Factors affecting attraction

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Starter.

Physical Attractiveness - An important factor in the formation of romantic relationships. This term usually applies specifically to how ______________ we find a person's face. There is general agreement within and across cultures about what is considered physically attractive. There exists an assumption that we seek to form relationships with the ______ attractive person available.

Matching Hypothesis: The belief that we do not select the most attractive person as a prospective partner but, instead, are attracted to people who approximately '__________ us' in facial attractiveness. This implies that we take into account our own attractiveness 'value' to others when seeking romantic _______________.

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A01 - Explaining the importance of physical attra

Shackelford and Larsen (1997) found that people with symmetrical faces are rated more attracive. This is because it may be an honest signal of genetic fitness.

People are also attracted to neotenous (baby-face) features such as widely separated an large eyes, a delicated chin, a small nose - to trigger a more protective or caring instinct, valuable resource for females wanting to produce.

Physical attractiveness is not only important a the start of a relationship, but the intital attractiveness is what brought and kept partners in several year marriages together (McNulty et al).

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a01 - the halo effect

The halo effect

We have preconceived ideas about what personality traits attractive people must have, universally positive - "What is beautiful is good".

Dion et al found that physically attractive people are consistently rated as kind, strong, sociable, and successful compared to unattractive people. The belief that good-looking people probably have these characteristics is what makes them even more attractive to us, so we behave postively towards them - self-fulfilling prophecy.

Psychologists use the halo effect to describe how one distinguishing feaure tends to have a disproportionate influence on our judgements of a person's others attributes.i.e. personality.

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The matching hypothesis

Though we find physical attractiveness desirable, common sense tells us that we cannot form relationships with the most attractive person.

Elaine Walster believed we choose romantic partners based on rough similar attractiveness to what we are - we make a realistic judgement about our own 'value' to a potential partner. We compromise (still desiring the most physically attractive for evolutionary/social/cultural/psychological reasons) and balance this against wishing to be rejected by someone 'out of our league', that is someone who is very unlikely to consider us physically attractive.

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A02

Apply your answer below text.

Rob has been described as a very handsome man by both men and women, receiving many 'offers' down the years. He has found that people smile at him everywhere he goes, also very polite and friendly towards him, he assumes he must be very intelligent as well as handsome.

Using your knowledge of physical attractiveness, can you think of any ways Rob's attractiveness prove to be beneficial? Some drawbacks as well?

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A03 for halo effect

Halo Effect

•Determinist a person must chose person who is physically attractive when they have a choice. For example a person may form a friendship relationship which may turn into a romantic one as people share similarity

•Individual differences as people rate different factors as attractive and have different opinions. This makes research not as scientific as everyone has different opinions over if the couple are similar in attractiveness or not.

•Nature in nature nurture debate as females chose males with good physical stature and males pick females according to facial beauty this has evolutionary reasons

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A03 for Matching Hypthosis

Reductionist as it only looks at physical attraction when other factors such as similarity are also important

Culturally biased as other cultures may pick partners in a different manor

•Socially sensitive as person may be upset if they are scored lowly with levels of physical attractiveness 

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PEC PARAGRAPH

P= A strength for the support for the halo effect is that there is research behind it.

E = Palmer and Peterson found physically attractive people were rated more politically knowledgable and competent than unattractive people. This halo effect was so powerful that it persisted even when participants knew that these 'knowledgeable' people had no expertise. There is a danger for democracy if voters elect merely on physical attractiveness.

C =

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PEC PARAGRAPH

P = A weakness of explainging the important of physical attractiveness is individual differences 

E = Towhey asked male/female participants to rate how much they would target an individual based on their photograph and some biographical information while completing a questionnaire (MACHO scale) designed to measure sexist attitudes/behaviours. Those with high scores were more influenced by physical attractiveness but lower scorers were less sensitive. 

C= 

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PEC PARAGRAPH

P = A strength is that there is research to support the matching hypothesis. 

E = Walster study, raters only had a few seconds to judge attractiveness so it was not reliable however, Feingold carried out a meta-analysis of 17 studies and found a significant correlation in ratings of attractiveness between romantic partner. 

C= 

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