and be careful to not get feelings of excitement and obsession confused with love
Have you ever wondered why one person can speak in public without apparent nerves while another crumples under pressure? Or why one elite athlete can shake off their nerves to win Olympic gold while another chokes?
Even with ample experience some people never seem to learn to cope with their emotions. A key insight comes from a controversial psychology study carried out on a rickety bridge by Dutton and Aron (1973).
Men crossing the bridge were approached by an attractive woman who asked them to fill out a survey. The men were chosen because they were known to be nervous and this was exaggerated by the fact the bridge was swaying, its handrails were very low and there was a 230-foot drop to the river below. After the men filled out the survey the woman gave them her number and said they could call her if they wanted the study explained in more detail.
A little further up men crossing another bridge were also being approached by a female researcher half-way across. The difference was that this bridge was sturdy, did not sway and was only a few feet above a small stream.
One of the key tests was: how many people would call up the attractive woman?
On the stable, safe bridge only 2 out of the 16 participants called. But, on the rickety bridge, 9 out of 18 called. So something about the rickety bridge made people more likely to call.
Dutton and Aron’s explanation was that it’s how we label the feelings we have that’s important, not just the feelings themselves. In this experiment men on the rickety bridge were more stressed and jittery than those on the stable bridge. And the argument is that they interpreted these bodily feelings as attraction, leading them to be more likely to make the call.
So: fear had been transformed into attraction.
This explanation is now controversial because subsequent studies have found that it’s rare to be able to reinterpret a negative emotion like fear into a positive one like attraction. Indeed some studies have specifically shown it can’t be done (Zanna et al., 1976).
However, we can reinterpret one positive emotion into a different positive emotion, and the same for negative emotions.
