Human Relationships: Formation (BIOLOGICAL)

Question 1

STUDY 1 RESEARCHER & AIM

Answer 1

Wedekind: role of MHC in human attraction and how the gene biologically allows relationships to be formed.

Question 2

EVALUATION

Answer 2

Has been successfully replicated by other studies
Over-simplifies the behavior of human mate selection ⇒ Reductionist
Double-blind experiment ⇒ decreases the possibility of demand characteristics
Participants were debriefed
Participants were similar in age and culture ⇒ decreases generalizability

Question 3

STUDY 2 RESEARCHER & AIM

Answer 3

Buss : investigating biological reasons behind mate preference in context of evolution

Question 4

S2 PROCEDURE

Answer 4

Given two questionnaire
1. biographical data + what age prefer to marry & preferred age difference. 18 characteristics to rate on a 4 point scale, includes looks, money, chastity & ambition

2. 13 characteristics to rank in order of desirability

Question 5

S2 RESULTS

Answer 5

women value/prefer ambition, resources, status, economic stability. Men prefer youth & physical attractiveness.

Question 6

S2 EVALUATION

Answer 6

limitation) we don’t know to what extent we could generalize, the samples cannot be viewed as representative of the populations of each country.

(strength) questionnaire was in participant’s own language and used back-translation, to check if the understanding was reliable.

(limitation) construct validity, which is whether e.g the word marriage means the same in every culture.

(strength) parallel forms validity, which means that the same response was given on both surveys.