Misattribution of Arousal and Relationships

This week I kind of want to talk about the concept of misattribution of arousal.  Which is he tendency to mislabel our feelings of fear arousal as feelings of romantic arousal.  It doesn't always have to be romantic but this usually what it is associated with. 

In Ira Hyman's "Is This Love Or Too Much Caffeine? Misattributions of Arousal Strengthen Relationships" (2010) in Mental Mishaps, she describes a study done with men on two different types of bridges. The link below is a video that explains the study.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P0aMEkGlcQE

It's interesting that a lot more men from the scary bridge called her.  Hyman says, "The implication is that any physiological arousal can be misattributed to feelings for the other person. I can imagine some nice first date ideas. Going out for coffee (which may increase heart rate), for example, may be better than drinking other beverages. Going dancing or participating in some other aerobic activity might be more advantageous than sitting quietly in a dark, calm movie theater (of course horror films that raise anxiety levels and heart rate may also get misinterpreted as love)."

This almost sounds like it could be manipulative but Hyman also says that these types of experiences could actually strengthen the bond between romantic couples.  As long as the activities are challenging enough for both people and also meets their individual skill level.  When the couple achieves success they enjoy the activity more and, "they will then misattribute the activity's positive affect to how they feel about their partner. When we enjoy joint activities, some of the arousal and joy gets transferred to our romantic partners."

However this gives us cause to be careful if we are not in any sort of relationship, and are just dating.  Be sure to know what your feelings actually mean in the given setting, because it could be misattribution instead of real feelings of love.