Proximity and Relationships

The Effect of Proximity on Interpersonal Attraction

Festinger, Schachter & Back (1950)

After WWII, waves of G.I.s went to college on government money. Many of these soldiers already had families, making regular student housing inappropriate. MIT resolved this issue by renting nearby Westgate apartment complexes. In 1950, friendship formation was tracked among the new couples at Westgate. Couples would name their three closest friends. 65% of the friends mentioned were in the same building. 41% of the next-door neighbors (19′ apart) were close friends. 22% of those who were two doors away (38′ apart) said so. Only 10% of those who lived on opposite ends of the hall (89′ apart) said they were close friends. Attraction also depended on functional distance: people whose rooms were next to the building’s mailboxes were more likely to have friends, since others would pass by them each day on the way to the mailbox.

In social psychology, propinquity(from Latin propinquitas, nearness) is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. It refers to the physical or psychological proximity between people. Two people living on the same floor of a building, for example, have a higher propinquity than those living on different floors. Propinquity can mean physical proximity, a kinship between people, or a similarity in nature between things.

http://www.ocf.berkeley.edu/~wwu/psychology/attraction.shtml#proximity

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Propinquity

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