1. FACTORS AFFECTING ATTRACTION
RELATIONSHIPS
FACTORS AFFECTING ATTRACTION

2. Lots of theories into why humans form romantic relationships
Lots of theories into why humans form romantic relationships. What do you think? Brainstorm your ideas…
Physical attractiveness
Similarity
Companionship
Material resources
Family relationships/obligation (traditional cultures e.g. arranged marriages)

3. The Theories we will cover…
Self disclosure
Physical attractiveness
Filter theory

4. SELF DISCLOSURE
Revealing personal information about yourself. As a romantic relationship develops the amount we self disclose increases and the content deepens.

5. Self Disclosure: Social Penetration Theory (Altman & Taylor)
As relationships develop, we penetrate deeper and deeper into private and personal matters about the other person. This exposes vulnerabilities, so trust has to be developed along the way. 
Penetration goes through a number of stages. You can think of this like an onion – peel away the layers to get to the core.

6. Self Disclosure: Social Penetration Theory (Altman & Taylor)
Orientation stage. Here, we play safe with small talk and simple, harmless clichés that follow standards of social desirability and norms of appropriateness.
Exploratory stage. We now start to reveal ourselves, expressing personal attitudes and opinions. This may not be the whole truth as we are not yet comfortable to lay ourselves bare. We are still feeling our way forward. This is the stage of casual friendship, and many relationships do not go past this stage.
Affective stage. Now we start to talk about private and personal matters. Criticism and arguments may arise.
Stable stage. The relationship now reaches a plateau in which personal things are shared and each can predict the emotional reactions of the other person.
For relationships to succeed and so move forward self-disclosure must be reciprocated and done so at a similar pace.

7. Have a go at ‘Love Story’ task p.4 in your booklets

8. Evaluation of Self Disclosure as a factor of Attraction
 Support from research studies –
Sprecher & Hendrick (2004) found strong correlations between satisfaction of relationships in (heterosexual) dating couples and self- disclosure (both theirs and their partner’s). Those couples who stated they ‘self-disclosed’ effectively felt more committed to the relationship and had better trust in their partner.
Lauranceau et al. (2005) asked married couples to keep a daily diary. They found that self-disclosure and the perception of self-disclosure were linked to high levels of intimacy (and the reverse was true also).

9. Evaluation of Self Disclosure as a factor of Attraction
 Real-life applications Those people who regularly and skilfully self-disclose seem to have better relationships. Those less skilled can be limited to making ‘small talk’ which can hamper efforts for more in-depth, long-term relationships. It is possible to teach individuals how to self-disclose more effectively and this in turn has been seen to aid relationships.

10. Evaluation of Self Disclosure as a factor of Attraction
 Cultural differences An issue with trying to assess the importance and impact of self-disclosure cross culturally is that it is used in different ways from one culture to the next. In individualistic cultures such as the UK and US self- disclosure focuses heavily on sex. In collectivist cultures such as China these kinds of thoughts are rarely, if ever disclosed or discussed, leading to the appearance and suggestion that Chinese self-disclose less. They probably do, they just do it relating to different things.

11. PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS
Probably the one feature of an individual we notice immediately, but how important is it. We’d like to think we’re not that shallow, but do we simply get into relationships based on how attractive the other person is?
Is there such a thing as love at first sight?

12. PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS – THE MATCHING HYPOTHESIS
The matching hypothesis states that it is not the best looking people that we are attracted to, but rather we are attracted to those who match us in terms of physical attraction. This does not mean that we are attracted to people who look like us, but that we are attracted to people with a similar level of attractiveness.
Think of some (celebrity) couples. Would you say they are of a similar level of attractiveness?

13. PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS
Evaluation for The Matching Hypothesis
Walster et al (1966) conducted a very famous study called the Computer Dance.
752 student participants were rated on physical attractiveness (as a measure of social desirability) by four independent judges. Participants were asked to fill in a questionnaire, supposedly for the purposes of being paired in terms of similarity by a Computer. However, what really happened was that participants were randomly paired, went on a date to a dance with their ‘partner’ and were then asked to complete a second questionnaire asking about their overall experiences of the date, with the critical question of whether or not they would like to see their date again for a second date.
The findings showed that he more attractive students were favoured as dates over the less attractive students, and physical attractiveness was found to be the most important factor, over intelligence and personality.
These findings therefor don’t support the matching hypothesis.

14. PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS
Evaluation for The Matching Hypothesis
Murstein (1972) presents contradictory findings to Walster as he found that the physical attractiveness of couples was rated to be similar.
He asked Judges to rate photos of each of the two different partners in 99 couples (engaged or ‘steady’) for physical attractiveness on a 5-point scale, without knowing who was paired with who (the individuals in each couple were only seen singularly, not together).
The photos were then re-arranged and placed back into their respective pairings. Murstein found a significant positive correlation between appropriate couples when rated next to each other, that is to say, couples who were actually together did correlate and so match.

15. The Halo effect
The halo effect is a cognitive bias (mental shortcut) which occurs when a person assumes that a person has positive traits in terms of personality and other features because they have a pleasing appearance.
Dion, Berscheid and Walster (1972) asked participants to rate photographs of three strangers for a number of different categories including personality traits such as overall happiness and career success.
When these results were compared to the physical attraction rating of each participant (from a rating of 100 students), the photographs which were rated the most physically attractive were also rated higher on the other positive traits.

16. Have a go at ‘Are you only after me for my car. ’ task p
Have a go at ‘Are you only after me for my car?’ task p.8 in your booklets

17. FILTER THEORY Filter Theory
Developed by Kerckoff & Davis, Filter Theory compares the attitudes and personalities of individuals in a relationship as well as considering their social demography. It claims that we will only invest time and energy in a relationship if we ‘narrow down’ the possible partners to ensure some degree of similarity. In terms of partner choice we all have a FIELD OF AVAILABLES (the entire set of potential romantic partners) but not all of these are desirable (just because someone is single doesn’t mean we want to go out with them!). According to this theory we narrow down this number by considering three variables to form a FIELD OF DESIRABLES (people who are not only available but who we want to go out with also).

18. Formation of relationships takes place through 3 filters:
1. Social demography. We are attracted to those who we come in contact with. We meet people who live near us, go to school/college/ work with us. They usually come from a similar social background and class, have a similar level of education and ethnic origin. We already have lots of things in common with these people. Humans like familiarity and familiarity increases with exposure. Exposure increases with proximity.
2. Similarity in attitudes. We tend to like people with whom we agree. This is already more likely to happen due to the narrowing of the field of availables in the first filter. This particular filter ties in with the notion of Sled-disclosure which we have discussed previously. Individuals who have similarity of attitude are perceived by each other as more attractive and compatible.
3. Complementary. Focus here is on how much each partner manages to meet the others’ needs, especially emotional ones. Such complementarity helps to make a relationship ‘deeper’ and thus can be regarded as important in establishing commitment towards a long-term relationship.

19. FILTER THEORY – Key terms
Field of availables – The entire set of potential romantic partners, all the people we could realistically form a relationship with.
Field of desirables – From the field of availables, those who are attractive to us.
Law of attraction – The idea that we find similarity of attitudes attractive.
Complementarity – Similarity becomes less important as a relationship develops, and is replaced by a need for your partner to balance your traits with opposite ones of their own.
Homogamy – The idea that you are more likely to form a relationship with someone who is socially or culturally similar to yourself.

20. Proximity: Liking People who are Nearby Evidence (Festinger, 1950)
Close friends:
Next door neighbours: 41%
Two doors down: 22%
Opposite ends of hallway: 10%

21. Why does Proximity Work?
If you are proximate to someone then it stands to reason that the number of times you see them will increase. The mere-exposure effect (Zajonc, 1968) is a phenomenon by which people tend to develop a preference for things merely because they are familiar with them. This effect is sometimes called the familiarity principle and can be applied to many areas of psychology.

22. Exposure/Familiarity Research Evidence (Moreland & Beach, 1992)
Procedures
Four different classes were used over a one semester timescale. In each of the classes a confederate (attractive female student) was ‘added’ to the class for a variety of times (5, 10, 15). There was also a control condition where the attractive stranger did not attend. The real students (naïve Pps) were asked to rate how attractive and likeable they thought she was at the end of the semester (shown a photo).
Students rate women on traits at end of semester
Results
The more classes the woman attended, the more favorable her ratings became.

23. Have a go at ‘So you think you KNOW filter theory. ’ task p
Have a go at ‘So you think you KNOW filter theory?’ task p.11 in your booklets

24. Evaluation of Filter Theory
 supporting evidence from Festinger and Mooreland & Beach regarding filter one (social demography)  face validity  lacks temporal validity (filter one – ‘proximity’)  issues of causality – do we like people to whom we are proximate or do we like people anyway (for other reasons) and as such become proximate to them?  could be considered deterministic as it doesn’t really for free will and choice or individual differences it just assumes we’ll form a relationship based on things like closeness, similarity…