The Basis of Attraction

The Fundamental Basis of Attraction

• Attraction is influenced by the rewarding presence of others.
• Direct rewards are the evident pleasures people provide, for example, interest, approval, money, or good advice, and the more direct rewards, the greater the attraction.
• Indirect rewards include kindness, good looks, and pleasant personalities, which can attract without conscious awareness.
• Instrumentality is the extent to which someone helps achieve current goals.
• Attraction is higher towards those whose company is consistently rewarding and fulfills desires, contributing to a sense of belonging.

Proximity

• Relationships are more rewarding when people are physically and psychologically close.
• Physical proximity has a connection with interpersonal attraction.

Familiarity: Repeated Contact

• Repeated contact or mere exposure increases liking.
• Liking increases for people whose faces are recognizable, even without interaction.
• The mere exposure effect describes the preference for things due to repeated exposure, even without conscious awareness.
• Familiarity has limits since gaining negative information can decrease liking with further exposure.

Physical Attractiveness: Linking Those who are Lovely

• Physical appearance is the first noticeable attribute, with a tendency to assume that good-looking people are more likable.

"What is beautiful, is good"

• The assumption is that attractive people have desirable traits like agreeableness and conscientiousness.
• Positive judgments are made automatically upon seeing an attractive face.
• Attractive people tend to earn more money and get promoted more often.
• Attractive professors receive better teaching evaluations, and their classes have higher attendance.
• Attractive politicians are often judged as more competent.
• Attractive people tend to make better impressions in court and receive lower fines.
• Babies spend more time looking at attractive faces.

Who is Pretty?

• Women are considered more attractive with "baby-faced" features, such as large eyes, a small nose and chin, and full lips, which create a feminine and youthful appearance.
• Beautiful women combine baby-faced features with signs of maturity, like cheekbones, a narrow cheeks, broad smile, and long eyelashes.
• Men with strong jaws and broad foreheads are generally considered handsome.
• Slightly feminine, baby-faced features can also make men attractive.
• Symmetrical faces are a sign of attractiveness.
• Men tend to prefer women with a waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) of 0.7, indicating a waist that is 30% smaller than the hips, resembling an hourglass shape.
• Men with broad shoulders and muscles are considered more attractive, with a WHR of 0.9.
• For men, broad shoulders are considered attractive as well, and these men reportedly have more sex partners.
• Men are considered less attractive to women if they are handsome but poor.
• Scent and education also matter in assessing attractiveness.
• Women may prefer men with high facial width-to-height ratio (FWHR) for short-term relationships.
• Facial preferences in women are influenced by their progesterone levels and relationship status, as single women may prefer rugged features, while partnered women show lower preferences for masculine features.

Matching in Physical Attractiveness

• Partners in established relationships tend to have similar levels of physical attractiveness, known as matching.
• Individuals are likely to end up with partners who are about as attractive as they are.

Reciprocity

• Refers to the tendency to like and feel positively towards those who show liking or appreciation.
• Positive feelings create a cycle of mutual positive reinforcement.
• Connections are more likely to form with people who treat you well or express liking for you.
• The most appealing partner is moderately attractive and likely to accept you.
• A partner’s desirability is found by multiplying his physical attractiveness by his probability of accepting you.
• Mate value is the overall attractiveness of an individual as a potential partner for reproduction and long-term partnership.
• The best acceptance comes from potential partners who are selective and don't offer acceptance to everyone

Similarity: Liking People who are Like Us

• "Birds of a feather, flock together" means people with similar interests and values tend to associate.
• Individuals are drawn to others who are like them in personality, lifestyle, beliefs, or behaviors.
• Demographic similarities include age, sex, race, education, religion, and social class.
• The more similar people are, the more they like each other.
• Key personality traits include being agreeable, conscientious, emotionally stable, and easy to live with (OCEAN).

Do Opposites Attract?

• Liking increases with commonalities, so opposites do not attract.
• Perceived similarity affects attraction more than actual similarity.
• People overestimate shared similarities in relationships, and partners stay together because they think they are similar.

Stimulus-Value-Role (SVR) Theory

• Relationships evolve through three stages: Stimulus, Value, and Role
• In the Stimulus stage, attraction is based on initial attributes discovered upon meeting, such as age, sex, and looks.
• The Value stage involves discovering similarities in values, such as preferences for music, pizza, and movies.
• The Role stage focuses on roles like parenting, careers, and house cleaning.
• Dissimilarities may only become apparent after marriage.
• People admire skills and traits in others that they wish they had, but these people are not necessarily opposites.
• Dissimilarities may decrease over time, and members of a relationship become more similar.
• Some types of similarities are more important than others.

What do Men and Women Want?

• Three themes are used to evaluate potential mates:
  • Warmth and loyalty (trustworthy, kind, supportive)
  • Attractiveness and vitality (good-looking, sexy, outgoing)
  • Status and resources (financially secure, living well)
• Partner standards depend on whether it is a short-term fling or a long-term romance.
• For short-term flings, both men and women want a good-looking partner.
• For long-term partners, women value warmth, loyalty, status, and resources, whereas men value warmth, loyalty, attractiveness, and vitality.
• The preference for warmth and loyalty grows as people grow older.