Human relationships: Attraction Flashcards
What is the Definition of attraction and love?
Attraction: the degree to which we like other individuals.
Interpersonal attraction is the attraction between people which leads to friendship and romantic relationships.
It is related to how much we like, love, dislike, or hate someone.
It can be viewed as a force acting between two people that tends to draw them together and result their separation.
Love: an emotional state involving attraction, sexual desire, and concern about the other person. It represents the positive level of attraction.
Define Interpersonal attraction
Interpersonal attraction is the attraction between people which leads to friendship and romantic relationships.
It is related to how much we like, love, dislike, or hate someone. It can be viewed as a force acting between two people that tends to draw them together and result their separation.
What is the Evolutionary Explanations of Attraction (Bio. origins of attraction)
- The purpose of attraction is to procreate, pass on genes to the next generation.
- The assumption is that males and females have different reproduction strategies to pass on their genes, because, according to evolutionary ideas of
- parental investment, (women have to invest at least 9 months, men haven’t) and
- human reproductive capacity (men can produce a vast amount of children, while women cannot)
- This means that when they DO copulate
- the woman has to be fertile to produce a child,
- only women can be sure of being the parent of the offspring
That is why there are gender differences in what men and women prefer in a mate.
Buss (1989)
Aim: To investigate gender differences in mate preferences, which means that he was interested in what women and men find attractive.
Theory: Evolutionary explination of attraction.
Hypothesis: Buss made several predictions about gender differences in mate preferences.)
- Men will, more than women, prefer youth and attractiveness (signs of fertility)
- Women will, more than men, prefer men with status and resources (earning)capacity, industriousness, ambition)
- These gender differences will occur in all cultures
Procedure:
2 questionnaires were distributed to approx 10,000 people from 37 countries on six continents that asked the participants to rate the importance of 32 characteristics in potential mates.
Results:
Women placed a higher value than men on potential partners’ status, ambition, and financial prospects. Men showed more interest than women in potential partners’youthfulness and physical attractiveness.
Men showed more interest than women in potential partners’ youthfulness and physical attractiveness.
Conclusion:
- The results give powerful support for the evolution-based origins of attraction.
- The sex differences found in this study may reflect different evolutionary selection pressures on males and females
- They provide powerful cross-cultural evidence for gender differences in attraction.
- Since similarities were found in many cultures around the world, it is possible to draw the conclusion that these differences are biological rather than learned. This does not mean that the environment/the social context does not influence partner preferences.
What role do neurotransmitters have in attraction (Bio. origins of attraction)
- The symptoms exhibited in human romantic passion indicate that dopamine, adrenaline, and serotonin all play an important role.
- Serotonin could perhaps explain the continuous focus on the beloved.
- The hormone, Adrenaline makes your heart race, your palms become sweaty, and your mouth go dry when in the presence of that new special someone. It is a stress hormone. Increased levels of adrenaline result in high energy, less need for sleep and food, and more focused attention on the potential mate, according to Fisher.
Fisher et.al (2005)
Aim: To study courtship attraction in humans by looking at early stages of intense romantic
**Theory: **The role that neurotransmitters have in attraction.
- Neurotransmitter dopamine plays a major role in emotional arousal (also in memory, learning, experiencing pleasure or pain)
- It has an excitatory effect
- This can be stimulated by the opposite sex, through romantic love
- The presentation of a rewarding/positive stimuli causes intense nerve impulses to the brain – activates dopamine cells
- *Hypothesis: ** Romantic Love (RL) involves dopaminergic pathways that mediate reward.
- *Participants:** 10 women and 7 men
- *Procedure:**
- Each participant was orally interviewed in a semi-structured format to establish the duration, intensity and range of his or her feelings.
- Passionate Love Scale (PLS) a 9 point Likert Scale self-report questionnaire which measure several traits commonly associated with RL.
- First condition, photograph of beloved shown for 30 seconds, following 40 seconds a count back distraction task
- Second condition, photograph of a neutral acquaintance shown for 30 seconds, following 40 seconds a count back distraction task
- This was repeated six times
- Pre-scanning instructions were to think about a nonsexual, euphoric experience with the beloved
Results:
- There was group activation regions detected as individuals looked at an image of their beloved COMPARED TO an image of an acquaintance.
- Evidence from the human fMRI study support the hypothesis that reward regions using the neurotransmitter dopamine are activated during feelings of romantic love.
The role of early attachment in the subsequent formation of relationships (socio-cultural origins of attraction)
