Relationships

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Relationships

• Whos your soul mate?
• And why

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Propinquity Effect/Mere Exposure

• Seeing a person makes us like them more
• Rated woman on 1 to 5 scale of attractiveness of
  personality
• No visits 3.6
• 5 visits 3.8
• 10 visits 4.25
• 15 visits 4.7

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Techno-News

• Computer chat rooms are being researched
• Some lie, non verbal cues are not available
• Dating success? About .045

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Similarity

• With qualities like our own
• Cornell study N978
• People picked partners who had the same traits as
  they themselves had

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Gay men

• Preferred partners who had the same traits as
  themselves
• Those rated as more masculine, liked masculine
  men
• Those feminine, like more feminine men

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Assortative mating

• We tend to marry those who look like us
• Increasing family resemblance in the children

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Reciprocal Liking

• We like to be liked
• Knowing that someone likes us increases their
  attractiveness to us
• Can become self-fulfilling prophecy

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Physical Attractiveness

• How attractive a woman is predicts how often she
  dates
• Unfortunately, have a what is beautiful is good
  stereotype
• Teachers also prefer attractive children

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Who is attractive?

• Women large eyes, small nose, small chin,
  prominent cheekbones, narrow checks, high
  eyebrows-big smile
• Men same, except large chin

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Cultural standards of beauty

• Similar answers across cultures
• Correlations among participants ranged from .66
  to .93
• Infants also prefer attractive faces to
  unattractive ones

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Cosmetic Surgery

• Women post surgery
• Rated more kind, sensitive, sexually warm and
  responsive, likeable, etc.

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Attractive people get jobs

• make more money
• MBAs men made 2,600 a year more
• Women made 2,150 a yr more
• For each point on a 1 to 5 scale

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Love Relationships

• In America, we need romantic love
• 90 of us think its a must
• Here, we love then marry
• Collectivist cultures/arranged marriages
• Marry, then love

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Cohabitating

• 93 of Women born 1933-1942 married without
  living w/ partner
• Divorce rate? 1/5
• 64 of women born 1963-1974 married after living
  w/ partner
• Divorce rate? about 1/2

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Women and domestic violence

• Dating or cohabitating women report 3x as many
  violent arguments
• Single or divorced women are 4-5x as likely to be
  violent crime victims.

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Courtship

• Most couples who marry date an average of 25
  months
• Courted 3 years, more likely to divorce 2-7 years
• Courted 18 months/engaged at 9 mons, married 7
  years

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Sternbergs Theory of Love

• 3 aspects
• 1. passion
• 2. intimacy
• 3. commitment

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What happens to passion?

• After 2 years, it fades
• Love settles into companionate love about then or
• We divorce and seek new passion

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U.S. attachment to Passionate love

• Probably responsible for divorce rate
• Highest in the World
• 66 of those 35-54 divorced, separated, or close
  to separation

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Does modeling matter?

• Probably
• Women whose parents
• --divorced, 43 get divorced w/in 10 years
• -- stayed together 29 get divorced

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Divorce for children

• 50 will see parents break up
• Of these, about half will see 2nd marriage break
  up
• 10 will see 3 or more family break ups

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More likely to stay married if

• No cohabitation or pregnancy
• Over 20 years old
• Dated over a year
• Are well similarly educated
• Are of similar age, faith, education

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OF COURSE THERE ARE EXCEPTIONS

• Friends of mine
• Married at 17 16 pregnant, still married after
  40 years
• Married after knowing each other 6 weeks, still
  married after 31 years
• Married after knowing each other 1 week, still
  married after 30 years

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Breaking up

• One of lifes most painful experiences
• Destructive behaviors harm a relationship more
  than positive ones help it
• Often reasons for the attraction became the very
  reason it ended

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The Experience of Breaking Up

• Breakers those who decide to leave
• Breakees those who didnt decide to end the
  relationship
• Mutuals both decided to call it quits

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Divorce and women

• Women more likely to break up relationships,
  marriages
• Then, womens economic lifestyle drops 45
• 20-33 wind up in poverty

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What about divorced men?

• 42 GAIN in standard of living
• 20 of men comply fully with paying for children
• 15 pay irregularly
• About ¼ dont see their children at all

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Suicide Divorce

• Divorced men (but not widowed or single men) 2.5
  times more likely to commit suicide
• Women no change

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What about the kids?

• Not much says divorce is good for them
• More than 2x as likely to drop out
• Poor school outcomes generally
• Teens who murder, 75 from broken homes

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What about stepfamilies?

• Boys in stepfamilies are 3x as likely to have
  committed a crime or gone to jail
• Children are 5x as likely to be sexually abused
• 40x more likely to be the victims of nonfatal
  child abuse
• 100x more likely to be a fatality in child abuse.

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What keeps us together?

• Equity in the marriage
• So, guys do more housework
• Women 2-3x more housework than men

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Divorced men

• Increase housework by 4.5 hours a week
• Reduce it by cohabitating or getting married by 3
  hours a week
• Women? Reverse that.

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Add children

• Men add no housework time per child (do more
  child care)
• Women add 3 hours of hswk per child and
  additional child care

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Evolutionary Psychology

• What they are saying
• What its critics are saying

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Evolution

• 1. random mutation occurs
• 2. non-random natural selection occurs
• Not so much survival of the fittest but the fit
• Adaptive traits survive, non-adaptive you have
  fewer relatives

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Males in E.P.

• Take the initiative in sex
• Are easier sexually (endorse casual sex)
• Why?

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Relative Reproductive Investment

• Men make 12 million sperm an hour
• Sexual investment about 7 minutes
• And she? Fixed, unreplenisable supply of 400 ova
• intercourse can involve a 9 month investment

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Or in other words

• Men want to reproduce widely
• Women want to reproduce wisely

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What Men want why

• Prefer a woman whose features suggest youth
• BECAUSE youth a certain figure imply fertility
• What figure? Hip to waist ratio of .67 to .80

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Does this work?

• Models, centerfolds, beauty queens all got
  thinner over the last 30 years
• BUT their waist to hip ratio remained at .70
  (U.S. ideal)
• Culture affects it a bit but still w/in that
  range

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Buss study of 37 cultures

• Men everywhere want to marry younger women
• About 2.5 years younger in first marriage
• By age 50, want a woman at least 10-20 years
  younger

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Mostly, Men want

• An attractive wife
• Over decades of studies, men rate this as more
  important than women do
• most consistent psychological sex difference

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Females of all species

• Want a mate with resources
• Birds do it with berries
• We do it with Jaguars, spending on dates, tipping
  your waitress

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What else do women want?

• A man who is taller than them.
• Only 1/720 couples violate this norm.
• 4/5 women want a man 6 tall.
• 1/5 men are 6 tall.

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Women rate it important

• That men like their jobs
• Show career orientation
• Display ambition
• Men dont care about these things in women at
  all.

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What about intelligence?

• If evolution exists, should favor smart folk of
  both genders
• So does he want a smart woman?
• Highly valued by both sexes

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Critics of Evolutionary Psychology

• Their perspective

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Men Women

• 97 Fortune 1000 companies senior execs
• B.A. degree adds
• 28,000

• 3 Fort 1000 execs
• B.A. Degree adds
• 9,000

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The Sex Drive

• Women supposed to have
• But virtually all cultures put in place intense
  strictures on womens s.d.
• E.g. chastity belts, purdah, female circumcision

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Sarah Hrdy further suggests

• We know little about human female choice because
  male interests are paramount
• Female apes closest to humans (chimps/bonobos) do
  like a variety of partners

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Final word

• Until men are subjected to the same severe
  standards threat of censure that women are,
• Its not possible to tell what is natural

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Reaction Paper

• 1. Take a stand on Evolutionary Psychology. Why
  or why not do you think EP is applicable to your
  life or the lives of others? Be sure to state
  what EP is saying and why or why not you agree
  with the premise.