Interpersonal Attraction: Physical Attractiveness

Interpersonal Attraction

• Hatfield and colleagues (1966) found that only physical attractiveness mattered when choosing a partner in a blind-date study.
• Self-esteem and personality did not play a major role in initial attraction.
• Being attractive has social, financial, and legal benefits.
• The physical attractiveness stereotype is the tendency to assume attractive people have socially desirable traits (Dion et al., 1972; Moore et al., 1987).
• Babies prefer attractive faces, and adults consider attractive children more intelligent.

What Is Attractive

• The averageness effect is the preference for average, prototypical faces over those with distinctive features.
• Perceptual fluency is the relative ease of mental operations.
• The exposure effect explains that liking increases with repeated exposure to a stimulus.
• An evolutionary perspective suggests a preference for prototypical faces as a signal of health and reproductive fitness.
• Symmetrical faces are considered more attractive.
• People tend to choose partners with similar physical attractiveness, known as the Matching Phenomenon.
• Compensatory factors are wealth, intelligence, personality, and social status, and can offset differences in physical attractiveness.
• People seek partners with similar values and attitudes.
• Asset Matching is when people seek complementary assets in others.
• Increased familiarity due to physical closeness can facilitate attraction and increase perceived attractiveness.
• Repeated exposure increases liking (Moreland & Beach, 1992).
• Proximity increases the anticipation of future interaction, boosting liking (Darley & Berscheid, 1967).
• Excitation transfer occurs when arousal from one stimulus is added to arousal from another, misattributing the overall arousal.
• Dutton & Aron (1974) studied this on a bridge.

Psychological Determinants of Attraction

• The need to affiliate is the motivation to seek and maintain relationships.
• Affect, or emotional state, influences attraction; positive feelings lead to a more positive evaluation of others.
• Classical conditioning can lead to associating positive feelings with the person present.
• Similarity of attitudes, interests, and values contributes to a sense of "balance."
• Balance theory indicates people compare attitudes, achieving balance when similarities are found.
• Attitude dissimilarity results in negative emotions.
• Self-disclosure is important for long-term relationship success.
• Complementarity explains that people seek traits that complement their own.
• People generally gravitate towards those similar to themselves.
• Mutual Liking: People tend to like those who like them back.
• Culture: People often date within their own culture, with cultural similarity being important.

Theories of Attraction

• Social Exchange Theory: Feelings about a relationship depend on the perceived rewards and costs.
• The evaluation of potential "better" relationships is key.
• Relationship evaluation includes pros and cons.
• Feelings depend on one's comparison level, based on previous relationships.
• Equity Theory states that people also need fairness and equity, not just rewards and low costs.
• Schafer & Keith (1980) discovered inequitable relationships lead to unhappiness and distress in married couples.
• Over-benefitted partners seek to restore equity, but under-benefitted partners seek equity out more often.
• Reinforcement-affect model: People can be liked or disliked based on associations with positive or negative feelings (Byrne & Clore, 1970).
• Lewicki (1985) demonstrated this by showing that participants preferred an experimenter who looked nothing like an unfriendly one.

Love and Romantic Relationships

• Love is a grouping of emotions, behaviors, and cognitions experienced in intimate relationships.
• Passionate love is intense emotional and physical feelings for another.
• Companionate love is the deep caring and affection for another.
• Lasting romantic relationships depend more on secure, stable feelings than intense ones. Sternberg's Triangular Theory of Love (1986): Love comprises intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment.
• Intimacy includes closeness, connectedness, and bondedness, largely from emotional investment (Sternberg, 1986).
• Intimacy is stable over time, fluctuates, and is not always noticed.
• Intimacy plays a medium role in short-term and a larger role in long-term relationships
• Intimacy typically causes a moderate psychophysiological response.
• Passion includes romance, physical attraction, and sexual consummation, derived from motivational involvement (Sternberg, 1986).
• Passion is unstable, changeable, and marked by high awareness.
• Passion plays a larger role in short-term relationships and a smaller role in long-term ones.
• Passion causes a high psychophysiological response.
• The high psychophysiological response of passion is short-term due to the body's limits.
• Decision/Commitment: cognitive elements involved in decision-making about the existence of and potential long-term commitment to a loving relationship" (Sternberg, 1986).
• Like intimacy, commitment is stable, and awareness fluctuates.
• Commitment is more easily controlled than intimacy.
• Commitment has a small part in short-term relationships.
• Non-love: None of the three elements is present.
• Liking: Intimacy is present.
• Infatuation: Passion is present.
• Empty love: Commitment is present.
• Romantic love: Intimacy and passion are present.
• Companionate love: Intimacy and commitment are present.
• Fatuous love: Passion and decision-making are present.
• Consummate love: All three elements are present.
• Lee (1973, 1976) developed six love styles.
• Eros: Characterized by passion and importance of sex; "love at first sight."
• Ludus: Love is a game, quantity over quality; commitment is a trap, fidelity is uncommon.
• Storge: Grows with friendship, commitment is important; but sex is less so, prioritizing intimacy.
• Mania: Intense, possessive, jealous, anxious, and insecure with sex as reassurance.
• Agape: Generous, unconditionally faithful, loving, and caring, viewing sex as a gift.
• Pragma: Practical and realistic, thinking rationally; sex is a means to procreate or maintain connection.
• Aspects of love and attraction are considered universal.
• There is a cultural dimension to love
• Arranged marriages view love as something that grows after marriage.
• Love in "love" marriages decreases over time, while love in "arranged" marriages increases over time (Gupta & Singh, 1982).
• Men tend to fall in love more quickly and initiate breakups less.
• Women are typically more emotionally invested particularly in heterosexual relationships.

Attachment and Bonding

• Attachment formation predicts future relationship styles.
• Secure attachment forms when carers are responsive.
• Avoidant attachment forms when carers are aloof and distant.
• Anxious/Ambivalent attachment forms when carers are inconsistent and overbearing.
• Secure individuals trust others and feel well-liked in close relationships.
• Avoidant individuals struggle to form intimate relationships due to fear of rejection.
• Anxious individuals worry that their feelings are not reciprocated.

Maintaining Relationships

• Commitment and shared values are important.
• Cognitive strategies include lowering expectations. Partner regulation involves actively attempting to change one's partner to fit desired ideals.
• Commitment and stability are shaped by perceived costs, rewards, and available alternatives.
• Adams and Jones (1997) identified dedication, cost of leaving, and shared resources as factors in commitment.
• High commitment predicts trust, which increases relationship success.
• Fletcher et al (2009) studied communication strategies to change partners' behavior.
• Direct communication strategies predicted increased change over 12 months.
• Indirect strategies predicted immediate change but not sustained change.

Non-Hetero Relationships

• Non-heterosexual relationships share similarities with heterosexual relationships.
• Heterosexual relationships value affection, interests, culture, proximity, familiarity, equity, and commitment.
• Non-heterosexual relationships are more likely to stay friends after a breakup and have a more equitable division of labor in the household.
• Lesbian relationships are more likely to originate from pre-existing friendships.
• Controlling for demographics, non-heterosexual relationship are more likely to break up than heterosexual relationships.

Predictors of the End of Relationships

• Common reasons for divorce include infidelity, falling out of love, and stressors.

Abusive Relationships

• Women in abusive relationships may blame themselves or the situation (Eckstein, 2011).
• Abused individuals focus on positive aspects to cope.
• Abused individuals make interpersonal comparisons to others with higher severity of abuse.
• Cognitive Dissonance: Faced with the feeling of being trapped may alter negative attitudes toward the relationship/abuse.
• Foot-in-the-Door Effect: Compliance with a smaller abusive demand makes a person more compliant with larger abusive demands later.
• Abuse may be acceptable due to commitment and a wish for consistency from early exposure, leading to an ambivalent attitude (Wood, 2001).
• Heron, Eisma & Browne (2021) found key factors for staying in DV relationships: investment, entrapment, and love.
• Those researchers discovered external support, fear of harm, and protecting children influence a woman's decision to leave a DV relationship.