Proximity and Attraction

Classic Research

The most classic (and now famous) study that first made the proximity effect well known was completed by Leon Festinger and two of his colleagues, Stanley SchachterandKurtBack. Thesethree researchers investigated a small community named the Westgate Housing Project, which was part of the campus at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). They wanted to know what would happen when strangers (in this case, MIT students) were randomly thrown together in apartment buildings—in other words, the students would have a close proximity to each other. Each apartment housed a married couple, one of whom was a veteran. Each apartment building included 10 single-family units, with five apartments on each of two floors. The researchers pointed out that the residents of Westgate were similar to each other in terms of background, interests, and life goals. The real relevance of this study for proximity is that the researchers wanted to know how physical closeness would influence each resident's liking or attraction to the other residents in the complex.

Festinger pointed out that there were two kinds of proximity in this study: (1) physical distance from one apartment to another, and (2) functional distance. Functional distance refers to the idea that the buildings were constructed such that some apartments were more likely to be passed by. For example, if an apartment was at the bottom of a staircase leading to the second floor, all of the residents who lived on the second floor would have to pass that door. Thus, both physical and functional proximity were factors in this study and affected how often any given resident would be seen by the others. If two people see each other often, they are more likely to get to know each other and become friends. For example, consider neighborhoods. Individuals are more likely to know and like the residents living directly to each side of themselves, compared with residents who live three blocks away. Festinger found this pattern as well. When he asked people in Westgate to choose the three people in the entire complex whom they were most likely to see socially (in other words, their friends), they listed residents with closer physical and functional proximity to themselves. This general idea—that the physically closer we are to someone, the more likely we are to be attracted to him or her—is sometimes referred to as the propinquity effect. The propinquity effect was supported by Festinger's research, as well as several additional studies (some of which are described next).

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