Transcript sps1610

Attraction and Love
Introduction
• What do we know about the causes of
attraction?
• Why do we like some people better than
others?
• What are the similarities and differences
between liking and loving others?
Reward-Cost Theory of Attraction
• Research (Lemann & Solomon, 1952)
indicates that we like people…
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…with pleasant characteristics
…who agree with us
…who like us
…who cooperate with us
…who praise us
But why?
Reward-Cost Theory of Attraction
• According to the reward-cost theory of
attraction, we like people whose behavior
provides us with maximum reward at
minimum cost (Homans, 1961)
– Physically attractive people provide us with
aesthetic rewards
– People who agree with us validate our beliefs,
which feels good
– People who cooperate with us share our load of
work
Reward-Cost Theory of Attraction
• BUT the reward-cost theory cannot fully explain human
attraction
– People like others for whom they have suffered (Aronson &
Mills, 1959)
– For example, in our prior readings, we learned that when
you have to go through a painful initiation to join a group,
you tend to value that group more due to the cognitive
dissonance that arises when hard work has to be put into
something you presumably value
Factors That Determine Attractiveness
• What factors play a role in determining
whether a person will be liked or disliked?
– Praise
– Favors
– Personal attributes (competence, physical
attractiveness)
– Similarity
– Being liked
– Gain/loss of self-esteem
The Effects of Praise
• In general, we like people who evaluate us
positively (or praise us) far more than those
who evaluate us negatively (Aronson &
Darwyn, 1965; Aronson & Worchel, 1966;
Sigall & Aronson, 1969)
• However, there are situations in which this is
not the case….
The Effects of Praise
– Research shows that a negative evaluation
generally increases the admiration we feel for the
evaluator so long as he or she is not evaluating us
• For example, students rated a highly critical book
reviewer to be more intelligent, competent, and expert
than a positive reviewer, but less likable (Amabile,
1983)
– We also do not like praise if we feel we are being
manipulated
• If the praise is too lavish, it seems unwarranted
• If the praiser will benefit from the ingratiating behavior,
then he or she is not liked very much
The Effects of Favors
• We tend to like people who do us favors
– In a classic study of women in a reformatory, the
most popular women were those who initiated new
and interesting activities and helped others become
part of those activities, that is, did a type of favor
(Jennings, 1959)
The Effects of Favors
• However, we do not like people whose favors
seem to have strings attached to them
– strings constitute a threat to the freedom of the
receiver
• People do not like to receive a gift when a gift is
expected in return
• People do not like to receive favors from individuals
who are in a position to benefit from these favors
The Effects of Praise and Favors
• So, the effect of praise and favors depends on
situational variables
• It turns out, if you want someone to like you,
instead of doing him or her a favor, try to get
him or her to do you a favor
– If your friend does a favor for you, he she will
have to justify this action by convincing him or
herself that you are an attractive, deserving person
(because of the cognitive dissonance that would be
aroused by doing a favor for an undeserving
person!)
The Effects of Praise and Favors
• Example of when getting someone to do a
favor increased their liking:
– After having won lots of money for participation
in a study, students who were asked to return the
money as a “special favor” to the experimenter
later reported liking the experimenter better than
those who had not done this favor (Jecker &
Landy, 1969)
The Effects of Personal Attributes
• Two of the most important personal
characteristics that play a role in determining
the extent to which a person will be liked:
– Competence
– Physical Attractiveness
• Competence
– It would seem that people who are perceived as
more competent are also perceived as more likable,
but this is not always the case
The Effects of Personal Attributes
Competence, cont.
A highly competent person may make us
uncomfortable (they may seem unapproachable,
distant, superhuman, and make us look bad)
– Pratfall effect = some evidence of fallibility in a
highly competent person may make us like them
better
• A nearly perfect person who made a blunder was liked
most compared to a nearly perfect person who did not
blunder and mediocre people who either did or did not
blunder (Aronson et al., 1966)
The Effects of Personal Attributes
• Competence, cont.
– To test the pratfall effect, Aronson and colleagues had
college students listen to an audiotape recording of a person
who was supposedly trying out for a game show. They
listened to one of the following four people:
• A nearly perfect person who got 92% of questions right
• A nearly perfect person who commits a blunder (they
got 92% of questions right but spilled their coffee on
their suit)
• A mediocre person who got 30% of questions correct
• A mediocre person who commits a blunder (they got
30% of questions correct but spilled their coffee on their
suit)
The Effects of Personal Attributes
– Competence, cont. – the study results:
• Students rated the superior person who committed the
blunder as the most attractive
• The perfect person without the blunder was second
• The mediocre person without the blunder was third
• And the mediocre person with the blunder was liked
least
The Effects of Personal Attributes
• Physical Attractiveness
– Research overwhelmingly suggests that we are
influenced by another person’s looks
• For college students set up on blind dates, the only
determinant of whether a couple liked each other
was their physical attractiveness. If a handsome
man was matched with a beautiful woman, they
were most likely to want to see each other again.
(Walster et al., 1966)
• In couples in long-term relationships, another
researcher found that the similarity of the
attractiveness of members of the couple was crucial
in determining whether a relationship lasted (White,
1980)
The Effects of Personal Attributes
– All other things being equal, people’s physical
attractiveness influences a wide range of attributions
• College students were shown pictures of three
college-age people – one was attractive, one was
average, and one was unattractive. Participants
rated each of the people on 27 personality traits and
predicted their future happiness.
• Physically attractive people were assigned by far
the most desirable traits and the greatest prognosis
for future happiness.
– This was true whether men were rating men, men
were rating women, women were rating men, or
women were rating women (Dion et al., 1972)
The Effects of Personal Attributes
• Physical attractiveness (cont.)
– Our culture reinforces and magnifies this preference for
physical attractiveness
• From childhood, we learn that beauty is associated with
goodness (children’s movies, books)
The Effects of Personal Attributes
The Effects of Personal Attributes
• Physical attractiveness (cont.)
– Dion (1972) asked several women to examine
reports of severe classroom disturbances
supposedly written by a teacher. Each report had a
photo of the child who was supposedly the cause
of the disturbances.
• People tended to attribute less blame to beautiful
children (male or female), even when the children were
reported to be misbehaving.
• This shows that we tend to give attractive children the
benefit of the doubt far more than unattractive children.
The Effects of Personal Attributes
Physical attractiveness, cont.
– A similar phenomenon was found with
adolescents:
• 6th graders and their teachers rated the attractive
students as being more competent than the less
attractive students (Lerner et al., 1991)
– Beauty has important consequences in the business
world as well
• Frieze and colleagues (1991) tracked the careers of 700
young adults and found that more attractive men got
higher salaries, and more attractive women got higher
and more frequent raises than their less attractive
counterparts (Frieze et al., 1991)
The Effects of Personal Attributes
• Physical attractiveness, cont.
– Beauty may influence the legal system to some
degree (Downs & Lyons, 1991)
• Downs and Lyons found that for misdemeanors, the
judges were more lenient with good-looking defendants
(lower bail, lower fines)
• BUT for actual felonies, the physical attractiveness of
the defendant made no difference
• But is physical attractiveness objective or subjective
(i.e., is beauty in the eye of the beholder)?
Is Beauty Objective or Subjective?
• There’s evidence for both sides!
• Objective: according to some researchers, certain faces
are inherently more attractive
– Research has demonstrated high levels of agreement
when people rate others’ attractiveness among children
and adults, men and women, and across cultures
– Certain physical features are reliably associated with
attractiveness
– Babies exhibit a nonverbal preference for faces
considered attractive by adults (e.g., symmetrical
faces) – they spend far longer gazing at attractive faces
than unattractive faces
Attractive Features
MEN
WOMEN
V-shaped physique
Height
Broad jaw
Hourglass figure
Large eyes
Prominent cheekbones
Small nose
Wide smile
Men and Women:
Average facial features
Symmetry
Why These Features?
• According to evolutionary psychologists,
human beings all over the world exhibit
patterns of attraction and mate selection that
favor conception, birth, and survival of
offspring
– We tend to be most attracted to features that also
indicate the health and fertility of the other person
– For example, symmetrical facial features, clear
skin, and low hips (in females) have been shown to
be associated with health and fertility
Is Beauty Objective or Subjective?
• Subjective: according to some researchers, physical
attractiveness is subjective and is influenced by
culture, time, and the circumstances of our perception
– People from different cultures enhance their beauty
in different ways
– Body ideals differ across cultures
– Standards of beauty change over time
– Judgments of beauty can be manipulated in the lab
– For example, people rate each other as more
attractive once they get to know and like each
other!
Is Beauty Objective or Subjective?
• Beauty over time and across cultures…
Is Beauty Objective or Subjective?
• Thus, the truth is probably somewhere in
between:
– Though there tends to be a lot of agreement in
terms of what people consider attractive, it is not
completely universal and can depend on the
situation
The Effects of Similarity
• Research shows that if all you know about a person
are his or her opinions on several issues, the more
similar those opinions are to yours, and the more you
like the person (Byrne, 1969)
• Why?
– If people share our attitudes and opinions on important
issues, we think they must be uncommonly intelligent,
thoughtful individuals
– They provide us with social validation for our beliefs
• That is, they provide us with the feeling that we are
right, which is rewarding
The Effects of Similarity
• Similarity, cont.
• If we happen to like someone for some
irrelevant reason (e.g., a common interest), we
will assume that his or her important attitudes
must be similar to ours
– So, causality works in both directions: all other
things being equal, we like people whose attitudes
are similar to ours, and if we like someone, we
attribute attitudes to him or her that are similar to
ours
The Effects of Being Liked
• One of the most powerful determinants of
whether we will like another person is whether
the other person indicates that he or she likes
us (Secord & Backman, 1964)
• Merely believing that someone likes you can
initiate a spiraling series of events that
promotes increasingly positive feelings
between you and the other person
The Effects of Being Liked
• Examples:
– If you and I met briefly at a party, and later, a mutual
friend told me that you had nice things to say about
me, in our next meeting I would like you more and
behave in a friendly manner; you would like me more!
– Curtis and Miller (1986) told some people they were
liked by another person and others that they were
disliked. Those who thought they were liked behaved
in more likable ways (were warmer, self-disclosed
more, disagreed less, etc.), and so the other person
liked them more.
• Thus, knowledge of whether someone likes or dislikes you
can create a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy
The Effects of Being Liked
• Also, the greater our insecurity and self-doubt,
the fonder we will grow of the person who
likes us
– Those who are initially less secure about
themselves will tend to like someone who likes
them regardless of the other person’s personal
attributes
– Those with higher self-esteem tend to be choosier
– they do not like someone indiscriminately just
because that person likes them
The Effects of Gain and Loss of
Self-Esteem
• Gain-loss effect (Aronson & Linder, 1965)
– The theory that we like people most if we feel that
over time, they have grown to like us increasingly
more
• That is, if they initially disliked us but now like us
– Further, this theory hypothesizes that we dislike
people most if we feel we have lost their favor
• That is, if they initially liked us but now dislike us
The Effects of Gain and Loss of
Self-Esteem
• Gain-loss effect, cont.
– So, increases in positive, rewarding behavior from
another person have more impact on an individual
than constantly rewarding behavior
– Similarly, losses in positive behavior have more
impact than constant negative behavior
• For the gain-loss effect to occur…
– …a change of heart must be made explicit
– …the change of heart must be gradual (if not, it
does not seem genuine)
Types of Relationships
• Clark and Mills distinguish between:
– Exchange Relationships: where there is concern
about fairness in the relationship
• For example, if I spend $15 at the grocery store, I would
want you to pay me back for half
• More typical of more distant relationships
– Communal Relationships: neither partner keeps
score – partners tend to help one another based on
need
• For example, when I have less income, my husband
foots the bills more frequently
• More typical of intimate relationships
Love and Intimacy
• It turns out that people love one another for some of the
same reasons that they come to like each other
• Research shows that one of the major factors determining
whether we like or love someone is their physical
proximity
– It is more likely that we will fall in love with someone who
lives in or near our town or attends our university than with
someone who lives far away
– This is because it is easier to develop and sustain love with
someone who is closer by
• The second most important factor is similarity
– People tend to like and love others with similar opinions,
attitudes, values, beliefs, personalities, and looks
Love and Intimacy
• According to Hartfield and Rapson (2002),
there are two basic types of love:
– Passionate love = characterized by strong
emotions, sexual desire, and intense preoccupation
with the beloved
• Rapid onset
• Intensity cools over time (short-lived)
– Companionate love = characterized by feelings of
mutual trust, dependability, and warmth
• Milder and more stable than passionate love
• Lasts longer and deepens over time
Love & Intimacy
• According to Sternberg (1988), there is a
triangle of love:
– There are three ingredients of love
• Passion (euphoria, sexual excitement)
• Intimacy (feeling free to talk about anything, feeling
close to and understood by the loved one)
• Commitment (needing to be with the other person,
feeling loyal)
• Love can consist of any one component alone or all
three
Love and Intimacy
• Sternberg’s triangle of love, cont:
– As the relationship develops, it moves from pure
passion into a combination of passion and intimacy
called romantic love
– As the relationship matures further, it becomes
companionate (combination of intimacy and
commitment without a lot of passion)
– The ultimate goal is consummate love (the
blending of all three components); this is only
rarely achieved because couples often lose the
passion and get stuck in companionate love
Communication and Relationships
• As relationships become more intimate, it
becomes increasingly important to
communicate more authentically:
– This means being honest about oneself without
trying to make a good impression
• In order to communicate honestly, Aronson
advocates straight talk:
– clearly stating one’s feelings without accusing,
blaming, judging, or ridiculing the other person
Communication and Relationships
• Straight talk involves:
• Expressing one’s feelings directly and openly at the
time they arise (not bottling them up and having them
leak out passive-aggressively later)
• Expressing one’s own feelings rather than judging or
criticizing the other (“I feel upset when x happens
because.…” rather than, “You are annoying when.…”)
• See the book for great examples of this!
• It is crucial that one communicates in a calm manner
where the other person can hear the communication
rather than become defensive and deny, though this is
easier said than done and takes practice
The end