Chapter 8: Liking, Loving, and Interpersonal Sensitivity Flashcards
What are the four most typical reasons that people give for liking their friends?
People like most:
- Those whose beliefs and interests are similar to their own;
- Those who have some skills, abilities, or competencies;
- Those with some pleasant or admirable qualities, such as loyalty, reasonableness, honesty, and kindness;
- And those who like them in return.
The four aspects of interpersonal attraction can be gathered under what sweeping generalization?
We like people whose behavior provides us with maximum reward at minimum cost.
What are the problems with a general reward-cost theory of human attraction?
- Critically, the world isn’t that simple.
- For example, a reward-cost theory would lead us to suspect that, all other things being equal, we will like people who live in close proximity to us because we can get the same reward at less cost by traveling a short distance than we can by traveling a great distance. It’s true that people have more friends who live close by than friends who live far away; but this doesn’t mean it’s their physical proximity that makes them attractive—it may simply make it easier to get to know them, and once we get to know them, we tend to like them.
- It’s also been proven that people who go through punishing initiations are more likely to enjoy the group. Where’s the reward in that?
- Lastly, to label everything (e.g. being right, fitting in) as rewards tends to obscure the important differences between them. For the social psychologist, a far more important task is to determine the conditions under which one or the other course of action will be taken.
Does praise and reward always lead to liking?
It’s uncertain. Consider this: you’re delivering a thesis to a room of university students. One student seems engaged and awed the entire time, and comes up to tell you that your theory is mind-blowing and you’re super smart. Another student is shaking their head the entire time and scowling at you. Afterwards, they tell you all the things wrong with your theory. When you get home, you reflect on the criticism and make your theory even better. Who will you like more? That is, is the reward of a praise greater than the reward of new insights gained through criticism?
How can ulterior motives change the way we perceive reward? Use the example of Nancy’s blueprints.
If Nancy’s having a bad day and produces some sloppy blueprints, and her boss comes around and says, “Nice work, Nancy,” how will she interpret this? On the one hand, she could think he’s actually praising her and trying to cheer her up, which will lead to her liking him more. But she could also contribute this comment to ulterior motives: being sarcastic or manipulative, which could reduce her liking of him. As situations become complex, the general reward-cost theory decreases in value because a slight change in the social context in which the reward is provided can change a reward into a punishment.
What are the different situations that demonstrate how we don’t like to feel manipulated, and how that affects attraction?
- Edward Jones conducted an experiment in which a colleague was interviewing women. The women received either positive, negative, or neutral evaluations. For half of the women, they were told that the interviewer was a grad student who would be recruiting them as volunteers for their own study. Women who were evaluated positively rated the interviewer as being more likeable. But those who thought there was an ulterior motive rated the interviewer as less likeable.
- Brehm and Cole conducted a study in which the participants were to give their first impressions of one another. The other participant was actually a confederate. The confederate asked to get up and leave for a moment before the experiment began. In one condition, they came back with nothing. In the other condition, they came back with a soft drink and gave it to the participant. The participants were then asked to help the confederate with a boring task. The students who had been given the drink were actually less likely to help.
- These two studies demonstrate the point that praise and favours are not transsituational; whether they function as rewards depends on situational variations, some of which can be extremely subtle.
What are some studies which support the theory that you get people to like you by asking them to do you a favour?
- Jecker and Landy’s experiment had participants go through a task that would allow them to win some money. One third of the participants were asked by the researcher to return their winnings because the fund was running short. Others were asked by the secretary to return it as a donation to the psychology department. The last third didn’t have to return it. The exit questionnaire showed that those who returned the money to the researcher liked him best. Because they did him a favor, they succeeded in convincing themselves that he was a decent, deserving fellow.
- Lerner and Simmons had groups of participants observe a student who appeared to be receiving a series of electric shocks. After watching for a while, some participants were allowed to vote, by private ballot, on whether the “victim” should continue to receive electric shocks. Others weren’t allowed to vote. All those who were allowed to voted for termination of the shocks; some of the voting participants succeeded in terminating the shocks, while others did not. Those people who succeeded in terminating the shocks came to like the victim the most. The people who tried but failed to terminate the shocks liked him about as much as those who didn’t vote at all.
How does a person’s competence influence how much you’ll like them, and what is the pratfall effect?
- There is a great deal of apparently paradoxical evidence in the research literature demonstrating that, in problem-solving groups, the participants who are considered the most competent and to have the best ideas tend not to be the ones who are best liked.
- How can we explain this paradox? One possibility is that, although we like to be around competent people, a person who has a great deal of ability may make us uncomfortable. If this were true, we might like the person more were he or she to show some evidence of fallibility.
- In an experiment by Aronson with Willerman and Floyd, they found that: the superior person who committed a blunder was rated most attractive, the average person who committed the same blunder was rated least attractive, the perfect person (no blunder) was second in attractiveness, and the mediocre person (no blunder) finished third.
- This phenomenon has been dubbed the pratfall effect.
When you first meet a potential partner, what’s the most important aspect in determining whether or not you’ll like them?
- As much as we don’t want it to be so, it’s physical attractiveness.
- However, as Gregory White has found, in long-term relationships it’s the similarity of the attractiveness of the members of the couple that was crucial in determining whether a relationship had staying power.
- As well, for women, factors such as socioeconomic status can outweigh attractiveness when selecting a long-term mate. This may be due to women’s biological dispositions to make sure her partner can care for her and her kids in the long-run.
How can attractiveness lead us to make mis-attributions?
- Karen Dion had women examine reports of children (written by their teachers) who were apparently misbehaving. Attached to each report was a photo of the child, either an attractive or less attractive boy or girl. The women tended to place more blame on the less attractive children and to infer that this incident was typical of their everyday behaviour. When the child was pictured as good-looking, however, they tended to excuse the disruptive behavior.
- Richard Lerner found that 6th graders tended to rate their more attractive classmates as also being more competent.
- Hunsberger and Cavanagh found that students rated good-looking teachers as nicer, happier, less punitive, and more effective than their less attractive teachers.
How can attractiveness work against a person’s likability? Use the example of Aronson and Sigall’s experiment.
- Aronson and Sigall had a woman who appeared either physically attractive or unattractive. She posed as a graduate student who was interviewing college men. At the end, she gave each student her own clinical evaluation of him. Half received highly favorable evaluations and half received unfavorable evaluations.
- When the evaluator looked unattractive, the men didn’t seem to care much; they liked her a fair amount. When she was beautiful, they liked her a great deal when she gave them a favorable evaluation but, when she gave them an unfavorable evaluation, they disliked her more than in any of the other conditions.
- Although the men who were evaluated negatively by the attractive woman said they didn’t like her, they did express a great desire to return to interact with her in a future experiment.
- Our guess was that the negative evaluations from the beautiful woman were so important to the men that they wanted the opportunity to return so as to induce her to change her mind about them.
Why is agreement attractive?
There are at least two major reasons. First, it’s obvious to most of us that people who share our attitudes and opinions on important issues are uncommonly intelligent, thoughtful individuals. It’s always rewarding and interesting to hang out with intelligent and thoughtful people. Second, they provide us with a kind of social validation for our beliefs; they provide us with the feeling that we’re right. This is rewarding; hence, we like people who agree with us.
How does our knowledge of whether or not someone likes us influence how much we’ll like them?
Predictably, if you think that someone likes you, you’ll most likely act more warmly towards that person.
What is the effect of self-esteem on attraction?
We like to be liked—and the more insecure we feel, the more we like someone who likes us. One of the implications is that people who are secure about themselves are less “needy”; that is, they are less likely to accept overtures from just any person who comes along.
How have researchers demonstrated the physiological effects of rejection?
- After a Cyberball experiment, participants were asked to rate the desirability of a variety of foods and beverages: hot soup, hot coffee, an apple, crackers, and coke. Subjects who had been excluded during the ball-tossing game rated the hot soup and hot coffee as significantly more desirable than the control participants did. Apparently, one symptom of social exclusion is the physical sensation of being cold.
- Other Cyberball experiments have shown that subjects who were excluded during the game showed increased activity in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and right anterior insula, areas of the brain involved in the experience of pain. But if they had been given a dose of Tylenol prior to playing the game these regions didn’t show heightened activity.
- In a study, women were placed into an fMRI and received mild electric shocks to their ankles. There was a great deal of activity in regions of the brain associated with physical arousal, regulating negative emotions, and anticipating pain. For women who were able to hold their husband’s hand, the pain-anticipating neural activity plummeted. Women who held a stranger’s hand also had reduced neural activity, but not nearly as much as those who held their husband’s hand. This experiment goes to show that physical contact and companionship is good for us psychologically and physiologically.
What is the:
triangle of love
Love and Intimacy: Defining Love
This theory was proposed by Sternberg, and he proposes that love consists of three components: passion (euphoria and sexual excitement), intimacy (feeling free to talk about anything, feeling close to and understood by the loved one), and commitment (needing to be with the other person, feeling loyal). Love can consist of one component alone or of any combination of these three parts.
