1. Formation of relationships: Matching hypothesis
Introduction to Year 2 Psychology

2. Rate each celebrity for attractiveness 1 = ugly! 10 = gorgeous!

3. What is the first thing you notice about a new potential boy/girlfriend when you meet them for the first time?

4. Learning Objective
To understand what is meant by the ‘matching hypothesis’ and the process of your first personal investigation.
Success Criteria
Rate celebrities for attractiveness.
Complete a project proposal form (in rough).
Begin writing your instructions and debrief for your mini-project.
Challenge Consider the link between the Matching Hypothesis and evolution.

5. Personal investigation
To ensure true appreciation of the principles of psychological investigation the learners are expected to gain first-hand experience of two research methods.
Learners will be required to respond to questions concerning these investigations in the assessment.
The two investigations required this year are:
An experiment on the effect of context on an individual’s perception
A correlational research – relationship between intelligence and another psychological variable (of the learner’s choice)
Learners are encouraged to use ICT in researching, designing, analysing and presenting their investigation.
Learners will be expected to apply their knowledge of research methods to each investigation, including the following aspects: hypotheses; variables; methodology (including experimental design if appropriate); sampling; descriptive statistics; graphical representations; inferential statistics; reliability; validity; ethics.

6. Before we begin the real personal investigations you will conduct this trial version. It will take 12 lessons.

7. The matching hypothesis
We don’t seek the most attractive partner but we are attracted to those who match us in terms of our attractiveness rating… this is subjective
Is their physical attractiveness
rating the same?

8. The Matching Hypothesis
We actively seek individuals who are most like ourselves (attractive wise). This compromise is necessary because of fear of rejection from a more attractive person.
What are his chances?

9. Evidence of the Matching Hypothesis
Walster et al. (1966) carried out a computer dance study.
Read the handout from your teacher
752 students were involved and were rated for attractiveness by experimenters
Afterwards questionnaire on:
how attractive they rated their partner
whether they liked their partner and wanted to see them again

10. What did Walster et al. find?
They found that regardless of their own attractiveness, participants liked the more physically attractive participants and tried to arrange subsequent dates with them!
Did this support the matching hypothesis?

11. Murstein (1972) More evidence
Took 99 photos of dating or engaged couples, and 98 of random people posing as couples
Judges rated the attractiveness of each person in each photo without knowing which were the ‘real’ couples
Each person rated their own and their partner’s attractiveness

12. What Murstein (1972) found
Murstein compared the ratings for the ‘together’ couples given by the independent judges. He found that members of couples received very similar ratings.
In effect, people appeared to be paired up with someone who had a fairly similar level of attractiveness to themselves.
In the randomly paired up photographs of students Murstein found – unsurprisingly – that there was little pattern in the attractiveness of the randomly paired couples.

13. Evaluation
Murstein’s theory doesn’t consider arranged marriages and influence of third parties.
It is useful for dating agencies.
Do you think the same is true of homosexual couples?
What are the evolutionary reasons for this?
“Complex matching” (Hatfield & Sprecher, 2009): people are matched in terms of SOCIAL DESIRABILITY (not only physical attractiveness) – this is more reflective of the real world.

14. Practical Rate each photo on a scale of 1 – 10
1 = not at all attractive
10 = very attractive
Need to find mean across all the scores for each photo
You would then reunite the couples and plot the means onto a graph – what type of graph? Why is this useful in your analysis?

15. Evolutionary theory
Gender differences: men value physical attractiveness more than women

16. One proposal form per group
Project proposal form
One proposal form per group
You do a project brief for two reasons:
So that your proposed study is realistically planned and doesn’t breach any ethical guidelines.
So you can demonstrate to the examiners that you are aware of the advantages and disadvantages of the research method, have thought about overcoming sources of bias and the level of significance.
 PB1: Identify the aim of your study and link it with previous research:
E.g. The aim of the current research is partially to replicate the study by Murstein (1972) and find evidence of the matching hypothesis.
State the hypothesis so that you are saying exactly what you are going to study and make a prediction. The hypothesis must be OPERATIONALISED.
E.g. There will be a positive correlation between the attractiveness of married couples.
State the null hypothesis:
E.g. There will be no correlation between the attractiveness of married couples.
PB2: Explain why you have chosen a directional or non-directional hypothesis.
You are more likely to have a directional hypothesis because the study you are doing is based on other people’s work and they have already proposed the direction of the link between the two factors.
PB3: Identify the research method and research design used
e.g. is it a laboratory experiment or a questionnaire survey? Did you use independent groups, repeated measures or matched pairs design?

17. One proposal form per group
Project proposal form
One proposal form per group
PB4: Evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of the chosen research method.
This should not just be general advantages or disadvantages but one that is related to your study.
PB5 and PB6 should be linked. What is identified in PB5 must be dealt with in PB6.
PB5: List anything that might affect your results,
again it should be directly relevant to your study not just general points.
 PB6: Explain how you are going to try to deal with potential bias and confounding variables
in a way that is directly relevant to your study.  
PB7: Statistical significance:
This is the easiest bit, but do get the decimal point in the right place. Generally in psychology a result is considered significant if the probability that it was obtained by chance is less than 5%: p0.05.
 PB8: Ethics:
The ones to consider are:
Confidentiality (how are you going to keep the data confidential)
Deception (are you going to deceive, if so is it harmless and how are you going to undeceive them?)
Psychological harm (not making people do anything distressing, telling them that they have the right to withdraw)
Informed consent (are people fully aware of what the study is about and their role in the study)

18. Standardised instructions
The instructions should be clear and succinct. They must:
explain the procedures of this study relevant to participants
include a check of understanding of instructions
They should also use language appropriate for a formal document and be as straightforward and courteous as possible.
This is not a consent form so explicit references to ethical considerations are not necessary. However, it is perfectly acceptable to include comments such as 'you are free to withdraw from the study at any time.'

19. Standardised debrief
This is where all is explained to the participant who is thanked at the end of his/her contribution.
Make sure the aim of your study is included and also a reference to ethical guidelines.
Make sure in your debriefing statement that you refer to participant’s results being confidential.
Next, make sure that participants’ names are not shown/written on the results sheets, raw data or anywhere else in the report (re: confidentiality). The best thing to do here is to cross them out.
Again, you could display/read the standardised instructions to the participant(s).

20. Learning Objective
To understand what is meant by the ‘matching hypothesis’ and the process of your first personal investigation.
Success Criteria
Rate celebrities for attractiveness.
Complete a project proposal form (in rough).
Begin writing your instructions and debrief for your mini-project.
Challenge Consider the link between the Matching Hypothesis and evolution.