PROVIDE RESPONSE:
1. What kinds of distinctions have social psychologists made between liking and loving, as well as different forms of love?
It was stated that love is not a unitary, one-dimensional state, but instead complex and experienced in all types of relationships. Passionate love is recognized as a strong emotion, sexual desire, and intense preoccupation with the beloved according to Aronson. Companionate love is short-lived intensity, romantic, long-lasting, deepening over time. Liking someone is seemlingly based off of whether that person likes us which can begin because of shared opinons, mutual friends, smiling at each other, kind behavior, and/or because of insecurities. While liking someone can be very simple, loving someone is much more intense.
2. What are the characteristics of these various forms of attachment and attraction?
As previously mentioned, liking someone is based on simple interactions, not much attachment or attraction. Instead it is solely based on similar opinions, interactions, wholesome interactions of getting along. Love is more intimate, physical, intense. The attachment is strong, attraction as well specifically in passionate love.
3. Are they mutually exclusive within a given relationship, or do they have the capacity to co-exist?
I believe a person can like and love someone or feel one way or the other. As I have heard some parents say about their teachers, "I do not like you right now but I will always love you". Love goes beyond, interactions, it is felt and known deeper. We choose to like or not like people, often who we love is not chosen but felt because of connection.