Two studies provided evidence that misattribution of arousal facilitates romantic attraction. In Experiment 1, arousal of male subjects was manipulated through exercise. Arousal subjects liked an attractive female confederate more and an unattractive female less than did controls. In Experiment 2, arousal was manipulated in a positive (comedy tape) or negative (mutilation tape) way; other subjects heard a nonarousing tape (textbook excerpt). Results replicated the interaction found in Experiment 1: Valence of initial arousal did not affect attraction to the confederate. Salience of plausible labels for arousal is hypothesized to mediate the misattribution effect.Walster (1971) and Berscheid and Walster (1974) have used the two-factor theory of emotion (Schachter & Singer, 1962) to explain the development of passionate love, or intense sexual-romantic attraction to another person. They argue that high arousal, regardless of its source, will produce passionate love "as long as one attributes his agitated state to passion" (Walster, 1971, p. 91). Consistent with the two-factor theory, passionate love is viewed as a combination of arousal and a label for that arousal. When situational cues provide a passion-appropriate label, the person's resulting emotion will be passionate love. However, "as soon as he ceases to attribute his tumultuous feelings to passion, love should die" (Walster, 1971, p. 91). The misattribution effect would be expected to occur only as long as one's arousal is inferred to be a product of the stimulus qualities of the attractive other.Relatively few studies confirming the hypothesis that sexual-romantic attraction results from the appropriate labeling of arousal have been reported. Cantor, Zillman, and Bryant (1975) induced arousal through ex-Computer time for data analysis was granted by the Computer Science Center of the University of Maryland. The authors thank India Fleming, Douglas Kenrick, and Robert Cialdini for their comments on an earlier draft of this manuscript.

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