1 Psychology 307: Cultural Psychology Lecture 13

2 Group Processes, Relationships, Interpersonal Attraction, and Love 1.How does culture influence conformity to social norms and cooperative behaviour? 2.What characteristics are perceived to be attractive across cultures?

3 By the end of today’s class, you should be able to: 2. describe “cultural frame” switching among bicultural people. 3. discuss the relationship between IC and cooperative behaviour. 4. discuss the relationship between propinquity and attraction. 1. discuss the relationship between IC and conformity.

4 6. define the term “heterozygosity.” 7. discuss the relationship between heterozygosity and perceived attractiveness. 8. discuss cultural and sex similarities in preferred personality characteristics. 5. identify physical characteristics that are perceived to be attractive across cultures.

5 How does culture influence conformity to social norms? ● For several decades, researchers have been interested in identifying the factors that lead people to conform to social norms. ● The most influential research examining these factors was conducted by Asch (1951):

6 Asch’s Line Judgment Task

7  Across several studies using this task, Asch found that American participants agreed with the group’s incorrect response (i.e., conformed) in 37% of trials.

8  Subsequent research demonstrated that conformity was greatest when: (a) the group was relatively large. (b) the group provided a unanimous incorrect response. (c) the participant admired, liked, or felt a sense cohesiveness or similarity among group members.

9 ● Bond and Smith (1996) conducted a meta-analysis of studies examining IC and conformity: ● Theorists believe that individualism promotes a resistance to conformity, whereas collectivism promotes a tendency toward conformity.

10  133 experiments were included in the meta-analysis: 97 were conducted in the U.S., 1 was conducted in Canada, the remaining were conducted outside of North America (e.g., Brazil, Fiji, Ghana, Hong Kong, Japan, Kuwait, Zimbabwe).

11  Found: (b) a negative relation between date of publication and conformity in the U.S. studies. (a) a negative relation between individualism and conformity.

12 How does culture influence cooperative behaviour? ● Theorists believe that individualism promotes competitiveness, whereas collectivism promotes cooperation. ● Evidence indicates that IC influences cooperative behaviour:

13 ● Example: Wong and Hong (2005)  Recruited bicultural participants from Hong Kong.  Randomly assigned participants to 1 of 3 conditions:  Employed cultural priming to activate “cultural frames” among bicultural people.

14 Chinese priming condition American priming condition Neutral priming (control) condition

15  Had participants take part in a prisoner’s dilemma game in which their partners were 5 friends.  Among the options that were given to participants were: (b) to cooperate: participant and each partner receives 3 points. (a) to compete: participant receives 4 points and each partner receives 0 points.

16 Priming Condition

17  When participants were paired with strangers, the percentage of cooperative choices made in the Chinese priming condition dropped to the same level as the American priming condition.

18 What characteristics are perceived to be attractive across cultures? ● Research suggests that there are many similarities across cultures with respect to the factors that influence interpersonal attraction. ● Among these factors are the following:

19 (a) Propinquity  Across cultures, propinquity is positively correlated with attraction.  Propinquity allows for more frequent contact between individuals, resulting in the “mere exposure effect.”  The mere exposure effect has been found to occur with both animate and inanimate stimuli.

20  Example: Moreland and Beach (1992).  Had 3 female confederates pretend to be students in a university classroom. They attended class 5 10, and 15 times, respectively.  At the end of term, the students rated the attractiveness of the confederates and a fourth female who never attended class.

21 Number of Times in Classroom

22  Across cultures, people are attracted to similar physical characteristics:  Example: Cunningham, Roberts, and Wu (1995) (b) Physical characteristics  Recruited Asian Americans, Hispanic Americans, and European Americans.  Found an average correlation of.93 between the facial attractiveness ratings provided by the 3 groups.

23 Faces Rated as Being Highly Attractive

24  Among the characteristics that have been found to be attractive across cultures are:  A complexion that is free of blemishes and sores.  Facial features that are relatively average in size and shape.  Bilateral symmetry of the face and body.

25 Bilateral Facial Symmetry (Braun et al., 2001) Original FaceSymmetrically Optimized Face

26 Facial “Smoothness” (Braun et al., 2001) Original FaceSmoothed Face

27 Average-Sized Facial Features (Braun et al., 2001) += Original Face 1Original Face 2Morphed Face

28

29  The faces that are perceived to be most attractive are those that result from morphing people from different ethnic groups:  Example: Rhodes et al. (2005)  Recruited European-Australians and Japanese.  Had participants rate the attractiveness and health of several composite images created by morphing faces:

32  Found that: (a) for both males and females, the Eurasian face was perceived to be most attractive. (b) for both males and females, the Eurasian face was perceived to be most healthy.

33  Across cultures, people are attracted to similar personality characteristics: (c) Personality characteristics  Example: Buss et al. (1990)  Recruited participants from 33 countries (e.g., Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Finland, France, India, Japan, Iran, Nigeria, Poland, U.S., Zambia).

34 (b) an average male-female correlation of.87.  Had participants rate personality characteristics for how desirable they would be in a mate.  Found: (a) an average cross-cultural correlation of.78.

35 Group Processes, Relationships, Interpersonal Attraction, and Love 1.How does culture influence conformity to social norms and cooperative behaviour? 2.What characteristics are perceived to be attractive across cultures?