The sets are basically any relevant subject matter about a person,
persons, or non-persons, depending on the context. Propinquity can be
more than just physical distance. Residents of an apartment building
living near a stairway, for example, tend to have more friends from
other floors than those living further from the stairway.[3] The propinquity effect is usually explained by the mere exposure effect, which holds that the more exposure a stimulus gets, the more likeable it becomes.
In a study on interpersonal attraction (Piercey and Piercey, 1972),
23 graduate psychology students, all from the same class, underwent 9
hours of sensitivity training in two groups. Students were given pre-
and post-tests to rate their positive and negative attitudes toward each
class member. Members of the same sensitivity training group rated each
other higher in the post-test than they rated members of the other
group in both the pre- and post-test, and members of their own group in
the pre-test. The results indicated that the 9 hours of sensitivity
training increased the exposure of students in the same group to each
other, and thus they became more likeable to each other.[4]
Propinquity is one of the effects used to study group dynamics. For
example, there was a British study done on immigrant Irish women to
observe how they interacted with their new environments (Ryan, 2007).
This study showed that there were certain people with whom these women
became friends much more easily than others, such as classmates,
workplace colleagues, and neighbours as a result of shared interests,
common situations, and constant interaction. For women who still felt
out of place when they began life in a new place, giving birth to
children allowed for different ties to be formed, ones with other
mothers. Having slightly older children participating in activities such
as school clubs and teams also allowed social networks to widen, giving
the women a stronger support base, emotional or otherwise
