1 Psychology 307: Cultural Psychology Lecture 13

2 Group Processes, Relationships, Interpersonal Attraction, and Love 1.How does culture influence: (c) 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: 1. describe “cultural frame” switching among bicultural people. 2. discuss the relationship between IC and cooperative behaviour. 3. identify physical characteristics that are perceived to be attractive across cultures.

4 4. define the term “heterozygosity.” 6. explain cultural differences in “the tyranny of the beautiful.” 5. discuss the relationship between heterozygosity and perceived attractiveness. 7. identify cultural and sex similarities in preferred personality characteristics.

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

6 ● 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.

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

8  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.

9 Priming Condition

10  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.

11 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:

12  Across cultures, people are attracted to similar physical characteristics:  Example: Cunningham, Roberts, and Wu (1995) (a) 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.

13 Faces Rated as Being Highly Attractive

14  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.

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

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

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

18

19  In addition, 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:

22  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.

 In individualistic cultures, physically attractive people experience more positive outcomes. This is known as the “tyranny of the beautiful”:

Among candidates for the Canadian federal election, physically attractive candidates received three times as many votes as unattractive ones. Among MBA graduates, each “unit” of attractiveness was associated with an additional $2150/yr salary for females and $2600/yr salary for males. Among individuals charged with a misdemeanor, attractive defendants were assigned less than half of the bail amounts of unattractive defendants.

25  The tyranny of the beautiful is more prevalent in individualistic cultures than collectivistic cultures:  Investigated the relationship between physical attractiveness and life outcomes in the US and Ghana.  Example: Anderson, Adams, and Plaut (2008)

26 Correlations with Attractiveness

  In contrast to collectivistic cultures (i.e., low relational mobility contexts), in individualistic cultures (i.e., high relational mobility contexts) people have greater freedom of choice in selecting relationship partners.  In such “open relationship markets,” physical attractiveness serves as a cue, attracting others and, thus, facilitating positive outcomes.

28  Across cultures, people are attracted to similar personality characteristics: (b) 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).

29 (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.

30 Group Processes, Relationships, Interpersonal Attraction, and Love 1.How does culture influence: (c) cooperative behaviour? 2.What characteristics are perceived to be attractive across cultures?