Is Love Really Blind, Habibi?

Netflix's hit show tackles an age-old question about attraction without sight.

Reviewed by Margaret Foley

Key points

• "Love Is Blind" explores emotional connections without visual cues, challenging dating norms.
• Attraction can grow through emotional vulnerability and self-disclosure, even without visuals.
• Idealized perceptions formed in dating"pods" face real-world challenges when couples emerge.

Is love truly blind? This question is at the core of Netflix's hit reality series "Love Is Blind," which recently debuted here in the Middle East as "Love Is Blind: Habibi." More than 1.3 million people have tuned in to see whether two people can develop love without visual cues, and—more importantly—whether this love will persist once partners see each other and connect in the real world.

The results have been pretty mixed, in the Middle East and abroad. We have seen some couples make it through the experiment to their wedding and beyond. At the same time, we have also seen many couples break up during the transitional period, on their wedding day, or once they've returned to their real lives.

The show may not have answered these questions, but we can look to the social psychological literature to better understand interpersonal attraction and love. This post will dive into the concept of attraction by focusing on the experiment setup, proximity, familiarity, and suspension of judgment. A subsequent post will focus on the couples' transition to the real world by focusing on idealization, novelty, and the challenge of reconciling fantasy and reality.

So, what are the factors that influence whether we develop an attraction for another person?

• Proximity (or nearness) is the single best predictor of interpersonal attraction. You are more likely to develop an attraction towards someone in your community simply because you are more likely to come into contact with them. Early research focused on physical communities like workplaces, schools, and neighbourhoods (e.g., Festinger, 1950). One can argue that in modern times this proximity would also include people's virtual worlds.
• We become attracted to people who are familiar to us. Simply put, the more we see someone the more we come to like them; this is known as the mere exposure effect.
• We react more favorably to people who are physically attractive than those who are not. There are some universal aspects to beauty, but there are also individual, temporal, and cultural preferences.

Together, proximity increases the chances that we will meet someone, familiarity makes us feel more comfortable with them, and beauty draws us in. But what determines whether the initial attraction will turn into something more?

• One of the most important factors is similarity. Forget about the idea that opposites attract; science tells us that we tend to associate with and like people who are similar to us when it comes to demographics (e.g., education, intelligence, height, socioeconomic status), attitudes (e.g., opinions, interests, and values), and physical attractiveness.
• Further, we tend to like people who like us (reciprocity) and prefer those we perceive as more highly selective in their choices than those who are more readily available (the hard-to-get effect).

How do all of these psychological concepts play out in Love Is Blind?

• The contestants automatically cross paths with one another as part of the experiment, ticking the proximity box.
• The contestants gain familiarity with one another, slowly gaining attraction and a sense of closeness to the people they are most drawn to.
• The contestants have no visual cues or access to physical information, and yet many of them report a physical/sexual attraction during the episodes.

A few factors may explain why some contestants report feeling attraction despite the absence of physical information:

• Suspension of judgment: Physical appearance is one of the first things that we notice about another person, and it often takes center stage during the initial attraction. Contestants do not have access to this visual information, so they are able to temporarily put aside physical preferences and the assumptions that come with them. Instead, they are able to focus more heavily on inferred personality characteristics, communication styles, and emotional vulnerability. This context encourages openness, self-disclosure, and potentially, idealization, in that contestants create an "ideal" image of their partners that captivates their attention and heightens the attraction.
• Novelty and emotional intensity: The pods can create a sense of anonymity that encourages emotional vulnerability and self-disclosure much more rapidly than would occur in the real world. Further, the experience is unlike anything the contestants have experienced before. This novelty and fast pace can be really exciting and lead to more intense emotional experiences and connection, which participants can interpret as true, blind love.
• Many contestants end up selecting someone similar to them on the factors that they deem important, which can include education, interests, and values.
• Contestants often end up gravitating towards people who have shown an interest in them, reinforcing the idea of reciprocity. At the same time, we have seen numerous instances of people vying for the attention of a highly desirable, in-demand partner (the hard-to-get effect).

This analysis of Love Is Blind has allowed us to gain insight into how proximity, familiarity, and the suspension of visual cues can shape initial attraction. But is this enough to sustain a relationship outside the controlled, emotionally intense pod environment? We have seen many contestants struggle after the reveal, as their idealized impressions clash with the reality. In my next post, I will explore whether love that started blind can adapt to the real world.