Understanding Mental Health: What is Propinquity?

Anyone who has ever been a teenager knows what it feels like to have a crush. Better yet, anyone who has ever had a crush knows that feeling that comes when you are close to the object of your affection, maybe in the same room or riding in the same car? While we often think about how it can sometimes feel so strange just be a short physical distance away from a person, few realize that this idea of proximity is actually an important part of attraction, and it is commonly known as "propinquity".

In short, propinquity means nothing more than simple physical closeness. However, physical proximity plays a major role in many mental health spectrums, and studying propinquity and proximity can help to give us a clearer understanding of how the mind handles attraction, and why certain things become so important to forming a lasting relationship or friendship.

The easiest way to explain propinquity is that we cannot be friends or even know someone who we do not see. Think quickly about your best friends. Where did you meet them? Most likely, you were in a position where you saw them everyday; perhaps having the same class, working at the same job, or playing a sport together. While it may seem strange, more often than not, our closest relationships seems to form with those who see the most often. The more often that we see a person, the more friendship is likely to result.

The more often that we see some one, the more we come to associate them to be an object of comfort or familiarity. When our brains engage in this action, it forms the basis for friendship. While this may indeed seem like a strange idea, there are a variety of explanations for the effect of propinquity, and the major role that it plays in attraction.

One of the first explanations deals with simple availability. When we live close to someone, or see someone every day, over time, we begin to form more and more complex friendships with them. What starts as a simple hello to a friendly face may blossom into a long and lasting relationship. However, it does not take a lot to see that if we did encounter that person so often, we would not have the same ability and availability that we do to them through the effects of propinquity.

The second idea that attempts to explain why simple physical distance is so important is the idea of anticipating interaction. After a while, when we know that we are going to see a certain person everyday, we start naturally preparing for those meetings. Because of this, our social interactions go much more smoothly, and those basic ideas of friendship which were formed before become something deeper, as both parties involved become prepared for their interactions everyday. Through these prepared interactions, conversations and meetings become much more meaningful and much more deep, further increasing the chance that friendship or a relationship will come out of meetings, after a period of time of course.

The third, and one of the most important ideas relating to propinquity and attraction is known as the mere exposure effect. Basically, various studies which have been conducted, prove that the more we are exposed to something, the more we come to like it. For example, when we look in the mirror everyday, we do not see our true reflections, but rather a mirror image of it. Although this is not the true image, it is the one that we see everyday. For that reason, if we show a person their true image, such as a photograph of their face, and ask them to choose between the mirror image and the photograph, they will take the mirror image any day; it is simply more familiar to us and therefore more welcoming and more comforting. This works as well for mirror images as it does for almost anything: the more we are exposed to something, the more that we come to like it. Therefore, it is not hard to see that we are predisposed to like the people that we see the most often. This one of the most important ideas that relates to physical attraction, the more we see a person, the more likely that we are to become friends with them, and this friendship may even lead to a deeper or more complex relationship in the future.

Although we often think of attraction as a very deep matter, and there is no doubt that it is, we must not forget the other, simpler, effects that also go into producing relationships and friendships. For that reason, it is incredibly important that we understand the ideas of propinquity, and what they mean to us.