Transcript Social Psychology

Social Psychology
(Pp 305-321)
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
6th edition
Chapter 10
Interpersonal 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
One of the simplest determinants of
interpersonal attraction is proximity
(sometimes called propinquity).
Propinquity Effect
The finding that the more we see and
interact with people, the more likely
they are to become our friends.
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.
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The Person Next Door:
The Propinquity Effect
The propinquity effect occurs
due to mere exposure.
Mere Exposure Effect
The finding that the more exposure
we have to a stimulus, the more
apt we are to like it.
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-toface 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.
Similarity
Researchers 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.
Similarity
Propinquity 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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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 Style
We 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!
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Interests and Experiences
Why is similarity so important in attraction?
Computer Dating Exercise:
1. Complete form
2. 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 Liking
People 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
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Have more socially desirable traits
Be more likely to marry
Be more likely to remarry if divorced
Attain more prestigious occupations
Have better prospects for happy social and professional lives
Be better able to reward you
Have beliefs and values similar to your own
As children have higher educational potential and IQ
Be more responsible for good things that happen to them and less
responsible for things that happen to them
10. 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 divorce
2. Be more likely to have an extramarital affair
3. Have more opportunities and temptations to have an extramarital
affair
4. Be more vain
5. 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).
Assumptions about Attractive People
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
Assumptions about Attractive People
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Assumptions about Attractive People
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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 Theory
The idea that people are happiest with relationships in
which rewards and costs experienced and both
parties’ contributions are roughly equal.
Social Exchange Theory
Social 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 Theory
Rewards 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 Theory
Costs 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 Theory
How satisfied you are with your
relationship depends on another
variable—your comparison level.
Comparison Level
People’s expectations about the level of
rewards and punishments they are likely
to receive in a particular relationship.
Social Exchange Theory
Finally, 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 Alternatives
People’s expectations about the level of
rewards and punishments they would
receive in an alternative relationship.
Equity Theory
Proponents 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).
Research
According 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