Midterm 1: Interpersonal Attraction
Why does interpersonal attraction exist?
Because it gets people to reproduce
3 proccesses of interpersonal attraction
1. Attraction
2. Attachment
3. Maintnenance
Pair-bonding
The development of romantic attachment.
2 types of pair-bonding
Passionate love and companionate love
Herustic about attractive people
What-is-beautiful-is-good sterotype: the tendency to assume someone has positive characteristics because they are physically attractive.
3 things that increase attraction
1. Being average
2. Mere exposure effect
3. Other people's opinions
Attractiveness-is-only-average hypothesis
The idea that if you take a bunch of faces and combine them together to create an average of those faces, that face would be more attractive than any of those other faces alone.
Line Picture Study and it's concept
People were shown pictures of line drawings a different number of times, sometimes unconciously. When asked to rate those drawings, those that were shown more times are the ones that people like more. People also tended to like the unconciously exposed drawings.
Concept: mere exposure effect
Face exposure study and concept
People were shown a face repeatedly and their emotional arousal were measured. When shown a face a second time, they showed more emotional arousal.
Concept: mere exposure effect
Peer face rating study and concept
People were asked to rank people's attractiveness after being told of someone else's rankings, and their emotional arousal were measured. Their rankings and emotional arousal levels matched those of other people's.
Concept: other people influence the level of how attracted you are to others.
2 types of love
Passionate love: when everything with your partner is exciting, the honeymoon phase.
Companionate love: when it settles into more of a calm friendship.
3 attachment styles:
1. Secure attachment
2. Insecure attachment
3. Avoidant attachment
They are speculated to stem from early interactions with parents, although that is controversial.
Secure attachment
Normal, healthy attachment where they are not afraid of their partner leaving.
Insecure attachment
Attachment style where they are anxious that people will not reciprocate their need for intimacy and that their partner might leave.
Avoidant attachment
People avoid attachment and intimacy with others.
Pair-bonding in nature
Monogomy is not very common. 4-5% of mammals are monogamous.
Voles and monogamy
Prairie voles are monogamous while meadow voles are not. When given the option after a brief seperation from mating, mrarie voles will choose to go back to their partners instead to a new one or to be alone while meadow voles would rather be alone.
Biology behind attachment
A function of dopamine is to create wanting/motivation. When it interacts with certain neuropeptides, it creates a wanting for pair-bonding for another individual and monogamy.
Prairie voles have more of these neuropeptides than meadow voles. When meadow voles were genetically engineered to have high levels of these neuropeptides, they became monogamous.
Evolution and relationship maintenance
It seems that our brains predisposes us to maintain our relationships. Jelousy motivates us to protect our relationships.
Men are more jelous with sexual infidelity while women are more jelous with emotional infidelity. This is controversial and the hypothesis is that men want to make sure the children he's raising are his so that he is not aiding in helping another reproduce at his own cost.
Devaluization of romantic alternatives
Once you are in a relationship, other potential relationships seem less appealing.
Magazine Model Ranking Study and concept
People in relationships or no relationships were asked to rate the attractiveness of models in magazines. Those in relationships rated them as less attractive than those not in relationships.