Can a wobbly bridge make a stranger more attractive?
In 1974 men crossed a scary suspension bridge, met a woman at the far end, and were more likely to call her than men on a sturdy bridge.
▶ Start the storyCan a wobbly bridge make a stranger more attractive? In 1974 the psychologists Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron tried to find out, on the Capilano Suspension Bridge, in a well-known experiment. It tested an idea called the two-factor theory of emotion, put forward by Stanley Schachter and Jerome Singer in 1962.
The theory has two ingredients. When you feel an emotion, your body is aroused, and you then use your surroundings to search for emotional cues that label that arousal. So arousal alone is not enough: the same pounding heart might be called fear, excitement or attraction, depending on what the situation suggests. The theory adds that emotions may therefore be misinterpreted, depending on the body's state.
Step 1: Arousal
The body speeds up
Step 2: Search
Look at the surroundings for cues
Step 3: Label
Fear, excitement or attraction
Dutton and Aron put it to the test on a bridge. Male participants walked across either a very scary suspension bridge, narrow and high above a deep ravine, or a much safer, more stable one. At the far end an attractive female experimenter gave each man a questionnaire, with an ambiguous picture to describe, and her phone number in case of questions. The picture was purposely not sexual at all.
The men who had crossed the scary bridge were more likely to call her, and their stories had more sexual content. The researchers read this as misattribution: the men took leftover arousal from the fear of the bridge to be attraction to the woman. As a check, when a male experimenter handed out the same test and his phone number, there were no significant differences on either bridge.
Even the bridge result has a rival explanation. In 1989 Allen, Kenrick, Linder and McCall proposed a response-facilitation model: in their studies, aroused people were more attracted to an attractive person even when they knew the real cause of their arousal, which the misattribution account says should not happen.
The 1962 study behind the theory has also been challenged. Criticism of the theory has come from attempted replications, and one of them found that a euphoric confederate had little impact on people who had been injected with adrenaline.
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Recap
The 1974 bridge study fits the idea that the situation labels bodily arousal, but its misattribution explanation has a rival, and attempted replications of the 1962 injection study have been a source of criticism.
💡 A trick to remember it · Buzz plus label: the body supplies the buzz, the scene supplies the name.
Surprising fact · In the 1974 study, men who crossed a scary suspension bridge were more likely to phone the woman who met them at its end.
Sources (3)
No source, no claim. Every fact in this lesson (21 claims) cites at least one of these.