Attraction+&+Loving

=**Attraction and Loving**=

**I. Mere Exposure Theory (Zajonc)**

 * Festinger: studied apartment complexes in a horseshoe configuration. Found that people
 * on the ends had more relationships in the complex than those closest to the door.
 * Segal: in police academies, found that alphabetical order had more to do with friendships
 * than any other single factor.

**II. Physical Attractiveness:**
Both male and female subjects rated =**III. Similar to you:**= =**IV. Reciprocate your liking**= =**V. The dependence model:**= People are more likely to stay in a relationship when it satisfies important needs--not satisfied by anyone else Argyle lists seven basic needs: =**VI. Social Exchange Theory and Equity (An economic approach to relationships)**= Proposed by Kelley and Thibaut. For a benefit received, an equivalent benefit ought eventually to be returned. Complementary roles: teller and client. Well defined reciprocity of rights and obligations A relationship will endure only as long as it is profitable to both in appropriate equivalent degree. The duration of the term over which non-equivalence can be tolerated varies from one relationship to another.
 * attractive people as
 * kinder
 * stronger
 * more interesting
 * more nurturing
 * than unattractive people.
 * personal validation
 * Hewitt: confirmed but only if it is deserved.
 * Unfounded flattery lead to decreased liking. (Ingratiating effect).
 * Liking improved when criticism was sought or deserved.
 * Honesty is a sought after trait. (Extra Credit effect).
 * Biological: eating and drinking together; hunting together.
 * Dependency: need for comfort and nurturing.
 * Affiliation: company and friendship
 * Dominance: social order
 * Sex: reproduction and intimacy
 * Aggression: interpersonal hostility
 * Self-esteem.
 * ===**Benefits:**===
 * gifts
 * help
 * esteem
 * affection
 * conformity
 * obedience
 * ===**avoidance of any undesirable:**===
 * failure
 * pain
 * hardship
 * humiliation.
 * **Costs: anything undesirable or a reward foregone.**
 * **Profits = Benefits – Costs**
 * Tendency to engage in social action stronger in the degree that it promises to be more profitable than alternative actions.
 * The more one invests in a relationship, the more one expects to have great returns or benefits.

Kiesler and Baral
The amount of inequity that a woman is willing to tolerate has changed.

Question to men AND women:
“If a woman (man) had all the qualities you wish for in a mate but you were not in love with him (her), would you marry?” =**VII. The Matching Hypothesis**= Individuals who are willing to become a romantic couple should be rather closely matched in ability to reward one another. Subjectively equivalent total value or power to reward.
 * 1956
 * 65% of men said no
 * 24% of women
 * In 1976
 * 86% ofmen said no
 * 80% of women.
 * Discussion: Declining marginal utility.
 * Walster: The balance is achieved more through perceived fairness than through objective economics. (Equity theory)
 * If superior expertise has been acknowledge too many times, there is very littleadditional info or pleasure in having it acknowledged again.
 * Mills and Clark distinguish two kinds of intimate relationships:
 * The communal couple = Each individual gives out of concern for the other
 * The exchange couple = keeps a mental record of who is ahead and who is behind
 * As sentiment declines (especially romantic love), the consciousness of exchange or equity in a close relationship grows.
 * This could explain cheating on your partner.
 * Hatfield found with 2000 couples
 * Those who felt deprived or underbenefited had extra-marital sex sooner after marriage and with more partners than those who felt either fairly treated or overbenefited. The stabilizing effect on marriage of well-managed extra-marital sexuality.
 * Those who felt that their relationship was perfectly equitable were more likely than others to think that they would still be together in one year and in five years.
 * Those who felt greatly under benefited and those who felt greatly over benefited were least likely to think that their relationship would be intact in the future.
 * What is most interesting is that the over benefited were just exactly as doubtful about future prospects as were the underbenefited.
 * Why does attraction play such a large role in the university/workplace dating scene?
 * Students at a college have already been selected, as a population, for their comparative homogeneity in intelligence, social class, knowledge, and values.
 * This is also a schema that is generally accepted. When it is violated, we often ask, “I wonder what she sees in him?”


 * **Hatfield, Walster, and Berscheid (1978)** summarize a large literature showing that couples tend to be similar in IQ, education, and other characteristics.
 * **HOMOGAMY**
 * Together couples were at the start much more alike than “broken” couples in
 * age
 * SAT math & verbal
 * physical attractiveness
 * educational plans.
 * Height religion, and father’s occupation did not have any correlation.
 * Other important factors:
 * sex-role traditionalism
 * number of children wanted.

=**VIII. Self esteem**= =**IX. The role of communication**= We judge a conversation based on four criteria: =**X. The creation of relationships**= Sampling, Bargaining, Commitment, Institutionalization norms and mutual expectations are established =**XI. The maintenance/ Dissolution of relationships**=
 * Walster's Computer Dance Experiment did not support the matching hypothesis.
 * 400 male and female students were randomly paired to dance.
 * Later they were asked to rate their date.
 * Physical attraction was the best indicator of the likelihood that they would see each other again.
 * Kiesler and Baral (1970).
 * Some men were led to believe that they had just done poorly on an IQ test, and some that they had done unexpectedly well. Immediately after receiving the self-enhancing or self-diminishing information, each man had a natural-seeming opportunity to become acquainted with, and eventually try to date, either a very attractive young woman, or a quite unattractive young woman.
 * The experiment showed that the men who had recently had their valued elevated “came on” to the attractive girl, while the men who had recently been depreciated more often approached the unattractive girl.
 * Gain-Loss Theory:
 * we find it more rewarding when someone’s initially negative feelings toward us gradually become positive than if that person’s feelings for us were entirely positive all along.
 * We tend to find it more noxious when a person who once evaluate us positively slowly comes to view us in a negative light than if he or she expressed uniformly negative feelings toward us.
 * Once we have grown certain of the reward behaviour of a person, that person may become less powerful as a source of reward than a stranger.
 * A gain in liking is a more potent reward than a constant level of liking; accordingly, a close friend probably is behaving at ceiling level and cannot provide us with a gain.
 * The Pratfall Effect (Aaronson):
 * Although a high degree of competence does make us appear more attractive, some evidence increases of fallibility increases our attractiveness still further.
 * The pratfall effect holds more clearly true within the head of the observer there is some implicit threat of competition with the stimulus person.
 * Applies most strongly to males. Although most males in Kay Deaux study preferred the highly competent man who committed a blunder, women showed a tendency to prefer the highly competent non-blunderer, regardless of whether the stimulus person was male or female.
 * Veitch and Griffitt found:
 * listening to good news/bad news had an effect on perception of attraction. Good news bearers were considered more attractive.
 * Duck criticized these methods using strangers for being laboratory based.
 * 1) Valence: tone of the conversation: positive, negative.
 * 2) Magnitude: the strength of the other person’s signals. You’re not bad vs. You’re gorgeous.
 * 3) Congruence: how other’s comments about us match our own assessment.
 * 4) Authenticity: whether the person seems to be sincere or merely trying to
 * 5) impress.
 * Duck: relationships offer comfortable predictability. Crisis occurs when this predictability is disrupted.
 * Duck and Pond: relationships are not a string of routines but rather the cognitions that surround them.
 * Self-disclosure: unless the friend matches such behaviour, disclosure will stop.
 * The closer the relationship and the greater the past history of invariant esteem and reward, the more devastating is that person’s withdrawal of support.

**Reasons for dissolution:**

 * Personal factors: change in interests, poor role models (parents were divorced), dissonance (different religious beliefs), poor social skills.
 * Situational factors: deception, boredom, relocation, conflict, or a better alternative.
 * Fatal Attraction Theory (Felmlee): the same trait that initially caused attraction ultimately leads to dissolution.
 * For example, the intrigue of a partner that travels a lot dissolves when they are never home.
 * Social Exchange theory.

Steps in Dissolution (Duck)
=**XII. The Cross Cultural Research and other interesting info**=
 * 1) Breakdown: dissatisfacton to breaking point.
 * 2) Intra-psychic phase: brooding focuses on the relationship. At first in private, but then with confidants. A form of anticipatory coping.
 * 3) Dyadic phase: talking with partner about whether to break up or repair the relationship.
 * 4) Social phase: including others in the debate and enlisting support for your "side."
 * 5) Grave dressing phase: post-mortem for public consumption and private readjustment.
 * Cowen et al.**
 * A study of 800 school children found that a lack of friendships in childhood was related to later psychological treatment.
 * Cochrane:**
 * Mental hospitalization for single people is three times higher than for married people.
 * It is six times higher for divorced.
 * There is also a gender difference. Married women are more likely than men to be hospitalized, but divorced or widowed men aremore likely than women.
 * This suggests that the needs that relationships fulfill is different for the two genders.
 * Yelsma and Athappilly:**
 * Compared Indian arranged marriages with Indian and American love marriages and found the former to be more satisfied.
 * Argyle:**
 * Social norms affect the way individuals conduct relationships.
 * Japanese andHong Kong (collectve) found to have more rules for avoiding conflict and a clearer lineof obedience.
 * Italy and Britain (individualistic) has more rules for regulating intimacy.