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PSY424: - L2

Jan 23, 2023, 12 min read

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Chapter 3

Basis of Attraction: We are attracted to people whose presence is rewarding because they offer us instrumentality, assistance in achieving our goals.

  • Proximity: Liking Those Near Us
    • We select our friends, and our enemies, from those around us.
    • Familiarity: Repeated Contact:
      • In general, familiarity breeds attraction. Even brief, mere exposure to others usually increases our liking for them.
    • Convenience: Proximity Is Rewarding, Distance Is Costly:
      • Relationships with distant partners are ordinarily less satisfying than they would be if the partners were nearby.
    • The Power of Proximity:
      • Close proximity makes it more likely that two people will meet and interact, for better or for worse.
  • Physical Attractiveness: Liking Those Who Are Lovely
    • Our Bias for Beauty: “What Is Beautiful Is Good.” We assume that attractive people have other desirable personal characteristics.
    • Who’s Pretty:
      • Symmetrical faces with features of average dimensions are especially beautiful. Waist-to-hip ratios of 0.7 are very appealing in women, whereas a WHR of 0.9 is attractive in a man if he has money.
    • An Evolutionary Perspective on Physical Attractiveness:
      • Cross-cultural agreement about beauty, cyclical variations in women’s desires, and the link between attractiveness and good health are all consistent with the assumptions of evolutionary psychology.
    • Culture Counts, Too:
      • Standards of beauty also fluctuate with changing economic and cultural conditions.
    • Looks Matter:
      • When people first meet, nothing else affects attraction as much
    • The Interactive Costs and Benefits of Beauty:
      • Physical attractiveness has a larger influence on men’s social lives than on women’s. Attractive people doubt the praise they receive from others, but they’re still happier than unattractive people are.
    • Matching in Physical Attractiveness:
      • People tend to pair off with others of similar levels of beauty.
  • Reciprocity: Liking Those Who Like Us
    • People are reluctant to risk rejection. Most people calculate others’ overall desirability by multiplying their physical attractiveness by their probability of reciprocal liking. People who are desirable partners—that is, those with high mate value—insist that their partners be desirable, too.
  • Similarity: Liking Those Who Are Like Us
    • Birds of a feather flock together. People like those who share their attitudes.
    • What Kind of Similarity:
      • Happy relationship partners resemble each other in demographic origin, attitudes, and, to a lesser degree, in personalities.
    • Do Opposites Attract:
      • Opposites do not attract, but they may seem to for several reasons. First, we are attracted to those who we think are like us, and we can be wrong. Then, it takes time for perceived similarity to be replaced by more accurate understanding of the attributes we share with others. People may be attracted to those who are mildly different from themselves but similar to their ideal selves. People also tend to become more similar over time, and some types of similarity are more important than others. Matching is also a broad process; fame, wealth, talent, and looks can all be used to attract others. Finally, we may appreciate behavior from a partner that differs from our own but that complements our actions and helps us to reach our goals.
    • So, What Do Men and Women Want:
      • People evaluate potential partners with regard to (a) warmth and loyalty, (b) attractiveness and vitality, and (c) status and resources. For lasting romances, women want men who are warm and kind and who are not poor, and men want women who are warm and kind and who are not unattractive. Thus, everybody wants intimate partners who are amiable, agreeable, and loving.
  • Suggestions for Relationships
    • Proximity is attractive; don’t expect absence to make the heart grow fonder.
    • Don’t be fooled: A dating site that promises to find a perfect partner for you probably won’t.
    • Don’t judge a book by its cover; beauty isn’t talent.
    • Seek friends and lovers with whom you agree on all of the things that are important to you.
    • Join the crowd: Put a potential partner’s warmth and kindness at the top of your list of priorities.

Chapter 4

First Impressions (and Beyond): When we first meet others, we jump to conclusions because of stereotypes and primacy effect. Confirmation Bias then affect our selection of subsequent data, and overconfidence leads us to put unwarranted faith in our judgments.

  • The Power of Perceptions:
    • Partners’ perceptions can be very consequential.
    • Idealizing Our Partners:
      • Happy partners construct positive illusions that emphasize their partners’ virtues and minimize their faults.
    • Attributional Processes:
      • The explanations we generate for why things happen are called attributions. Partners are affected by actor/observer effects and self-serving biases, and they tend to employ either relationship-enhancing or distress-maintaining patterns of attribution.
    • Memories. We edit and update our Memory as time goes by:
      • This process of reconstructive memory helps couples stay optimistic about their futures.
    • Relationship Beliefs:
      • Our assumptions about the role marriage will play in our lives take the form of marital paradigms. Dysfunctional relationship beliefs such as destiny beliefs are clearly disadvantageous. Growth beliefs are more realistic and profitable.
    • Expectations.
      • Our expectations about others can become self-fulfilling prophecies, false predictions that make themselves come true:
    • Self-Perceptions.
      • We seek reactions from others that are self-enhancing and complimentary and that are consistent with what we already think of ourselves—with selfverification leading people to seek intimate partners who support their existing self-concepts.
    • Nonconscious Social Cognition.
      • We often have both positive and negative associations with our partners, implicit attitudes, of which we are unaware. We also may not recognize how, through transference, experiences with prior partners can influence our feelings and behavior in current relationships.
  • Impression Management
    • We try to influence the impressions of us that others form.
    • Strategies of Impression Management.
      • Four different strategies of impression management—ingratiation, self-promotion, intimidation, and supplication—are commonplace.
    • Impression Management in Close Relationships.
      • High self-monitors are less committed to their romantic partners, but all of us work less hard to present favorable images to our intimate partners than to others.
  • So, Just How Well Do We Know Our Partners?
    • We generally don’t understand our partners as well as we think we do.
    • Knowledge.
      • As a relationship develops and partners spend more time together, they typically do understand each other better.
    • Motivation.
      • The interest and motivation with which people try to figure each other out help to determine how insightful and accurate they will be.
    • Partner Legibility.
      • Some personality traits, such as extraversion, are more visible than others.
    • Perceiver Ability.
      • Some judges are better than others, too. Emotional intelligence is important in this regard.
    • Threatening Perceptions.
      • However, when accurate perceptions would be worrisome, intimate partners may actually be motivated to be inaccurate.
    • Perceiver Influence.
      • Perceptions that are initially inaccurate may become more correct as we induce our partners to become the people we want them to be.
  • Suggestions for relationships
    • Humility is attractive. Strive to be humble instead of overconfident in your judgments of others.
    • Celebrate your partner’s virtues and acknowledge, but do not dwell, on their faults.
    • Blame less; remember that nearly all of the annoyances and inconveniences a loving partner causes you are unintended.
    • Accept more personal responsibility for the setbacks you encounter in your relationships.
    • Love, all by itself, does not conquer all. Adopt the perspective that successful relationships require creative collaboration, compromise, and effort.
    • Remember that people behave the way they do around you due in part to the way you behave toward them.
    • Don’t overestimate your ability to change a potential partner’s negative self-concept.
    • Don’t get lazy. Continue to work hard to make good impressions on your friends and lovers.
    • Recognize that you don’t understand your partners as well as you think you do. Actively strive to know and understand them better.

Lecture

  • PDF:
  • Attachment
    • What is attachment?
      • A long-enduring, emotionally meaningful tie to a particular person
      • Imprinting in animals = attachment in human
      • What was John Bowlby’s Attachment theory’s main argument
        • Infants have a biological-bias to develop attachments to caregivers
        • Reason: evolutionary advantage
          • Favoured behavours in infants increases its likelihood to survive
          • Psychologically, feel sense of security and been cared
    • What is a Attachment Behavioural System and its primary/secondary strategy.
      • Characteristic (strategies used)
        • Primary strategy: behavioural to seek proximity with attachment figure
        • Secondary strategy: hyper-activation, deactivation
      • Cognitive aspect
        • Monitor attachment figure presence and changes strategies to seek proximity
    • What is IWMs, why useful?
    • Explain how Behavioural System --> IWMs --> attachment types in Strange Situation.
    • How did infant attachment affect adult?
      • Human carry early IWMs when grow up --> Romantic Relationship
      • Adult Attachment Interview (Main et al, 1985)
      • Adult Attachment Dimensions Bartholomew (1990), Fraley (200)
      • Adult attachment is more variable (experiences plays more role), infant attachment is more dependent on biological bases
  • Attraction
    • What is the basis of interpersonal attraction?
      • We are attracted to people whose presence is rewarding because they offer us instrumentality, assistance in achieving our goals
    • Why are physical proximity attractive (4 reasons)?
      • Availability
      • Convenience
        • “距离产生美”?
          • Not good, unless already committed to the relationship --> easier to idealize the relationship
          • If not already committed, makes it relationships more costly
      • Anticipation of interaction
        • Higher frequency of exposure -> Anticipatory liking -> good interaction
        • A adaptive advantage for group functions, based on expectations, not perception
      • Familiarity
        • Mere Exposure Effect
          • Novel stimulus + exposure --> higher liking
          • Digital age: 刷存在感 can increase attraction
        • Perceptual fluency
        • If repeated exposure to a unfavourable stimulus, what happens?
          • Dislike even more
    • What are some features, benefits, and disadvantages with physical attractiveness in attraction?
      • Features
        • US (idiosyncratic judgments)
        • Cross culture
          • Blemish-free (evolution advantage which indicate disease free)
          • Average/symmetry (perceptual fluency, familiarity for prototypical features)
          • Other reasons
            • Culture (different norms and ideas)
      • Benefits
        • Stereotypical benefits
        • Truthful benefits
        • Disadvantages
          • Other lies more
          • More ingratiation
          • Less trusting of others
        • Other’s perspective
          • Other has a better mood
          • Mere association vs. Contrast effect
            • Other: feels good about self (with good looking people)
            • Other’s perceptions: other uses most good looking people to compare
      • Smell
        • Strangers prefer the “natural smell” of attractive people
        • What is the sexual different in smell preference
          • Females thinks smells > appearance
          • Male thinks appearance > smell
        • Why do people prefer better smell
          • Better smell are correlated with different immune system
          • Major histocompatibility complex (MHC) alleles have different smells
    • Why do people prefer reciprocal liking

      • Mate value

          ```text
  [Partner's desirability]   =   [Physical attractiveness]   X   [Acception probability]
  ```
      • Do you think that playing “hard to get” actually works?
        • Can be effective
          • Works better with selection (accept target, hard to get for everybody else)
          • Backfire (risk of rejection is too high, they stop)
        • Why
          • Principle of scarcity (people want things that are scarce)
          • Justification of effort due to Cognitive Dissonance Theory
            • More effort -> justify effort -> likes it more
    • Why do people prefer similarity
      • Characteristics
        • Demographics, attitudes/values, personality
      • Reason
        • Reciprocal liking assumption (people will inclined to like them due to same reason)
        • Self validation
        • Maintain cognitive consistency
          • Hard to like someone who dislike something you like
      • Perceived similarity
        • Which do you think matters more for attraction?
          • Answer
            • Perceived similarity (beginning) + actual similarity
          • Actually being similar to the other person
          • Perceiving that the other person is similar to you
          • Actually being the opposite of the other person
          • Perceiving that the other person is the opposite of you
        • Stimulus value role theory
          • Stimulus information (Ex. Sex, age, physical attractiveness)
          • Value stage (similarity in attitudes and beliefs)
          • Role compatibility (agreement)
        • Fatal attractions
          • Beginning attraction characteristics (interdependency is low) will become fatal (interdependency is high)
        • Positive illusions
          • Tendency to see oneself and partners as “slightly better”
          • Problematic if degree of illusion is too great
        • Complimentary match
          • “Opposite” does not mean dissimilarity
        • Psychological reactance
          • When people lose their freedom of action or choice, they strive to regain that freedom
          • Forbidden motivates attraction (叛逆)
    • What are some other factors that can affect attraction
      • Interpersonal factors
        • “Chemistry”, a dynamic process
          • Pleasurable, positive, subjective, an interpersonal process
          • Most research focus on average attributes (proximity, physical, similar…), hard to study this
      • Culture
        • Perceptions of physical attractiveness (state of economy, ethnicity)
        • Changing value of traits
      • Evolution
        • Parental investment theory
          • Evolutionary reasons for sex differences in mate preference
          • Male: young, physically attractive women (invest less, want more children)
          • Female: older, more resourceful partner (invest more, want less children)
        • Social Role Theory
          • Male: directly benefited entire group, seek biological preferences
          • Female: could only access resources indirectly through men, seek resourceful preferences
    • What are some universal preferences for attraction
      • Preferences
        • Warmth, loyalty, vitality, status and resources
      • Don’t want
        • Poor hygiene, objectionable traits
  • Social Cognition

In Class Quiz

  • Do you think that the Strange Situation is a good (valid and reliable) and ethical way of assessing infant attachment?
    • Valid, reliable, somewhat ethical
  • How stable do you think infant attachment is?
    • Somewhat stable – we carry our infant attachments through adulthood but they can change
  • Do you think that playing hard to get actually works?
    • Yes, to some extend
  • Infant attachment is more variable than adult attachment. (TRUE or FALSE)
    • FALSE
  • Two-year-old Alice is nervous and clingy when her parent is around and gets very distressed when her parent leaves. What’s Alice’s attachment style?
    • Anxious-ambivalent
  • Do you think that dismissing adults have no attachment needs?
    • No, I think that they are suppressing their attachment needs
    • This takes cognitive resources (conscious behaviour)
    • If put avoidant people under cognitive load, they react similarly to relationship threats as the other attachment types, suggest active cognitive involved in relationship avoidant
  • When is perceived similarity MOST likely to influence attraction?
    • At beginning, when intimacy is low

Active Studying

Summarize today’s lecture

  • [::Most important/focused topic]: Attachment, Attraction
  • [::Most difficult part, why, how to resolve], differentiation between factors (need deeper understanding for each -> review more)

What part I didn’t understand, next step actions?

  • Can someone without childhood abuse/trauma develop disorganized attachment?
    • Yes, there is no direct causation for infant/adult attachment, life experience contribute too
  • Differences between anticipation of interaction vs. Familiarity?
    • Anticipation interaction focus on expectation due to evolution
    • Familiarity focus on preference of familiarity due to perceptual processing

Graph View

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