Interpersonal attraction: In search of a theoretical Rosetta Stone.

Our goal in this chapter is to take a step toward the theoretical integration of the interpersonal attraction literature. We seek to do so in two ways. First, we suggest that almost all research on interpersonal attraction has been implicitly or explicitly guided by one of three overarching metatheoretical perspectives—domain-general reward perspectives, domain-specific evolutionary perspectives, and attachment perspectives—and we use this tripartite theoretical structure to review the attraction literature. Second, we argue that this literature coheres around a single core principle, the instrumentality principle, which suggests that people become attracted to others who help them achieve needs or goals that are currently high in motivational priority.