UNIT 3 Psychology of relationships

Interpersonal Attraction

Attraction is a step ahead of interaction. More than interpersonal relation, the interpersonal attraction is prolonged relationship between two person. Attraction serve as a function in forming social network (relations) which result in security, belongingness to social groups.

factors influencing attraction

  1. Individual differences in need to affiliate

    • different individuals have different intensity of desire to affiliate with others and to form relations. People around us may be sociable and extrovert or may be introvert and prefer to be alone. These depend upon a person’s life experience. This tendency forms relatively stable traits which remain more or less unchanged for whole life span. When affiliation is not fulfilled, an individual develops feeling of being ignored or social exclusion

  2. Situational influence on need of affiliation

    • many external events may also influence the need to affiliate. One possible reason for affiliation with people who experience similar problems may be that during troubled times people seek social comparison. Such comparisons provides them cognitive clarity (know what is happening) and emotional clarity (know how does it feel) with such comparisons, they compare their perceptions with those of others which further lead them to reduce uncertainty.

external factors affecting attraction

  1. Proximity

    • two persons are likely to know each other if their environment repeatedly brings them into contact. The mere exposure effect suggests that something seen multiple times elicits positive response. A possible explanation for mere exposure effect may that unknown and unfamiliar stimuli are considered as uncomfortable because of uncertainty about their behaviour. However, repeated exposure reduces unpredictability about the stimulus leading to enhanced positive emotions towards it.

  2. Observable characteristics

    • not only familiarity, evoked by repeated exposure, elicits positive effect which may also be elicited by some observable characteristics, physical appearance may be one of the most misleading cues about someone’s inner personality; yet it is a very powerful factor to initiate relationship between 2 individuals. It has been found that people associate qualities like interesting, sociable, dominant, skilled, successful, etc. with attractive people. Although these associations may be incorrect, misguiding and illogical; yet, researchers have found that attractiveness is usually associated with popularity, high self esteem and good interpersonal skills.

internal factors affecting attraction

  1. Similarity

    • It not only evokes positive feelings but also has many other effects. We tend to evaluate similar people as more intelligent and better adjusted than the dissimilar people. This consideration of similarity initiates attraction towards other individual.

    • social psychologists have been exploring that why similarity causes attraction while dissimilarity causes repulsion. People have a natural tendency to organise their likes and dislikes in a symmetrical way. Similarity of thoughts, ideas, attitudes, etc., between 2 persons constitutes a state of balance which is emotionally pleasing to both the persons. Similarly, discovering dissimilarity in some respect causes imbalance which is emotionally unpleasant. An imbalanced state drives individuals to restore balance by any of the three methods

      • causing one of them to change or to misperceive the dissimilarity or by developing dislikes each other.

    • social comparison theory suggests that we tend to compare our thoughts, beliefs and attitudes with those of others in order to validate them.

  2. Mutual liking (reciprocity)

    • sometimes we like people because they like us and are nice to us. we encounter this technique several times in our life. Research findings have shown that this proves to be a powerful technique in gaining favours and likings.

Theories

Social exchange theory

People’s feelings toward a potential partner are dependent on their perception of rewards and costs, the kind of relationship they deserve, and their likelihood for having a healthier relationship with someone else. Rewards are the part of a relationship that makes it worthwhile and enjoyable. The cost is something that can cause irritation like a friend overstaying his welcome.

Comparison level is also taken into account during a relationship. This suggest that people expect reward or costs depending on the time invested in the relationship. If the level of expected reward is minimal and the level of costs is high, the relationship suffers and both parties may become dissatisfied and unhappy.

Lastly, the comparison of alternatives means that satisfaction is conditional on the chance that a person could replace the relationship with a more desirable one.

evolutionary theories

The evolutionary theory of human interpersonal attraction states that opposite-sex attraction most often occurs when someone has physical features indicating that he or she is very fertile. Considering that the primary purpose of conjugal/romantic relationship is reproduction, it would follow that people invest in partners who appear very fertile, increasing the chance of their genes being passed down to the next generation. This theory has been criticised because it does not explain relationship between same-sex couples or couples who do not want children, although this may have something to do with the fact that where one want children or not is still subject to the evolutionary forces which produce them.

Another evolutionary explanation suggests that fertility in a mate is of greater importance to men than to women. According to this theory a women places significant emphasis on a man’s ability to provide resources and protection. The theory suggests that the resources and protection are important in ensuring the successful raising of the women’s offsprings. The ability to provide resources and protection might also be sought because the underlying traits are likely to be passed on to male offspring.

Evolutionary theory also suggests that people whose physical features suggest they are healthy are seen as more attractive. The theory suggests that a healthy mate is more likely to posses genetic traits related to health that would be passed on to the offspring. People’s tendency to consider people with facial symmetry more attractive than those with less symmetrical faces is one example. However, a test was conduced that found that perfectly symmetrical faces were less attractive than normal faces.

It has also been suggested that people are attracted to faces similar to their own. Case studies have revealed that when a photograph of a woman was superimposed to include the features of a man’s face, the man whose face was superimposed almost always rated that picture the most attractive. This theory is based on the notion that we want to replicate our own features in the next generation, as we have survived thus far with such features and have instinctive survival wished for our children. Another (non-evolutionary) explanation given for the results of that study was that the man whose face was superimposed may have consciously or subconsciously associated the photographically altered female with the face of his mother or other family member.

Evolutionary theory also suggests that love keeps two people together so they can raise a child, for example, a man and a woman who love each other would be together and work together to raise a child. Back in the tribal days—when much of human evolution took place—it would probably require two people to successfully raise an offspring, and a mother with supporting partner would probably have more surviving offspring than a mother who does not have such a partner. Thus, people with the ability to form love would produce more offsprings than those without that ability. And these offspring would have the genes for love. Thus, the genes for love would become common, that is why most people today have the ability to love.

the reciprocity-of-liking rule

A naive observer from another culture would have little trouble discovering one reward which people in our society spend a tremendous amount of time, money and effort to obtain. Just a brief glance at a few television commercials would reveal that the desire for esteem of others must be a very strong and pervasive motivation, for it is often exploited by those who have something to sell. Countless everyday observations provide a great deal of evidence that we value highly the esteem of others and will work hard to obtain this reward. If esteem is indeed a reward, and if it is true that we tend to like those who reward us, it follows that we should like people who like us. The proposition that esteem will be reciprocated can be derived from several psychological theories. Theorists who take the reinforcement point of view reason that most general determinants of interpersonal esteem are reciprocal rewards and punishment. Some of these theorists (e.g., Homans, 1961) have specifically noted that one type of reward to which people are extremely responsive is social approval or esteem. Like money, social approval is viewed as a generalised, “transituational” reinforcer because it has the power to reinforce a wide variety of human activities, it is valuable because its possession makes one reasonably confident that his needs will be satisfied; a lack of social approval often indicates that many of one’s needs—those which require the good will and cooperation of others for satisfaction—will be frustrated.

Cognitive-consistency theorists also make the reciprocal-liking prediction. Heider’s balance theory (1958), for example, predicts that if person A likes X (himself) and person B likes X (person A), a cognitively balanced state in which person A likes person B will be induced. Many correlational data, obtained from a variety of psychological studies, have been cited in support of the reciprocal-liking proposition (e.g., Newcomb, 1963). These data provide evidence that individuals tend to believe that people they like reciprocate their liking. If it is true that we like people who like us, we would expect to find such a correlation. Taken alone, however, these data do not provide conclusive evidence for reciprocity of liking. Either one of two processes, or both, could be responsible for the observed correlation between the extent to which we feel another likes us and the extent to which we like him.