Interpersonal attraction

Physical appearance Inferences of personality Propinquity (mere exposure) Other factors (e.g., arousal, emotion) Similarity

propinquity

Festinger, Schacter, & Back (1950) Next door Two doors down Opposite ends of hall

Conceptual replications Priest and Sawyer (1967) Segal (1974)

Mita, Dermer, & Knight (1977) original reversed self People you know +

One major explanation for propinquity effects: mere exposure Mere exposure effects—already covered (e.g. Zajonc and Murphy) But WHY? Two explanations offered: – Misattribution hypothesis – Uncertainty reduction

Misattribution Prior/repeated exposure Greater fluency (“ease of processing”) Are participant s aware of prior exposure? YES Correct attribution (due to exposure) NO misattribution Greater liking Inferences of “fame”— Jacoby et al. (1989)

Uncertainty reduction Two factors – Initially: greater exposure  uncertainty reduction (positively valued) – Later: tedium (“get sick of” stimulus) exposure Liking for stimulus

Similarity Opinions and personality Interpersonal style Interests and experiences

On the importance of physical attractiveness hotornot.com Spoofs: amiannoying.com; monkeyhotornot.com; amigeekornot.com

On the “market value” of being attractive – Highly valued commodity – On the “rub-off” influence of Friends Dating partners, spouses manAttractive woman + Unattractive woman(same) man - - womanAttractive man Unattractive man (same) woman

Beliefs vs. reality Attractive people are believed to be more – Likeable, friendly, sociable, extraverted, popular, happier, sexier, assertive – this is “narrow”?? (see p. 329) Cross cultural differences Reality?

On the power of attractiveness: empirical demonstrations Elaine (Walster) Hatfield, 1966 – “Mother of all blind dates”: – 752 students paired up, at random! Subsequent replication with gay couples by Sergios and Cody (1985)

Battle about the sexes (and about sex) genetic (“innate”) differences between men and women? – dating/mating strategies – what qualities they find attractive ?

Some issues that often get confused Really, two questions – Are there observable differences between men and women? – If so, why? Evolutionary/sociobiological hypothesis Socialization hypothesis The two possibilities are not mutually exclusive

What might be those differences? Different preferences for… – # of sexual partners – short vs. long term sexual relationships – age of partner – Physical appearance But again: if so, WHY?

Sociobiological hypothesis: General idea: Behavior in humans—or any other species—can be viewed as the result of thousands of years of evolution in which “successful” genes survive and prosper whereas “unsuccessful” genes die out. In Darwinian terms, success defined as those genes which are passed on to the next generation through reproduction.

Parental investment hypothesis (Trivers, 1985) Females: greater biological investment – females have more to lose by unwise mating; hence “choosier” Implications (according to Trivers) – Mating strategies (all species) – For humans: relationship preferences, basis for attraction, dating styles, etc.

“The sex that invests more in offspring should be more choosy about potential mates than the sex that invests less in offspring.” “An ancestral woman who had sex with 100 men in the course of a year would still have produced a maximum of one child. An ancestral man who had sex with 100 women during the same time would have most likely produced substantially more than one child….In sum, for the high-investing sex (typically, females), the costs of indiscriminate sex are high whereas for the low investing sex (typically, males), these costs are low. Quote from Trivers (1985).

So, what’s the evidence? pro and con Pro: Cross species patterns of sexual behavior Males are almost always more promiscuous, aggressive in courtship pattern is reversed among “oddball” species in which males have greater investment –E.g., Pipefish, Phalaropes, Panamanian poison- arrow frog, certain species of waterbugs, and the mormon cricket.

Cross-cultural similarities in human studies: Buss and Schmitt (1993)

The critics speak: con 1. selective analysis 2. self-report 3. some data equally supportive of socialization 4. theory difficult to test rigorously

summary

Social costs of physical attraction When mistakes lead to greater liking Positive attributes + Negative attributes = Greater liking Two counterintuitive findings in attraction

Social costs Major, Carrington, & Carnevale (1984) Attractive* vs. non- attractive* participants write essay “seen” “not seen” Positive feedback attribution

not seen seen not seen seen Unattractive Attractive Attribution of positive evaluation to writing augmentation discounting

When mistakes make people like us more Bay of Pigs incident Aronson, Willerman, & Floyd (1966) high performer low performer mistakeNo mistake