Making the Connection: Social Bonding in Courtship Situations

Making the Connection: Social Bonding in Courtship Situations
Daniel A. McFarland (with Dan Jurafsky and Craig Rawlings)

Sociologists have long argued that the force of a social bond resides in a
sense of interpersonal connection. This is especially true for initial
courtship encounters when pairs report a sense of interpersonal
chemistry.The authors explore the process of romantic bonding by applying
interaction ritual theory, extended and integrated with methods from
computational linguistics, to the study of courtship encounters and,
specifically, heterosexual speed dating. The authors find that the
assortment of interpersonal moves associated with a sense of connection
characterizes a conventionalized form of initial courtship activity. The
game is successfully played when females are the point of focus and
engaged in the conversation and males demonstrate alignment with and
understanding of the female. In short, initial heterosexual courtship
encounters are associated with a sense of bonding when they reflect a
reciprocal asymmetrical performance in which differentiated roles are
mutually coordinated.