Attraction

WHAT IS LOVE?


Rollo May

  • to love is to care, to recognize the essential humanity of the other person, to have an active regard for that person’s development.


Erich Fromm

  • union with somebody, or something outside oneself under the conditions of retaining the separateness and integrity of one’s own self.


“Love is not a thing or a pattern. It is simply a word that we use to gloss over the amazingly diverse, complex, and even messy, realities of human relationships. And as always, being human is much more interesting than that.”


  • Psychology Today


“... To give visibility to love, I made a simple substitution in my most famous equation. If instead of E = mc2, we accept that the energy to heal the world can be obtained through love multiplied by the speed of light squared, we arrive at the conclusion that love is the most powerful force there is, because it has no limits. ”


                   - Albert Einstein


THE BRAIN IN LOVE

Ostracism

  • the act of ignoring or being excluded

  • a real pain

  • a natural painkiller


WHAT ENABLES CLOSE RELATIONSHIPS?


Attachment

  • our  need to belong is adaptive

  • biological 


Hormones of Love:

  • oxytocin- “love/ cuddle hormone”

  • vasopressin- bonding, attachment 


Helen Fisher

  • Lust- estrogen, testosterone 

  • Attraction- dopamine, norepinephrine, and serotonin 

  • Rewards Systems:

    • ventral tegmental area

    • caudate nucleus

    • nucleus accumbens- impaired prefrontal cortex 

For Lasting Relationships 


  • overlook what you do not like and focus on what you can do; do activities that will sustain the brain areas for mating and reproduction

  • sustain deep attachment (communicate, touch (with consent); say nice or good things to your partner


“We're built to love.”

  • Dr. Helen Fisher


FACTORS THAT LEAD TO LOVING


1 | PROXIMITY

  • (geographical nearness or functional distance) powerfully predicts liking


  1. Interaction- functional distance

  • you become friends with your roommates

  • enables people to explore similarities, sense one another's liking, and perception as a social unit

  • availability

  1. Anticipation of interaction 

  • boosts liking

  • John Darley and Ellen Berscheid (1967):participants preferred the person they expected to meet

  • expecting to date someone also boosts liking

  • why? Adaptive

  • expecting that someone will be pleasant and compatible-increases the chance of a rewarding relationship


2 | FAMILIARITY: MERE-EXPOSURE EFFECT 

  • repeated exposure to a person or any stimuli is often sufficient enough to produce attraction. But if the initial interactions, though, repeated exposure may instead intensify our initial dislike

  • more than 200 experiments revealed that: 

    • familiarity does not breed contempt, but rather fondness

  • liking or disliking someone or something without knowing why

  • Zajonc (1980): emotions are often more instantaneous than thinking

  • emotions and cognitions are enabled by distinct

  • damage in the amygdala, emotional responses will be impaired but cognitive functions are still intact

  • damage in the hippocampus, cognition will be impaired but emotional responses are still intact

  • repetition alone can increase sales or votes when people do not have strong emotions about a I candidate or product

  • repetitions can lead to unthinking, automatic, favorable response to the product/candidate

  • this explains why those candidates who are relatively unknown but have the most media exposure win!


3 | SIMILARITY

  • discovering that others have similar attitudes, values, or traits makes us like them more. The more similar others are, the more we like them.

  • the greater the similarity between husband and wife, the happier they are and less likely to be divorced

  • dating couples with more similar political and religious attitudes were more likely to still be together after 11 months comed plotless


Similarity in terms of: 

  • Demographic: age, religion

  • Attitudes, opinions

  • physical


Similarity: Attitudes 

  • Research shows that people liked others they perceived as being similar to their attitudes

  • newlywed couples decide to marry someone who shared their political attitudes, religiosity and values but did not start out as having similar personalities (Lou & Klohnen, 2005)


Similarity: Subjective Experience

  • similar event such as laughing at the same thing at the same time, people might feel that they have shared a subjective experience

  • Pinel and others refer to this as the I-sharing


Likeness begets liking

  • Donn and Byrne (1971) : the more similar someone's attitudes are to your own, the more you will like the person


"At two of Hong Kong's universities, Royce Lee and Michael Bond (1996) found that roommate friendships flourished over a six-month period when roommates shared values and personality traits but more so when they perceived their roommates as similar. As so often happens, reality matters, but perception matters more."


"In various settings, researchers at Wilfrid Laurier University found that people entering a room of strangers sit closer to those like themselves (Mackinnon, Jordan, & Wilson, 20ll). People with glasses sit closer to others with glasses. Long-haired people sit closer to people with long hair. Dark-haired people sit closer to people with dark hair (even after controlling for race and sex).raits but more so when they perceived their roommates as similar. As so often happens, reality matters, but perception matters more."




Dissimilarity breeds dislike

  • false-consensus bias: assume that others share our attitudes

  • if someone has dissimilar attitudes pertaining to our moral convictions, we dislike and distance ourself from that person


Attitude Alignment- promotes and sustains close relationships

  • phenomenon that can lead partners to overestimate their attitude similarities

  • Perceiving another person as "other" invites conflict

  • perception of like minds seems more important for attraction than like skins

  • ex. liberals expressed dislike for conservatives and vice-versa but race did not affect liking


Cultural Racism- according to James Jones 

  • persists because of cultural differences

  • Black people- present-oriented, spontaneously expressive, spiritual and emotional driven

  • White people- future-oriented, materialistic, achievement oriented

  • appreciate what they contribute to the cultural fabric of our multicultural society


Similarity

  • Reciprocity-of-liking effect

    • We like to be liked, and just knowing that someone likes us is enough for us to feel attracted to that person.

Two-Stage Model of the Attraction Process

by Byrne and his colleagues (1986)














Do opposite poles attract or birds of the same feather flock together?

  • Research do not support the complementarity hypothesis, similarity is still the key to attraction



4 | PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS 

  • presumption that physically attractive people possess other socially desirable traits as well

  • What is beautiful is good

  • William Goldman and Philip Lewis (1977) 

    • 60 University of Georgia men call and talk for five minutes with each of three women I students. Afterward the men and women I rated the most attractive of their unseen telephone partners as somewhat more socially skillful and likable.


Matching Hypothesis

  • We choose someone of the same level of attractiveness

  • Research by Bernard Murstein (1986) 

    • people pair off with people who are about as attractive as they are.

  • Gregory White (1980) from a study of I UCLA dating couples. 

    • Those who were most similar in physical attractiveness were most likely, nine months later, to have fallen more deeply in love.

  • In  a relationship where there is a different level of attractiveness, the less attractive person often has compensating qualities.






PURSUING THOSE WHO ARE HARD TO GET


  • hard to get- tendency to prefer people who are highly selective in their social choices over those who are more readily available

  • we prefer individuals who are moderately selective than those who have low standards or are too selective



HOW ABOUT LOVE STORIES THAT ARE OPPOSED OR FORBIDDEN BY PARENTS/ OTHERS?


Theory of psychological reactance

  • people react against threats to their freedom by asserting themselves and seeing the threatened freedom as more attractive

  • if  you are in a forbidden or opposed one, you might try to reassert yourself by wanting the relationship more


SELF-ESTEEM AND ATTRACTION


Elaine Hatfield

  • she gave some women either very favorable or unfavorable analyses of their personalities, affirming some and wounding others

  • then she asked them to evaluate several people, including an attractive male confederate who just before the experiment had struck up a warm conversation with each woman and had asked each for a date.

  • which women do you suppose most liked the man?

  • people fall passionately in love on the rebound, after an ego-bruising rejection

  • Jessica Cameron et al., (2010)

    • when partners behave in an equally friendly way, low self-esteem individuals believe they will be less accepted than high self-esteem individuals.

  • low-self-esteem individuals: behave in a less warm and friendly manner leading to less acceptance by others








GAINING ANOTHER'S ESTEEM


  • other's nice words have more credibility coming after not-so-nice-words, or perhaps, after being withheld, they are especially gratifying

  • Aronson (1965)

    • constant approval can lose value

  • An open, honest relationship- one where people enjoy one another's esteem and acceptance yet are honest- is more likely to offer continuing rewards than one dulled by the suppression of unpleasant emotions


"As a relationship ripens toward greater intimacy, what becomes increasingly important is authenticity- our ability to give up trying to make a good impression and begin to reveal things about ourselves that are honest even if unsavory... If two people are genuinely fond of each other, they will have a more satisfying and exciting relationship over a longer period of time if they are able to express both positive and negative feelings than if they are completely "nice" to each other at all times." 


  • Aronson (1988)


SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY


  • A perspective that views people as motivated to maximize benefits and minimize costs in their relationships with others

  • Comparison Level (CL) (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959) average outcome in relationships

  •  we evaluate the rewards and costs of our relationships in terms of how they compare to what we expect or believe we deserve in such a relationship

  • Comparison Level for alternatives (CLalt) (Thibaut & Kelley, 1959), expectations of what couples would get in alternative situation

  • rewards available elsewhere are high, less commitment

  • few acceptable alternatives (low CLalt), they will stay in the relationship


for a dyadic relationship to be viable it must provide rewards and or economies in costs which compare favorably with those in other competing relationship or activities available to the two individuals"


  • Thibaut & Kelley (1959)



FORECASTED REWARDS AND COSTS


  •  we assess the future of our relationships, evaluating potential rewards and costs

  • usually this happens at the beginning of a relationship

  • predicted outcome value: our goal of maximizing outcomes leads to evaluating the likelihood of positive or negative outcomes if we pursue a given relationship


CUMULATIVE REWARDS AND COSTS


  • represents the sum total of the f rewards and costs (profits) a person receives over the history of the relationship

  • helps explain why we don't immediately end relationships the moment the immediate costs exceed the rewards


THE MOST SATISFYING AND STABLE RELATIONSHIPS


  • would be one where the forecasted profits and current outcomes exceed the comparison level of our expectations and alternatives

  •  most unstable and least satisfying: an alternative appears to exceed comparison level of expectation, which exceeds our current outcomes and forecasted profits, and the cumulative costs exceed the cumulative rewards

SOCIAL EXCHANGE THEORY


  • Commitment can affect our perceptions of alternatives

  • people who are in love will see others as less attractive

  • Investment-something a person puts in the relationship

  • increases commitment














EQUITY THEORY


  1. The theory that people are most satisfied with a relationship when the ratio between benefits and contributions is similar for both partners







Two Factors that influence Equity

  1. Our social exchanges don't necessarily require immediate payback from our partners

    • the time we allow is affected by how important the relationship is and how important the relationship is and how great the cost was to you

  2. Assessment of the costs and rewards relative to the partners' abilities to provide them or the relative availability of resources

    • what is equitable rests on our minds


BREAKING UP

1. UNEQUAL OUTCOMES AND INSTABILITY


  • We can assess our actual outcomes; we can evaluate the rewards we are obtaining relative to the costs of maintaining the relationship.

  • What about people who differ in attractiveness?

  • The less attractive person will benefit from associating with the more attractive, whereas the more attractive person will experience less positive outcomes.


2. DIFFERENTIAL COMMITMENT

  • In a study in four colleges and universities in Boston, 231 couples filled out an initial questionnaire and completed three follow-up questionnaires, 6 months, 1 year, and 2 years later.

  • Results:

    • couples who were more involved initially- who were dating exclusively, who rated themselves as very close, who said they were in love, and who estimated a high probability that would get married- were more likely to be together 2 years later.

  • Those who reported equal involvement initially, 23% broke up in the following 2 years; 54% (who reported unequal involvement) were no longer seeing each other 2 years later.


TYPES OF LOVE


Passionate love

  • represents an intense absorption in someone 

Companionate love

  • strong affection we have for those with whom our lives are deeply involved like family and close friends



COMPONENTS OF LOVE (ROBERT STERNBERG)



Decision/ commitment

  • initial thoughts that one loves someone and the longer-term feelings of commitment to maintain love

Intimacy

  • feelings of closeness and connectedness

Passion

  • sex, physical closeness and romance



TYPES OF LOVE IPORERT STERNBERG)



























“Love is a decision, it is a judgment, it is a promise. If love were only a feeling, there would be no basis for the promise to love each other forever. A feeling comes and it may go. How can I judge that it will stay forever, when my act does not involve judgment and decision.”

  • Erich Fromm, The Art of Loving




"Love is the only way to grasp another human being in the innermost core of his personality. No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.”

  • Viktor Frankl