It was very interesting to read the UBC article about the Bridge Experiment, especially because I had actually been to that exact spot when traveling to Vancouver when I was 10 years old. (Photos attached)
I think that arousal attribution, or better said, misattribution of arousal, happens to everyone at some point. Sometimes, it can be very annoying, especially when we are not aware of this concept. It can feel very out of control, which can hit harder for people who are more prone to anxiety and the need for control. When we are physiologically aroused, we don’t always know exactly why. We might be around someone, feel nervous, notice our heart beating faster, and then conclude, “I like them”.
Professor Maddox gave a great example in class: he said he might feel nervous either because he was lecturing about attraction in front of college students, or simply because he had too much coffee.
Misattributions like this happen all the time. If it only affects something like giving a speech or working on a task, it’s usually harmless. But it becomes more complicated when it influences important decisions. For example, imagine trying to figure out if you actually like someone and are ready to take the next, or first, step. If all your interactions with them happened at parties with your friends, you might mistakenly think you know them well. What you probably haven’t considered is that in all those situations, you were very likely aroused by multiple external factors: loud music, the energy of the crowd, drunk friends, and so on. Attribution of arousal from these sources onto the person can explain why passionate feelings sometimes seem stronger than they really are.
Another experiment mentioned in the article, I’ll call it the High Voltage Questionnaire experiment, showed something similar. When people are threatened by something, they sometimes mislabel their fear and assign it to the person they think they are attracted to. So, the big question is: how do we know if we are genuinely feeling attraction, or if we are just scared and confusing emotions? Should we actually start “building the bridge”?
Attribution of arousal is a very complicated matter. Even though the examples I described earlier are fictional, everyone has probably experienced something similar. The answer to figuring out what we’re truly feeling? Give it time. Change the setting. It’s all about sorting through the complexity and mix of emotions. Only by separating one feeling from another, over time, can we figure out what truly applies to us and what is just an excessive amount of coffee
