Attraction

Question 1

3 predictors of attraction

Answer 1

• physical attractiveness
• personality traits
• socially-oriented processes

Question 2

predictors of attraction: physical attractiveness

Answer 2

• Very high correlation between cultural groups regarding perceived attractiveness of different targets
• Some aspects of physical attractiveness have been found to be universal: clear complexion, bilateral symmetry, average features
• Ideas of what makes someone physically attractive are based on evolutionary psychology (ie. deviations from “ideal” may have signalled health problems, pathogens, etc. → perceived physical health = more attractive)

Question 3

universal aspects of physical attraction: clear complexion

Answer 3

• skin signals health more directly than most visible aspects; clearer faces more attractive than less clear faces
• Photoshop and makeup industries capitalize on this

Question 4

universal aspects of physical attraction: bilateral symmetry

Answer 4

• human faces rarely perfectly symmetrical, but high asymmetry signals health issues (may indicate genetic mutations, pathogens, or stressors in the womb)
• • Smaller effect size than clear complexion (not as important)
• • Very asymmetrical faces generally rated as more unattractive

Question 5

universal aspects of physical attraction: average features

Answer 5

• large deviations from average features seen as less attractive (average features are less likely to contain genetic abnormalities)
• • Morphing of photos allows for averaging of facial features across faces (ie. irregularities, more extreme features, asymmetries) → the more faces used to morph, the more attractive the face is
• • Eurasian faces (mix of European and Asian faces) generally perceived to be most attractive, also perceived to be healthiest

Question 6

physical attractiveness: genetic fitness explanation

Answer 6

• Genes = segment of a chromosome that codes for a function
• • Allele = alternate forms of a gene
• – Homozygous: alleles take on the same form
• – Heterozygous: alleles take on different forms
• • More homozygosity (ie. being European or Asian) means you have a particular set of immunity; more heterozygosity (ie. being Eurasian) means you had more resistance to infections, more survivability → associated with higher attractiveness

Question 7

predictors of attraction: personality traits

Answer 7

• Certain characteristics predict greater attraction across cultural environments on all 6 continents:
• • Emotional stability (regardless of gender)
• • Dependability (regardless of gender)
• • Kindness
• • Intelligence

Question 8

predictors of attraction: socially-oriented processes

Answer 8

• Human attraction is a social process, whether romantic or platonic
• Any process of appraising suitability of partner is also a social process
• Some aspects of social interactions increase attraction: propinquity effect and similarity-attraction effect

Question 9

socially oriented processes: propinquity effect

Answer 9

• Tendency to form interpersonal relationships with those we encounter more often (romantic or not romantic)
• Occurs due to mere exposure effect → more exposure = greater attraction
• Primarily works for people for whom we had slightly negative, neutral, or positive impressions at first

Question 10

socially-oriented processes: similarity-attraction effect

Answer 10

• Tendency to become attracted to others if they share many similarities with us
• Similarity plays bigger role for important issues than on less important issues
• Tends to be associated with independent self-construal

Question 11

4 basic elements of sociality

Answer 11

• communal sharing
• authority ranking
• equality matching
• market pricing
• all relationships are based on 1 or more of these elements of sociality
• All four are universal, but variability exists in extent to which each operates:
• • Individualistic cultural environments → market pricing
• • Traditional subsistence societies → equality matching

Question 12

4 basic elements of sociality: communal sharing

Answer 12

• Members of a group emphasize common identity based on something socially meaningful
• More pooled resources for everyone to use
  Strongest communal groups created via consubstantial assimilation (groups where people see each other as sharing bodies - ie. family, blood pacts) → high level of compassion for each other’s suffering; attack on one = attack on all)

Question 13

4 basic elements of sociality: authority ranking

Answer 13

• Members of a group linearly ordered along hierarchical social dimension, leading to asymmetrical relationships (ex. The military)
• • Status differentiation:
• – Higher ranking → more privilege and prestige, entitled to more resources (give commands to lower ranked people)
• – Lower ranking → entitled to protection and care from above (give obedience to higher ranked people)

Question 14

4 basic elements of sociality: equality matching

Answer 14

• Relationships are based on reciprocity and balance (everyone deserves the same thing)
• If you give someone something, the expectation is that they will give something back to you
• Unlike communal sharing, contributions are tracked, high need for reciprocation
• Turn-taking to ensure equality matching

Question 15

4 basic elements of sociality: market pricing

Answer 15

• Emphasizes balance and reciprocity guaranteed by monitoring, but not direct reciprocity
• • Not reciprocity in kind (ie. eye-for-an-eye)
• • Does not entail turn-taking → resources exchanged on the same turn
• Relies on use of arbitrary symbols (ie. a price) to facilitate interactions (commonly currency) on the same turn
• Ex. exchanging money for goods and services

Question 16

3 approaches used by organizations/businesses around the world

Answer 16

• Chaebol
• Guanxi
• Simpatia

Question 17

3 approaches used by organizations/businesses around the world: Chaebol

Answer 17

• South Korean form of business organizations
• Collection of corporations in different domains falling under 1 name, controlled by 1 chairman (and often family)
• • Ex. Samsung sells electronics, life insurance, medical centres, etc.
• Runs on a hierarchy with chairman and other executives at the top
• • Superiors are supposed to act fatherly to the superiors (be loving, but stern)
• Important to foster sense of family within company - a tight-knit network of relationships
• Mixing of life inside and outside of work (it’s expected that workers socialize with their bosses after work; supervisors often invited to worker’s family functions, etc.)

Question 18

3 approaches used by organizations/businesses around the world: Guanxi

Answer 18

• Chinese approach to conducting business based on developing relationships and dense personal networks
• Often a mixing of business networks with social networks
• • Dense networks come from within networks → networks are seen as a transitive (your network is my network)
• Individuals can directly access another’s network without using intermediaries (ie. access people in partner’s networks without having to go through the partner)
• Assumes indirect links are trustworthy due to accountability from direct links (ie. the person you talk to will want to do their best in order to maintain their reputation in the eyes of the person they know)
• Business decisions not based on objective measures (ie. price), but based on relationships

Question 19

3 approaches used by organizations/businesses around the world: Simpatia

Answer 19

• Approach to interactions common in Latin cultures (primarily Latin American countries
• Similar to East Asian cultural environments → social harmony and interpersonal attention (focusing on how well others are doing) are important
• Meant to allow for smoother social interactions
• One who is being sympatico demonstrates simpatia
• Differences from East Asian culture contexts:
• • More focused on positive affect (you want to make sure people around you are happy)
• • Ingroup-outgroup distinction is not as strong (you want to make sure that everyone is happy regardless of their ingroup/outgroup status)
• Bosses from Latin cultural environments pay more attention to goals and aspirations of subordinates
• Workers from Latin cultural environments pay more attention to emotional state of other workers & cooperate more

Question 20

romantic love

Answer 20

• Romantic love is evolutionarily advantageous (ie. facilitates procreation), and experiencing this is universal
• Historically, love and marriage did not mix
• Long history of love being associated with negative consequences (ie. during Renaissance, love songs, plays, and stories had love being unrequited or leading to tragedy)
• But, there as been variation through time in positivity of association
• Over the last century, perspectives on love and marriage have changed dramatically, but change has not been universal

Question 21

romantic love and marriage: effect of culture

Answer 21

People in more collectivistic cultures are more willing to marry someone they don’t love compared to individualistic cultures, but even this pattern has been changing - collectivistic cultures are increasingly perceiving the necessity of romantic love in marriage

Question 22

love songs in different cultures

Answer 22

• When comparing love songs from HK, China, and US:
• • Majority of Chinese love songs (vs. minority of American songs) indicated negative outcomes associated with love
• • Majority of Chinese love songs (vs. minority of American songs) indicated suffering (ie. sorrow, sadness, pain) as a consequence of love relationships

Question 23

4 types of marriage systems

Answer 23

• Monogamy (1 person married to 1 person)
• Polygamy (1 man married to many women)
• Polyandry (1 woman married to many men)
• Polygynandry (many men married to many women)

Question 24

marriage systems: common vs. rare

Answer 24

• Amongst pre-industrial societies, most allow polygamy, but monogamy is still overwhelmingly the most common system
• Polyandry occurs in small number of societies (fraternal polyandry common)
• • Where it exists, region usually has scarcity of resources
• Polygynandry is extremely rare
• • Sometimes seen in religious enclaves
• • Also in extremely resource-scarce environments for more diversification of domestic economic activities (ie. Indian-Himalayan Region)

Question 25

in-group vs. out-group

Answer 25

• in-group: group with whom we share a sense of belonging or feeling of identity (ie. “us”)
• Out-group: group with whom we see dissimilarity or lack of familiarity (ie. “them”)

Question 26

independent vs. interdependent self-construals in terms of in-groups/out-groups

Answer 26

• Independent self-construal: easy for ingroup to become outgroup (and vice versa), ingroups have fewer demands on individuals, focus on individual goals, feel less commitment to in-groups
• Interdependent self-construal: difficult for outgroup to become ingroup (and vice versa), ingroups place great demands on individuals, focus on group goals and harmony by suppressing individual goals, feel more commitment to in-groups

Question 27

2 domains showing differences in group relations between the self-construals

Answer 27

• day-to-day interactions

- attitudes towards ingroups vs. outgroups

Question 28

2 domains showing differences in group relations between the self-construals: day-to-day interactions

Answer 28

• Compared to interdependent cultural environments, independent cultural environments:
• • Have more interaction partners
• • Have more interactions in general
• • Spend more time interacting with/talking to people
• Interdependent people speak to fewer people; choose people to whom they feel closer (ie. ingroup members)

Question 29

2 domains showing differences in group relations between the self-construals: attitudes towards in-groups vs. outgroups

Answer 29

• 3 main types of evidence of this:
• • nature of interactions with in/outgroup members
• conformity with in/outgroup members
• cooperation with in/outgroup members

Question 30

attitudes towards in/outgroups: nature of interactions with in/outgroup

Answer 30

• 3 types
• • Subordination: showing deference to interaction partners, not asserting oneself over interaction partner, entailing cooperation
• – Ex. With Americans, social distance from someone (ie. not being in ingroup), didn’t really affect their willingness to engage in subordination, but with Chinese participants, social distance was negatively associated with subordination
• • Superordination: asserting oneself over interaction partner, demonstrating superiority
• – Ex. With Americans, social distance from someone didn’t really affect their willingness to engage in superordinate behaviours, but with Chinese participants, social distance was positively associated with superordination
• • Dissociation: engaging in behaviour that repels the interaction partner (ie. avoiding the person, being rude, stealing their resources, etc.)
• – Ex. With Americans, social distance from someone did slightly affect their willingness to engage in dissociative behaviours, but with Chinese participants, social distance was positively associated with dissociation

Question 31

attitudes towards in/outgroups: conformity with in/outgroup

Answer 31

• Some have argued that individualism promotes resistance to conformity; collectivism promotes conformity
• Major meta-analysis across African, East Asian, South American, North American, European samples:
• • Anti-conformity usually seen more among non-Western participants when confederates are seen as more outgroup members than ingroup members
• • The more collectivism, the higher the rate of conformity
• • The more recent the publications in the US, the less conformity seen (unsure if it’s because of actual cultural change or because of increased familiarity with conformity studies)

Question 32

conformity

Answer 32

• social influence in which individuals change attitudes or behaviours to match with perceived norms; traditionally studied using the Asch line test
• Factors that increase rates of conformity:
• • Group size (the larger the group, the more likely they’d follow the group)
• • Allies (if there are lot of allies/people giving the correct answer, less conformity

Question 33

attitudes towards in/outgroups: cooperation with in/outgroup

Answer 33

• General assumptions:
• • individualism/independence is associated with competitiveness
• • collectivism/interdependence is associated with cooperation among individuals
• Different cooperation levels reflect underlying expectations about partners’ likelihood of cooperation
• Similar patterns of cooperation amongst Chinese children and Euro-American children, as well as between Mexican-Americans and Euro-Americans
• Culture plays important role in interactions, conformity, and cooperation → relates strongly to trust (if we trust partner, we’re more likely to cooperate with them - and vice versa)

Question 34

cooperation

Answer 34

• the ability to work together toward common goals - essential for efficient functioning and survival of social groups
• Often studied using economic games (ex. Prisoner’s Dilemma)

Question 35

Prisoner’s Dilemma

Answer 35

• you and your friend get arrested and are placed in separate interrogation rooms. You can either betray your friend (by ratting them out) or stay silent
• Betraying = competitive option (if both of you betray, you each get 2 years)
• Staying silent = cooperative option (If both of you cooperate, you each get 1 year)
• If 1 person betrays and the other stays silent, the silent person would get 3 years, betrayer would get 0
• Individually, the best option is to compete, but the best strategy for the group is for both parties to cooperate

Question 36

Cultural influence on the prisoner’s dilemma study

Answer 36

• Used cultural priming: priming participants using either American or Chinese images
• • If partner was friend: People who looked at American prime were less willing to cooperate with their partners, vice versa for Chinese
• • If partner was stranger: People who looked at American prime still less willing to cooperate (not much difference between ingroup/friend and outgroup/stranger), people who looked at Chinese image were more willing to cooperate (but less willing than with a friend)

Question 37

trust

Answer 37

• extent to which one is confident that interaction partner will cooperate
• Trust can be due to 2 different processes: personalized trust and depersonalized trust

Question 38

personalized vs. depersonalized trust

Answer 38

• Personalized trust: trust given to someone because they’re connected directly or indirectly to you
• • Trust reserved for people in your network
• • People who are not in your network are not afforded trust
• • Driven by ability to monitor each others’ reputations
• • Trust afforded even if indirectly related
• • Associated with interdependent self-construal
• Depersonalized trust: trust afforded to someone because they share the same category membership as you
• • Trust is for anyone who belongs in the same category
• • People who are not in your category are not afforded trust
• • Applies even with arbitrary categories → seen as stable
• • Monitoring unimportant
• • Associated with independent self-construal