The 7 C's of Psychologically Sexy

Helen E. Fisher, Ph.D. (a biological anthropologist) describes 3 brain systems for love: lust, attraction, and attachment (http://helenfisher.com/downloads/articles/15npolve.pdf). Our neurology, biology, and the environments (both social and physical) that we live in have conspired (through evolution) to create these 3 brain systems. In one way or another, all 3 systems are interested in helping us perpetuate life (our own, new/ next generational, social communities, etc.). The Lust Brain drives us to seek sexual gratification (inspiring us to expend precious energy to procreate, i.e. create lives). The Attraction Brain inspires us to focus on winning and guarding the beneficial relationships that make us most interested in living. The Attachment Brain influences us to cooperate and build the communal and compassionate relationships that sustain lives. Obviously, being physically sexy helps you engage someone's lust brain...but in humans, something curious happens pretty quickly...we start looking at the deep-level characteristics in others (e.g. personality, values, principles, faith, etc.) as we interact with them in groups (https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/256901). Maybe even more shocking, we can find ourselves eventually lusting after someone we've become attached to, who didn't physically trigger our lust...attraction can sneak in after the fact! (https://psycnet.apa.org/record/1971-08141-001) We can even come to think of an objectively attractive person as downright homely or ugly if they are (or become) psychologically ugly (e.g. aggressive, cynical, abusive). It turns out that being psychologically sexy is where it's at!

So regardless of gender, sexual orientation, age, race, culture, and dozens of other specifiers...what generally makes one person psychologically sexy to another? The answer from psychological research so far seems to be easiest to summarize using these seven C's: (Note: Famed teams researcher, Eduardo Salas, Ph.D., has the seven c's of effective teamwork; so I owe the conceptual model to him.)

1. Consenting: People who first consent or agree that we are interesting, earn our interest in return. Furthermore, people who ask for our consent before taking action that impacts us earn our trust. For example, most of us think it's pretty nice when someone tells us they find us attractive and ask if they can kiss or hug us. Even in long-term relationships, we rate our spouses as more attractive when they habitually tell us they would like to surprise us and ask if a specific time to do so would work for us before committing to expensive trips or dinners, etc.
2. Competent: We find it sexy when a person has the necessary knowledge, ability, or skill to do something difficult that we value. This is part of what makes certain professions so attractive and why romantic heroes/ heroines frequently have jobs that obviously involve some calling (rather than just an occupation) - such as civil rights lawyer or ER doctor. It goes further than that though (after all we're still attracted to unemployed folks who answer callings in other ways)...because our brains associate competence with integrity and this triggers our trust that they will devote the time necessary to learn and care for our relationship too.
3. Caring: We like people who perform acts of kindness, and we love people who perform acts of kindness to us. Why? Because acts of kindness maximize our social benefits and minimize our social costs. We feel a sense of obligation toward those who do good things for us. When the caring/ good acts pile up enough we feel loved. Please note though, that to be considered a good thing, a caring act must be competently provided by someone in a consenting fashion (see the first two C's).
4. Compassionate: I know, you want to know how compassion is different than caring, so allow me to describe it a little first. Caring is an act. Compassion is a feeling. Specifically, the feeling of empathy or sympathy for the suffering or misfortune of another. Suffering cannot always be avoided or alleviated, and in these cases, we love folks who help us validate our feelings--it's all the emotional satisfaction we can obtain in some cases. We also love folks who try to understand us, it is part of expressing their interest in us even when they cannot provide caring.
5. Confident: There are two important meanings to this C. The first is we love those we can confide in. Those who make us feel like it is safe to be vulnerable, to be our full awkward selves. They won't hold our ugly moments against us in the long run. The second meaning is that they are confident/ self-assured enough in their own worth to accept our apologies when we do admit mistakes, and even, more importantly, to accept our acts of caring and compassion for them as the truth when it is. As anyone who has ever been in love with someone battling depression or drug- abuse can tell you, it is very difficult and demoralizing to offer caring and compassion to someone who cannot or will not accept it because their struggles have ruined too much of their confidence or self-worth. While we appreciate humility, most of us also find it unattractive when someone declines a deserved compliment. We're attracted to folks confident enough to accept a compliment (caring) when they deserve it. (Note that different cultures do define what deserving is very different though.)
6. Cooperative: We are more likely to be attracted to someone when we share a common goal, and we are attached to those who labor mutually toward that goal with us. Folks are psychologically sexy when they agree to cooperate to achieve something we both love or value (e.g. raising a child, building a home, saving enough money to retire, etc.). Families grow together faster and stay together longer when they keep agreeing and focusing on common goals that suit their energy realities. We find folks who will build something with us psychologically sexy, whereas folks who refuse to cooperate toward achieving a goal we've agreed on are a big turn-off...and often the seeds of divorce.
7. Creative: The last C is a tall order. We're attracted to people with original ideas, especially those people who have original ideas about how to embody and exhibit some of those previous C's over the duration of our relationship with them. When someone invents a new way to show us they care, express their empathy, build confidence with us, or cooperate toward an interesting new goal with us, then we love them all the more for it. When we are invited to mutual creativity we feel more alive and satisfied with living together.

Now for sailing the 7 C's...

Here is the good news. You can learn to be psychologically sexier...even if you're already sailing these seven C's you can always continue your mastery studies. As those of us with a growth mindset or a learning orientation already know, everything in the universe is constantly changing so there is always a need to learn how to adapt strength to new variations.

Here is the (maybe) bad news. Since everyone in every relationship you will ever have is growing and changing you can never completely master these seven C's. You will always have something to learn, but this also means you can continuously become more and more psychologically sexy, even as you age and your physical beauty fades.

Beauty is in the perceptions of the beholder, a cognitive process that happens behind the eye, rather than in the eye.

A few additional words for my fellow authors...

When it comes to writing romance, I think it becomes very obvious which authors must know this. The ones who do know are able to create characters that we come to deeply love in the span of a story by showing us how their behavior embodies these 7 C's. Whereas authors who rely on physical descriptions are able to create characters we can imagine lusting after but aren't really all that memorable (we don't really love to love them enough to remember them).

Gertrude Stein wrote, "Rose is a rose is a rose" and Shakespeare wrote, "A rose by any other name would smell as sweet."