Chapter 9

Attraction and Close Relationships

Need to Belong: A Fundamental Human Motive

The Need to Belong

• The need to belong is a basic human motive.• We care deeply about what others think

of us.• Those with a network of close social ties tend

to be happier, healthier, and more satisfied with life than those who are more isolated.

Social Media Networks

The Thrill of Affiliation

• Need for Affiliation: The desire to establish social contact with others.– We are motivated to establish and maintain an

optimum balance of social contact.

• Stress arouses our need for affiliation.– “Fearful misery loves company.”– But, “embarrassed misery seeks solitude.”– “Misery loves the company of those in the same

miserable situation.”

Shyness

• Sources– Inborn personality trait– Learned reaction to failed interactions with others

• Painful consequences– Negative self-evaluations– Expectations of failure in social encounters– Self-blame for social failures– Self-imposed isolation

The Agony of Loneliness

• A feeling of deprivation about social relations.• Most likely to occur during times of transition

or disruption.• Loneliest group in American society are those

18 to 30 years old.• We employ various strategies to combat

loneliness.

The Initial Attraction

Perspectives on Attraction

• We are attracted to others with whom a relationship is directly or indirectly rewarding.

• All humans exhibit patterns of attraction and mate selection that favor the conception, birth, and survival of their offspring.– Evolutionary perspective

Familiarity: Being There

• Who are we most likely to become attracted to?

• Two basic and necessary factors in the attraction process:– Proximity effect– Mere exposure effect

The Proximity Effect

• The single best predictor of attraction is physical proximity, or nearness.

• Where we live influences the friends we make.– College students tend to date those who live

either nearby or in the same type of housing as they do.

Becoming Friends By Chance

The Mere Exposure Effect

• Contrary to folk wisdom, familiarity does not breed contempt.

• The more often we are exposed to a stimulus, the more we come to like that stimulus.

• Familiarity can influence our self-evaluations.

Virtual Familiarity Breeds Liking

Virtual Familiarity Breeds Liking

Physical Attractiveness:Getting Drawn In

• We react more favorably to others who are physically attractive than to those who are not.

• Bias for beauty is pervasive.• Is physical beauty an objective or subjective

quality?

What is Beauty?

• Some argue that certain faces are inherently more attractive than others.– High levels of agreement for facial ratings across

ages and cultures.– Physical features of the face are reliably

associated with judgments of attractiveness.– Babies prefer faces considered attractive by

adults.

Is Beauty a Subjective Quality?

• People from different cultures enhance their beauty in very different ways.

• Ideal body shapes vary across cultures, as well as among racial groups within a culture.

• Standards of beauty change over time.• Situational factors can influence judgments of

beauty.

Romantic Red: The Color of Attraction?

Why Are We Blinded by Beauty?

• Inherently rewarding to be in the company of people who are aesthetically appealing.– Possible intrinsic and extrinsic rewards

• Tendency to associate physical attractiveness with other desirable qualities.– What-is-beautiful-is-good stereotype

When Being Seen Leads to Disbelief

Is the Physical Attractiveness Stereotype Accurate?

• Good-looking people do have more friends, better social skills, and a more active sex life.

• But beauty is not related to objective measures of intelligence, personality, adjustment, or self-esteem.

• The specific nature of the stereotype also depends on cultural conceptions of what is “good.”

The Benefits and Costs of Beauty

• Being good-looking does not guarantee health, happiness, or high self-esteem.

• Attributional problems with being good-looking:– Is the attention and praise one receives due to

one’s talents or just one’s good looks?

Other Costs of Beauty

• Pressure to maintain one’s appearance.– In American society, pressures are particularly

strong when it comes to the body.– Women are more likely than men to suffer from

the “modern mania for slenderness.”

• Overall, being beautiful is a mixed blessing.– Little relationship between appearance in youth

and later happiness.

First Encounters: Getting Acquainted

• We tend to associate with others who are similar to ourselves.

• Four types of similarity are most relevant– Demographic– Attitude– Attractiveness– Subjective Experience

A Two-Stage Model of the Attraction Process

Matching Hypothesis

• People tend to become involved romantically with others who are equivalent in their physical attractiveness.

• Matching is predictive of progress in a relationship.

Why Don’t Opposites Attract?

• Is there support for the complementarity hypothesis, which holds that people seek others whose needs “oppose” their own?

• Research shows that complementarity does not influence attraction.

First Encounters:Liking Others Who Like Us

• Heider (1958): People prefer relationships that are psychologically balanced.

• A state of balance exists when the relationship is characterized by reciprocity.– Mutual exchange between what one gives and

what one receives

• Liking is mutual, which is why we tend to like others who indicate that they like us.

First Encounters: Pursuing Those Who Are Hard to Get

• Does the hard-to-get effect exist?– We prefer people who are moderately selective to

those who are nonselective or too selective.– We are turned off by those who reject us.

• Psychological reactance can increase or decrease attraction.

Mate Selection: The Evolution of Desire

• Men and women by nature must differ in their optimal mating behaviors.– Women must be highly selective because they are

biologically limited in the number of children they can bear and raise in a lifetime.

– Men can father an unlimited number of children and ensure their reproductive success by inseminating many women.

Sex Differences in Mate Preference

Supporting Evidence for the Evolutionary Perspective

• Universal tendency in desired age for potential mate.– Men tend to seek younger women. – Women tend to desire older men.

• Men and women become jealous for different reasons.– Men become most upset by sexual infidelity.– Women feel more threatened by emotional

infidelity.

Mate Selection: Sociocultural Perspectives

• Women trade youth and beauty for money because they often lack direct access to economic power.

• Men are fearful of sexual infidelity because it represents a threat to the relationship, not fatherhood issues.

• The differences typically found between the sexes are small compared to the similarities.

Conspicuous Consumption

• If women are drawn to men who have wealth or the ability to obtain it, then it stands to reason that men would flaunt their resources the way the male peacock displays his brilliantly colored tail.

Sex Ration Effects on Conspicuous Consumption

Expressions of Love

• Male and female stereotypes would suggest that while men are more likely to chase sex, women to seek love

Who’s The First To Say “I Love You”?

Jealousy

• Jealousy is a common and normal human reaction, men and women may be aroused by different triggering events

Close Relationships

Intimate Relationships

• Often involve three basic components:– Feelings of attachment, affection, and love– The fulfillment of psychological needs– Interdependence between partners, each of

whom has a meaningful influence on the other

• How do first encounters evolve into intimate relationships?– By stages or by leaps and bounds?

Stimulus-Value-Role Theory

• Stimulus Stage: Attraction is sparked by external attributes such as physical appearance.

• Value Stage: Attachment is based on similarity of values and beliefs.

• Role Stage: Commitment is based on the performance of such roles as husband and wife.

How Do Intimate Relationships Change?

• Most researchers reject the idea that intimate relationships progress through a fixed sequence of stages.

• For reward theories of love, quantity counts.• There are qualitative differences between

liking and loving, as well as different forms of love.

The Intimate Marketplace:Social Exchange Theory

• People are motivated to maximize benefits and minimize costs in their relationships with others.

• Relationships that provide more rewards and fewer costs will be more satisfying and endure longer.

• The development of an intimate relationship is associated with the overall level of rewards.

Relationship Expectations

• Comparison Level (CL): Average expected outcome in relationships.

• Comparison Level for Alternatives (CLalt): Expectations of what one would receive in an alternative situation.

• Investments in relationship increase commitment.

Relational Building Blocks

The Intimate Marketplace:Equity Theory

• Most content with a relationship when the ratio between the benefits and contributions is similar for both partners.

onsContributisPartner'

BenefitssPartner'

onsContributiYour

BenefitsYour

• Balance is what counts.

Types of Relationships

• Exchange Relationships: Participants expect and desire strict reciprocity in their interactions.

• Communal Relationships: Participants expect and desire mutual responsiveness to each other’s needs.

Secure and Insecure Attachment Styles

• Attachment Style: The way a person typically interacts with significant others.

• Is the attachment style we had with our parents related to the attachment style we exhibit in our romantic relationships?

• Does the attachment style you endorse today forecast potential outcomes tomorrow?

Attachment Styles

How Do I Love Thee? Lee’s Love Styles

• Primary Love Styles– Eros (erotic love)– Ludus (game-playing, uncommitted love)– Storge (friendship love)

• Secondary Love Styles– Mania (demanding and possessive love)– Pragma (pragmatic love)– Agape (other-oriented, altruistic love)

Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love

Types of Love (cont.)

• Rubin (1973)– Liking: The type of feeling one has for a platonic

friend.– Loving: The kind of feeling one has for a romantic

partner.

• Hatfield et al. (1988)– Passionate Love: Romantic love characterized by

high arousal, intense attraction, and fear of rejection.

– Companionate Love: A secure, trusting, stable partnership.

Passionate Love: The Thrill of It

• Passionate love requires:– A heightened state of physiological arousal– The belief that this arousal was triggered by the

beloved person

• Sometimes can misattribute physiological arousal to passionate love.– Process known as excitation transfer

• Is the diminishment of passionate love inevitable?

Companionate Love: The Self-Disclosure in It

• Form of affection found between close friends as well as lovers.

• Less intense than passionate love.– But in some respects it is deeper and more

enduring.

• Characterized by high levels of self-disclosure.• The more emotionally involved, the more self-

disclosure

Culture, Attraction, and Close Relationships

• Are people the same all over the world? • Passionate love is a widespread and universal

emotion• Yet passionate loves does not necessarily

equate to marriage around the world• Cultural influence on love is complex

Relationship Issues: Sexuality

• Kinsey’s groundbreaking research during 1940s

• Problems with studying sexual activities:– Limitations of self-reports– What does it mean to “have sex”?

• Men view the world in more “sexualized” terms.

• Gender differences in self-report surveys about sexual attitudes and behaviors.

Relationship Issues: Sexual Orientation

• Sexual orientation is one’s sexual preference for members of the same sex, opposite sex, or both sexes.

• Large scale surveys suggest that– 2.8% of men are exclusively homosexual.– 2.5% of women are exclusively homosexual.

• Incidence of homosexual behavior varies with generations and among cultures.

Origins of Sexual Orientation

• Little evidence to support many early theories.• Scientific evidence of a biological disposition.• Complex issue– Are roots for sexual orientation the same for men

and women?– May be a psychobiological process.

The Marital Trajectory

• 73 percent of American college students surveyed said they would sacrifice most other life goals rather than give up a satisfying relationship.

Marital Satisfaction Over Time

Relationship Issues:Communication and Conflict

• Communication patterns in troubled relationships:– Negative affect reciprocity– Demand/withdrawal interaction pattern

• Basic approaches to reducing the negative effects of conflict:– Increase rewarding behavior in other aspects of a

relationship– Try to understand the other’s point of view

Attributions and Quality of Relationship

• Happy couples tend to make relationship-enhancing attributions.

• Unhappy couples tend to make distress-maintaining attributions.

Breaking Up

• A relationship is likely to be long-lasting when the couple:– Has incorporated each other into one’s self– Has become interdependent and have invested

much into the relationship

• But these factors also intensify stress and make coping more difficult after the relationship ends.

Changes in Life Satisfaction Before and After a Divorce