The Evolutionary Basis of Relationships

• Humans have an evolutionary basis for forming relationships including:
  • Long-term romantic bonds for reproduction and raising offspring
  • Parent-offspring relationships for infant survival
  • Friendships enabling non-kin cooperation, avoiding competition and aggression
  • Evolutionary basis suggesting relationships should be universal

Forming Relationships

• Propinquity effect: Increased interaction leads to increased friendship.
  • Relies on physical and functional distance.
  • Functional distance: Architectural design influences contact frequency.
• Familiarity/mere exposure effect: Increased exposure to a stimulus increases liking.
• Social allergy effect may counteract increasing exposure.
• Similarity strongly predicts attraction in friendships and romantic relationships, especially in attitudes and values.
  • Reasons include:
    • Expectation of liking from similar people
    • Validation of values/beliefs
    • Reward of interaction
  • More important in committed relationships
• Attraction can create perceptions of similarity
• Thinking someone likes you can lead to behaving in likeable ways toward them due to the self-fulfilling prophecy
  • Those with a negative self concept are skeptical of others liking them
• Physical attractiveness strongly influences liking.

What is Attractive?

• Both sexes prefer large eyes, prominent cheekbones, and a big smile.
• Males prefer females with small noses and chins.
• Females prefer males with large chins.
• Cross-cultural agreement exists on what constitutes a beautiful or handsome face.
• Attractiveness is associated with desirable traits, like social competence.
  • Reinforces self-fulfilling prophecy.
  • Applies cross-culturally.
• Evolutionary explanations for attractiveness include:
  • Facial symmetry
  • Waist-to-hip ratio
  • Shoulder-to-hip ratio
• People may misinterpret physiological arousal as attraction (misattribution of arousal).

Forming Relationships Online

• Theories on online relationships:
  • Social compensation hypothesis
  • Social enhancement hypothesis
• People are more honest and revealing of their "true" selves online
• Offline continuation is important.
• Men commonly lie about status and women about weight or age on online dating profiles
  • This can lead to a decline in attraction once these lies are discovered

Defining Love

• No single definition exists.
• Components include intimacy, attachment, and passion.
• Types of love:
  • Passionate/romantic love
  • Companionate love
  • Compassionate love
  • Attachment love
• Compassionate love: Concern for another's welfare and actions to promote it (altruistic, charitable, brotherly love).
• Attachment love: Strong emotional bond with an attachment figure, rooted in human evolutionary history and the need for infant protection.
• Companionate love: Intimacy and affection felt for someone with deep care.
• Passionate love: Intense longing accompanied by physiological arousal.
• Brain areas (VTA and Caudate nucleus) linked to pleasure, reward, and motivation activate when viewing romantic partners.
  • This can cause pleasure, euphoria, restlessness, sleeplessness, loss of appetite (Similar to cocaine ingestion).

Gender and Love

• Men:
  • Fall in love more quickly
  • More likely to believe in "true love lasts forever"
  • Report experiencing love at first sight more often
  • Rate passionate love higher
• Women:
  • Rate companionate love higher
• Both rate companionate love higher than passionate love.

Culture and Love

• Questions of whether romantic love is a cultural creation arises.
• Culture influences include:
  • Romantic and passionate love are less valued in collectivist cultures than in individualistic cultures.
  • People from collectivist cultures value companionate love more.
  • Love is most important for marrying in Western/Westernized countries and least important in Eastern countries

Evolutionary Explanations

• Human behavior evolved for reproductive success.
• Couples in love are more likely to raise children together, ensuring survival.
• Reproduction is more costly for females, so they are more selective.
• Men pair with many partners leading to more offspring
• Women prefer men who can provide resources and support.
• Men respond to physical appearance and age, which are related to reproductive success for women.
• Research supports these predictions but also notes similarities in preferences
• Both sexes value warmth, love, honesty, trustworthiness, and pleasantness
• Both sexes want physically attractive mates for short term flings, but less important for long term mates.