Thursday, January 27, 2011

What is propinquity?


Search
: propinquity

Why: My Uncle Hal got a nameart order for a thing that said "PROPINQUITY." The final product looked exactly like this:
Answer: Let's just let Wikipedia handle this one.
In social psychology, propinquity (from Latin propinquitas, nearness) is one of the main factors leading to interpersonal attraction. It refers to the physical or psychological proximity between people. Propinquity can mean physical proximity, a kinship between people, or a similarity in nature between things. Two people living on the same floor of a building, for example, have a higher propinquity than those living on different floors, just as two people with similar political beliefs possess a higher propinquity than those whose beliefs strongly differ.
And I love a good diagram, so here:
U = universe, A = set A, B = set B, and S = similarity:
Source: Wikiwiki

The More You Know: It also says:
Propinquity is also one of the factors, set out by Jeremy Bentham, used to measure the amount of (utilitarian) pleasure in a method known as felicific calculus.
Yes.