Attraction and Mate Selection
Attraction
Mate Selection
Attraction
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Mere-exposure effect
 Repeated exposure to any stimulus, including a person, leads to greater
liking for that stimulus.
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Homophily
 Tendency to have contact with people who are equal in social status.
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Matching phenomenon
 Tendency for men and women to choose as partners people who match
them on social and personal characteristics.
Attraction
Attraction
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A great deal of evidence shows that individuals will prefer
potential partners who are more physically attractive.
Young men and women typically rate physical appearance as
the most important aspect of sex appeal.
 Women’s worth may be based on beauty.
 Men’s worth may be based on success.
Attraction
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According to Research:
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Couples who had been matched for similar attitudes were most
attracted to each other.
Those with dissimilar attitudes were not so attracted to each other.
Greater attraction to the better-looking dates was reported.
Study demonstrated the importance of similarity and physical
appearance.
Online:
 Some Web sites have tens of thousands of personals ads.
 Surveys suggest that educated, busy, affluent 20- to 40-yearolds seek partners online.
 Technology forces users to focus on similar interests, rather
than physical attractiveness.
Mate Selection
Explaining our Preferences:
 Reinforcement theory: Byrne’s Law of Attraction
 We tend to like people who give us reinforcements or rewards and to
dislike people who give us punishments.
 Sociobiology: Sexual Strategies Theory
 We look for partners who will produce healthy offspring.
Playing Hard-to-Get:
 Men appear to be equally attracted to “easy-to get” women.
 “Selectively hard to get” women appear most attractive, because she is
“easy to get” for you, but “hard to get” for other men.
 Limited past sexual experience seems to be the ideal.
Mate Selection
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Intimacy in a romantic relationship is “the level of commitment
and positive affective, cognitive and physical closeness one
experiences with a partner in a reciprocal relationship.”
Self-disclosure is the key characteristic of intimacy.
Personal Assessment of Intimacy in Relationships (PAIR)
measures emotional intimacy in a relationship.
Mate Selection
Triangular Theory of Love (Robert Sternberg, 1986)
 Three components of love:
 Intimacy - emotional component
 Passion - motivational component
 Decision or commitment - cognitive component
Mate Selection
Mate Selection
Attachment Theory of Love: (Hazan and Shaver)
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Secure lovers find it easy to get close to others.
Avoidant lovers are uncomfortable feeling close to another
person.
Anxious-ambivalent lovers want desperately to get closer to a
partner but often find that the partner does not reciprocate
the feeling.
Mate Selection
Love as a Story:
 A love story is a story about what love should be like.
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Includes characters, a plot, and a theme
Two central characters in every love story
Falling in love occurs when you meet someone with whom
you can create a relationship that fits your love story.
Love stories are self-fulfilling.
Mate Selection
Biology of Love:
 Passionate love - State of intense physiological arousal and intense
longing for union with the other person.
 Companionate love - Feeling of deep attachment and
commitment to a person with whom one has an intimate
relationship.
Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) has been used to study brain
activity related to love.
 The rush of love at first sight is caused by body chemistry and
neural activity in the brain.
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Dopamine can produce increased energy, focused attention and
reduced need for food and sleep -common experiences of people in
early stages of love.
Oxytocin - stimulated by touch, including sexual touching and orgasm;
may contribute to long-term relationships.
Death by Broken Heart
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Can you die of a broken heart?
Mate Selection
Measuring Love:
 Operational definition:
 A concept is defined by how it is measured.
 Scores on the Passionate Love Scale (PLS) were correlated
positively with other measures of love and with measures of
commitment to and satisfaction with the relationship.
Mate Selection
Two Component Theory of Love:
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Berscheid and Walster’s theory that two conditions
must exist simultaneously for passionate love to
occur:
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physiological arousal
Attaching a cognitive label (“love”) to the feeling of arousal
Misattribution of arousal - When one is in a stage of
physiological arousal (from exercising or being in a
frightening situation) but attributes these feelings to
love or attraction to the person present.
Mate Selection
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Worldwide:
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Men placed more weight on cues of reproductive capacity, such
as physical attractiveness.
Women rated cues about resources as more important.
Some phenomena similar across cultures, such as valuing:
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intelligence
kindness
understanding in a mate
Others, such as whether love is a prerequisite for
marriage, differ across cultures.
Mate Selection