Social Psychology (Pp 305-321)

Social Psychology(Pp 305-321)

Elliot AronsonUniversity of California, Santa Cruz

Timothy D. WilsonUniversity of Virginia

Robin M. AkertWellesley College

6th edition

Chapter 10Interpersonal Attraction:From First Impressions to

Close Relationships

“Try to reason about love, and you will lose your reason.”

—French proverb

What Causes Attraction?The absence of meaningful relationships

with other people makes people feel lonely, worthless, hopeless, helpless, powerless, and alienated.

In this chapter, we will discuss the antecedents of attraction, from the initial liking of two people meeting for the first time to the love that develops in close relationships.

The Person Next Door: The Propinquity Effect

Propinquity EffectThe finding that the more we see and

interact with people, the more likely they are to become our friends.

One of the simplest determinants of interpersonal attraction is proximity (sometimes called propinquity).

Festinger, Schachter, and Back (1950) tracked friendship formation among the couples in various apartment buildings.

Residents had been assigned to their apartments at random. Most were strangers when they moved in.

The researchers asked the residents to name their three closest friends in the entire housing project.

Just as the propinquity effect would predict, 65% of the friends mentioned lived in the same building, even though the other buildings were not far away.

Festinger, Schachter, and Back (1950) tracked friendship formation among the couples in various apartment buildings.

Residents had been assigned to their apartments at random. Most were strangers when they moved in.

The researchers asked the residents to name their three closest friends in the entire housing project.

Just as the propinquity effect would predict, 65% of the friends mentioned lived in the same building, even though the other buildings were not far away.

Even more striking was the pattern of friendships within a building:

• 41% of the next-door neighbors indicated they were close friends.

• 22% of those who lived two doors apart said so.

• Only 10% of those who lived on opposite ends of the hall indicated they were close friends.

Mere Exposure EffectThe finding that the more

exposure we have to a stimulus, the more apt we are to like it.

The propinquity effect occurs due to mere exposure.

The Person Next Door: The Propinquity Effect

COMPUTERS:LONG-DISTANCE PROPINQUITY

Researchers found that strangers who met on the Internet were more attracted to each other than those who met face-to-face.

Whether people on the Internet were attracted to each other was largely determined by the level and quality of their conversation, while face-to-face meetings depended on other variables as well, such as physical attractiveness.

COMPUTERS:LONG-DISTANCE PROPINQUITY

Chan and Cheng (2004) found that the quality of offline friendships was higher than that of online for relationships that had existed for up to a year.

However, when friendships had existed for longer than a year, the online and offline relationships were very similar.

SimilarityResearchers describe two types of situations in which relationships begin:

• Closed-field situations, in which people are forced to interact with each other.

• Open-field situations, in which people are free to interact or not as they choose.

SimilarityPropinquity increases familiarity, which leads

to liking, but something more is needed to fuel a growing friendship or a romantic relationship.

(Otherwise, every pair of roommates would be best friends!)

That “fuel” is similarity—a match between our interests, attitudes, values, background, or personality and those of another person.

Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.

Similarity Exercise

Similarity

Folk wisdom captures this idea in the expression “Birds of a feather flock together” (the concept of similarity).

But folk wisdom also has another saying, “Opposites attract” (the concept of complementarity, or that we are attracted to people who are our opposites).

Luckily, we don’t have to remain forever confused by contradictory advice from old sayings.

Research evidence proves that it is overwhelmingly similarity and not complementarity that draws people together.


Opinions and Personality

In dozens of controlled experiments, if all you know about a person (whom you’ve never met) are his or her opinions on several issues, the more similar those opinions are to yours, the more you will like the person.

Interpersonal StyleWe are attracted to people whose interpersonal

style and communication skills are similar to ours.

Relationships with people who do not share your interpersonal communication style are frustrating and less likely to flourish.

This is probably a great predictor of satisfaction in relationships and marriage—and of breakups and divorce!


Interests and Experiences

The situations that you choose to be in are, by definition, populated by people who have chosen them for similar reasons.

Students in the same academic track share many of the same experiences.

New similarities are created and discovered between them, fueling the friendships.


Interests and Experiences

Why is similarity so important in attraction?

Computer Dating Exercise:1. Complete form2. Share/discuss results

Interests and Experiences Why is similarity so important in attraction? 1. Desire to be liked (we tend to think that

people who are similar to us will also like us, so we are likely to initiate a relationship)

2. Need to be validated (people who are similar validate our own characteristics and beliefs)

3. Conclusions about character (we make negative inferences about someone who disagrees with us on important issues)

Reciprocal Liking• Just knowing that someone likes us

fuels our attraction to the person.

• Reciprocal liking sometimes happens because of a self-fulfilling prophecy:When we expect people to like us, we elicit more favorable behavior from them and show more to them.

Reciprocal LikingPeople with a negative self-concept respond quite differently:

• Such people indicate that they’d prefer to meet and talk to a person they know has criticized them earlier than meet and talk to a person they know has praised them earlier.

• Thus if people think of themselves as unlikable, another person’s friendly behavior toward them will seem unwarranted, and they may not respond, setting in motion another self-fulfilling prophecy.

Physical Attractiveness and Liking

• Physical attractiveness also plays an important role in liking.

• People from different cultures perceive facial attractiveness quite similarly.

• The “what is beautiful is good” stereotype indicates that people assume that physical attractiveness is associated with other desirable traits.

Research

• Elaine Walster Hatfield and her colleagues (Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, & Rottman, 1966) randomly matched 752 incoming students at the University of Minnesota for a blind date at a dance during freshman orientation week. Although the students had previously taken a battery of personality and aptitude tests, the researchers paired them up at random. On the night of the dance, the couples spent a few hours together dancing and chatting. They then evaluated their date and indicated the strength of their desire to date that person again. Of the many possible characteristics that could have determined whether they liked each other—such as their partner’s intelligence, independence, sensitivity, or sincerity—the overriding determinant was physical attractiveness.

• What’s more, there was no great difference between men and women on this score.

Physical Attractiveness and Liking

• Genders differences in the importance of attractiveness are greater when men’s and women’s attitudes are measured than when their actual behavior is measured.

• It may be that men are more likely than women to say that physical attractiveness is important to them in a potential friend, date, or mate, but when it comes to actual behavior, the sexes are more similar in their response to the physical attractiveness of others.

Research• Several studies have found that men and women

pay equal attention to the physical attractiveness of others (Duck, 1994a, 1994b; Lynn & Shurgot, 1984; Speed & Gangestad, 1997; Woll, 1986).

• Other studies have reported that men value attractiveness more than women do (Buss, 1989; Buss & Barnes, 1986; Howard, Blumstein, & Schwartz, 1987).

• A meta-analysis of many studies found that while both sexes value attractiveness, men value it somewhat more (Feingold, 1990).

What Is Attractive?High attractiveness ratings are

associated with female faces with:• Large eyes• Small nose• Small chin• Prominent cheekbones • Narrow cheeks

• High eyebrows• Large pupils• Big smile


What Is Attractive?In women’s ratings of male beauty,

they gave the highest attractiveness ratings to men’s faces with:

• Large eyes• Prominent cheekbones• Large chin• Big smile


Cultural Standards of Beauty

People from a wide range of cultures agree on what is physically attractive in the human face.

Although judgments vary, across large groups a consensus emerges: perceivers think some faces are just better-looking than others, regardless of cultural background.

Even infants prefer photographs of attractive faces to unattractive ones, and infants prefer the same photographs adults prefer.


Cultural Standards of Beauty

Attractive faces for both sexes are those whose features tend to be the arithmetic mean—or average—for the species and not the extremes.

This does not mean a composite “average” face has all the physical qualities that people cross-culturally agree are highly attractive, though.

The Power of Familiarity

The crucial variable that explains interpersonal attraction may actually be familiarity.

When research participants rate the attractiveness of faces, they prefer the faces that most resembled their own!

The Power of Familiarity

Familiarity also underlies the other concepts we’ve been discussing:

• Propinquity (people we see frequently become familiar through mere exposure),

• Similarity (people who are similar to us will also seem familiar to us), and

• Reciprocal liking (people who like each other get to know and become familiar with each other).

True or False?

Compared to less attractive persons, more attractive persons are expected to:

1. Have more socially desirable traits2. Be more likely to marry3. Be more likely to remarry if divorced4. Attain more prestigious occupations5. Have better prospects for happy social and professional

lives6. Be better able to reward you7. Have beliefs and values similar to your own8. As children have higher educational potential and IQ9. Be more responsible for good things that happen to them

and less responsible for things that happen to them10.Show greater “marital competence”

True or False?

Compared to less attractive women, more attractive women are expected to:

1. Be more likely to request a divorce2. Be more likely to have an extramarital affair3. Have more opportunities and temptations to have an

extramarital affair4. Be more vain5. Be more sexually warm

WHAT WERE YOUR ANSWERS?

All of answers were true…

Physical appearance promotes many assumptions

Assumptions about Attractive People

Many studies have found that physical attractiveness affects the attributions people make about the attractive.

Specifically, people attribute positive

qualities to beautiful people that have nothing to do with their looks.

This tendency is called the “what is beautiful is good” stereotype.

Research

A particularly chilling example of the unfair benefit of beauty was discovered by Lina Badr and Bahia Abdallah (2001), who rated the facial physical attractiveness and health status of premature infants born in hospitals in Beirut, Lebanon.

They found that physical attractiveness significantly predicted the health outcomes of these infants above and beyond the contribution of factors such as their medical condition. The more attractive the infant, the more quickly he or she gained weight and the shorter his or her stay in the hospital. The reason? Neonatal nurses responded more to the “prettier” infants and gave them better care. As one of the researchers said, “nurses played much longer with the cuter babies, held them longer and spent longer feeding them…it’s really upsetting…what if you have an ugly kid?” (Morin, 2002; p. b5).


The “What is beautiful is good” stereotype is relatively narrow, affecting people’s judgments about an individual only in specific areas.

The beautiful are thought to be more:– Sociable– Extraverted– Popular

– Sexual– Happy– Assertive


Highly attractive people do develop good social interaction skills and report having more satisfying interactions with others.

This involves a self-fulfilling prophecy: The beautiful, from a young age, receive a great deal of social attention that in turn helps them develop good social skills.



Can a “regular” person be made to act like a “beautiful” one through the self-fulfilling prophecy? Yes.

Men talking to women on the phone elicit warmer, friendlier responses when led to believe the women they are talking to are attractive.

The same happens for women talking to men they believe are attractive.


Research• Researchers gave college men a packet of information about another

research participant, including her photograph (Snyder, Tanke, & Berscheid, 1977). The photograph was rigged; it was either of an attractive woman or of an unattractive woman. The men were told that they would have a telephone conversation with this woman (in this experimental condition, only verbal communication—no gestures or facial expressions—was used). The experimental purpose of the photograph was to invoke the men’s stereotype that “what is beautiful is good”—that the woman would be more warm, likable, poised, and fun to talk to if she was physically attractive than if she was unattractive. In fact, the photograph the men were given was not a photo of the woman with whom they spoke. Did the men’s beliefs create reality?

• This study was later replicated with the roles switched: Women participants looked at a photograph of an attractive or an unattractive man and then spoke with him on the phone (Andersen & Bem, 1981). The men were unaware of the women’s belief about them, and just as in the original study, the women acted on their “prophecy” and the unknowing men responded accordingly. These data remind us that it is a myth that physical attractiveness affects women’s lives more than men’s. Three meta-analyses that have examined the effect of attractiveness on behavior and perceptions across hundreds of studies have found no gender differences: Physical attractiveness is as important a factor in men’s lives as women’s (Eagly et al., 1991; Feingold, 1992b; Langlois et al., 2000).

Theories of Interpersonal Attraction: Social Exchange and Equity

Social Exchange Theory (An Economic Model)The idea that people’s feelings about a relationship

depend on perceptions of rewards and costs, the kind of relationship they deserve, and their chances for having a better relationship with someone else.

Equity TheoryThe idea that people are happiest with

relationships in which rewards and costs experienced and both parties’ contributions are roughly equal.

Social Exchange TheorySocial exchange theory holds that how people

feel (positively or negatively) about their relationships will depend on:

(1)Their perception of the rewards they receive from the relationship,

(2) Their perception of the costs they incur, and (3) Their perception of what kind of relationship

they deserve and the probability that they could have a better relationship with someone else.

In other words, we buy the best relationship we can get, one that gives us the most value for our emotional dollar. The basic concepts of social exchange theory are reward, cost, outcome, and comparison level.

Social Exchange TheoryRewards are the positive, gratifying

aspects of the relationship that make it worthwhile and reinforcing, including:

• The kinds of personal characteristics and behaviors of our relationship partner that we have already discussed, and

• Our ability to acquire external resources by virtue of knowing this person (e.g., gaining access to money, status, activities, or other interesting people).

Social Exchange TheoryCosts are, obviously, the other side of

the coin, and all friendships and romantic relationships have some costs attached to them (such as putting up with someone’s annoying habits and characteristics)

Social Exchange TheoryHow satisfied you are with your

relationship depends on another variable—your comparison level.

Comparison LevelPeople’s expectations about the level

of rewards and punishments they are likely to receive in a particular relationship.

Social Exchange TheoryFinally, your satisfaction with a relationship

also depends on your perception of the likelihood that you could replace it with a better one.

Comparison Level for AlternativesPeople’s expectations about the level of

rewards and punishments they would receive in an alternative relationship.

Equity TheoryProponents of equity theory describe

equitable relationships as the happiest and most stable.

In comparison, inequitable relationships result in one person feeling:

• overbenefited (getting a lot of rewards, incurring few costs, having to devote little time or energy to the relationship), or

• underbenefited (getting few rewards, incurring a lot of costs, having to devote a lot of time and energy to the relationship).

ResearchAccording to equity theory, both underbenefited and overbenefited partners should feel uneasy about this state of affairs, and both should be motivated to restore equity to the relationship. This makes sense for the underbenefited person (who wants to continue feeling miserable?), but why should the overbenefited individual want to give up what social exchange theory indicates is a cushy deal—lots of rewards for little cost and little work?

Some theorists argue that equity is a powerful social norm—people will eventually feel uncomfortable or even guilty if they get more than they deserve in a relationship. However, being overbenefited just doesn’t seem as bad as being underbenefited, and research has borne out that inequity is perceived as more of a problem by the underbenefited individual (Buunk & Schaufeli, 1999; Hatfield, Greenberger, Traupmann, & Lambert, 1982; Sprecher & Schwartz, 1994; Van Yperen & Buunk, 1990).

The End

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Social Psychology (Pp 305-321)