newly trained stimulus can be used to train another unconditioned stimulus. The association to the first person “bleeds” into the second person, and then when a third person comes along, the second person’s attractiveness “bleeds” into the third person. And so on.
Granted, the chain reaction can stop if the new person you meet is so repelling to the point where, not even an association with a previously liked feature can get you to admire this person; but then again I’m not proposing this theory to explain all of physical attractiveness. I think it might explain a very small part of it. I think it might account for how neutral (or even slightly negative) stimuli can be converted into a somewhat positive (or at least neutral) stimulus as long as it is associated with an already positive stimulus.
