Intro to Psych Chapter 12
Chapter 12 Social Psychology
12.1 What is Social Psychology?
Social psychology examines how people affect one another, and it looks at the power of the situation. According to the American Psychological Association (n.d.), social psychologists "are interested in all aspects of personality and social interaction, exploring the influence of interpersonal and group relationships on human behavior."
Intrapersonal topics (those that pertain to the individual) include emotions and attitudes, the self, and social cognition (the ways in which we think about ourselves and others). Interpersonal topics (those that pertain to dyads and groups) include helping behavior (
Situationism is the view that our behavior and actions are determined by our immediate environment and surroundings.
dispositionism holds that our behavior is determined by internal factors (Heider, 1958).
An internal factor is an attribute of a person and includes personality traits and temperament.
In the United States, the predominant culture tends to favor a dispositional approach in explaining human behavior.
According to some social psychologists, people tend to overemphasize internal factors as explanations—or attributions—for the behavior of other people. They tend to assume that the behavior of another person is a trait of that person, and to underestimate the power of the situation on the behavior of others.
. This erroneous assumption is called the fundamental attribution error (Ross, 1977; Riggio & Garcia, 2009). To better understand, imagine this scenario: Jamie returns home from work, and opens the front door to a happy greeting from spouse Morgan who inquires how the day has been. Instead of returning the spouse’s kind greeting, Jamie yells, “Leave me alone!” Why did Jamie yell? How would someone committing the fundamental attribution error explain Jamie’s behavior? The most common response is that Jamie is a mean, angry, or unfriendly person (traits).
The fundamental attribution error is so powerful that people often overlook obvious situational influences on behavior.
The halo effect refers to the tendency to let the overall impression of an individual color the way in which we feel about their character. For instance, we might assume that people who are physically attractive are more likely to be good people than less attractive individuals.
not. People from an individualistic culture, that is, a culture that focuses on individual achievement and autonomy, have the greatest tendency to commit the fundamental attribution error.
behavior. In contrast, people from a collectivistic culture, that is, a culture that focuses on communal relationships with others, such as family, friends, and community are less likely to commit the fundamental attribution error
Why do you think this is the case? Collectivistic cultures, which tend to be found in east Asian countries and in Latin American and African countries, focus on the group more than on the individual
This focus on others provides a broader perspective that takes into account both situational and cultural influences on behavior; thus, a more nuanced explanation of the causes of others’ behavior becomes more likely.
This focus on others provides a broader perspective that takes into account both situational and cultural influences on behavior; thus, a more nuanced explanation of the causes of others’ behavior becomes more likely.
We can understand self-serving bias by digging more deeply into attribution, a belief about the cause of a result. One model of attribution proposes three main dimensions: locus of control (internal versus external), stability (stable versus unstable), and controllability (controllable versus uncontrollable). In this context, stability refers to the extent in which the circumstances that result in a given outcome are changeable. The circumstances are considered stable if they are unlikely to change.
Controllability refers to the extent to which the circumstances that are associated with a given outcome can be controlled. Obviously, those things that we have the power to control would be labeled controllable
Self-serving bias is the tendency to explain our successes as due to dispositional (internal) characteristics, but to explain our failures as due to situational (external) factors. Again, this is culture dependent. This bias serves to protect self-esteem. You can imagine that if people always made situational attributions for their behavior, they would never be able to take credit and feel good about their accomplishments.
The just-world hypothesis is the belief that people get the outcomes they deserve
In order to maintain the belief that the world is a fair place, people tend to think that good people experience positive outcomes, and bad people experience negative outcomes
The ability to think of the world as a fair place, where people get what they deserve, allows us to feel that the world is predictable and that we have some control over our life outcomes
12.2 Self-presentation
One major social determinant of human behavior is our social roles. A social role is a pattern of behavior that is expected of a person in a given setting or group
Social roles are defined by culturally shared knowledge. That is, nearly everyone in a given culture knows what behavior is expected of a person in a given role. For example, what is the social role for a student? If you look around a college classroom you will likely see students engaging in studious behavior, taking notes, listening to the professor, reading the textbook, and sitting quietly at their desks
A social norm is a group’s expectation of what is appropriate and acceptable behavior for its members—how they are supposed to behave and think
A script is a person’s knowledge about the sequence of events expected in a specific setting
For example, at a restaurant in the United States, if we want the server’s attention, we try to make eye contact. In Brazil, you would make the sound “psst” to get the server’s attention. You can see the cultural differences in scripts. To an American, saying “psst” to a server might seem rude, yet to a Brazilian, trying to make eye contact might not seem an effective strategy.
Stanford prison experiment, conducted by social psychologist Philip Zimbardo and his colleagues at Stanford University, demonstrated the power of social roles, social norms, and scripts. In the summer of 1971, an advertisement was placed in a California newspaper asking for male volunteers to participate in a study about the psychological effects of prison life. More than 70 men volunteered, and these volunteers then underwent psychological testing to eliminate candidates who had underlying psychiatric issues, medical issues, or a history of crime or drug abuse. The pool of volunteers was whittled down to 24 healthy male college students. Each student was paid $15 per day (equivalent to about $80 today) and was randomly assigned to play the role of either a prisoner or a guard in the study.
In a relatively short time, the guards came to harass the prisoners in an increasingly sadistic manner, through a complete lack of privacy, lack of basic comforts such as mattresses to sleep on, and through degrading chores and late-night counts.
The prisoners, in turn, began to show signs of severe anxiety and hopelessness—they began tolerating the guards’ abuse. Even the Stanford professor who designed the study and was the head researcher, Philip Zimbardo, found himself acting as if the prison was real and his role, as prison supervisor, was real as well. After only six days, the experiment had to be ended due to the participants’ deteriorating behavior.
The Stanford Prison Experiment has been used as a memorable demonstration of the incredible power that social roles, norms, and scripts have in affecting human behavior. However, multiple aspects of the study have been subject to criticism since its inception. The nature of these criticisms range from ethical concerns to issues of generalizability
The Stanford Prison Experiment has some parallels with the abuse of prisoners of war by U.S. Army troops and CIA personnel at the Abu Ghraib prison in 2003 and 2004 during the Iraq War. The offenses at Abu Ghraib were documented by photographs of the abuse, some taken by the abusers themselves
12.3 Attitudes and Persuasion
beliefs. Attitude is our evaluation of a person, an idea, or an object. We have attitudes for many things ranging from products that we might pick up in the supermarket to people around the world to political policies. Typically, attitudes are favorable or unfavorable: positive or negative
And, they have three components: an affective component (feelings), a behavioral component (the effect of the attitude on behavior), and a cognitive component (belief and knowledge)
Our attitudes and beliefs are not only influenced by external forces, but also by internal influences that we control. Like our behavior, our attitudes and thoughts are not always changed by situational pressures, but they can be consciously changed by our own free will.
Psychologist Leon Festinger (1957) defined cognitive dissonance as psychological discomfort arising from holding two or more inconsistent attitudes, behaviors, or cognitions (thoughts, beliefs, or opinions).
Festinger’s theory of cognitive dissonance states that when we experience a conflict in our behaviors, attitudes, or beliefs that runs counter to our positive self-perceptions, we experience psychological discomfort (dissonance). For example, if you believe smoking is bad for your health but you continue to smoke, you experience conflict between your belief and behavior
When we experience cognitive dissonance, we are motivated to decrease it because it is psychologically, physically, and mentally uncomfortable. We can reduce cognitive dissonance by bringing our cognitions, attitudes, and behaviors in line—that is, making them harmonious. This can be done in different ways, such as:
changing our discrepant behavior (e.g., stop smoking),
changing our cognitions through rationalization or denial (e.g., telling ourselves that health risks can be reduced by smoking filtered cigarettes),
adding a new cognition (e.g., “Smoking suppresses my appetite so I don’t become overweight, which is good for my health.”).
Another social psychology concept, justification of effort, suggests that we value goals and achievements that we put a lot of effort into. According to this theory, if something is difficult for us to achieve, we believe it is more worthwhile. For example, if you move to an apartment and spend hours assembling a dresser you bought from Ikea, you will value that more than a fancier dresser someone else bought you. We do not want to have wasted time and effort to join a group that we eventually leave.
Persuasion is the process of changing our attitude toward something based on some kind of communication. Much of the persuasion we experience comes from outside forces.
Features of the source of the persuasive message include the credibility of the speaker (Hovland & Weiss, 1951) and the physical attractiveness of the speaker (Eagly & Chaiken, 1975; Petty, Wegener, & Fabrigar, 1997). Thus, speakers who are credible, or have expertise on the topic, and who are deemed as trustworthy are more persuasive than less credible speakers.
Features of the message itself that affect persuasion include subtlety (the quality of being important, but not obvious) (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986; Walster & Festinger, 1962); sidedness (that is, having more than one side) (Crowley & Hoyer, 1994; Igou & Bless, 2003; Lumsdaine & Janis, 1953); timing (Haugtvedt & Wegener, 1994; Miller & Campbell, 1959), and whether both sides are presented. Messages that are more subtle are more persuasive than direct messages.
Features of the audience that affect persuasion are attention (Albarracín & Wyer, 2001; Festinger & Maccoby, 1964), intelligence, self-esteem (Rhodes & Wood, 1992), and age (Krosnick & Alwin, 1989). In order to be persuaded, audience members must be paying attention. People with lower intelligence are more easily persuaded than people with higher intelligence; whereas people with moderate self-esteem are more easily persuaded than people with higher or lower self-esteem
An especially popular model that describes the dynamics of persuasion is the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion (Petty & Cacioppo, 1986). The elaboration likelihood model considers the variables of the attitude change approach—that is, features of the source of the persuasive message, contents of the message, and characteristics of the audience are used to determine when attitude change will occur. According to the elaboration likelihood model of persuasion, there are two main routes that play a role in delivering a persuasive message: central and peripheral
The central route is logic driven and uses data and facts to convince people of an argument’s worthiness.
The peripheral route is an indirect route that uses peripheral cues to associate positivity with the message
Using the foot-in-the-door technique, the persuader gets a person to agree to bestow a small favor or to buy a small item, only to later request a larger favor or purchase of a bigger item. The foot-in-the-door technique was demonstrated in a study by Freedman and Fraser (1966) in which participants who agreed to post a small sign in their yard or sign a petition were more likely to agree to put a large sign in their yard than people who declined the first request
A common application of foot-in-the-door is when teens ask their parents for a small permission (for example, extending curfew by a half hour) and then asking them for something larger. Having granted the smaller request increases the likelihood that parents will acquiesce to the later, larger request.
12.4 Conformity, Compliance, and Obedience
A confederate is a person who is aware of the experiment and works for the researcher. Confederates are used to manipulate social situations as part of the research design, and the true, naïve participants believe that confederates are, like them, uninformed participants in the experiment. In Asch’s study, the confederates identified a line segment that was obviously shorter than the target line—a wrong answer. The naïve participant then had to identify aloud the line segment that best matched the target line segment.
Asch (1955) found that 76% of participants conformed to group pressure at least once by indicating the incorrect line. Conformity is the change in a person’s behavior to go along with the group, even if he does not agree with the group.
The Asch effect is the influence of the group majority on an individual’s judgment.
Research shows that the size of the majority, the presence of another dissenter, and the public or relatively private nature of responses are key influences on conformity.
The finding that conformity is more likely to occur when responses are public than when they are private is the reason government elections require voting in secret, so we are not coerced by others
In a different classroom, the majority might vote differently, and most of the children would comply with that majority. When someone’s vote changes if it is made in public versus private, this is known as compliance.
conformity. Compliance is going along with a request or demand, even if you do not agree with the request. In Asch’s studies, the participants complied by giving the wrong answers, but privately did not accept that the obvious wrong answers were correct.
In normative social influence, people conform to the group norm to fit in, to feel good, and to be accepted by the group.
with informational social influence, people conform because they believe the group is competent and has the correct information, particularly when the task or situation is ambiguous.
Obedience is the change of an individual’s behavior to comply with a demand by an authority figure. People often comply with the request because they are concerned about a consequence if they do not comply. To demonstrate this phenomenon, we review another classic social psychology experiment.
The volunteer participants were led to believe that they were participating in a study to improve learning and memory. The participants were told that they were to teach other students (learners) correct answers to a series of test items. The participants were shown how to use a device that they were told delivered electric shocks of different intensities to the learners. The participants were told to shock the learners if they gave a wrong answer to a test item—that the shock would help them to learn. The participants believed they gave the learners shocks, which increased in 15-volt increments, all the way up to 450 volts. The participants did not know that the learners were confederates and that the confederates did not actually receive shocks.
In response to a string of incorrect answers from the learners, the participants obediently and repeatedly shocked them. The confederate learners cried out for help, begged the participant teachers to stop, and even complained of heart trouble. Yet, when the researcher told the participant-teachers to continue the shock, 65% of the participants continued the shock to the maximum voltage and to the point that the learner became unresponsive
For example, when the setting of the experiment was moved to an off-campus office building, the percentage of participants who delivered the highest shock dropped to 48%. When the learner was in the same room as the teacher, the highest shock rate dropped to 40%. When the teachers’ and learners’ hands were touching, the highest shock rate dropped to 30%. When the researcher gave the orders by phone, the rate dropped to 23%. These variations show that when the humanity of the person being shocked was increased, obedience decreased.
Another phenomenon of group conformity is groupthink. Groupthink is the modification of the opinions of members of a group to align with what they believe is the group consensus
In group situations, the group often takes action that individuals would not perform outside the group setting because groups make more extreme decisions than individuals do.
Moreover, groupthink can hinder opposing trains of thought. This elimination of diverse opinions contributes to faulty decision by the group.
There are several symptoms of groupthink including the following:
perceiving the group as invulnerable or invincible—believing it can do no wrong
believing the group is morally correct
self-censorship by group members, such as withholding information to avoid disrupting the group consensus
the quashing of dissenting group members’ opinions
the shielding of the group leader from dissenting views
perceiving an illusion of unanimity among group members
holding stereotypes or negative attitudes toward the out-group or others’ with differing viewpoints
Group polarization (Teger & Pruitt, 1967) is the strengthening of an original group attitude after the discussion of views within a group.
Group polarization can be observed at political conventions, when platforms of the party are supported by individuals who, when not in a group, would decline to support them. Recently, some theorists have argued that group polarization may be partly responsible for the extreme political partisanship that seems ubiquitous in modern society.
Over time, this leads to a strengthening of their own perspective and of hostile attitudes and behaviors towards those with different political ideals. Remarkably, political polarization leads to open levels of discrimination that are on par with, or perhaps exceed, racial discrimination
Social traps refer to situations that arise when individuals or groups of individuals behave in ways that are not in their best interest and that may have negative, long-term consequences.
Social loafing involves a reduction in individual output on tasks where contributions are pooled. Because each individual's efforts are not evaluated, individuals can become less motivated to perform well.
The researchers noted that social loafing could be alleviated if, among other situations, individuals knew their work would be assessed by a manager (in a workplace setting) or instructor (in a classroom setting),
College students could work around social loafing or “free-riding” by suggesting to their professors use of a flocking method to form groups.
compared groups of students who had self-selected into groups for class to those who had been formed by flocking, which involves assigning students to groups who have similar schedules and motivations. Not only did she find that students reported less “free riding,” but that they also did better in the group assignments compared to those whose groups were self-selected.
Deindividuation refers to situations in which a person may feel a sense of anonymity and therefore a reduction in accountability and sense of self when among others.
Deindividuation is often pointed to in cases in which mob or riot-like behaviors occur
but research on the subject and the role that deindividuation plays in such behaviors has resulted in inconsistent results
12.5 Prejudice and Discrimination
Prejudice is a negative attitude and feeling toward an individual based solely on one’s membership in a particular social group
Thus, certain types of education, contact, interactions, and building relationships with members of different cultural groups can reduce the tendency toward prejudice.
What are some examples of social groups that you belong to that contribute to your identity? Social groups can include gender, race, ethnicity, nationality, social class, religion, sexual orientation, profession, and many more.
Prejudice often begins in the form of a stereotype—that is, a specific belief or assumption about individuals based solely on their membership in a group, regardless of their individual characteristics. Stereotypes become overgeneralized and applied to all members of a group.
Discrimination.
Discrimination is negative action toward an individual as a result of one’s membership in a particular group (Allport, 1954; Dovidio & Gaertner, 2004). As a result of holding negative beliefs (stereotypes) and negative attitudes (prejudice) about a particular group, people often treat the target of prejudice poorly, such as excluding older adults from their circle of friends.
However, it is important to also point out that people can hold positive thoughts, feelings, and behaviors toward individuals based on group membership; for example, they would show preferential treatment for people who are like themselves—that is, who share the same gender, race, or favorite sports team.
Racism is prejudice and discrimination against an individual based solely on one’s membership in a specific racial group (such as toward African Americans, Asian Americans, Latinos, Native Americans, European Americans).
Research suggests cultural stereotypes for Asian Americans include cold, sly, and intelligent; for Latinos, cold and unintelligent; for European Americans, cold and intelligent; and for African Americans, aggressive, athletic, and more likely to be law breakers
Humans have two forms of attitudes: explicit attitudes, which are conscious and controllable, and implicit attitudes, which are unconscious and uncontrollable (Devine, 1989; Olson & Fazio, 2003). Because holding egalitarian views is socially desirable (Plant & Devine, 1998), most people do not show extreme racial bias or other prejudices on measures of their explicit attitudes. However, measures of implicit attitudes often show evidence of mild to strong racial bias or other prejudices
Sexism is prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based on their sex. Typically, sexism takes the form of men holding biases against women, but anyone can show sexism toward their own or the other sex. Like racism, sexism may be subtle and difficult to detect.
Common forms of sexism in modern society include gender role expectations, such as expecting women to be the caretakers of the household.
Sexism also includes people’s expectations for how members of a gender group should behave.
For example, women are expected to be friendly, passive, and nurturing, and when women behave in an unfriendly, assertive, or neglectful manner they often are disliked for violating their gender role.
ageism, or prejudice and discrimination toward individuals based solely on their age.
Some cultures, however, including some Asian, Latino, and African American cultures, both outside and within the United States afford older adults respect and honor.
is homophobia: an umbrella term referring to prejudice and discrimination of individuals based solely on their sexual orientation, which is often applied to bisexual, lesbian, gay, and other non-heterosexual people.
Transphobia is the hatred or fear of those who are perceived to break or blur stereotypical gender roles, often expressed as stereotyping, discrimination, harassment and/or violence.
Negative feelings often result in discrimination, such as the exclusion of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ+) people from social groups and the avoidance of LGBTQ+ neighbors and co-workers. This discrimination also extends to employers deliberately declining to hire qualified LGBTQ+ job applicants, a practice officially outlawed by a 2020 Supreme Court decision but which remains a significant issue.
Prejudice and discrimination persist in society due to social learning and conformity to social norms. Children learn prejudiced attitudes and beliefs from society: their parents, teachers, friends, the media, and other sources of socialization, such as social media
For example, public and private schools are still somewhat segregated by social class. Historically, only children from wealthy families could afford to attend private schools, whereas children from middle- and low-income families typically attended public schools.
A self-fulfilling prophecy is an expectation held by a person that alters their behavior in a way that tends to make it true. When we hold stereotypes about a person, we tend to treat the person according to our expectations.
This treatment can influence the person to act according to our stereotypic expectations, thus confirming our stereotypic beliefs.
When interacting with the target of our prejudice, we tend to pay attention to information that is consistent with our stereotypic expectations and ignore information that is inconsistent with our expectations. In this process, known as confirmation bias, we seek out information that supports our stereotypes and ignore information that is inconsistent with our stereotypes
An in-group is a group that we identify with or see ourselves as belonging to.
or an out-group, is a group that we view as fundamentally different from us. For example, if you are a woman, your gender in-group includes all women, and your gender out-group includes all men
This in-group bias can result in prejudice and discrimination because the out-group is perceived as different and is less preferred than our in-group.
. Scapegoating is the act of blaming an out-group when the in-group experiences frustration or is blocked from obtaining a goal
Despite the group dynamics that seem only to push groups toward conflict, there are forces that promote reconciliation between groups: the expression of empathy, acknowledgment of past suffering on both sides, and the halt of destructive behaviors.
12.6 Aggression
Humans engage in aggression when they seek to cause harm or pain to another person.
Hostile aggression is motivated by feelings of anger with intent to cause pain; a fight in a bar with a stranger is an example of hostile aggression.
instrumental aggression is motivated by achieving a goal and does not necessarily involve intent to cause pain
From the perspective of evolutionary psychology, human male aggression, like that in nonhuman primates, likely serves to display dominance over other males, both to protect a mate and to perpetuate the male’s genes
Although aggression provides an obvious evolutionary advantage for men, women also engage in aggression. Women typically display more indirect forms of aggression, with their aggression serving as a means to an end
For example, women may express their aggression covertly by communication that impairs the social standing of another person.
Bullying is repeated negative treatment of another person, often an adolescent, over time (Olweus, 1993).
A one-time incident in which one child hits another child on the playground would not be considered bullying: Bullying is repeated behavior. The negative treatment typical in bullying is the attempt to inflict harm, injury, or humiliation, and bullying can include physical or verbal attacks.
bullying doesn’t have to be physical or verbal, it can be psychological.
Bullying involves three parties: the bully, the victim, and witnesses or bystanders. The act of bullying involves an imbalance of power with the bully holding more power—physically, emotionally, and/or socially over the victim.
Children who are emotionally reactive are at a greater risk for being bullied. Bullies may be attracted to children who get upset easily because the bully can quickly get an emotional reaction from them.
Children who are different from others are likely to be targeted for bullying. Children who are overweight, cognitively impaired, or racially or ethnically different from their peer group may be at higher risk.
Gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender teens are at very high risk of being bullied and hurt due to their sexual orientation.
Cyberbullying, like bullying, is repeated behavior that is intended to cause psychological or emotional harm to another person. What is unique about cyberbullying is that it is typically covert, concealed, done in private, and the bully can remain anonymous.
some studies indicating that nearly three in five teens have experienced some type of online abusive behavior such as non-repeated name-calling or being sent unsolicited links or images
Cyberbullying can take many forms, including harassing a victim by spreading rumors, creating a website defaming the victim, threatening the victim, or teasing the victim
In cyberbullying, it is more common for girls to be the bullies and victims. Interestingly, girls who become cyberbullies often have been the victims of cyberbullying at one time
Girls were more likely to say someone spread rumors about them online while boys were more likely to say that someone threatened to hurt them online
The effects of cyberbullying are just as harmful as traditional bullying and include the victim feeling frustration, anger, sadness, helplessness, powerlessness, and fear. Victims will also experience lower self-esteem
Cyberbullying is a form of aggression and, depending on the messages and methods, can be considered harassment, stalking, or assault—all subject to prosecution.
The bystander effect is a phenomenon in which a witness or bystander does not volunteer to help a victim or person in distress. Instead, they just watch what is happening. Social psychologists hold that we make these decisions based on the social situation, not our own personality variables.
Diffusion of responsibility is the tendency for no one in a group to help because the responsibility to help is spread throughout the group
In general, the greater the number of bystanders, the less likely any one person will help.
12.7 Prosocial Behavior
Voluntary behavior with the intent to help other people is called prosocial behavior
Altruism is people’s desire to help others even if the costs outweigh the benefits of helping. In fact, people acting in altruistic ways may disregard the personal costs associated with helping
Some researchers suggest that altruism operates on empathy. Empathy is the capacity to understand another person’s perspective, to feel what they feel. An empathetic person makes an emotional connection with others and feels compelled to help
Other researchers argue that altruism is a form of selfless helping that is not motivated by benefits or feeling good about oneself.
It is challenging to determine experimentally the true motivation for helping, whether it is largely self-serving (egoism) or selfless (altruism).
What do you think is the single most influential factor in determining with whom you become friends and with whom you form romantic relationships? You might be surprised to learn that the answer is simple: the people with whom you have the most contact. This most important factor is proximity.
Similarity is another factor that influences who we form relationships with. We are more likely to become friends or lovers with someone who is similar to us in background, attitudes, and lifestyle.
Homophily is the tendency for people to form social networks, including friendships, marriage, business relationships, and many other types of relationships, with others who are similar
But, homophily limits our exposure to diversity
Reciprocity is the give and take in relationships. We contribute to relationships, but we expect to receive benefits as well. That is, we want our relationships to be a two way street. We are more likely to like and engage with people who like us back.
Self-disclosure is the sharing of personal information
People differ in what they consider attractive, and attractiveness is culturally influenced. Research, however, suggests that some universally attractive features in women include large eyes, high cheekbones, a narrow jaw line, a slender build
For men, attractive traits include being tall, having broad shoulders, and a narrow waist (Buss, 1989). Both men and women with high levels of facial and body symmetry are generally considered more attractive than asymmetric individuals
Social traits that people find attractive in potential female mates include warmth, affection, and social skills; in males, the attractive traits include achievement, leadership qualities, and job skills
For example, you and most people you know likely would say that a very attractive movie star is out of your league. So, even if you had proximity to that person, you likely would not ask them out on a date because you believe you likely would be rejected.
there are three components of love: intimacy, passion, and commitment. These three components form a triangle that defines multiple types of love: this is known as Sternberg’s triangular theory of love
Intimacy is the sharing of details and intimate thoughts and emotions. Passion is the physical attraction—the flame in the fire. Commitment is standing by the person—the “in sickness and health” part of the relationship.
Companionate love, which is characteristic of close friendships and family relationships, consists of intimacy and commitment but no passion. Romantic love is defined by having passion and intimacy, but no commitment. Finally, fatuous love is defined by having passion and commitment, but no intimacy, such as a long term sexual love affair.
states that a healthy relationship will have all three components of love—intimacy, passion, and commitment—which is described as consummate love
According to social exchange theory, we act as naïve economists in keeping a tally of the ratio of costs and benefits of forming and maintaining a relationship with others
People prefer to have more benefits than costs, or to have nearly equal costs and benefits, but most people are dissatisfied if their social exchanges create more costs than benefits.