Lecture 13: Attraction

Question 1

The contact hypothesis can…

Answer 1

• Foster positive attitudes

- Uniracial / multiracial houses

Question 2

How can functional distance instrument attraction?

Answer 2

• If you lived by the stairs, you’re more likely to develop positive attitudes since you see people more often

Question 3

There’s a slight tendency to like / prefer people we have contact with. True or false?

Answer 3

• True

Question 4

What did Hatfield and Walster attribute love to being?

Answer 4

• Love = concept of love + arousal + target

Question 5

Walster came up with a matching hypothesis where…

Answer 5

• People seek out others of similar physical attractiveness

Question 6

What did Swann propose about self-verification?

Answer 6

• People are motivated to seek out other people who can confirm what they believe about themselves, they’re motivated to feel like they know themselves
• You want to be around people that share the same views

Question 7

What is a balanced triad?

Answer 7

• Where you like the thing that someone you like, likes
• Where you hate the thing that someone you like, hates
• Feels unpleasant to be around people who don’t like the things you do and vice versa

Question 8

The Ned Flanders Effect:

Answer 8

• People tend to prefer people who share the same religious views

Question 9

Ultimate explanations for attraction include:

Answer 9

• People similar to us will be less likely to harm us
• The people you help may have a proportion of your genes in them, so it would be advantageous if you were altruistic towards them. We use their similarity as a queue for kin selection (they might be distantly related to us)

Question 10

What predicts physical attractiveness?

Answer 10

• Extreme traits

- Lack of extreme traits

Question 11

What are extreme traits?

Answer 11

Caricatures
- When you pick a face and enhance their specific traits
Anticaricatures
- Minimise the things that are distinctive to your face
- Combining two faces make them look more attractive than the original
- Disney does this with their heros/heroines vs villains
- There’s a strong correlation between typicality and attraction

Question 12

Why do we prefer averageness?

Answer 12

• It’s easier to cognitively process
• Familiarity
• People may think they’re at more of a genetic advantage

Question 13

Learning theories of attraction:

Answer 13

Instrumental vs. Classical conditioning
Social exchange: depends on balance of rewards and costs
Comparison levels
Equity theory: cost/reward ratio
Exchange vs. communal relationships

Question 14

Biological theories of attraction:

Answer 14

• Sexual Selection Theory: attraction is a mechanism to identify appropriate mates