Interpersonal Attraction

Question 1

What is affiliation?

Answer 1

Sense of belonging
Fundamental for survival & happiness…
…If not met:
Depression, Sadness, Loneliness & Alienation

Question 2

Why do we have this need?

Sense of belonging

Answer 2

Evolution: To survive, reproduce, provide support network in time of need

Social attraction:
Ancestry/attachment
Romantic affiliation: offspring (survival)
Shape emotions and sense of self
Aids wellbeing and happiness (Baumeister & Leary, 1995)

Question 3

Determinants of Affiliation + Interpersonal Attraction

Answer 3

Physical:
Proximity
Familiarity
Attractiveness
Misattribution of   arousal
Similarity

Psychological:
Need to affiliate
Emotions
Similarity of attitudes
Mutual liking

Question 4

Proximity effect -

Answer 4

Being or living close to others can facilitate attraction and relationship formation.

Question 5

Familiarity: 1. Mere exposure:

Answer 5

Simply knowing of something may lead us to like it more

Proximity → familiarity

Question 6

Familiarity: 2. Anticipating future interaction:

Answer 6

If we anticipate that we will need to interact with the person again, we will like them more (Klein and Kunda, 1992)

Darley & Berscheid (1967)

Question 7

Familiarity: 3. Subliminal liking/disliking:

Answer 7

Your judgements of the ‘new’ person are clouded by your exposure to similar person in the past (Bornstein and D’Agostino, 1992).
Serves adaptive function in predicting environment

Question 8

Physical: Attractiveness:

Answer 8

We judge others (and are judged by them) based on looks (Hatfield et al., 1966)

Question 9

Physical Attractiveness Stereotype –

Answer 9

the tendency for people to assume that attractive people possess other socially desirable traits in addition to their looks (Dion et al., 1972).

Question 10

Averageness effect -

Answer 10

People prefer average or prototypical faces to faces that have distinctive features (Winkielman et al, 2006)

Question 11

Averageness -

Answer 11

diverse gene pool stronger and more able to fight off diseases, more reproductively fit (Grammer and Thornhill, 1994).

Question 12

Attractiveness involve -

Answer 12

young, healthy and fertile (Jokela, 2009)

Question 13

Excitation transfer –

Answer 13

a phenomenon that occurs when the arousal from one stimulus is added to the arousal of a second stimulus.

Question 14

The matching phenomenon -

Answer 14

tendency for individuals to choose as partners people who are a similar match to themselves in terms of their physical attractiveness (Berscheid et al., 1971)

Question 15

Need to Affiliate

Answer 15

The motive to seek and maintain relationships with others. (Baumeister and Leary, 1995)

Question 16

Privacy Regulation Theory (Altman, 1975)

Answer 16

Ideal level of privacy (& need to affiliate) influenced by two factors:
Dialectic principle: Desire for privacy can vary from being open or closed to others
Optimization principle: Try to align our desired level of contact with our actual level of contact with others
Too little contact - feel isolated; Too much - feel crowded

Question 17

the Need to Affiliate is to…

Answer 17

Understand our feelings and compare them with people who are sharing the same experiences and feelings.

Reduces anxiety and makes a person less fearful of events because their feelings are shared.

Question 18

Affect -

Answer 18

Emotional state consisting of feelings and moods

Question 19

‘Law of attraction’ -

Answer 19

attraction towards a person is directly – and linearly – related to the proportion of attitudes that one shares with that person (Byrne, 1971)

Question 20

Complementarity -

Answer 20

The idea that people seek out traits in potential relationship partners that complement, or add what is missing, to their own (Sadler and Woody, 2003)

Question 21

Dissimilarity leads to…

Answer 21

avoidance (Chen and Kenrick, 2002)

Question 22

Balance theory:

Answer 22

(Similar attitudes - balance - positive emotional state)

Question 23

Social comparison -

Answer 23

Validity of their own attitudes

Question 24

Evolutionary perspective -

Answer 24

dissimilar others may present a danger to survival

Question 25

A person’s attraction to another person is often determined by …

Answer 25

reciprocity (Dittes and Kelley, 1956)