Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others

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Attraction and Intimacy Liking and Loving Others

• (Chapter Eleven, in Myers)

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Whos Out There Pool of Availables

• Limiting the Pool
• Institutional Structures
• Personal Characteristics Preferences

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Whos Out There Pool of Availables

• Limiting the Pool (cont.)
• Routine Activities
• Proximity
• Interaction
• Familiarity
• The Mere exposure effect (Zajonc)
• Works for art, music, taste, humans, etc.

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Attraction

• The Norm of Homogamy
• Physical attractiveness
• Attractiveness and dating
• The matching phenomenon
• Freshman dance
• Results discrepancy between self-report and
  overt behavior
• Who is Attractive
• Explaining the Freshman dance study results
• 1. The physical-attractiveness stereotype

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Attraction

• Who is attractive? Explaining the Freshman
  dance study results (cont.)
• 2. Preferential Treatment
• 3. The physical-attractiveness stereotype
• What is beautiful is good

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Attraction (cont.)

• Who is attractive? Explaining the Freshman
  dance study results (cont.)
• Waist-Hip Ratio In women, the persevering 0.70
  preference? (Singh)

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Attraction (cont.)

• Who is attractive? Explaining the Freshman
  dance study results (cont.)
• Waist-hip ratio
• In premenopausal women, .68-.80 is normal)
• In men Ideal is .85-.95 (along with higher
  financial position)
• Symmetry Facial and Body Beauty Check
  (Thornhill),
• Baby-facedness

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Attraction (cont.)

• Who is attractive? Explaining the Freshman
  dance study results (cont.)
• The Science of Attraction (Victor Johnson, U. of
  N.M.)
• Gender Characteristics Maleness-Femaleness
• Preference for Average (Langlois Roggman)

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Attraction (cont.)

• Facial Attractiveness Preference for Average
  Faces Contested (Perrett, May, Yoshikawa, 1994)
• Face stimuli manufactured by prototyping can be
  used to investigate questions related to facial
  attractiveness. For example, the experiment on
  this page tests and refutes the hypothesis that
  the average female face of a population is
  perceived as being the most attractive, a theory
  put forward by Langlois Roggman (1990).
• The experiment is split up into two parts the
  first identifying whether highly attractive faces
  differ in shape from a computed average, and the
  second making sure that any shape differences are
  causally related to the perceived attractiveness
  of the face.

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Attraction (cont.)

• Facial Attractiveness Preference for Average
  Faces Contested (Perrett, May, Yoshikawa,
  1994), cont.
• Part 1 Is there a difference between the average
  and highly attractive face shapes?
• Sixty female faces were rated for attractiveness
  by male and female raters. An Average' prototype
  was made by blending 60 faces into the average
  shape for the population. A prototype was formed
  with a High' shape by blending all 60 faces into
  the average shape of the 15 most attractive
  faces. The High shape differs from the Average
  shape (see diagram below).
• Fig. 1 The High shape (from the 25 of female
  faces judged most attractive) is illustrated in
  red. The Average shape of the population of
  female faces is also illustrated in blue. (The
  above image is linked to a larger version.)

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Attraction (cont.)

• Facial Attractiveness Preference for Average
  Faces Contested (Perrett, May, Yoshikawa,
  1994), cont.
• Part 2 Is the difference between the average and
  highly attractive face shapes related to
  attractiveness?
• Regarding the three images on the next slide, 90
  of male and female Caucasian subjects preferred
  the prototype in the High shape (image B) to the
  prototype in the Average shape (image A)
  indicating that the shape differences were
  causally related to perceived attractiveness.
  Moreover, caricaturing the difference between
  High and Average shapes produced an image (C)
  which 70 of subjects preferred to image B. Thus,
  the most attractive face shape is not average.
  These findings generalized across cultures and
  gender of face.

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Preference for Average Faces Contested (cont.)

• (A) (B) (C)
• (A) Average shape, a prototype made from 60
  female faces aged 20-30 without makeup. (B) High
  shape, the prototype reformed into the average
  shape of a subset of faces rated highly for
  attractiveness. (C) Enhanced shape difference,
  prototype reformed by enhancing the shape
  differences between images (A) and (B) by 50.

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Attraction

• Physical-attractiveness Stereotype (cont.)
• Not everyone succumbs to attraction
• Low self-monitors
• Those with Progressive values
• Having prior info. can help overcome it

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Friendships Pre-Contact

• Beyond Attraction, what Determines Contact?
• Two Standards (Thibaut Kelley)
• Comparison Level (CL)
• Comparison Level for Alternatives (CLalt)

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Friendships Making Contact

• First Contact
• Proximity getting close
• Nonverbal Communication
• Body Language gender, fertility markers
• Eye Contact
• Verbal Communication
• Identification Display Approach
• Access Display Reciprocal approach or Denial
  Withdrawal

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Friendships Growth

• Similarity versus complementarity
• Do birds of a feather flock together?
• Do opposites attract?
• Liking those who like us Attitudinal Similarity,
  most Important
• Attribution better chance of understanding
  partners behavior
• Self-esteem and attraction being approved of
• Gaining anothers esteem

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Friendships Growth

• Self disclosures
• Should be reciprocal
• Can happen quickly, but
• Too quick ? negative evaluations
• Sharing
• Interdependence Dyadic Withdrawal
• Trust
• Especially reliability

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Love

• Liking vs Love (Rubin Rubin)
• Passionate love
• Schachters 2 component theory (Aron Dutton)
• Types of love (Sternbergs Triangle)
• A theory of passionate love
• Variations in love
• Romantic Love
• The Ideal
• 1. Love at first site, 2. Ones own intended
  exists, 3. Love conquers all, 4. Ones Beloved
  is perfect (aka, Love is blind), 5. Follow your
  heart

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Arranged Marriage
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Maintaining close relationships

• Attachment
• Responsibility for welfare
• Equity Theory

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Ending relationships

• Who divorces?
• Differential Commitment
• Other Opportunities -- CLalt
• The detachment process
• Timing
• Gender differences
• Filter process

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