Law of Attraction in Relationships and Intercultural Communication

Metaphysical Law of Attraction

"Thou, constrained by no limits, in accordance with thine own free will, in whose hand we have placed thee, shalt ordain for thyself the limits of thy nature." — Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, Oratio de hominis dignitate ("God's Address to Adam")

"If you're not an infinite being, what would be the purpose of your life?" — Wayne Dyer, The Power of Intention

What are your beliefs about the nature of the universe? Do you believe in order, universal natural laws, cosmic intelligence, or chaos? Do you believe in the presence of God? What is the importance of attitudes? What is fortune? Is there good or bad fortune? Why do bad things happen to good people? These types of questions come to the mind of almost every human being. One thing we note consistently is that positivity and virtue are universally accepted. Everyone appreciates good conduct such as truthfulness, honesty, speaking politely, and doing well for others. Similarly, bad attitudes and wrong deeds such as dishonesty, theft, and causing harm to others are universally disliked.

Joseph Murphy writes, "As a person thinks, feels, and believes, so is the condition of his or her mind, body, and circumstances" (vxiii). "We are each 100% responsible for all of our experiences," writes Louise Hay. "Every thought we think is creating our future" (You Can Heal Your Life 5). These statements point to the existence of an influential and authoritative self that manifests its desires in alignment with a cooperative, abundant, and intelligent universe. According to this belief, every human being is continuously creating his or her own reality, and the present-day world is the collective creation of humanity. As Deepak Chopra has described, "And when we realize our true Self is one of pure potentiality, we align with the power that manifests everything in the universe" (Seven Spiritual Laws of Success 8).

Need for the Law of Attraction in the Modern Era

This paper is an exploration of the potential of the universal law of attraction for the benefit of humanity. It discusses how this law is useful in interpersonal communications and relationships — not only in close personal relations but also in intercultural communication.

The law of attraction is more needed in the modern era than in any previous era because, with the advancement of telecommunication and technology, the world has become a global village. There are many benefits of globalization: economically, it accelerates the free flow of goods, services, investment, and labor. World trade expanded steadily throughout the 1990s at a rate of more than 6% per annum, exceeding growth in world output by a wide margin (UNCTAD, 2003, p. 41). The five-year annual growth of world foreign direct investment (FDI) inflows and outflows increased from 20.0% during 1991–1995 to 40.1% during 1996–2000 (UNCTAD, 2002, p. 4). As a result, the global economy has taken the shape of a single global market consisting of a vast network of regional and local markets.

In terms of its political aspect, globalization has transformed the traditional concept of national sovereignty. The increasing power of global treaties and negotiations — such as the General Agreement on Trade in Services (GATS) and the World Summit on the Information Society (WSIS) — and major international organizations such as the World Trade Organization (WTO), the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) means that domestic issues can no longer be fully managed within the borders of nation-states. As a result, the power of nation-states as sovereign actors in international relations has been significantly undermined.

Yet globalization has also produced many harmful effects, including wars and widespread hatred based on language, color, and racial differences. There are gross violations of human rights, such as deliberate acts of genocide and other war crimes. Moreover, some of the most serious harms the global community faces are the result of ordinary, decent people engaging in "business as usual" rather than the result of deliberate brutality or callous indifference. This is because we are often involved in collective harms — harms caused by the combined actions of many individuals — that are not directly caused by our individual actions yet are in some sense dependent upon them.

Attitudes, Social Identity, and Superordinate Identities

People interact with one another on a daily basis, and as part of this process individuals will like some people better than others. This happens for many different reasons, and many psychological approaches have been developed for understanding this phenomenon. Depersonalized social attraction occurs when individuals depersonalize themselves and others through the process of categorization, and are then attracted to others who match the group's prototype. In other words, when individuals view themselves and others as group members, they do not evaluate others as individuals but as group members. Since prototypes set the standards for groups, the more prototypical a person is, the more favorably they are perceived. For example, a Christian will tend to like an outstanding Christian more than an average one.

A paper published in 1995 added evidence for depersonalized social attraction. In the experiment, individuals were asked to report their attitudes toward an individual who was either a group member or their partner for a task. The study examined how prototypicality influenced attraction, and the results generally supported the idea that through depersonalization, people are more attracted to prototypical group members (Michael A., 112).

A paper published in 1998 examined the relationships between friendship, group identification, group cohesiveness, and groupthink. Generally speaking, groupthink arises when a group's drive for unanimity overrides practical considerations and prevents the group from realistically evaluating its situation. This can lead to an unquestioned belief in the morality and invulnerability of the group, as well as problems in the decision-making process. The 1998 paper sought to better understand how cohesiveness could lead to groupthink by drawing a distinction between cohesion based on personal attraction (friendship) and cohesion based on depersonalized social attraction. Participants were placed into four-person discussion groups formed with friends, socially attractive strangers, or random strangers, under conditions designed to encourage groupthink. The results showed that friendship was weakly or negatively related to groupthink, while depersonalized social attraction was strongly correlated with it (Michael A., 112).

A related study measured students' levels of racial identification to establish in-groups and then, through fabricated news stories, manipulated the prototypical level of intelligence attributed to each racial in-group. Students were then asked to evaluate various celebrities. As predicted, the more a celebrity matched the prototypical level of intelligence for the in-group, the more socially attractive they were found to be. The level of prototypical embodiment was the strongest predictor of social attraction (Dana E., 323). These results stress both the importance of depersonalized social attraction and the powerful effect that media can have on people's perception of others.

A paper published in 2010 examined in-group bias as it relates to religion. The study was conducted in Israel and involved 217 Jewish and Muslim young men between the ages of 14 and 18, who were asked to respond to 12 different hypothetical scenarios involving aggression from another individual. The religion and gender of the aggressor, as well as the severity of the aggression, varied across scenarios. The study found that participants' responses were more moderate toward members of their own religion than toward members of the opposing religion (Zeev Winstok, 57).

A paper published in 2009 examined different social identities simultaneously by reporting the results of two studies that measured in-group bias created by different social identities (e.g., political views, nationality, religion, and kinship) across four circumstances: giving money in a dictator game, sharing an office, commuting, and working together. The results showed that people discriminated in favor of their in-group regardless of which social identity was at issue. The authors were also able to rank the different social identities by the strength of bias they produced: family and kinship were the most powerful sources of bias, followed in descending order by political views, religion, sports-team loyalty, and music preference.

Recent research has also examined the relationship between religious practice and feelings of uncertainty. A paper published in 2008 reported on a study in which 47 students were presented with scenarios designed to increase anxiety and, in some cases, lower their sense of personal control. The authors predicted that belief in a controlling God would be strengthened when individuals were confronted with an uncertain and random world, and the results supported this conclusion, suggesting that religious social identities can be a powerful tool for coping with uncertainty.

A powerful method for bringing people together is the creation of superordinate identities — overarching identities that encompass people who belong to multiple other social identities. For example, the American national identity encompasses American Jews, Christians, Muslims, and others, bringing them together under one unified social identity. Which identity is most salient will change depending on the social context: while celebrating the Fourth of July, an individual's American identity may dominate, causing them to view everyone as part of their American group. Conversely, at a worship service, the same individual will likely categorize others according to their religion.

Superordinate identities are most successful when subordinate identities remain secure. This principle is known as the mutual intergroup differentiation model, which holds that superordinate identities can improve intergroup relations as long as the integrity of the subgroups is maintained. Attempts to categorize individuals on a purely superordinate level can constitute a threat to their subordinate identities, potentially leading to increased discrimination as individuals strive to maintain their sense of identity.