177 lines
8.9 KiB
Markdown
177 lines
8.9 KiB
Markdown
# 9. Interpersonal Attraction
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> PSYG2504 Social Psychology
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*Why people like or dislike each other.*
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Human beings have the need for affiliation (i.e. association with others).
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The motivation to interact with others in a cooperative way.
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We want to have close ties to people who care about us.
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### 9.0.1 Attraction: Basic Principles
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- We like people **who like us**: self-esteem
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- We like people **who satisfy our needs**: love, safety, money, sex…
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- We like people **when the rewards they provide outweigh the costs** (social exchange theory)
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- The analysis of relationships in terms of rewards and costs people exchange with each other
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- We also make judgments, assessing the profits we get from one person against from another
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### 9.0. 2 Sex Differences in Mate Selection
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- For both sexes, characteristics such as kindness and intelligence are necessities
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- Men rank physical attractiveness higher (Feingold, 1990; Jackson, 1992)
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Women were more willing than men to marry someone who was NOT “good-looking” (Sprecher et al., 1994)
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- Women places financial resources higher
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- Men prefer younger partners, while women prefer older partners
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- Applicable to many other cultures (Buss, 1989)
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- Evolutionary explanation
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Young and physically attractive are cues to women’s health and fertility (Johnson & Franklin, 1993)
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- Social cultural explanation
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Traditional distinct social roles: Men as the bread-winners; Women were economically dependent and poorly educated than men
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## 9.1 Proximity
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*The best single predictor of whether two people will be friends is how far apart they live.*
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> **Back et al. (2008)**
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> Randomly assigned students to seats at their first-class meeting.
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> Each student made a brief self-introduction to class.
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> One year after this one-time seating assignment…
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> Students reported greater friendship with those who happened to be seated next to or near them during the first-class meeting.
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### 9.1.1 Why does proximity have an effect?
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- Availability: more chances to know someone nearby
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- Anticipation of interaction:
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We prefer the person we expected to meet
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Anticipatory liking (expecting that someone will be pleasant and compatible) increases the chance of forming a rewarding relationship
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### 9.1.2 The mere (repeated) exposure effect
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*Simply being exposed to a person (or other stimulus) tends to increase liking for it.*
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> **Moreland & Beach (1992)**
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> 4 equally attractive assistants silently attended a large Social Psychology lecture for 0, 5, 10 or 15 times.
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> Students were asked to rate these assistants.
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> Results?.
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### 9.1.3 Limits to Mere Exposure
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- Most effective if stimulus is initially viewed as positive or neutral.
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- Pre-existing conflicts between people will get intensified, not decrease, with exposure.
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- There is an optimal level of exposure: too much can lead to boredom and satiation (Bornstein et al., 1990).
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## 9.2 Similarity
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We like others who are similar to us in attitudes, interests, values, background & personality.
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Applicable to friendship, dating and marriage.
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In romantic relationships, the tendency to choose similar others is called the matching phenomenon.
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People tend to match their partners on a wide variety of attributes .
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Intelligence level, popularity, self-worth, attractiveness (McClintock, 2014; Taylor et al., 2011).
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### 9.2.1 Why do people prefer similar others?
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- Similar others are **more rewarding**.
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e.g. agree more with our ideas or share activities
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- Interacting with similar others minimizes the **possibility of cognitive dissonance**.
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To like someone and disagree with that person is psychologically uncomfortable.
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- We expect to **be more successful with similar others**.
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Even we all like to date someone who is attractive, rich, and nice…
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But having a similar partner provides basis for relationships that have higher chance to survive and mutually desired.
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### 9.2.2 Limits to Similarity
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- Differences can be rewarding.
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- Differences allow people to pool-shared knowledge and skills to mutual benefit.
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e.g. a Social Psy group project
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Similarity vs. Complementarity (Does opposite attract?).
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People are more prone to like and marry those whose needs, attitudes, and personalities are similar (Botwin et al., 1997; Rammstedt &Schupp, 2008).
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### 9.2.3 Reasons or Results?
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Proximity causes liking: Once we like someone, we take steps to be close
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Similarity causes liking and liking increases similarity
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Gruber-Baldini et al. (1995) followed married couples over a 21-year period.
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Spouses were similar in age, education, and mental abilities at the initial testing.
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Over time, they actually became more similar on several measures of mental abilities.
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## 9.3 Desirable personal attributes
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There are large individual and cross-cultural differences in the characteristics that are preferred.
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Within the U.S., the most-liked characteristics are those related to *trustworthiness*
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*Including sincerity, honesty, loyalty and dependability*.
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Two other much-liked attributes are personal warmth and competence *(Anderson, 1968)*.
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### 9.3.1 Warmth
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*People appear warm when they have a positive attitude and express liking, praise, and approval (Folkes & Sears, 1977).*
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Nonverbal behaviors such as smiling, watching attentively, and expressing emotions also contribute to perceptions of warmth (Friedman, Riggio, & Casella, 1988)
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### 9.3.2 Competence
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*We like people who are socially skilled, intelligent, and competent.
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The type of competence that matters most depends on the nature of the relationship.
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e.g. social skills for friends, knowledge for professors
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### 9.3.3 “Fatal Attractions”
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*The personal qualities that initially attract us to someone can sometimes turn out to be fatal flaws to a relationship.*
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- e.g. the “fun-loving” boyfriend who is later dismissed as “immature”.
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- e.g. the professional success and self-confidence boyfriend who is later dismissed because he is a “workaholic”.
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- About 30% of breakups fit this description (Felmlee, 1995, 1998).
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- It is also found that “fatal attractions” are more common when an individual is attracted to a partner by a quality that is unique, extreme, or different from his or her own.
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## 9.4 Physical attractiveness
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*Other things being equal, we tend to like attractive people more (Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986).*
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> A meta-analysis found that although both men and women value attractiveness, men value a bit more **(Feingold, 1990)**.
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> Gender difference was greater when men’s and women’s attitudes were being measured than when their actual behavior was being measured.
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> Men are more likely than women to say that physical attractiveness is important.
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> For actual behavior, men and women are fairly similar in how they respond to physical attractiveness.
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*One reason we like more attractive people is that they are believed to possess good qualities.*
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Physically attractive people do not differ from others in basic personality traits, e.g. agreeableness, extraversion, or emotional stability (Segal-Caspi et al., 2012).
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Attractive children and young adults are somewhat more relaxed, outgoing, and socially polished (Feingold, 1992).
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Self-fulfilling prophecy – Attractive people are valued and favored, so many develop more social self-confidence .
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### 9.4.1 “Benefits” of Attractiveness
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Physically attractive people are more likely to
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- People of above-average looks tend to earn 10% to 15% more than those of below-average appearance (Judge, Hurst, & Simon, 2009).
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- College professors perceived as attractive receive higher student evaluation ratings (Rinolo et al., 2006).
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### 9.4.2 Who is Attractive?
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*Culture plays a large role in standards of attractiveness.*
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However, people do tend to agree on some features that are seen as more attractive: (Cunningham, 1986).
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- **Childlike features**: large, widely spaced eyes and a small nose and chin - “cute”.
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- **Mature features** with prominent cheekbones, high eyebrows, large pupils, and a big smile.
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### 9.4.3 Good news for the plain people
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To be really attractive, to be perfectly average (Rhodes, 2006): Statistically “average” faces are seen as more attractive (Langlois and Roggman, 1990).
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We not only perceive attractive people as likable, we also perceive likable people as attractive.
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Gross and Crofton (1977) found that after reading description of people portrayed as warm, helpful, and considerate, these people looked more attractive.
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### 9.4.4 Why does attractiveness matter?
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- Biological disposition
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- Year-old infants prefer attractive adults, and they spend more time playing with attractive dolls than with unattractive dolls (Langlois et al., 1991).
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- According to evolutionary theory, attractiveness may provide a clue to health and reproductive fitness (e.g. Kalick et al., 1998).
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- Psychological schema
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- People believe attractiveness is correlated with other positive characteristics.
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- Social psychological influence
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- Being associated with an attractive other leads a person to be seen as more attractive him or herself.
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- “radiating effect of beauty”
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