Document Type

Article

Publication Date

2018

Publication Title

Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships

Volume

12

Issue

1

First Page

34

Last Page

50

ISSN

1981-6472

DOI

10.5964/ijpr.v12i1.289

Keywords

first impressions, relationship initiation, friendships, romantic relationships

Abstract

Interpersonal chemistry refers to a perceived instant connection that exists when meeting a person for the first time. In this study, we inductively explored the characteristics of friendship and romantic chemistry for men and women. A social constructionist lens guided our data collection and interpretation. The sample consisted of 362 ethnically diverse individuals (men = 162, women = 200) who completed an online survey. Using textual coding methods, we identified the core themes for interpersonal chemistry as: Reciprocal candor, mutual enjoyment, attraction, similarities, personableness, love, instant connection, and indescribable factors. The similarities theme was more characteristic of friendship than romantic chemistry and the attraction and love themes were more salient to romantic chemistry. We analyzed the data separately for men and women and found that women’s responses centered more on love as characteristic of friendship chemistry and similarities as a component of romantic chemistry.

Rights

This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Comments

Campbell, K., Nelson, J., Parker, M. L., & Johnston, S. (2018). Interpersonal chemistry in friendships and romantic relationships. Interpersona: An International Journal on Personal Relationships, 12(1), 34-50. doi:10.5964/ijpr.v12i1.289

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