Dutton and Aron’s experiment, which led to the theory of mis attribution, is one of the most classic in psychology, has to do with the attraction between two human beings and helps us understand that sometimes the brain works surprisingly.
Attraction and love are complex feelings involving emotions, education, attitudes, but also hormones and neurotransmitters.
- Does Dutton and Aron’s experience show us how far?Butterflies in the stomach.
- Are they misleading.
- The truth is that sometimes attraction conditions are reasons that have more to do with brain chemistry than personal taste.
The theory of mis attribution is a derivation of attribution theory, proposed by psychologist Fritz Heider in 1958, which also gave rise to Lee Ross’ theory of fundamental attribution error and Leon Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance.
In part, these these theses were taken up by Dutton and Aron in their famous experiment.
“Your skin attracts me with the gravity of the entire cosmos that suffers from its impenetrable black eternity. “Gioconda Belli?
Fritz Heider proposed the theory of attribution. According to her, we naturally tend to make causal attributions of the events/changes we observe.
In other words, we are relentlessly observing why people act in a certain way, we do it automatically. The problem is that we don’t stop to think about the validity of these assignments.
In turn, the fundamental attribution error is the fact that we overestimate people’s internal conditioners to act (e. g. their personality) rather than looking more at external factors.
On the other hand, when we explain our own behavior, we value external factors more than internal motivations.
All of this is also expressed in the phenomenon of cognitive dissonance. Simply put, if we find ourselves in a situation where two beliefs or behaviors are in conflict, we tend to come up with reasons to harmonize them.
For example, if someone is wrong, they may end up believing that “the other is even more wrong. “
The Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron experience is also known as the Capilano Bridge experience. What these psychologists have done is use two bridges.
The first was a small bridge, very solid and modern; the other, on the other hand, was located in Capilano Canyon, 70 meters high, was an old bridge that mingled with the wind and trembled at every turn.
There were two groups of men. Each group was invited to cross one of the bridges, respectively, and both met a very attractive woman in the middle of the bridge.
He told them that he was studying landscapes, an excuse to ask them to describe something they saw and finally, in a flirtatious attitude, handed them his phone.
The result was that the men who crossed the short and safe bridge hardly paid attention to the interviewer, however, those who crossed the dangerous bridge called the girl and were very interested in her, why was there so much difference ?
This experiment allowed us to see that sometimes the brain deceives us, those who cross the dangerous bridge feel an extra dose of adrenaline.
It is therefore assumed that finding an attractive woman in the middle of their journey had a very positive impact on them, which in turn led them to confuse what they really felt about the girl.
In this case, it is possible to perfectly apply the premise of cognitive dissonance. The feeling of fear was met with the encouragement of an attractive woman.
The volunteers of the experiment attributed the dose of adrenaline, as well as the flirtation of the girl, to a strong attraction to it, the two sensations were mixed and produced this result.
Thus, it has been proven that in risky situations people tend to connect with the nearby ones, they are of course controlled risks, which are not extreme.
When the situation is disastrous or panicked, the opposite happens, others are seen as another threat and the tendency is to reject them.