“Imagine being in the jungle, thousands of miles from civilization…”
Thus opens the promo for Love In The Wild, the “extreme dating experiment” premiering on NBC this week which promises that its contestants will go on first dates that are jam packed with shaky bridges, crocodile attacks, and bungee jumping.
Either NBC has recently replaced their writing staff with former academics, or their writers missed a true calling as social psychologists. This trick has been done before — and, in case you were wondering, it works.
People typically assume that we process emotional experiences in a fairly straightforward way: First comes the target, and then comes the emotion related to it. Something makes you mad, so then you feel mad. Something makes you happy, so then you feel happy.
But our bodies aren’t quite so logical. Most of the time what we feel is not really “anger” or “happiness” but simply arousal, a word that tends to take on a sexual connotation yet really just means an increase in blood pressure, heart rate, and sensory alertness. When there’s an obvious reason why our bodies have responded this way (e.g. a fight), it’s easy to attribute this arousal to a distinct emotion (e.g. anger). What about when the source isn’t quite so clear?
Take this example: You’re walking across a shaky suspension bridge, 200 feet above rocks and shallow rapids. The bridge tilts and wobbles as you cross, making you feel like you could fall over the side with every step. Your palms sweat, and your heart is beating so fast you can feel it in your mouth. To what do you attribute this arousal? Fear, correct?
Not necessarily. This is exactly where researchers Dutton and Aron situated a group of men, except they added in one crucial thing: After stepping off the bridge (which was either the shaky one described above or a different, stable bridge), each participant was approached by a woman who offered him her name and phone number. The men in the “scary bridge” condition were significantly more likely to accept the phone number, call the woman, and ask her out on a date. After experiencing the fear-induced arousal from the bridge, the men all “misattributed” this arousal as sexual attraction when they saw the woman immediately afterward; when asked why they called her, the men often indicated that they were aroused by her, but never thought to mention anything about the fact that they had just stepped off of a terrifying bridge. They didn’t realize that the arousal they were experiencing actually had very little to do with the woman herself.
This happens more often than we realize. People will sometimes experience ambiguous arousal first, and then search the environment around them to find possible targets that they can label as an explanation second. If you’re amped up on a drug designed to raise your general level of body arousal (like epinephrine) but you don’t realize that the drug is the arousal’s cause, you can end up inferring the cause based on the emotions you witness in those around you. If you see a euphoric person, you will mislabel your arousal as “euphoria” and feel really, manically happy; if you see an angry person, you will misidentify the same arousal as “anger” and feel angry. In the case of the shaky bridge, the participants accidentally attributed (at least some of) their fear-based arousal to sexual attraction.
What does this mean for Love In The Wild? If social psychology has anything to say about it, the contestants may be surprised by how quickly they will end up falling hard and fast for their bungee-jumping, crocodile-fighting, shaky-bridge-walking teammates. Too bad their love in the wild is really love coming from the wild.
UPDATE: After posting this, I realized that I neglected to mention this great post from Jason Goldman at The Thoughtful Animal on the same Dutton & Aron study! It goes into much greater detail about the study and also draws some interesting comparisons with mating behavior in fairy wrens; if you’re interested in this topic, you should definitely check it out.
Dutton, D.G., & Aron, A.P. (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30 (4), 510-517 DOI: 10.1037/h0037031
Schachter, S., & Singer, J.E. (1962). Cognitive, social, and physiological determinants of emotional state. Psychological Review, 69 (5), 379-399 DOI: 10.1037/h0046234
PsySociety 
The men didn’t mention that they were on a terrifying bridge, because being terrified is not the type of thing men disclose, and most of them enjoyed the “terror” anyway.
All Duton and Aron demonstrated is that men are more likely to find a women attractive whilst on a suspension bridge. The misattribution of arousal is itself a misattribution of results. There is a simple alternative explanation: when men are already aroused (and being aroused feels good), they are more likely to be open to enjoying the company of an attractive women. Heck, if they are on top of a suspension bridge, they may feel on top of their game.
There was a study done awhile back, similar to the bridge study, but with roller coasters and random assignment. People getting off the roller coaster were more attracted to someone compared to those who were asked just getting on. But only if they were single. And everyone who was riding with their romantic partner was less attracted to their partner after as opposed to those who were asked before–prob cause their partner threw up and was gross.
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