The Seductive Realm of the Possible

People at the bar

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"You can't be happy, while your heart is on the roam, you can't be happy until you bring it home." —The Brothers Four

"A quick smile is more seductive than a slinky dress." —Mason Cooley

Human life concerns not only, or even mainly, the present, but rather, and to a significant extent, the realm of imagined possibilities. The fundamental human capacity of being aware of the possible does not merely reveal reality, but also guides our activities. I implement here James Gibson’s most valuable notion of “perceptual affordances” to the romantic realm (Ben-Ze’ev, 2024).

Gibson’s Notion of Perceptual Affordances

At the basis of James Gibson’s ecological approach to (visual) perception is the claim that perceptual affordances are meaningful possible activities offered by the perceptual environment to the perceiver. In order to sustain this view, Gibson adds two characteristics that confirm the genuine nature of perceptual affordances: (a) affordances are perceived in a direct cognitive manner, and (b) affordances have a unique ontological status that is neither subjective nor objective (or both). The first characteristic maintains the authentic nature of the information constituting affordances by eliminating the presence of mediated processes, which may contaminate the information. The second characteristic maintains that the possibilities of activities exist in our environment.

Gibson (1979) proposes a direct approach to perception, in which perceivers directly encounter meaningful objects and activities. Instead of assuming preparatory deliberate processes, such as inferences or judgments, the perceiver is assumed to have a kind of sensitivity that expresses the structure of the perceptual system. Perceptual learning, which is developed through changes in the sensitivity of the system, does not need to postulate deliberate processes involving cognitive mediation (Ben-Ze’ev, 1981, 1984, 1988, 1993).

Concerning the ontological status of affordances, Gibson claims that the affordance of something does not change as the need of the observer changes: “The observer may or may not perceive or attend to the affordance, according to his needs, but the affordance, being invariant, is always there to be perceived” (Gibson, 1979: 139). This claim may seem to oppose the assumption that the perceiver is essential for the affordances. However, when realizing that the existence of an affordance is a type of potentiality, or disposition, Gibson’s claim is coherent, since possibilities continually exist, even when they are not actually perceived, as it is possible that the perceiver may attend them in the future. When viewing the perceptual environment as a whole, the presence of a perceiver is necessary. However, within this relational environment, the absence of a specific perceiver does not abolish the existence of this affordance.

Extending the Notion of Affordances

“I have always been more open to the world of potentiality than to the world of contingent reality. This helps one to understand the human heart.” —Marcel Proust

In recent times, Gibson’s notion of “affordances” has become very popular not merely in psychology and other social sciences, but also in fields such as philosophy, robotics, design, architecture, art, communication, and sports science.

All kinds of affordances involve Gibson’s core idea of affordances, i.e., possibilities of activities that the environment offers the agent. They differ, among other things, in the type of environment-agent relationships. Gibson suggests that perceptual affordances are what the environment “offers the animal, what it provides or furnishes either for good or ill” (Gibson, 1979, p. 127). The essence of these terms is to make something possible or attainable.

I suggest that typical perceptual affordances enable (or provide) various activities; typical social affordances invite us to act; typical romantic affordances seduce us to behave in certain ways, and moral affordances demand that things must be done. Enabling is typically neutral from a normative aspect. Inviting has a positive aspect, but the decision is up to the invitee. Seducing has a greater positive aspect concerning both the exciting value of the deed and its feasibility in getting it. Moral affordances are the most forceful type of affordances that present normative opportunities for fitting moral actions (Peter, 2023).

Romantic Affordances

“I keep a close watch on this heart of mine… Because you're mine, I walk the line.” —Johnny Cash

"Seduction is merely encouraging a man to do something he already wants to do." —Lisa Kleypas

Extending the notion of perceptual affordances to other realms enables us a better understanding of these realms, as possibilities of actions are central in human life, and choosing the optimal affordances becomes increasingly complex. This is particularly so in the romantic realm. Coping with romantic affordances does not necessarily imply being blind to them, but rather realizing that we cannot actualize all seductive affordances. One helpful attitude in this regard is that of being happy with your own share.

The abundance of romantic affordances creates the advantage of having greater romantic options for finding a suitable partner. However, such abundance has its own difficulties. Thus, Menelaos Apostolou and colleagues (2023) argue that more than 50% of people are facing difficulties in starting and/or keeping a relationship. One major reason is the predominant experience of “too much of a good thing”; another is that traditional human mating skills are not optimal in the digital environment. Such deficits in mating performance relate to singlehood, specifically being involuntarily single (Apostolou et al., 2023).

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Samantha Joel and colleagues (2019) indicate that decisions of romantic pursuit often require a person to risk making one of two fatal errors: pursuing a romantic target when interest is not reciprocated (resulting in rejection) or failing to pursue a romantic target when interest is reciprocated (resulting in a missed romantic opportunity). They found that despite the heavy psychological cost of romantic rejection, people perceive missed romantic opportunities to be a more consequential and regrettable outcome than rejection, which motivates people to pursue rewarding potential partners in the face of rejection. The rewards that romantic relationships offer are powerful motivators, even for those whose fears of rejection are particularly strong (Joel et al., 2019). In many circumstances, positive romantic affordances are more powerful than negative ones.

To summarize, the present may make us somewhat sad, as well as restless and continually disappointed. Coping with the mixed blessing of romantic affordances requires us to establish a clear normative priority order in the form of ideals and boundaries. Imagining the romantic possible is a double-edged sword: it is a gift, but one that cuts. There is not a way to ignore the gift, nor a way to avoid its wounds.

This post is based on my recent article, “Romantic Affordances” (Ben-Ze'ev, 2024).