Interpersonal relationships II

Question 1

What did large studies find that men and women were attracted to?

Answer 1

• Physical attractiveness largest predictor of attraction for men (Sprecher, 1989)
• Status is the largest predictor of attraction for women (Li, Bailey, Kenrick & Linsenmeier, 2002)

Question 2

What is the parental investment theory?

Answer 2

Idea that men and women differ in terms of the cost associated with having sex and that this explains why women are attracted to status and men are attracted to physical attractiveness

Question 3

What are the costs of sex for men and why would they want to sleep with more attractive women?

Answer 3

 Provide sperm
 Time taken to have sex
 From evolutionary perspective men would want to sleep with attractive women because they are more fertile, usually because they are younger

Question 4

What are the costs of sex for women and why would they be attracted to status?

Answer 4

 High cost of sex
 9 months of pregnancy 
 Food to supply mother and baby 
 Limited number of eggs
 Physical and emotional cost of child 
 So want men who have the necessary resource to support the offspring and mother 
 More stringent in terms of sex
 Explains why women marry and date slightly older men

Question 5

What is physical attractiveness and what is the one feature that in general is judged more attractive?

Answer 5

• objective features of the face and body

- symmetrical faces are judged as more attractive than asymmetrical faces

Question 6

What female faces are most attractive and why?

Answer 6

Female faces with high cheekbones and smooth skin: most sensitive indicator of high levels of oestrogen (high fertility) (Draelos, 2007)

Question 7

What male faces are most attractive and why?

Answer 7

Male faces with large jaw, and prominent brow ridges and cheekbone signal high levels of testosterone (Penton-Voak, Ian & Chen, 2004).

Question 8

What bodies according to Tovee, Tasker and Benson (2000) are considered most attractive?

Answer 8

 Man: narrow waist and broad chest and shoulders

 Women: hourglass shaped waist-to-hip ratio of 0.70 (associated with fertility)

Question 9

Why does being attractive matter?

Answer 9

• People tend to endow good looking people with qualities they might not have
• Pupils are judged as more intelligent and get higher grades (Clifford and Walster, 1979)
• Raise more money for charity (Chaiken, 1979)
• Higher income (Frieze, Olson and Russell, 1991)
• Lower sentences in court (Downs and Lyons, 1991)
• Attractive babies: mothers play more and display more affectionate behaviour (Langlois, Ritter, Cassey and Sawin, 1995)

Question 10

What do attractive people tend to be in terms of social skills?

Answer 10

Attractive people are more extraverted, have higher self-confidence, possess better social skills (Langlois et al., 2000)

Question 11

Why do attractive people become more sociable?

Answer 11

 Mothers treat attractive children better
 Attractive pupils are treated better by peers and teachers
 Attractive people receive more help and cooperation
 Know their worth and have interacted with people for a long period of time who are interested in them

Question 12

What stereotype do attractive people confirm and how?

Answer 12

confirm the what-is-beautiful-is-good-stereotype by reciprocating favourable responses from others – self-fulfilling prophecy (Snyder, Tanke and Berscheid, 1977)

Question 13

What was love life like before the internet?

Answer 13

• In almost all societies, cultures and religions there have always been matchmakers (e.g., priests, village elders, clergy, rabbis, elderly women)
• With the advent of newspapers, people started to advertise for a spouse, with the first recorded one being in the early 1770s (Orr, 2004). Common by the 1970.
• Video dating became popular in the 1980s

Question 14

Theoretically why should internet dating help you find love?

Answer 14

• You can access thousands of people in your local area
• Dating sites can match you on similarity
• Internet might level the playing field – you can reduce the importance of physical attraction by writing a carefully crafted thing about yourself

Question 15

What happens when given too much choice?

Answer 15

• people experience choice overload, in which they avoid making any decision rather than exerting the mental effort required to make a decision (Lyengar, 2010)
• this is called choice paralysis

Question 16

What is Lyengar and Lepper’s (2000) supermarket shoppers experiment to show choice paralysis?

Answer 16

• Supermarket shoppers (Lyengar and Lepper, 2000): encountered tasting booth with 6 or 24 flavours of jams
   Shoppers twice as likely to stop at the booth with the larger array, but 10 times more likely to purchase the jams from the smaller array

Question 17

What is the experiment that shows choice paralysis in a real world romantic context?

Answer 17

• Fishman, Lyengar, Kamenica and Simonson (2006): Students attended a speed dating event that varied in size from 18 participants to 42 participants:
• As the size of the choice set increased, they said ‘yes’ to fewer potential partners
• Women who attended speed-dating events at which they met a small number of men (9-14) were over 40% more likely to agree to a follow-up meeting than those who met a larger number of men (15-21)

Question 18

How can online dating lead to objectification?

Answer 18

• Presented with thousands of profiles. Online websites allow users to narrow their search categories in much the same way that users on a shopping website can refine their searches
• Heino (2010): ‘relationshopping’ leads to the ‘objectification’ of individuals
• Found that people tend to see pictures and profiles as ‘sales pitches’ and we reduce people to ‘products’
• Difficult to measure subtle ‘experimental’ attributes (humour, warmth) from a profile, but easy to reduce/categorise people on attributes (job, redheads, income)

Question 19

How can there be deception when it comes to online dating?

Answer 19

• People engage in deliberate self-presentation when constructing their profiles (Ellison et al., 2006; Whitty, 2008)

Question 20

What were the results of - Hitsch, Hortascu and Airely (2010) where they compared 745 users’ profiles to the national average?

Answer 20

 Both men and women were taller than the national average

 Women claimed to weigh less than the national average

Question 21

What were the results of Toma, Hancock and Ellison’s (2008) experiment where they compared users profiles with actual weight, height and age data with their online profiles?

Answer 21

 81% had lied about at least one of characteristics

 60% lied about their weight, 40% about their height, 19% about their age

Question 22

What are the three problems with online dating?

Answer 22

• choice paralysis
• objectification
• deception

Question 23

What is the matching hypothesis?

Answer 23

The more socially desirable an individual is, the more socially desirable they would expect their partner to be (equally matched)

Question 24

How do people learn their position in the attractiveness hierarchy?

Answer 24

via a feedback loop (learn through experience of getting rejected)

Question 25

What was Murtien’s experiment on the matching hypothesis?

Answer 25

• Murtien (1972): took photos of 100 faces of 50 real couples
• Group A were asked to rate each member of the couple on attractiveness (didn’t know they were a couple)
• Group B were presented with the same pictures but in a randomised order
• Results: faces of real couples were consistently rated as more alike than faces randomly assigned into couples

Question 26

What did Rubin, (1973) say about self-disclosure?

Answer 26

revealing information about oneself to another person is important in interpersonal relationships

Question 27

What was Collins and Miller (1994) self-disclosure meta-analysis?

Answer 27

 We disclose more to people we like
 We like people more after having disclosed to them
 We like people who disclose more

Question 28

How does self-disclosure work?

Answer 28

• revealing information about yourself
• Self-disclosure usually operates according to a ‘norm of reciprocity’ (at least in the early days of the relationship)
• Sharing intimate information maintains relationships with intimacy and closeness (Canary et al., 1993)
• Disclosing is a delicate dance – can’t disclose too much or too little

Question 29

What was Hatfield and Walster’s (1981) three-factor theory of love?

Answer 29

 A state of physiological arousal
 An appropriate label for that arousal (cultural influence) and
 An appropriate love object

Question 30

What was Dutton and Aron’s (1974) bridge study and what were the results?

Answer 30

• Male participants crossed a bridge
   Shaky bridge
   Safe and wide bridge
• At the end of the bridge an attractive female experimenter waited
   Describe pictures on questionnaire (thematic apperception test)
   Received her telephone number in case of questions
• Shaky bridge induces arousal
• Men who had crossed the shaky bridge attributed arousal to attraction
   Described pictures in more sexual way than non-shaky bridge
   More likely to call experimenter

Question 31

What is the set of theories of what keeps relationships going?

Answer 31

Economic maintenance of relationships’ (e.g., social exchange theory, equity theory, investment theory).

Question 32

What is the investment theory?

Answer 32

• Satisfaction/ Quality of alternatives/ investments -> commitment -> relationship stability
• Three main factors:
   Satisfaction
   Quality of alternatives
   Investments

Question 33

What is ‘satisfaction’ in the investment theory?

Answer 33

how happy am I in this relationship?
 Relationships based on rewards (pleasurable resources associated with the relationship) and costs (factors in the relationship experienced negatively) and these tend to be subjective
 All relationships have an outcome (calculated by subtracting costs from rewards). Satisfaction occurs when rewards outweigh the costs

Question 34

What is ‘quality of alternatives’ in the investment theory?

Answer 34

is there a better relationship out there for me?
- Two different factors
 Comparison level: comparing current levels of satisfaction with previous relationships
 Comparison level for alternatives: Comparing current relationship to other possible relationships on offer

Question 35

What are ‘investments’ in the investment theory?

Answer 35

• Level of resources put into a relationship which increases the cost of withdrawing from the relationships
   E.g.
   Financial (e.g. money, house)
   Temporal (e.g. been with him/her 10 years of my life)
   Emotional (self-disclosure, welfare of the kids)

Question 36

What makes a person more committed to maintain a relationship according to the investment theory (Rusbult, 1983)?

Answer 36

The more satisfied, the lower the quality of alternatives, the more prior investments

Question 37

Why is satisfaction not always a reliable predictor of commitment?

Answer 37

• Abused women stay when:
   They have limited or poor quality alternatives
   They have invested more in their relationships

Question 38

What are Baxter’s (1982) four factors that characterise the strategies that people employ when relationships break down?

Answer 38

• Withdrawal/Avoidance (only works in relatively casual relationships) – most people want to avoid conflict
• Manipulation (common if you are already in a stable relationship) – e.g. try to create lots of arguments in the hope the other person will leave or telling a mutual friend that you’re not that happy and they can plant the seed in your partner’s mind
• Positive-tone strategies – come clean ‘it’s me not you’
• Open confrontation – come clean but not necessarily with a positive tone