Transcript Interpersonal Attraction

Interpersonal attraction
Propinquity (mere
exposure)
Similarity
Physical appearance
Inferences of personality
Other factors (e.g.,
arousal, emotion)
Interpersonal
attraction
propinquity
 Festinger,
Schacter, & Back (1950)
Next door
Two doors down
Opposite
ends of hall
Conceptual replications
 Priest
and Sawyer (1967)
 Segal (1974)
Mita, Dermer, & Knight (1977)
++
self
People
you
know
++
original
reversed
One major explanation for
propinquity effects: mere exposure
 Mere
exposure effects—already covered
(e.g. Zajonc and Murphy)
 But WHY?
 Two explanations offered:
– Misattribution hypothesis
– Uncertainty reduction
Misattribution
Prior/repeated
exposure
YES
Correct attribution
(due to exposure)
Greater fluency
(“ease of processing”)
Are
participant
s aware of
prior
exposure?
NO
misattribution
Greater liking
Inferences
of “fame”—
Jacoby et al.
(1989)
Uncertainty reduction
 Two
factors
Liking for stimulus
– Initially: greater exposure  uncertainty
reduction (positively valued)
– Later: tedium (“get sick of” stimulus)
exposure
Similarity
 Opinions
and personality
 Interpersonal style
 Interests and experiences
On the importance of
physical attractiveness
 hotornot.com
 Spoofs: amiannoying.com;
monkeyhotornot.com; amigeekornot.com
On the “market value” of being attractive
– Highly valued commodity
– On the “rub-off” influence of


Friends
Dating partners, spouses
++
man
--
(same) man
Attractive woman
Unattractive woman
woman
Attractive man
(same) woman
Unattractive man
Beliefs vs. reality

Attractive people are believed to be
more
– Likeable, friendly, sociable, extraverted,
popular, happier, sexier, assertive
– this is “narrow”?? (see p. 329)
Cross cultural differences
 Reality?

On the power of attractiveness:
empirical demonstrations

Elaine (Walster) Hatfield, 1966
– “Mother of all blind dates”:
– 752 students paired up, at random!

Subsequent replication with gay couples
by Sergios and Cody (1985)
Battle about the sexes
(and about sex)

genetic (“innate”) differences between
men and women?
– dating/mating strategies
– what qualities they find attractive ?
Some issues that often get confused
 Really, two questions
– Are there observable differences
between men and women?
– If so, why?
Evolutionary/sociobiological hypothesis
 Socialization hypothesis
 The two possibilities are not mutually
exclusive

What might be those differences?
 Different preferences for…
– # of sexual partners
– short vs. long term sexual relationships
– age of partner
– Physical appearance
 But again: if so, WHY?
Sociobiological hypothesis:
General idea:

Behavior in humans—or any other species—can be
viewed as the result of thousands of years of evolution
in which “successful” genes survive and prosper
whereas “unsuccessful” genes die out.

In Darwinian terms, success defined as those genes
which are passed on to the next generation through
reproduction.
Parental investment hypothesis
(Trivers, 1985)

Females: greater biological investment
– females have more to lose by unwise mating; hence
“choosier”

Implications (according to Trivers)
– Mating strategies (all species)
– For humans: relationship preferences, basis for
attraction, dating styles, etc.
Quote from Trivers (1985).
“The sex that invests more in offspring should be more
choosy about potential mates than the sex that invests
less in offspring.”
“An ancestral woman who had sex with 100 men in the
course of a year would still have produced a maximum of
one child. An ancestral man who had sex with 100 women
during the same time would have most likely produced
substantially more than one child….In sum, for the highinvesting sex (typically, females), the costs of
indiscriminate sex are high whereas for the low investing
sex (typically, males), these costs are low.
So, what’s the evidence?
pro and con

Pro:
Cross species patterns of sexual behavior
Males are almost always more promiscuous,
aggressive in courtship
 pattern is reversed among “oddball” species
in which males have greater investment

– E.g., Pipefish, Phalaropes, Panamanian poisonarrow frog, certain species of waterbugs, and the
mormon cricket.
Cross-cultural similarities in human
studies: Buss and Schmitt (1993)
The critics speak: con
1. selective analysis
2. self-report
3. some data equally supportive of
socialization
4. theory difficult to test rigorously
summary
Two counterintuitive findings
in attraction
Social costs of physical attraction
 When mistakes lead to greater
liking

Positive
attributes
+
Negative
attributes
=
Greater liking
Social costs
 Major,
Carrington, & Carnevale (1984)
Attractive* vs. nonattractive*
participants write
essay
“seen”
Positive
feedback
“not seen”
attribution
Attribution of
positive
evaluation to
writing
not seen
discounting
augmentation
seen
seen
not seen
Unattractive
Attractive
When mistakes make
people like us more
 Bay
of Pigs incident
 Aronson, Willerman, & Floyd (1966)
mistake
No mistake
high
performer
30.2
20.8
low
performer
-2.5
17.8