Factors Affecting Attraction

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Physical Attraction Intro

  • based on evolution
  • certain features suggest fertility or ability to care/provide for their partner
  • first feature that we notice about people
  • basis of online dating apps
  • important factor in formation of romatic relationships
  • different agreement of what is attractive across cultures
  • assumption that we seek to find a relationship with the most attractive person possible
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The Importance of Physical Attraction

Symmetrical Faces

  • Shackelford and Larsen
  • suggests genetic fitness (lopsided faces supposedly reflect bad foetal development)
  • hard to fake symmetrical beauty with plastic surgery
  • suggests that the children they will produce will be genetically beautiful

Neotony

  • people with baby faces
  • triggers an innate tendency to want to care for that person
  • good for females who want their partners to care for them and their babies
  • large eyes, delicate chin, button nose

Initial Attraction

  • McNulty
  • in early relationships, and commited marriages, physical attraction is important
  • brings partners together
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PA: The Halo Effect

  • preconceived ideas about personality traits that attractive people have, usually positive
  • physical attractiveness stereotype
  • Dion found that physically attractive people were often thought of as kind, strong, successful and sociable
  • self-fulfilling prophecy, as this then makes them more attractive to us
  • tends to have a disproportionate influence over our perception of their personality and other unrelated attributes
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The Halo Effect Evaluation

For

  • Palmer and Peterson - participants thought that the attractive confederates were more politically competent than the unattractive ones, despite it being obvious that they had no expertise
  • chart singers are rarely unattractive - we instantly think that because an artist is attractive, they make good music and are more deserving of success

Against

  • researchers have found that both men and women actually prefer someone who is supportive, warm and trustworthy, over looks (do not generalise these traits to looks)
  • some people are less sensitive to physical attractiveness when making judgements about likeability
  • some people instantly hates attractive people because of jealousy or past experience (individual differences)
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PA: The Matching Hypothesis

  • proposed by Walster
  • we make a realistic valuation of ourselves on how physically attractive we are in our social context
  • we are attracted to very physically attractive people for social, cultural, biological and personal reasons, but we know that realistically we are not in their 'league'
  • attracted to people of the perceived same level of attractiveness as us
  • we fear rejection from those at a higher level of attractiveness than us
  • want the best looking person within our range, but must compromise so that they are not too far above us:
    • once in the relationship, we suffer the fear of abandonment that our partner will leave us for someone more attractive
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The Matching Hypothesis Evaluation

For

  • Feingold found a correlation between the similarities of attractiveness between real life partners
  • Walster + Walster - found that when partners were 'matched' by a computer, those more physically similar rated their partner higher than those mismatched, looks-wise

Against

  • arranged marriages are based on wealth, family and power. They are very often completely successful and did not require any physical attraction to start them of keep them commited
  • Taylor claims that there is no evidence for the hypothesis, as daters in real life very often are not similar and people often strive for much better looking partners
  • many people have compensatory assets, such as humour, that people attempt to match to, or are simply attracted to
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Self-Disclosure Intro

  • learning personal information about your partner to strengthen and maintain a smooth relationship
  • Social Penetration Theory by Altman + Taylor
  • from biographical data to self-concept

Reciprocity of Self-Disclosure

  • Reis and Shaver
  • balance of revealing personal information for relationship intimacy
  • partners respond with empathy, understanding and rewarding with their own feelings
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Social Penetration Theory

  • Altman and Taylor
  • reciprocal exchange of intimate personal information
  • helps maintain trust
  • penetrate deeper into each other's lives
  • working your way from biographical data to self-concept
  • Low Risk information at the start of the relationship
    • superficial information you would give to anyone
    • narrow breadth
    • little depth
    • fear of scaring off a partner with too much deep detail
  • High Risk information for long relationships
    • great depth
    • larger breadth (more layers)
    • trust our partners enough to be able to cope with the deeper information
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Reciprocity of Self-Disclosure

  • Reis and Shaver
  • balance of revealing personal information for relationship intimacy
  • partners respond with empathy, understanding and rewarding with their own feelings
  • need to work your way down deeper (telling your partner lots of information straight away can scare them off)
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Evaluation

For

  • Sprecher and Hendrick - those who believed partner disclosed information were the most satisfied and commited in their relationship
  • Hass and Stafford - 57% of gay partners said self-disclosure was best for deeper, more commited relationships
  • can be used to counsel couples and bring them together

Against

  • Tang said that collectivist cultures do not disclose certain aspects of their lives, such as sexual preferences, as much as individualist cultures (culturally biased)
  • Duck - failing relationships disclose the problems of the realtionship, but usually make it worse or end up breaking up
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Filter Theory

  • Kerckhoff + Davis
  • based on the idea that we only meet a small fraction of people in our lifetimes
  • we must filter through the field of availables to find our field of desirables using several filters that appear through 3 levels:
    • proximity
    • physical attractiveness
    • similarity
    • meets our needs
    • competence
  • the filters start at social variables and get down to internal values

Study

  • compared attitudes and personalities of short-term partners and long-term student partners 
  • found that similarity was most important before 18 months 
  • complimentarity was more important after 18 months
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Filter Levels

Social Demography (1st Level)

  • proximity and access to partners, usually of the same social and ethnic group (homogamy)
  • within our physical attraction and education range

Similarity in Attitudes (2nd Level)

  • homogramy-based ideals
  • promote self-disclosure

Complimentarity (3rd Level)

  • needs met
  • what one partner lacks, the other compensates for
  • attracted to intelligence and competence
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Evaluation

For

  • Winch - similarities in attitudes for early relationships and complementarity in later ones were typical

Against

  • Levinger - no evidence for similarity or complimentarity influencing permenance
  • Anderson - (longitudinal study) couples become more similar, not more complimentary
  • attitudes change over time, as do personalities, which the Filter Theory does not account for
  • online dating reduces importance of first filter
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