6th edition
Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University
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.
Festinger,
Schachter,
(1950) tracked
friendship
Even more
striking and
wasBack
the pattern
of friendships
formation
among the couples in various apartment
within a building:
buildings.
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were strangers when they moved in.
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of thoseasked
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Schachter,
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the pattern
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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
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 & 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 & EXPERIENCES
Why is similarity so important in attraction?
1. We tend to think that people who are
similar to us will also like us, so we are
likely to initiate a relationship.
2. People who are similar validate our own
characteristics and beliefs.
3. We make negative inferences about
someone who disagrees with us on
important issues.
INTERESTS & EXPERIENCES
If participants want a committed
relationship, they choose a similar
partner. Relationships based on
differences, rather than
similarities, can be very
difficult to maintain.
However, if they feel a low level of
commitment to the relationship, they
favor dissimilar partners.
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.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
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.
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).
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.
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.
Theories of Interpersonal Attraction:
Social Exchange and Equity
Social Exchange Theory
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).
Close Relationships
• A researcher can’t randomly assign you to the
similar or dissimilar “lover” condition and make
you have a relationship!
• Feelings and intimacy associated with close
relationships can be difficult to measure.
• Psychologists face a daunting task when trying
to measure such complex feelings as love and
passion.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Defining Love
Companionate Love
The intimacy and affection we feel when we care
deeply for a person but do not experience
passion or arousal in the person’s presence.
Passionate Love
An intense longing we feel for a person, accompanied by
physiological arousal; when our love is reciprocated,
we feel great fulfillment and ecstasy, but when it is not,
we feel sadness and despair.
Source of “hot” image: Microsoft Office Online.
Companionate Love
People can experience companionate love
in nonsexual relationships, such as close
friendships, or in sexual relationships,
where they experience great feelings of
intimacy (companionate love) but not a
great deal of the heat and passion they
may once have felt.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Passionate Love
Passionate love involves an intense longing
for another person, characterized by:
• The experience of physiological arousal,
• The feeling of shortness of breath, and
• Thumping heart in loved one’s presence.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Passionate Love
Reviewing the anthropological research on
166 societies, William Jankowiak and
Edward Fischer (1992) found evidence
for passionate love in 147 of them.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Culture and Love
Although love is a universal emotion, how we
experience it (and what we expect from close
relationships) is linked to culture.
• For example, the Japanese describe amae as
an extremely positive emotional state in which
one is a totally passive love object, indulged
and taken care of by one’s romantic partner,
much like a mother-infant relationship. Amae
has no equivalent word in English or in any
other Western language.
Culture and Love
• Participants in the United States, Italy, and China
sorted more than a hundred emotional words into
categories; their analysis indicated that love has similar
and different meanings cross-culturally.
• The most striking difference was the presence of a “sad
love” cluster in the Chinese sample.
• The Chinese had many love-related concepts that were
sad, such as words for “sorrow-love,” “tenderness-pity,”
and “sorrow-pity.”
• Although this “sad love” cluster made a small
appearance in the U.S. and Italian samples, it was not
perceived as a major aspect of love in these Western
societies.
Culture and Love
• In many areas of West Africa, happily married
couples do not live together in the same house,
nor do they expect to sleep together every
night.
• Marrying for love is most important to
participants in Western and Westernized
countries (e.g., the United States, Brazil,
England, and Australia) and of least importance
to participants in less developed Eastern
countries (i.e., India, Pakistan, and Thailand).
Culture and Love
• Love can vary in definition and behavior
in different societies.
• We all love, but we do not necessarily all
love in the same way—or at least we
don’t describe it in the same way.
• Romantic love is nearly universal in the
human species, but cultural rules alter
how that emotional state is experienced,
expressed, and remembered.
LOVE AND RELATIONSHIPS
• Are the causes of love similar to the
causes of initial attraction?
• How do the factors we discussed earlier
as determinants of first impressions play
out in intimate relationships?
• And do other variables come into play
when we are developing and maintaining
a close relationship?
Evolution and Love:
Choosing a Mate
Evolutionary Approach to Love
A theory derived from evolutionary biology that holds that
men and women are attracted to different characteristics
in each other (men are attracted by women’s
appearance; women are attracted by men’s resources)
because this maximizes their chances of reproductive
success.
Evolutionary Psychology
The attempt to explain social behavior in terms of
genetic factors that evolved over time according
to the principles of natural selection.
Connections: This Is Your Brain…
In Love
fMRI research found:
• When looking at their beloved compared to when
looking at someone else, participants who selfreported higher levels of romantic love showed
greater activation in the brain’s ventral tegmental
area (VTA) and the caudate nucleus, which
communicate with each other as part of a circuit.
• A great deal is already known about what causes
these areas of the brain to fire and what kind of
processing they do—and now, this knowledge can
be applied to the experience of passionate love.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Attachment Styles
in Intimate Relationships
Attachment Styles
The expectations people develop about relationships
with others, based on the relationship they had with
their primary caregiver when they were infants.
Secure Attachment Style
An attachment style characterized by trust, a lack of
concern with being abandoned, and the view that one
is worthy and well liked.
Attachment Styles
in Intimate Relationships
Attachment Styles
Avoidant Attachment Style
The
expectations people develop about relationships
An attachment style characterized by a suppression of attachment
with
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resulting in higher-than-average levels of anxiety.
ATTACHMENT STYLE COMBINATIONS
ANXIOUS AND AVOIDANT PEOPLE BECOME
COUPLES BECAUSE THEY BOTH MATCH
EACH OTHER’S RELATIONSHIP SCHEMA:
• ANXIOUS PEOPLE EXPECT TO BE MORE
INVESTED IN THEIR RELATIONSHIPS THAN
THEIR PARTNERS.
• AVOIDANT PEOPLE EXPECT TO BE LESS
COMMITTED THAN THEIR PARTNERS.
• Attachment theory does not mean that if people
had unhappy relationships with their parents,
they are doomed to repeat this same kind of
unhappy relationship with everyone they ever
meet.
• People can and do change; their experiences in
relationships can help them learn new and more
healthy ways of relating to others than what they
experienced as children.
• In fact, it may be that people can develop more
than one attachment style over time, as a result
of their various experiences in close
relationships.
Social Exchange in
Long-Term Relationships
• Couples were found to focus more on rewards
during the first months of their relationships.
• If the relationships were perceived as offering a
lot of rewards, the people reported feeling happy
and satisfied. The perception of rewards
continued to be important over time.
• At seven months, couples who were still together
believed their rewards had increased over time.
• Rewards are always important to the
outcome; costs become increasingly
important over time.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Of course, we know that many people do not leave their
partners, even when they are dissatisfied and their
other alternatives look bright.
Research indicates that we need to consider at least one
additional factor to understand close relationships—a
person’s level of investment in the relationship.
Investment Model
The theory that people’s commitment to a relationship
depends not only on their satisfaction with the
relationship in terms of rewards, costs, and comparison
level and their comparison level for alternatives but also
on how much they have invested in the relationship that
would be lost by leaving it.
Investment Model
To predict whether people will stay in an
intimate relationship, we need to know:
(1) How satisfied they are with the
relationship,
(2) What they think of the alternatives, and
(3) How great their investment in the
relationship is.
Equity in Long-Term Relationships
Does equity theory operate in long-term
relationships the same way it does in new
or less intimate relationships?
Not exactly:
The more we get to know someone, the
more reluctant we are to believe that we
are simply exchanging favors and the less
inclined we are to expect immediate
compensation for a favor done.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
Exchange & Communal
Exchange Relationships
Relationships
Relationships governed by the need for
equity (i.e., for an equal ratio of rewards
and costs).
Communal Relationships
Relationships in which people’s primary
concern is being responsive to the other
person’s needs.
ENDING INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS
The current American divorce rate is nearly
50 percent of the current marriage rate
and has been for the past two decades.
And of course, countless romantic
relationships between unmarried
individuals end every day.
After many years of studying what love is
and how it blooms, social psychologists
are now beginning to explore the end of
the story—how it dies.
Source of image: Microsoft Office Online.
The Process of Breaking Up
The Process of Breaking Up
Caryl Rusbult’s identified four types of behavior that occur in
troubled relationships.
Destructive behaviors
• Actively harming the relationship (e.g., abusing the partner,
threatening to break up, actually leaving).
• Passively allowing the relationship to deteriorate (e.g.,
refusing to deal with problems, ignoring the partner or
spending less time together, putting no energy into the
relationship).
Constructive behaviors
• Actively trying to improve the relationship (e.g., discussing
problems, trying to change, going to a therapist).
• Passively remaining loyal to the relationship (e.g., waiting
and hoping that the situation will improve, being supportive
rather than fighting, remaining optimistic).
The Experience of Breaking Up
• Can we predict the different ways people
will feel when their relationship ends?
• The breakers, those who indicated a high
level of responsibility for the breakup,
decision feel less distress over the
breakup than do the breakees, the ones
they break up with.
The Experience of Breaking Up
The breakup moral?
If you find yourself in a romantic relationship
and your partner seems inclined to break it
off, try to end it mutually.
Your experience will be less traumatic
because you will share some control over
the process (even if you don’t want it to
happen).
6th edition
Social Psychology
Elliot Aronson
University of California, Santa Cruz
Timothy D. Wilson
University of Virginia
Robin M. Akert
Wellesley College
slides by Travis Langley
Henderson State University