Chapter 5 - Attraction

Interpersonal Attraction

Overview

• Interpersonal attraction is one's attitude about another person, reflecting how much we like or love them, encompassing intimate relationships and friendships.

• It is expressed along a dimension from strong liking to dislike, involving not only physical aspects but also personality, preferences, and beliefs.

• Ambivalence exists concerning attractiveness, with the saying "Don’t judge the book by its cover" contrasting with the reality that attractiveness is often an asset.

Physical Attractiveness

• Physical attractiveness is challenging to define and measure.

• Approaches to understanding it include:

  • Identifying common traits among individuals considered attractive.

    • Examples include childlike/cute and mature types of attractive women.

    • Face research indicates preferences for youthful features like large, round eyes and clean skin, associated with positive outcomes.

    • Sexual dimorphism, with distinct physical features between genders (masculine faces as more square, broad jaws), is also a desired trait.

  • Symmetry of face and body is preferred, potentially indicating health and reproductive fitness.

    • Symmetrical faces are perceived as more likable, familiar, and less threatening.

  • Averaging multiple faces creates composite faces that are often seen as more attractive.

    • This may be linked to similarity to oneself, fostering familiarity and likability.

• Other determinants of attraction beyond facial features:

  • Physical health/lack of observable disabilities.

  • Age.

  • Body size.

  • Mental health.

  • Clothing.

  • Name.

  • Culture.

  • Smiling expression and good grooming.

Gender Differences

• Similarities in what each gender values outweigh differences in attraction.

• Both genders value physical attractiveness, intelligence, sociability, kindness, and humor.

• Men value physical attractiveness and youthfulness more than women.

• Women value status more than men.

• Explanations for these differences include evolutionary perspectives, social norms, expectations, and the reality of women having lower status, leading them to aspire to higher status partners.

• Female preference for male status over male attractiveness is higher in cultures where women are poor and less educated.

Importance of Physical Attractiveness

• Attractiveness may signal health and reproductive success.

  • Facial features such as youthfulness, clean skin, symmetry, femininity in females, and masculinity in males.

  • Pitch of voice, higher in women and lower in men.

  • Body aspects such as waist-to-hip ratio (Western ideals: 0.7 in women, 0.9 in men), and average body size.

  • Lack of disability may be associated with positively understood averageness.

  • Positive expressions and behaviors.

• Attraction is multifaceted, combining aesthetic and sexual preferences with personality, culture, life phase, and both short- and long-term plans.

Determinants of Attraction

• Internal determinants: Located within us.

• External determinants: Located in others.

• Interactive determinants: Based on interactions with others.

Internal Determinants

• Need to affiliate.

• Affect as a basic response system.

Need to Affiliate

• Built-in need to associate with other human beings in a friendly, cooperative way.

• Possible neurobiological bases.

• Newborns prefer faces to other stimuli.

• Evolutionary perspective: the need is adaptive for survival.

• Situational differences:

  • Common mortality salience response.

  • Affiliation provides a chance for social comparison and emotional exchange.

  • Participants expecting an electric shock preferred to spend time with others expecting it.

• Individual differences:

  • Dismissive avoidant attachment style: people claiming to have little need for emotional relations, avoiding close relationships.

  • Attachment styles play an important role in relationships; attachment anxiety involves fear of rejection and abandonment.

Caravallo & Gabriel Study (2006)

• Participants exchanged information with three others, rating and ranking their preferences for a task partner.

• They received information that they were either accepted (highest rank) or were randomly assigned a partner (control condition).

• Measures included attachment style, current mood, and self-esteem.

• Participants high in dismissing attachment style showed a significant increase in mood and self-esteem when they thought they were accepted.

Affect as Basic Response System

• Affect is one’s emotional state, including positive and negative feelings and moods.

• Positive affect leads to positive evaluations of others (liking), while negative affect leads to disliking.

  • Direct effect on attraction: when another person does/says something that evokes a positive or negative feeling.

  • Associated (indirect) effect: when another person is present while our emotional state is aroused (classical conditioning principle).

• Positive affect may be based on external reasons such as background music or mood before interaction.

Positive Affect and Attraction

• Positive affect may lead to attraction and influence.

  • Salespeople try to evoke a positive response.

  • Laughter strengthens social bonds.

  • Political advertisements use smiling faces = more likable faces.

External Determinants

• Proximity (propinquity effect).

• Observable characteristics.

Proximity

• Physical closeness between two individuals (residence, seating arrangement).

• Adaptive to feel mild discomfort when seeing something new.

  • Unknown = potentially dangerous.

  • Known = familiar = liked.

• Smaller distance increases chances of repeated contact and mutual attraction.

• Infants smile at photos of someone they have seen before.

• Increased liking for a person seen more frequently (e.g., 15 times attending a class).

Observable Characteristics

• Instant likes or dislikes based on past experiences, stereotypes, attributions, priming, or associations.

• Physical attractiveness: a combination of characteristics evaluated as beautiful or handsome (positive extreme) or unattractive (negative extreme).

• Halo effect: cognitive bias where an impression of someone is formed based on how they are judged on a single attribute.

  • In aesthetic appearance, the halo effect may lead to evaluations for attributes unrelated to appearance: what-is-beautiful-is-good aka the attractiveness-leniency effect.

  • It may impact outcomes and is intuitive, pervasive, and hard to get rid of.

Halo Effect Studies

• Edward Thorndike (1920): appearances correlated with assumptions about ”good” character.

• Dion, Berscheid, & Walster (1972): attractive targets evaluated more positively, believed to have more socially desirable traits, happier lives, and better careers.

• Dion (1977): severe transgressions by attractive children were evaluated less negatively and attributed to the situation.

• Landy & Sigall (1974): essays by attractive authors were rated better.

• Kramer, Jarvis, Green, & Jones (2023): attractive defendants rated as less guilty of murder but more guilty of sexual assault.

• Swami, Arthley, & Furnham (2017): attractive targets seen as guiltier and deserving of more severe punishment for serious transgressions.

Interactive Determinants

• Similarity: birds of a feather flock together.

• Mutual liking.

• Complementarity vs. similarity:

  • In general, similarity is preferred.

  • Matching hypothesis: individuals form committed relationships with those who are equally attractive.

  • Principle of homophily: we tend to associate with those similar to us.

  • Complementarity may operate in early relationship phases, e.g., dominance and submission.

  • Gender role expectations and relationship phase influence complementarity.

Similarity Studies

• Francis Galton (1870): correlational design, spouses.

• Newcomb (1959): experimental design; Stage 1: measurement of attitudes; Stage 2: measurement of liking; higher initial similarity = more liking.

• Similarity in attitudes, beliefs, personalities, values, interests, and looks.

• Perceived vs. actual similarity: perceived similarity better predicts liking and attraction.

• Similarity-dissimilarity effect: responding positively to similarity and negatively to dissimilarity.

Proportion of Similarity

• Proportion \space of \space similarity = \frac{number \space of \space similar \space views}{total \space number \space of \space topics \space communicated}; higher the value, the greater the liking

• Balance theory (Heider, 1958; Newcomb, 1961):

  • Balance = liking + agreement = positive emotional state.

  • Imbalance = liking + disagreement = negative state, desire to restore balance.

  • Nonbalance = disliking + agreement/disagreement = indifference.

• Social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954): comparing with others to validate views and beliefs.

• Adaptive response (Gould, 1996): dissimilarity generates animosity as it may be dangerous.

Reciprocal Liking

• Intermediate step between initial attraction and relationship establishment.

• Positive mutual evaluation (mutual attraction) adds positivity for each party.

• Positive feedback is pleasant; negative feedback is not.

• Inaccurate positive evaluation or flattery counts if not seen as insincere.

• Nonverbal signs of attraction can include proximity.

• Liking leading to proximity.

Liking and Loving in the Longer Run

• Crucial factors in long-term relationships:

• Physical attractiveness, similarity, and proximity still matter.

  • Closeness and intimacy via self-disclosure, empathy, care, acceptance, and support.

  • Communality (vs. exchange relationships), suspending need for equity and exchange.

  • Interdependence and commitment: feelings and actions to maintain the relationship.

Sternberg's Triangle of Love (1986)

Individual Differences Matter

Attachment Styles (Ainsworth et al. 1978, after John Bowlby)

• Childhood (secure, ambivalent, avoidant, disorganized/disoriented) vs. adult life (secure, anxious-preoccupied, dismissive-avoidant, fearful-avoidant).

• Developed in childhood but modified later in life.

• Secure attachment: healthy feelings about the self and important others.

• Avoidant attachment: healthy feelings about the self but fears about connecting with others.

• Anxious/ambivalent attachment: desires to reach out but anxious about the self.

• Fearful attachment: poor relationships and self-concept.