Chapter 11 - Attraction and Exclusion

1
Chapter 11 - Attraction and Exclusion

• The Need to Belong
• Attraction Who Likes Whom?
• Rejection

2
Attraction and Exclusion

• Attraction
• Anything that draws two or more people together
• Social acceptance
• People like you and include you in their groups
• Rejection (Social exclusion)
• People exclude you from their groups

3
Tradeoffs - TestosteroneA Blessing and a Curse

• Testosterone is a hormone associated with
  masculinity
• Testosterone is a mixed blessing
• High testosterone men are more exciting, but less
  reliable
• Interested in exploring new places and less prone
  to stay at home

4
Tradeoffs - TestosteroneA Blessing and a Curse

• Testosterone is better suited for finding mates
  than maintaining stable families
• Testosterone reaches peak around age 20 and
  declines thereafter
• New fathers testosterone drops

5
The Need to Belong

• Need to belong is powerful drive within human
  psyche
• Form and maintain close lasting relationships
• People usually form relationships easily
• People are reluctant to end relationships

6
The Need to Belong

• Two ingredients to belongingness
• Regular social contact with others
• Close, stable, mutually intimate contact
• Having one without the other partial
  satisfaction

7
The Need to Belong

• People do not continue to form relationships
• Most people seek four to six close relationships
• Even in people-rich environments, most people
  form social circles of about six people

8
Not Belonging Is Bad for You

• Failure to satisfy a need to belong leads to
  significant health problems
• Death rates are higher among people without
  social connections
• People without a good social network have more
  physical and mental health problems

9
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Friendships and close relationships are at or
  near the top of the list of what people say makes
  them happy people desire to be liked by even the
  most casual of acquaintances.

10
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• The Person Next Door
• The Propinquity Effect

• Propinquity
• Being near someone on a regular basis
• The finding that the more we see and interact
  with people, the more likely they are to become
  our friends.
• Familiarity encourages liking

11
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• The Person Next Door
• The Propinquity Effect

• The propinquity effect works because of the mere
  exposure effect, the finding that the more
  exposure we have to a stimulus, the more apt we
  are to like it.

12
Neighbors Make Friends and Enemies

• Festinger et al. (1950)
• Strongest predictor of friendships was
  propinquity
• Ebbesen et al. (1976)
• Strongest predictor of enemies was propinquity
• Regular contact amplifies or multiplies power of
  other factors

13
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Similarity

• As we get to know each other better, other
  factors besides propinquity and attractiveness
  come into play in determining liking. Key among
  these is similarity to ourselves.
• People who are similar are attractive because
  they validate our own self-worth and we assume
  that people who disagree with us have negative
  personality traits.

14
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Similarity

• People change to become more similar to those
  with whom they interact
• High self-monitoring maximize each social
  situation
• Low self-monitoring interested in permanent
  connections and feelings

15
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Similarity

• Spouses are similar in many respects
• IQ, physical attractiveness, education, SES
• Couples more similar in attractiveness more
  likely to progress to committed relationship
• Matching hypothesis
• People tend to pair up with others of similar
  attractiveness

16
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Similarity

• As cultures progress and form large, complex
  groups, more need for complementarity
• Risks in joining a new group
• People tend to look for similarity

17
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Reciprocity

• One of the most potent determinants of our liking
  someone is if we believe that that person likes
  us.
• If we believe somebody else likes us, we will be
  a more likable person in their presence this
  will lead them to actually like us more, which
  leads to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

18
Reciprocity
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Liking begets liking (reciprocity)
• Mimicking increases liking
• If someone likes you, initially it is very
  favorable, but if that liking is not returned, it
  can be a burden

19
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Reciprocity

• A persons level of self-esteem moderates how we
  are affected by other people liking us.
• Swann and colleagues (1992) have shown that
  people with high self-esteem like and interact
  with those who like them, but people with low
  self-esteem prefer to interact with somebody who
  criticized them.

20
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• The Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Liking

• Physical attractiveness is a major determinant of
  liking in studies of first impressions.
• Most people show preference for attractive over
  unattractive

21
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• The Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Liking

• What is beautiful is good effect
• Attractiveness superiority on other traits
• Attractive children are more popular with peers
  and teachers
• Babies prefer attractive faces

22
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• The Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Liking

• Debate has existed on sex differences in the
  importance of physical attractiveness.
• Feingold (1990) reports that both sexes value
  attractiveness, although men value it somewhat
  more than women however this difference is
  larger for stated attitudes and values than for
  actual behavior.

23
What is Attractive?

• For men, clothing represent wealth and status
• High wealth and status men are more attractive
• Body shape influences attractiveness
• Cultural variation in ideal body weight
• People agree who is beautiful but not why
• Evolutionary psychology - beauty in women
• Health and Youth

24
What is Attractive?

• Symmetry is a powerful source of beauty
• Typicality is a source of beauty
• Average or composite faces are more attractive
  than individual faces
• For both sexes, this standard includes large
  eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a big smile. For
  women, a small nose and chin, narrow cheeks and
  high eyebrows are considered attractive for men,
  a large chin is considered attractive.

25
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• The Effects of Physical Attractiveness on Liking

• There is a some truth to the association between
  physical attractiveness and sociability
• This may be due to a self-fulfilling prophecy.

26
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Theories of Interpersonal Attraction Social
  Exchange and Equity

• Social exchange theory
• how people feel about a relationship depends on
  their perceptions of the rewards and costs of the
  relationship,
• the kind of relationship they believe they
  deserve (comparison level), and
• their chances for having a better relationship
  with someone else (comparison level for
  alternatives).

27
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Theories of Interpersonal Attraction Social
  Exchange and Equity

• Equity theory
• people are happiest with relationships in which
  the rewards and costs a person experiences and
  the contributions he or she makes to the
  relationship are roughly equal to the rewards,
  costs, and contributions of the other person.

28
Major Antecedents of Attraction

• Theories of Interpersonal Attraction Social
  Exchange and Equity

• Reinforcement theory
• Behaviors reinforced will be repeated
• In attraction, people like those who are
  rewarding to them
• Interpersonal rewards
• Do favors for someone
• Praise someone

29
Familiarity and Exposure

• Social allergy effect
• Annoying habits become more annoying over time
• Familiarity and repeated exposure
• Can make bad things worse
• Can encourage liking someone

30
Rejection

• Ostracism
• Being excluded, rejected, and ignored
• Effects of rejection
• Inner states are almost uniformly negative

31
Rejection

• Rejection sensitivity
• Expect rejection and become hypersensitive to
  possible rejection
• You hurt my feelings You dont care about
  the relationship
• Implicit message of rejection

32
Rejection

• Extent of hurt feelings is based on
• Importance of relationship
• How clear a sign of rejection you receive
• Initial reaction to rejection numbness
• Interferes with psychological and cognitive
  functioning

33
Food for Thought - Social Rejection and the Jar
of Cookies

• Fears of rejection are linked to eating binges
  and eating disorders
• Rejected people are more likely to eat fattening
  or junk food
• Rejection undermines self-regulation
• Baumeister, DeWall, et al., (2005)

34
Behavioral Effects of Rejection

• Show decreases in intelligent thought
• Approach new interactions with skepticism
• Typically less generous, less cooperative, less
  helpful
• More willing to cheat or break rules
• Act shortsighted, impulsive, self-destructive

35
Behavioral Effects of Rejection

• Repeated rejection can create aggression
• Aggression can lead to rejection
• Common theme in school shootings is social
  exclusion

36
Loneliness

• Painful feeling of wanting more human contact
• Quantity or quality of relationships
• Little difference between lonely and unlonely
• Lonely have more difficulty understanding
  emotional states of others
• Loneliness is bad for physical health

37
What Leads to Social Rejection?

• Children are rejected by peers
• Because they are aggressive
• Because they withdraw from contact
• Because they are different in some way
• Adults are most often rejected for being
  different

38
What Leads to Social Rejection?

• Adults are most often rejected for being
  different from the rest of the group
• Groups reject insiders more than outsiders for
  the same degree of deviance
• Deviance within the group threatens the groups
  unity

39
What Leads to Social Rejection?

• Bad apple effect
• One person who breaks the rules may inspire
  others to do the same
• Threat of rejection influences good behavior

40
Romantic Rejection and Unrequited Love

• Attribution theory and women refusing dates
• Privately held reasons were internal to the man,
  stable and global
• Reasons told the man were external, unstable and
  specific
• These reasons encourage asking again

41
Romantic Rejection and Unrequited Love

• Unrequited Love
• Men are more often rejected lover women do the
  rejecting more often
• Stalking
• Women are more often stalked