the reason you like certain people has nothing to do with who they are

Have you ever noticed that the people you end up liking most are usually the people that you see most often? Your favorite coworker, even your best friend, your closest neighbor, the person in your class you always sit near. Not because they're the best people available, but because they're the most familiar. That's the mere exposure effect, and it's one of the most well-documented phenomena in psychology.

In 1968, psychologist Robert Zajonc ran a very simple experiment. He showed participants a series of symbols, Chinese symbols, faces, shapes at different frequencies. Some appeared 25 times, some appeared only once. And they asked participants to rate how much they liked every single symbol.

And the result was insanely overwhelming because the more frequently a symbol appeared, the more participants liked it. And this is mostly because familiarity, at a neurological level, shows safety. It gets processed as safety. And this is not something that we consciously do or recognize.

Your brain thinks, "I've seen this before, so nothing wrong happened." So that means in the future if I see it again, nothing wrong will happen, too. This is safety, and I like safety. And this applies to people so much.

Research has been replicated with faces, with voices, with real social interactions. The more you encounter someone, even passively, even without speaking, the more your brain registers them as safe, as familiar and likable. And this is why proximity matters so much in romance or friendships in general. The MIT Housing Study from 1950s found that the strongest, highest predictor of who became friends was not their personality or their shared interest, it was how close their doors were.

One door apart, 40% more likely to become friends than if they were four doors apart. Not because they're the better people for you. This is just like a coincidence, but your brain saw them more often, so they become a safety net to you. And here's where the problem with the modern society is in this case, because the mere exposure effect only works if you have a physical encounter.

Seeing someone's posts online doesn't produce the same effect as seeing them in person, which means that us shifting to social online friendships has weakened the most powerful friendship forming mechanism that humans have. The people that you are most likely to love platonically or romantically or any type of love are the people that you see the most. Trust is the foundation of everything and trust is built through proximity. So, if you want to have close relationships, the strategy is so simple and it's so funnily simple.

to yourself in the same room with the same people repeatedly and that's it. That's all it takes. And now you're 40% more likely to become friends. Your guys' brain will literally do the rest.

I hope you enjoy this video and if you experience this in your real life, then please comment down below. I would love to open up a discussion about this and see how to make it easier for us in this society to make closer relationships and feel less lonely. If you enjoy this video, I'm sure you're going to like this playlist, too. I made a lot of videos about friendship and love and just interpersonal relationships in general.

I love you guys so much. Have the best day of your life. Kisses. Bye-bye.