Why Going on a Roller Coaster is the Best First Date
Going on a roller coaster is the best first date.
Or even just going to an amusement park. Or going parasailing, or to a scary movie, or ziplining, or going on a hike to a super tall peak.
Basically, any context that produces fear is good for a first date. And that’s not just my opinion — interestingly, there is psychological evidence that this is true.
Psychologically speaking, fear is good for attraction. Put simply, fear is accompanied by arousal, and arousal facilitates attraction. So, if we can put ourselves in a position to experience arousal (or get others to experience arousal), that arousal can be interpreted outside of fear and attributed to available external stimuli, meaning that our arousal can be targeted towards the person we’re with — our date — and BOOM! Science has allowed us to feel attracted to each other.
If none of that made sense, allow me to break it down for you.
Let’s begin with how psychology began to recognize that fear was good for attraction. It began with two psychologists named Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron in 1974. Dutton and Aron theorized that depending on the situation, negative arousal (precipitated by fear) could be misinterpreted as positive arousal (such as attraction). To test their hypothesis, Dutton and Aron…
