Exam 3 Notes

GROUP BEHAVIOR - Oct. 23rd

Group Behavior:

• Performance Before a Group

  • Social Facilitation: Arousal enhances the Dominant Response. States that arousal could be good for us or could be bad for us and that when performing a task that you are good at the arousal would enhance the task more than if you were to do it on your own but if you are not very good at a task, the arousal before a group would make you do worse. Another researcher did research on autonomic nervous system arousal of actual physiological measures of people when they’re having to do tasks in front of other people versus doing them alone, and found that there are different aspects of our ANS activates differently when doing a task well learned vs one that is not. A well learned task is one that might pump you up and is called a challenge and one not well learned which is more undermining and overwhelming is called a threat 

    • Maze Study: A study in which when an individual is faced with an easy maze on paper and asked to complete, the subject would complete it faster than if they were on their own. However, when the subject was faced with a difficult maze with more twists and turns and asked to complete, they’d be slower than if they were to have done it alone. 

    • Anagrams: A study in which when an individual is faced with an easy anagram on paper asked to complete, the subject would complete it faster than if they were on their own. However, when the subject was faced with a difficult anagram and asked to complete, they’d be slower than if they were to have done it alone. 

    • Sports: Archival research which showed the difference in “choking” behavior between sports like basketball in which those who are directed in a way that it appears as though the people are further back are less likely to feel as pressured and choke. 

    • Lacing up shoes vs. tying them: Another study in which when a subject is asked to tie their shoes on their own and with a group of people watching them, they’d perform quicker with people watching. However, if asked to lace shoes up they’d perform slower with people than if they were on their own. 

  • Social Impact Theory: Source of Arousal

    • Arousal = f (strength [or status of audience] x immediacy [more on top of you or feeling of presence] x number [audience quantity])

      • The each addition of a person is less arousal the greater in quantity your audience is

    • Interestingly, one of the things found was that arousal can diminish if you are doing something in a group versus if you feel like you are doing something alone. Completed a talent show study in which different performers were asked to illuminate the light to the level of nervousness they were experiencing and those performing individually were by far the most nervous. This can be explained as all eyes/attention being diffused across everybody. 

  • Yerkes-Dodson Model

    • Basically says that for any task you might perform, the level of arousal that you might feel there will be some sort of curve that’s going to be either impairing or optimizing your performance. Because we all have different skill sets, we might have different types of curves of where your optimal zone is and where you will be overwhelmed. Ex: Tiger Woods in his prime he might have been like a straight line for his curve in terms of golfing. 

• Intragroup Behavior: Within small group behavior 

  • Social Loafing: When embedded within a group, we don’t work as hard as we do when doing a task alone

    • Shouting

    • Clapping

    • Sports

  • Why:

    • Deindividuation: When we feel like no one can tie my identity to my behavior. People cannot tie what I’m doing to me and frees us up to behave non-normatively either positively or negatively. Example of a positive deindividuation experiment would be a study in which two groups of people are masked and asked to converse with one another in either light or dark. Those people who were in the dark enjoyed the time because they could talk about anything they wanted to without it being tied back to them. Example of a negative deindividuation experiment would be the Halloween study in which little kids were told to take one piece of candy and then leave. If there was a mirror they were more likely to follow instructions and only take one piece of candy whereas if there wasn’t a mirror they would take more candy and perhaps some of the money too. Also included a focus on how masked or deindividuated the customers were and the rates at which they took the candy/money which was high and allowed children to act in non-normative ways. Another negative deindividuation study was checking the behavior of crowds before a person who was threatening to jump off the ledge of top building.

    • Diffusion of Responsibility: That when we are embedded within a group the responsibility for the group’s output gets diffused across group members and nobody feels 100% responsible for the group’s performance. Ex: Group projects

    • Free Riding: This is when people social loaf by making a conscious decision of “I’m not going to work as hard in this group, I’m going to rely on other people to work hard. I’m just going to freeride off their efforts.” 

  • Groupthink: Deterioration of decision making that results from structural flaws and ingroup pressures, often leading to a disastrous decision. Difficult to create a groupthink situation in the lab, and so most research done has been archival. An example was the Bay of Pigs Invasion, so the US invasion of Cuba. Decision to land in the rural part of the country and attempt to gain momentum by getting the rural people to join the cause and create a large army which would force Castro to leave. 

    • Variables:

      • Central Leader: Tends to be someone who has the final say of whether something will occur or not

      • Gatekeeper: Can control access of who gets to talk to the central leader and therefore control the narrative of information that leader receives. Has the ability to reward and punish other people who might be part of the group for what opinions they might have. For example, the Attorney General punished those who doubted the Bay of Pigs plan and reduced access to the president. 

      • Pressure to uniformity: Oftentimes in a really bad groupthink decision making there is a pressure to go along and get on board with a course of action. Anybody who has any doubts is normative/informative pressured to be uniform. 

      • Pluralistic ignorance: The idea that those who may be part of a group but pushed aside by the gatekeeper, think that others must know more than they do and they must not have all the facts. 

      • Self-censorship: If someone has doubts about a plan, they won’t speak up and say something. An example of this could be the engineers in the Space Shuttle Challenger who had doubts about whether they should have been launching that day and the project manager working as the gatekeeper who was insistent on launching on that day and therefore putting stress on them to self-censor. 

    • Combating: Brainstorming

      • Idea generation first, followed by evaluation

GROUPS - INTRAGROUP - Oct. 28th

• Minority Influence: The reasoning behind why a minority may be able to withstand being moved to a decision by the majority’s normative influence and even have the majority move towards them

  • Consistency: The thought that the minority must stay consistent in their attitudinal position, and not budge from their stance. Majority might see a sliver of the person moving towards them and ramp up social influence attempts if they are not consistent. 

  • Confidence: The notion that the person who displays confidence that they are correct, whether that be informational or a moral high ground sort of correct, tends to be of more influence on the majority. 

  • Independence/Objectivity: The notion that the minority doesn’t necessarily have a personal stake in the position and will not gain something personally by having this minority position. Rather, that the minority has arrived at this through objective information and a logical framework. 

• Leadership

  • Interesting research done on the subject, shows that those who are taller in height tend to be viewed more as the leader as well if sitting on a rectangular table, the person who is at the head of a table more likely to be seen as a leader

  • Contingency Model: States that there are two different types of leaders - task and socioemotional leaders. Task leaders are especially good at cracking the whip, at making people stay productive by keeping them on task, monitoring that they’re doing the work, keeping track of how much work they’re doing, and being task oriented. Whereas, socioemotional leaders tend to be very good at making the people that they are leading feel like they have a voice, being listened to, and building a sense of group-ness. Different types of leaders can have different effectiveness depending upon the morale of the group and that when morale is extremely low, task leaders tend to be more effective because there’s not much you can do to really raise morale a lot. Socioemotional leaders can have an effect somewhere in the middle when morale is at a mid level and their qualities of being seen or heard can create a boost in performance. People who can do both roles tend to be really good at leadership, especially if they're good at figuring out what the situation calls for. In a lot of organizations there’s a socioemotional leader and a task leader. 

  • Large Intragroup Behavior: A large group like students in a classroom, everyone at Hopkins, or everybody who lives in Baltimore

• Social Dilemmas: the conflict between wanting to maximize self-interest and the interest of the group as a whole

  • Types:

    • Commons Dilemma

      • Harvesting from a natural resource, and if too many people act selfishly, it ruins the resource for the good of the group as a whole. Comes from the Tragedy of Commons, or this notion that in agrarian societies in Northern England, oftentimes in towns, there would be only one real good grazing area called a Commons and farmers had to show some restraint with the amount of sheep they brought as to not decimate the area and ruin it for the entire season. 

    • Public Goods Dilemma

      • Giving to a resource or a situation in which you have to do something, a behavior towards a resource for the resource to be there for everyone in the future. Examples of NPR radio stations or other stations taking donations from listeners in order to stay alive or recycling. 

    • General Social Dilemmas

      • Any situations in which there’s a conflict between wanting to maximize self-interest and the interest of the group as a whole, an example would be the usage of HOV lanes when not actually carpooling

  • Ways To Reduce Selfish Behavior:

    • Normative Issues:

      • Normative and Informative Social Influence: That if there is normative pressure, that there will be social repercussions or being given information and tools to reduce issues. Drought and a famous basketball player who had to clarify they were not breaking the law shows normative influence. 

    • Smaller groups: Impact of own actions have a larger effect in a smaller group of people than a large group. Lessens the “drop in the bucket” mindset and accountability

    • Deindividuation - Identifiability: Poses an issue in which might face normative repercussions if identified and therefore strengthens the ability to show restraint. 

    • Operant Conditioning (Rewards/Costs): When you reward selfless behavior in social dilemmas, people are more likely to do a behavior. Example is Baltimore Gas and Electric sending out emails about rewarding using less energy on a heat alert day which is then translated to money. A cost could be something like people who are running a red light being sent a forty dollar fine shown by a red light camera. 

    • Legal Measures (Often Last Resort): A sort of operant conditioning at the level which you will experience a sort of tangible trouble. An example would be something like the overfishing of crab populations who were not yet mature and a law set in place that stated that if caught on a boat with crabs of a certain size would be fined hundreds of dollars. Legal measures only tend to work when people feel as though the probability of getting caught is high enough, they aren’t willing to risk acting selfishly, as shown through low surveillance and law not deterring people. 

INTERGROUP BEHAVIOR - Oct. 30th

• Intergroup Behavior: Between group behavior

  • Discontinuity Effect

    • Intergroup behavior is much more competitive than inter-individual behavior

  • Often represented by the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

• In PDG, you will either have two individuals or groups identified as A or B who will play a series of trials in which they are asked to either choose Option X (cooperative choice or Y for points where the Y represents the greater number of points if the other group/individual chooses X (competitive choice). In a typical discontinuity study, the groups are asked to come in [by default strangers] and after being trained will have thirty seconds to discuss choice amongst each other before turning to have spokespeople communicate to each other about their choice and then have another thirty seconds to go back to the group and make a choice. After a number of trials, it can be seen that the individual version of this experiment shows that the party will choose X (cooperative choice) 95% of the time meanwhile, groups will cooperate 50% of the time and compete the other 50%. Also found in the individual version of this experiment that if the individual screws the other party over with their choice, they will apologize during the talking time. However, if one group in their version of the experiment manages to screw the other group over, they will throw it in the other team’s face. This is recognized as the greed response. Additionally, it was found that if the individual does betray the other party they are still able to flip back to cooperative choice and continue on to do this for the rest of time, whereas in the group scenario it is very difficult to regain the trust lost. The X and Y version of this experiment brought up the question of whether the groups or individuals were choosing the competitive response or Y out of greed or fear and therefore a new alternative version of this experiment was created. 

• PDGalt: In this version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma Game, a third choice was added which when chosen would add 2 points to the own group/person’s total regardless of what the other team might choose, came to be known as the fear choice. Individuals still recognize that X-X choice is in both parties' best interest and will choose this option 95% of the time. However, the group will choose the X about 50% of the time, and then 25% of the time for the greedy response and the other 25% for the fearful response. Oftentimes, will arrive at choice of Z or fear choice after the other team chose Y or the competitive response and caused you to get 0 points. 

• Reasons for Intergroup Competition: 

  • Schemas of Fear and Greed: Developed in childhood around school age where we come to recognize that groups will be competitive and it is acceptable to be greedy and want your own group to win. However, will also quickly realize that the other group would also like to win and be greedy which will in turn create the fear response. 

  • Social Support for Greed: Study done in which a regular PDG completed, however with a confederate who suggested during within group discussion that they get the other team to think they’re choosing X (cooperative choice) and instead choose Y and when someone else agrees, they’d get excited and encourage this idea again. It was found that rates of competition group behavior increased to about 70-75% choosing Y. 

  • Diffusion of Responsibility: The notion that when embedded within a group, there will diffusion of responsibility for competitive or greedy behavior. An example of this could be seen in PDG where the spokesperson would take responsibility off of themselves by blaming others in the group. 

  • Deindividuation: The idea that the people will not know each other and are all strangers to each other and their behaviors cannot be tied to them individually. This is not the case for individual experiments as they still know it was 100% of their responsibility if they choose a competitive choice. When deindividuation was reduced and people were given name tags with their actual  names, the rates of competitive behavior went significantly down from 50 to 30% of time.  

  • Reciprocity Effects: The notion that if one group screws the other group over in a PDG experiment the other group will want to screw them over as well. “If you choose Y, we’re choosing Y.”

  • Ingroup-Outgroup Bias: The tendency for people to think differently about members of their own groups versus members of an outgroup, making more positive attributions about the characteristics of the ingroup. “We are smart, we work hard, we’re deserving, we’re more moral, and the outgroup deserve to get screwed over, they’re not very smart, they’re cheaters.

  • Social Identity Theory: Idea that some of our self-esteem is tied to groups and whether they do well or not, this could be seen in a minimal group paradigm where subjects are tricked into believing they are part of one group and asked to distribute one hundred dollars across people, and their choice tended to distribute money across their own group even when randomly assigned. 

• Reduction of Intergroup Competition: 

  • Simple Contact Effects: The idea that simple contact of being around someone of another group might be enough to eliminate discrimination because you’ll begin to see commonalities between yourself and the other group. Did not necessarily work in regard to black and white schools, which resulted in segregation within school. 

  • Robber’s Cave Study

    • Higher level goals: Scenario in which a homogenous group of little kids were all recruited from communities to be at a camp without any prior knowledge of each other. Social psychologists wanted to see if they could create competition between these kids and were randomly  assigned to two groups and allowed to name themselves, they chose Rattlers and Eagles. Had them complete different kinds of games and activities to create ingroup-outgroup bias amongst each other and separated them from one another sleeping wise. The children began to have issues with one another’s groups and tried to fix issue with simple contact but instead realized that they needed to assign them all an issue together to switch identity from Rattlers/Eagles into Robber’s Camp as a whole. They had them complete an activity in which they had to recruit each other’s help to retrieve a water truck out of a ditch. Also had another camp competition against camp on the other side of the lake in which Rattlers/Eagles competed together and this reduced the competition amongst the two groups as they switched identity into one large group. 

  • Jigsaw Classroom

    • Interdependence

  • Positive Intergroup Examples

LARGE INTRAGROUP - CROWDS - Nov. 1st

Group Behavior: Larger Intragroup Issues

• Crowd Behavior: Panics vs. Destructive Events

  • Panics: survival instinct kicks in, fight or flight behavior, autonomic nervous system arousal

    • Examples:

      • Halloween - Itaewon district, Seoul, 2022

      • Hillsborough Soccer Championship, 1989

      • The Iroquois Theater Fire, 1903 

  • Destructive Events: purposeful negative behavior (e.g., property destruction, violence, looting, etc.)

    • Examples:

      • 2024 MLB World Series Celebration in LA

      • 2020 Kenosha, WI Black Lives Matter unrest

      • 2011 Vancouver Riot after NHL Game 7 Loss (“Facebook Riot”)

  • Social Rage Approach: Systemic issues (e.g., institutional racism, police misconduct, etc.) and dramatic events (e.g., unpopular verdicts, assassinations, sports defeats, etc.) crystallize frustration/outrage leading to collective protest that can turn into large scale destructive behavior. 

• However…

  • The majority of large protests are peaceful

  • Systemic issues are often continuous but destructive events are most often episodic

  • Destructive behavior can occur in the aftermath of good news (e.g., LA winning the 2024 World Series) 

• How Destructive Events develop:

  • Unifying Event: Mass of people together - spontaneous or planned

  • Convergent Norm: A substantial enough number of like minded people who would favor destructive behavior. A potential instigator must have the confidence that there are others thinking like he/she is thinking and would follow suit.

    • The Instigator: Just having many people in the same mood doesn’t start destructive behavior. Most people make the calculation that if they start it they might get caught. Need someone willing to risk it anyway.

    • Instigator has to weigh:

      • Risk of getting caught: Ratio of crowd/police

      • Probability everyone will join in

    • Spike Lee’s “Do The Right Thing”: A film set in NYC movie set where there’s a Italian pizza place that’s been in the family for generations, but the neighborhood has turned predominantly black and there’s underlying tension and there is the destructive behavior of people destroying the pizzeria after a horrendous police violence and the character throwing a trash can through pizzeria. 

• How Destructive Events unfold:

  • Once Started:

    • Contagion: The energy, excitement, or autonomic nervous system arousal, that people get swept up into and wind up doing behaviors which they would not normally do 

    • Emergent Norm: The idea that what is normally acceptable for behavior changes from showing restraint to what’s now allowable. So once you see somebody, one person throws a brick through a window, that frees up that maybe that’s a way that you can behave.

    • Deindividuation: When people feel like their behavior isn’t going to be tied to them individually, it frees them up to behave in a non-normative way. People will end up doing things destructively and non-normative in a negative way when they feel like their behavior will not be tied back to them like in the police scanner and person at ledge scenario. 

INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION - Nov. 4th

Interpersonal Relationship Research: 

• Interpersonal Attraction

  • First Impressions

    • Have enormous impact

      • Primacy Effect: The first things that we learn about somebody are the things that we pay attention to the most and matter more to us. Ex: If looking at a talent show, the people who go on first are going to be evaluated more positively than people who go on in the middle just because we like the things that come first. The first interactions we have with somebody could really cloud what we are coming away with.

      • Confirmation Bias: Oftentimes our first impressions will lead us to develop a schema and we’ll pay attention to things that are consistent with that scheme and ignore things that are inconsistent. The first time you meet somebody, the things that you take away from them often cloud your judgment of them long after because of the confirmation bias. 

      • Overconfidence: Research shows that we tend to be overconfident that our first impressions are correct more than we should be which also contributes to us having those first impressions linger longer than they should. 

  • Interpersonal Attraction Orientations

    • Physiological Approaches: Physiological changes that happen when we’re attracted to someone that might be linked to our interpretation of attraction

      • Pheromones: The idea that because pheromones are such a powerful part of the reproductive process in other mammals, this might apply to humans as well. However, research is relatively inconclusive but pheromones do matter in ovulation cycles in women and relation to one another, though results are out there in terms of interpersonal attraction

      • Arousal as Cue: Autonomic nervous system arousal as cue or when we feel adrenaline, excitement, sweaty, our heart is pumping around somebody we oftentimes use that as a cue that we’re attracted to someone 

      • Misattribution of Arousal

        • Bridge Study: A study in which there was a river gorge and had a bridge connecting two sides of the park and one bridge had a deep drop and was swaying and wooden while the other was a concrete bridge with a much less deep gorge. Had a female research assistant placed in the middle of both bridges and when men were crossing every fifth person would speak to them (with a trainee badge) and ask them questions about the park and then across the gorge had another researcher ask them about the woman who interviewed them and how much they liked her, how presentable she was, or how attractive she was. Found that the men going across the rickety bridge labeled the woman as more attractive, wanting to see her in the future, and more likely to take her “number” from the other researcher. This study had the criticism of the men who went on the different bridges as having a personality difference, and therefore conducted in a research lab where men/women were told they had to memorize certain words and if made mistakes would be intensely shocked. If the subjects were told they were going to be intensely shocked and then asked about the researcher’s attractiveness they would be more likely to say they were attracted to the researcher. 

        • “Secrets”: Study was conducted in groups of four, two men and two women and one of them will look at a card that will have a shape and color on it and the people would have to guess what the extrasensory perception on it is. However, they are also tasked with two of the subjects being told that touch promotes extrasensory perception and they’d want them to touch their feet below the table. One condition everybody knows, whereas the other condition is told to not let the other subjects know. It was found that the people who had to have physical contact, but kept it a secret, were much more likely to be attracted to each other compared with the other conditions. Other research demonstrates that keeping a relationship secret from other people actually can invoke both positive and negative emotions. Positive emotions when attraction increases because secrets are inherently exciting and having to be on constant guard which forces you to think about the person a lot more often than you probably would. Negative emotions because secret relationships can be very anxiety provoking, and most times when being kept a secret it is because if discovered, it could be an issue. 

    • Learning Theory

      • Operant Conditioning: Hallmark of interpersonal relationships, in which if rewarded by having interaction with somebody, we’re going to like them more. The more interactions with that person that have negative effects, costs, we’re going to like that person less. 

      • Reciprocity Effects: The idea that people are inclined to like someone who likes them back. We tend to reciprocate people’s feelings about us because it’s pleasing in terms of operant conditioning where we are rewarded by someone making us feel good when we like them. 

      • Flattery Effects: Research shows that flattery works, when people say nice things to us it tends to induce people to like the person because it makes them feel good. Tricky part of research demonstrates that flattery can work even if there’s some subtlety that may be insincere or for an ulterior motive, though we do learn along the way how to gauge this.

      • Gain-Loss Hypothesis: States that we are more troubled by someone moving from liking us to liking us less and that the loss of attraction is more troubling than staying at the same level of attraction. On the flip side, we are much more happy with a gain. 

    • Social Exchange Theory

      • Outcomes & Probability: The idea that when people make decisions about whether they want to interact with somebody, that it is not merely that we pay attention to rewards and costs of having that interaction but also that we weigh the probability of obtaining those rewards or costs. There exists a mental calculation of not just what those costs and rewards are, but what the likelihood of those happening is. Ex: Men have to be about 75% sure a woman will say in order to ask her out.

      • Communal vs. Exchange: Communal relationships are relationships with people who we typically provide closeness and could be our friends, family, or romantic partners. In communal relationships, we expect to have future interactions. Whereas, exchange interactions do not necessarily involve closeness and are more transactional in nature. This could be something like a mechanic working on my car or person who dropped off flowers. Turns out that this influences interpersonal attraction if someone thinks the individual who they have an exchange relationship with could be developed into a communal relationship. A study which shows this is when single people were asked to complete a “motor coordination” task and told there will be someone of the opposite gender on the other side of the room organizing cards with different shapes. However their variable is being told whether the opposite gender person in the room who is a confederate is in a relationship or not. They then have the confederate have a flustered accident moment, and measure how often the people were to help them out considering the knowledge they have. It was found that those who were told she was single were more likely to help out as they’d have the idea that this transactional relationship could turn into a communal relationship more than if the confederate was in a “relationship”. 

    • Contact Effects

      • Proximity: You have to have interactions with somebody, if you’re going to have a relationship with them. We are more likely to have interactions with people who are close by. 

        • MIT Study: Post WWII, there was a dramatic increase at colleges because of the GI Bill which allowed those who went to war to attend college because they served which caused a great influx of college students. New housing at MIT was similar to Motel 6 buildings where there were stairs up to the second floor across from rooms which allowed social psychologists to perform study regarding social metric findings of attraction. Found that the people who were rated highest in being liked socially were those who lived across the stairs as they had more interactions with more people by chance. Power of proximity showed that being around somebody and having more interactions with them meant that you’re probably going to like them more. On the flip side, other research showed that if you have negative feelings with someone and continue to have more interactions with them, you will like them less as it will accentuate that feeling about the person. 

        • Mere Exposure Effect: Inclined to like things that we are exposed more to. Study done in which non-Chinese speaking students were shown 100 slides in which one of them showed up around 20 times. After showing these slides they were not told to do ratings, but then reached out to a couple weeks later being told it was a mistake and if they could come in to rate the slides and found that those slides which they were shown 20 times were rated far higher than the rest. Can have a negative effect in which exposure eventually gets to be too much and to the tipping point.

      • Familiarity: We tend to be predisposed to evaluate someone positively or to like somebody who reminds us of somebody we liked in the past. If they seem familiar, whether that be looking familiar or having the same mannerisms like another person, we’re inclined to like them. Can also work on the flip side, where we are predisposed to dislike somebody if they remind us of somebody we disliked in the past. Research has also demonstrated that familiarity can make people feel less anxious in anxious situations. 

    • Trait Approaches

      • Physical Appearance (Halo Effect): Attractive people are assumed to have other positive characteristics and in terms of people who we are attracted to, physically attractive people tend to be rated more favorably. 

        • Computer Dance Study: Study in which incoming class of freshmen were asked to do a large survey in terms of things like demographics, age, race, gender, socioeconomic status of their household, two parents, one parent families, how many siblings they have, and other measures of attitudes in terms of conservative vs liberal, hobbies, movies, sports, and even personality scales (OCEAN). After the survey, during orientation week, they were invited to attend a dance where they’d be paired with someone of the opposite gender and have to spend the first hour with them and everyone had a headshot of them taken which was sent to another institution to rate them on attractiveness level. Then, dance people were asked about how they liked the person they spent the first hour with and found that the only thing which predicted whether they’d want future interactions with this person was not any of the demographic information they collected but instead attraction level. 

        • First Impressions: Hiring, Jury’s, Teacher Ratings: In terms of resumes being equal, a physically more attractive person is more likely to be hired than a less physically attractive person and have a higher salary on entry level than a less attractive person. In terms of jury verdicts, physically attractive defendants are more likely to be found not guilty. In terms of rating professors where all things are equal, attractive professors tend to get higher student evaluations in their courses than less physically attractive professors. 

        • Social Interactions: Diary Record Study: Experience sampling study in which college students were asked to keep a journal for every interaction they had with someone that was longer than ten minutes, and then to answer questions like who initiated the interaction, how likable they were, how physically attractive they were and also had headshots taken of subjects. Found that attractive women tended to have higher quality opposite sex interactions than less physically attractive women (same thing with men) and that the physically attractive women were less likely to initiate these interactions. There was an interesting speculation that women oftentimes date a man who’s a year or two older than them and so by limiting the original study to freshmen they were limiting the women to being the ones whose interactions were being initiated by other men more frequently, however, when the study was done on seniors, the results were still the same. 

        • Little Kids (Moms, Teachers, Persuasion Techniques): Research demonstrates that physically attractive little kids in elementary schools are more likely to be called on in class when they raise their hand and are more likely to receive positive reinforcement. Study also done in which little boys and girls were asked to persuade another kid to eat a healthy food cookie, and observed the different manners of persuasions and found that attractive children used their charm rather than reason. Another study done in hospitals in neonatal wards in which the time that a baby is checked out for breastfeeding or cuddling time with mother is measured. Found that even though all moms loved their children, those infants which were rated less attractive by other adults happened to be checked out for less time with their mother. Infant in crib study also found that those babies with a mobile rotating thing on them when placed with photos, would track and pay attention in terms of eye gaze to more attractive people than less. 

      • Matching Hypothesis: The phenomenon in which it turns out that we are likely to wind up with someone who has a romantic partner who’s about the same level of physical attractiveness as we are. Research has not really delineated this yet, but one theory believes that we all want the person who is the highest level of attractiveness which we all pursue at the beginning but the 10s match with 10s and so on, including a timing sequence where the most attractive pair up first. Another theory is that at some point we learn our attractiveness level and we seek someone out actively who’s about the same level of attractiveness. This could be explained through anxiety about reaching higher and the social marketplace effect where it is a comfort to be a four and be attracted to another four. 

      • Similarity

        • Attitudes and Demographics; Not Personality

          • Found through research in interpersonal attraction and in ongoing close relationships and actual relationships that similarity of attitudes does matter and we are attracted to people who like the same things we do and dislike the same things we do. We also tend to seek out people who are similar in terms of certain types of demographics, so perhaps similar ethnicities, or social class as we are. Personality similarities are not as overwhelming in effect, though those in high neuroticism are universally disliked for first impressions. Opposites attract can initially be enticing, but will slowly fade away and become a breaking point for relationships for how different they are. 

      • Positivity Effects: Research has demonstrated that we just tend to like people who are more positive, who show/display more positive affect, who smile more, and have a positive outlook on life. Meanwhile, we tend to really dislike negative people and are not attracted to that. 

      • Small Imperfection: The idea that someone who is slightly imperfect will be more attractive than someone who is not. This could be seen in the study where a professional public speaker is asked to run through his presentation twice, once in which everything is very polished and another in which everything is the same except for the accidental drop of a water glass. It was found that the students liked the man and his presentation more when he dropped the water as it made him relatable and more identifiable.

• Interpersonal Relationship Theories

  • Interpersonal Relationship Orientations

    • Evolutionary Approaches

      • “Differential Parental Investment”: The idea that men and women play very different roles in the reproductive process, where women are absolutely sure of their maternity, can only have so many offspring in their lifetimes in terms of the physical limitations, and have a more limited window of fertility during their lives. Men however, might be less sure of their paternity, can have kids throughout their lifespan, and can have as many kids with as many partners as will have them, and can then be less invested in any one offspring. Men are more likely to be concerned about physical attractiveness as it is historically a sign of health and saying that having an offspring with that person would be more likely that the woman and her child would survive childbirth and the man’s genes would be passed down. Whereas, women would be more attracted to resources, as a man with resources would be able to bring more to help for the survival of the offspring. 

      • Gender Differences:

        • Denigration of Rivals: That when there exists a potential rival to somebody you’re interested in, it is found that men and women use different strategies. Men tend to bring up their own set of resources and compare them to other rival’s resources whereas women tend to talk about the other person’s looks and promiscuity and hint at the idea that the rival wouldn’t be loyal. 

        • Jealousy: Physical vs. Emotional Jealousy - When partners were hooked up to physiological measuring tools and told to visualize their relationship partner falling in love with somebody else or imagining their partner having sex with somebody else, women tended to be more upset or have more of a response to the falling in love scenario while men tended to be more upset or responsive to the sex scenario. This could be attributed back to the idea that women would view male partner falling in love as someone taking away his resources whereas the man would view the sex as stripping away the certainty of paternity. 

          • Male Sexual Jealousy & Homicide: This jealousy of men and relation to how homicide rates of women tends to be high because it relates to how they will typically get killed by someone they were once in a relationship with and that if they can’t have the woman, no one can. 

        • Child Abuse: Step and Adopted Children: Interesting research shows that kids who are stepkids/adopted kids are more likely to be victims of child abuse rather than genetic children. Evolutionary psychologists point to the notion of step/adopted kid not sharing any of the genetic material with the parent and therefore won’t have influence on the species by having genes passed down. 

    • Social Cognition Approaches

      • Illusion vs. Accuracy: Research done shows that having a partner who views you a little higher on traits where you personally stand on traits or having this positive illusion in terms of how smart, kind, or funny you are is actually good for the relationship. This sort of illusion can help you grow towards that ideal form and help you move in ways to become that person which was checked by ratings of the couple’s friends who also noticed the process unfold. Could also be flipped in the sense that the partner could view our traits lower than we actually want to be and behave in ways that help us become that lower self. 

        • Traits vs. Attitudes: Because we are attracted to people who have similar attitudes as us, we need to have an accurate picture of our partner's actual attitudes in order to make the relationship work. This is an important thing to know as impression management might want to lead us to give out false information.

      • Attribution Effects: The idea that the way we assign cause for people’s behaviors in a relationship can be an indication of how well-functioning a relationship might be. Specifically, high functioning couples tend to make internal attributions for their partner’s good behavior and external attributions for their partner’s bad behavior. Whereas, the couple not doing well would make internal attributions for their partner’s bad behavior and external attributions for their good behavior. Making a flip from the high-functioning to the lower functioning can quickly go downhill and escalate. Interesting phenomenon within relationship trajectories also shows that downward trajectories will quickly go bad steeply whereas upwards trajectories can be slow or steady.

      • Relationship Schemas

        • Relationship Specific Identity: The notion to which your relationship becomes a really important identity for you and how couples who tend to think in terms of “us” tend to be higher level functioning than couples who think in terms of him vs. her. 

      • Attachment Theory (John Bowlby)

        • The idea that early socio-emotional bonding has later implications for schemas regarding self and others

          • Types:

            • Secure: Notion that I have a worldview that I am worthy of love, have a positive view of self, and can trust other people to be there for me who also want to be around me. Reflected by having early childhood care in which there is a strong social emotional bond where a parent is meeting the child’s emotional and physical needs. 

            • Anxious/Ambivalent: Typified by inconsistent care by the primary caregiver, where sometimes the caregiver is attentive and responsive, maybe even smothering, and then other times when they’re not responsive. Children develop a worldview of not knowing if they are worthy of love because sometimes they are ignored, and also develop schemas about not being able to trust others to be there for them and instead worry about whether people value or want to be close to them. 

            • Avoidant: Typified by primary caregiver being caring or providing care when it’s needed on a consistent basis, but in a much more cold and business-like fashion without the social emotional warmth. Early childhood experiences are typified by avoiding social emotional bonding, development of a worldview about other people that they don’t necessarily want to be close to other people or don’t want people to be close to them, and do not value intimacy. 

          • Strange Situation Test: A study in which mother’s and their children were placed in a room with a chair for the caregiver and toys for the children. Different children with kinds of attachment had different interactions with the world. Securely attached children would treat the caregiver as a homebase and explore more and more toys slowly and return back. Anxious/Ambivalent children would be nervously sitting near the caregiver waiting for their attention rather than with toys. Avoidant children would fully be playing with the toys and not address the caregiver. In the second phase of study, a stranger would replace the caregiver in the chair. For secure children, they’d have the trust that they would be back and would notice and perhaps be a bit upset but not very dramatic. Anxious/ambivalent children would be really upset and reinforce the inconsistency and notion that people do not want to love them. Avoidant children wouldn’t notice or care and would continue to play. However, when the caregiver would return, secure kids would hug them and return to playing, anxious/ambivalent kids would be histrionic and joyous but also a bit angry, and then avoidant children wouldn’t show any emotional warmth and continue to play. 

        • Adult Attachment and Relationships

          • Secure (60%) 

          • Anxious/Ambivalent (20%)

          • Avoidant (20%)

            • Displayed under stress

Explanation of graph: Another manner of approaching attachment style in a two dimensional space in which anxiety of whether you believe or trust in other people being there for you and avoidance of intimacy characterizes attachment. 

• Assorted Findings:

  • Relationships: Formation, Length, Functioning

    • Secure people are more likely to be in a romantic relationship compared to avoidant people as they tend to push people away or cause people to push them away to avoid intimacy. Anxious-ambivalent people are almost as likely to be in a relationship as secure people but will be in serial relationships (committed sexual relationships without much time in between) Avoidant with avoidant tends to be more of a sexual-hook up thing. 

  • Anxious-ambivalent: Negative Perceptions

    • Anxious-ambivalent people tend to be very rollercoaster-like and will make mountains out of molehills. Can usually tell when a partner is not being honest and will become almost obsessive. 

  • Stress: In a study where it was pretested what people’s attachment styles were, when people were told that they would be shocked in a study those in secure relationships would calm each other down and be willing to leave. Avoidant people turn inwards regardless of partner’s attachment style and will shut down and not want to engage with the world and instead deal with the stress internally. Anxious-ambivalent will have large histrionic freak outs.

• Interdependence Approach/Theory

  • Interaction between partners represents the essence of a close relationship

  • Interaction partners have the ability to effect each other’s outcomes

  • Across multiple interactions individuals experience rewards and costs of the relationship

  • Correspondence: The degree of “fit” of preferences across interactions helps determine relationship success

  • Interaction is key to any relationship

    • Satisfaction: Outcomes to Comparison Level (CL) or the outcomes - rewards and costs - from the relationship compared to what you expect from a close relationship. 

    • Dependence: Outcomes to Comparison Level for Alternatives (CLalt) or the outcomes from interacting with your partner across many interactions relative to what you might expect from the next best alternative to this relationship whether that be another person, multiple people (dating around), or singleness. 

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  Investment Model: Took the concepts from interdependence theory, expanded on them, and then has been used as a really successful model in predicting a bunch of different relationship behaviors.

  • Satisfaction and dependence contributes to feelings of commitment in a relationship

  • Feelings of commitment represent the primary force in a relationship

• Components of Commitment

  • Cognitive: Psychological attachment (i.e., how much the relationship means to you)

  • Motivational: One’s desire to continue the relationship and make it last

Path analysis shows that commitment is the primary force and that other things such as satisfaction, alternatives (or concept of dependence in Interdependence Theory), and investments go through commitment to breakup. Investments specifically are things that you would lose if the relationship were to end such tangible things like redistribution of wealth, time spent with kids, shared friends or intangible like shared traditions like visiting Nantucket on New Year’s Eve or going to a favorite restaurant. One of these three things can be suffering and commitment may still be there as the other two can be present as they push through. 

• Relationship Maintenance Behaviors:

  • Accommodation: Notion of how does a member of a couple respond when their partner’s done something to hurt them

The two dimensions of responsiveness to accommodation, one of which is active versus passive, where active is more of a behavioral dynamic response and passive is the less one. The other dimension is regarding intent and how you react to how your partner hurt you and whether you would like to hurt them back or make the situation better. Couples who aren’t doing well were demonstrated to respond destructively when partners hurt them and do this instinctively. Study found that waiting to respond would decrease destructive response in both high and low commitment couples. Transformation of motivation is also the idea that couples in a good relationship will not focus on one interaction but instead view everything for the long term sake of the relationship. Study was also done in which experience sampling noted partner’s interactions with another and when hurt, and found that there wasn’t necessarily a huge gap in number of times that people in committed relationships hurt their partners versus non committed relationships but found was that the people who are less committed, were much more likely to respond when they got hurt by behaving destructively. They also found congruence in the way that they both agreed when someone was hurt in committed relationships versus less committed. Found that of the responses, exit, voice, neglect, loyalty, the one that had the lead impact was loyalty responses or waiting for things to get better on their own.  Evidence also found that when couples switch from constructive to destructive responses when they get hurt, the relationship can go downhill really quickly. 

• Warding Off Alternatives: Different strategies that people have in terms of dealing with attractive alternatives and how committed people will do these behaviors and actions when confronted with a threatening alternative. If this alternative is not threatening to the relationship, we would not deal with them in these ways. 

  • Derogation of Alternatives: May think about alternative’s faults like “he’s handsome but dumb as rocks”

  • Derogation of Self: Research found that committed people when there was an attractive alternative and had to have conversation with alternative about interest, would describe themselves in terms of their traits as being worse or playing up their faults 

  • Distancing Behaviors: Oftentimes people deal with threatening alternatives when they’re committed by purposely going out of way to spend less time with person 

  • Relationship Enhancement: Research demonstrates that when people are faced with a threatening alternative and are committed, they will focus on the really great things about their current relationship as a way of making their current relationship outcomes be higher than that comparison level for the alternative. 

• Sacrifice: Can be thought of as the willingness to sacrifice or willingness to do things you wouldn’t want to do but if your partner wants to do them and giving things up that you enjoy because your partner hates that you do them. People who are more committed are more likely to sacrifice for the good of their partner. 

• Infidelity: Found that Investment Model that uses commitment as a pathway to predict breakup is also a good model to use for unfaithfulness to partner. Found that those with low commitment had greater levels of intimacy with opposite sex people who weren’t their partner