Lecture 3 - Attraction and Close Relationships

Question 1

What is love?

Answer 1

“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies” (Aristotle)
“Love is a serious mental disease” (Plato)
“We’re all a little weird, and life’s a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love” (Dr Seuss)
“Love is a losing game” (Amy Winehouse)
Let us always meet each other with a smile, for the smile is the beginning of love” (Mother Teresa)
“Love is all around us” (Love Actually)

Question 2

Describe the two kinds of love (Fehr, 1994)

Answer 2

Passionate (romantic) love -
State of intense absorption in another person involving physiological arousal

Companionate love -
The caring affection for another person that usually arises from sharing time together

Question 3

Describe no greater love (Sternberg, 1988)

Answer 3

Sternberg’s (1988) triangle of love:

• Three factors (passion, commitment and intimacy) are crucial in characterising different experiences of love
• When only one or two are present we have love in a different way. Two commonly experienced kinds include romantic love and companionate love

Question 4

What are positive outcomes associated with love?

Answer 4

Aron et al. (1995) falling in love associated with:
• Increased self esteem
• Expanded self-concept to include aspects of the other person
• Increased self-efficacy

Question 5

Describe the implications of being attractive

Answer 5

“Never judge a book by its cover”
“Beauty is only skin deep”
“Beauty is in the eye of the beholder”
Langlois et al. (2000) meta analysis of over 100 studies
Attractive people are treated differently in how they are judged, treated and how they behave

Question 6

What are the benefits of being attractive (Langlois et al., 2000)?

Answer 6

• Higher levels of intellectual competence
• More popular
• More successful in their jobs and liked more
• More physically healthy
• More sexually experienced and had more dates
• More confident, intelligent with better mental health

Question 7

Describe the evolution of attraction?

Answer 7

Ovulation - Women sniffed t-shirts and preferred those worn by simetrical men when about to ovulate
Women also prefer competitive men when about to ovulate
Red – women rated more attractive with a red background or when wearing red rather than white
Hourglass figure – depends on context

Question 8

What makes a face attractive (Rhodes, 2006)?

Answer 8

Landmark points were used to align features across individual photographs

Face composites were created by averaging the features of 24 real faces

Symmetrical faces are considered to be most attractive

Question 9

What influence does attachment have on love?

Answer 9

• Secure – trust in others, find it easy to be close to others, comfortable being dependent on others and vice versa
• Avoidant – uncomfortable when close to others, find it difficult to trust or depend on others, feel nervous when anyone gets close
• Anxious – concern that other’s will not reciprocate, feels that partner will leave and this can scare them away

Question 10

Detail influence on proximity (Festinger et al., 1950)

Answer 10

Friendship choice, physical proximity and housing design