[tarheeljks]

[ QUOTE ]
It makes me sad to see you say that you are less likely to be friends with someone you aren't attracted to. That's not how I view friendship at all.

[/ QUOTE ]

let me clarify my meaning.

less likely in so much as i think there is a selection bias as to how people make friends. i realize it sounds very shallow to say that, but i think its naive to believe otherwise. when we meet/interact with someone, no matter how briefly, we evaluate their physical characteristics on some level. it might be saying the person is pretty, or tall, or fat, or has nice hair, or dresses well but we are doing it whether we know it or not. this is even more pronounced when we meet members of the opposite sex and i think that the initial stages of a male female relationship are essentially the same whether it becomes romantic, platonic, or doesn't develop at all.

friendship isn't formed in a few minutes, or a brief meeting, but you obviously can't make a friend without meeting him/her first. many/most of the exchanges we have will be very brief, as such in an initial meeting/the short term a person's physical characteristics will tend to have a greater influence than personality/character/other intangibles over our impression of that person. while the latter characteristics are certainly more important, we just don't get that much information about them without a lot of repeated contact.

sometimes the contact happens naturally because of jobs, common interests, etc and other times the contact has to be sought. in the former case the first impression will matter less and less as time goes on, but in the latter case i don't think we can help but rely on them in determining which people interest us.

this is where i think the selection bias occurs. operating with a little information can be worse than operating with none, but that is what is occurring. now i'm not going to say, "we had a decent conversation, but i don't want to see that girl again b/c i didn't find her particularly attractive." however, i would be lying if i said (all things being equal) her being pretty wouldn't make me even more interested in seeing her again.


this doesn't mean that i wont take interest in anyone who literally does not catch my eye. i just think that physical characteristics play a strong role in the short term.


edit: i don't view friendship "that way" either in the sense that i'm evaluating prospective friends solely based on how attractive i think they are. i just think it is a factor early in the equation, whether or not it should be. call it a flaw in the mechanism.


i imagine this isn't going to be a very popular theory and maybe i'm way off, but that's my two cents.