David Myers
11e
Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others
1
Chapter Eleven
 What Leads to Friendship and Attraction?
 What is love?
 What Enables Close Relationships?
 Who do Relationships End?
 Live long dependence on one another




“….puts relationships at the core of our existence.”
A need to belong, connect to others in enduring relationships
A need for competence and autonomy and relatedness
 (Deci & Ryan, 02)
Ostracism is painful
2
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Proximity
 Geographical nearness; functional distance

Where did you meet your closest friend, romantic partner?
 Interaction

Availability
3
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Proximity
 Anticipation of interaction
 Mere exposure

Tendency for novel stimuli to be liked more or rated more
positively after the rater has been repeatedly exposed to them
 Especially things associated with oneself!
 Exposure without awareness leads to liking (Zajonc)
 Who’s image do we prefer? Mirror image or real one?
4
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Physical Attractiveness
 Attractiveness and dating


Looks are a predictor of how often one dates
 Are more men or women hooked on good looks?
Looks influence voting
5
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Physical Attractiveness
 The Matching phenomenon

Tendency for men and women to choose as partners those
who are a “good match” in attractiveness and other traits
 Men advertise position, job status, wealth
 Women advertise looks and youth
 What % of men and women are “above average” in looks?

Men – 67%
Women – 72% (self reported) Hitsch et al ‘06)
6
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Physical Attractiveness
 Physical-attractiveness stereotype

Presumption that physically attractive people possess other
socially desirable traits as well
 First impressions
 Is there an innate component?
 Do attractive make more money?
 Is the "Beautiful is Good" stereotype accurate?
 Attractive people are valued and favored, and so many
develop more social self-confidence
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
7
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Physical Attractiveness
 Who is attractive?

Whatever people of any given place and time find attractive
 Perfect average
 Would want to be the most average?
 Symmetry
8
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Physical Attractiveness
 Who is attractive?

Evolution and attraction
 Assumption that beauty signals biologically important
information
 Health
 Youth
 Fertility
9
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Physical Attractiveness
 Who is attractive?


Social comparison
 Contrast effect – exposure to more attractive people led to
rating others and oneself as less attractive
 What should you do about this?
Attractiveness of those we love
 We see likable people as attractive
10
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Similarity versus Complementarity
 Do birds of a feather flock together?


Likeness begets liking
Dissimilarity breeds dislike
11
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Similarity versus Complementarity
 Do opposites attract?

Complementarity
 Popularly supposed tendency, in a relationship between two
people, for each to complete what is missing in the other
12
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Liking Those Who Like Us
 The “Power of the Bad”

-Baumeister et al., ‘2001
 Attribution

Ingratiation
 Use of strategies, such as flattery, by which people seek to gain
another’s favor
 But be careful to disguise your motive when ingratiating
13
What Leads to Friendship and Attraction?
 Liking Those Who Like Us
 Attribution
 Self-esteem and attraction

How we feel about ourselves determines how we feel about
our relationships-esteem
 Embrace the “rebound” to get a boost in self esteem!
 Approval after disapproval is so rewarding!
 Gaining another’s esteem
(-) -> (+) Overheard evaluations enhances liking for the other
(Aronson and Linder, ‘65)
 Can you – should you be candid with your intimate
other?
14
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Reciprocal self-disclosure (S. Jourard)
 Gradually as the relationship develops
 Relationship Rewards
 Reward theory of attraction

Theory that we like those whose behavior is rewarding to us or
whom we associate with rewarding events
 Proximity (exposure)
 Attractive people – associative benefits
 Similarity of attitudes
 We like to be loved and like to love
 We like those who like us
15
What Is Love?
 Passionate Love
 Emotional, exciting, and intense
 Expressed physically
 Sternberg’s triangle



Intimacy (liking)
Passion (infatuation)
Decision / commitment (empty love)
 Romantic love (intimacy + passion)
 Companionate love (intimacy + commitment)
 Fatuous love (passion + commitment)
 Consummate love (all three)

Intimacy + passion + committment
16
What Is Love?
 Passionate Love
 Theory of passionate love

Two-factor theory of emotion (Schachter & Singer, ‘62)
 Suggests that in a romantic context, arousal from any source,
even painful experiences, can be steered into passion
 Take him/her on a ride – literally (an arousing one)
 Get the dopamine surging (Aron, ‘05)
 “Adrenline makes the heart grow fonder”
 ----But control the attributional object
17
What Is Love?
 Passionate Love
 Variations in love: culture and gender




Marriages for love versus arranged marriages
Men fall in lover more readily but fall out of love more slowly
 Surprise!
Men – more focused on
 Playful and physical side
Women – more focused on
 Intimacy and concern for partner
18
What Is Love?
 Companionate Love
 Affection we feel for those with whom our lives are
deeply intertwined
 Occurs after passionate love fades
19
What Enables Close Relationships?
 Attachment
 Our need to belong is adaptive



Parents and children
Friends
Spouses or lovers
20
What Enables Close Relationships?
- “Love is a biological imperative”
 Attachment
 Attachment styles



Secure attachment (70%)
 Rooted in trust and marked by intimacy
Avoidant attachment (20%)
 Avoiding closeness
Insecure attachment
 Clinging, then indifferent or hostile
21
What Enables Close Relationships?
 Equity
 Condition in which the outcomes people receive from a
relationship are proportional to what they contribute to
it


Long-term equity
 As people observe their partners being self-giving, their sense
of trust grows
 Perceived reciprocation is a non issue
 No strings attached
Perceived equity and satisfaction
 Faithfulness, happy sex, sharing household chores
22
What Enables Close Relationships?
 Self-Disclosure
 Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others

Disclosure reciprocity
 Tendency for one person’s intimacy or self-disclosure to match
that of a conversational partner
 Chris Kyle and the American Sniper…
 What role did self-disclosure play?
 “Women express…men repress” (Kate Millett, ‘75)
23
How Do Relationships End?
 Divorce
 Rates varied widely by country
 Individualistic cultures have more divorce than do
communal cultures
24
How Do Relationships End?
 Detachment Process
 Alternatives to exiting a relationship



Loyalty
 Waiting for conditions to improve
Neglect
 Ignore the partner and allow the relationship to deteriorate
Voice concerns
 Take active steps to improve relationship
 Postscript: get real!

Said the Skin Horse to the rabbit
25
The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
John M. Gottman & Nan Silver
1999 Crown pub
26