Humans are great at making the most mundane things just a little bit more exciting.
This is the basis of Erin Gibney’s theory about “convenience crushes”, which she explained in a viral video on TikTok. Since she posted the video on May 28, it has received 1.9 million views and over 360,000 likes. Gibney, 24, spoke to Newsweek about how she and her friends came up with the theory when younger—and how she says it still holds up today.
“Let’s talk about something that my friends and I call the ‘convenience crush,’ ” she said in the video. “The convenience crush is a crush that you develop on someone just because you see them all the time.”
Gibney gave examples of crushes on coworkers, people in the same class at school, or people in the same friend group to qualify her theory.
“Now, because this person is literally always in front of your face, your brain tricks you into thinking that you have real feelings for them,” she said. “When in reality…you’re probably just bored and they’re making your life more interesting.”
Gibney said she developed the term with her friends in high school.
“We would use the term when one of us developed feelings on a classmate, friend, etcetera. We would always encourage each other to ‘wait until next semester’ or a time when we were no longer around that person all the time to see if the feelings were still there,” she said. “If not, we would deem it a ‘convenience crush.’ “
Gibney said she definitely speaks from experience.
She has had “convenience crushes” in the past and realized that the feelings did not remain as deep after she switched contexts or routines. She provided the caveat that crushes on people within a certain orbit are not always “convenience crushes,” though—sometimes they can be the real deal.
“I think that a convenience crush can turn into a relationship if those feelings stand the test of time, and still exist when you are not with that person all the time,” she said.
A psychological explanation
Viewers in the comments were quick to resonate with Gibney’s claim.
“Me realizing most of my crushes have been convenience crushes, because every time if I’ve been away from them for a period of time the feelings just wane,” @communistwillgraham wrote. “But also—if I would see them again, the feelings would come rushing back, making me question if it was actually real.”
“I have a convenience crush, just because he’s the best option so far and I’m bored, it’s more entertaining to get a bit excited over a random thing,” @minparkjk wrote.
One user pointed to a psychological explanation for Gibney’s theory: “It’s called the mere exposure effect,” @liam._.evans wrote.
The mere exposure effect is the “tendency for repeated exposure to a stimulus to be sufficient to enhance an observer’s liking for it or attitude towards it,” according to Oxford University Press’ “Oxford Reference.”
While Gibney’s application to crushes is specific, she’s hardly the first person to point out the effects of consistent exposure. The mere exposure effect was first referred to all the way back in the 1800s by German philosopher and psychologist Gustav Theodor Fechner, according to the reference.
Some viewers in the comments who agreed with Gibney posited another approach to the phenomenon.
“I call it a motivational crush,”@luucy114 wrote. “[Because] it gets to a point where it’s the only motivation I have to go to work or class.”
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
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