Factors affecting Attraction in Romantic relationships Flashcards
(20 cards)
What is Self-Disclosure?
Revealing personal information about yourself. As a relationship develops, people are more likely to reveal more about their true selves.
What is the Social Penetration Theory?
Exchanging information such as likes and dislikes, interests and attitude enables two people to get to know each other. Starts with low risk information as the relationship develops more high risk information.
What is the role of reciprocation in disclosure?
As self-disclosure is more high risk and sensitive self-disclosure needs to be reciprocated in developing a trusting, committed and deep relationship.
Discuss research evidence into self-disclosure from couple’s diaries.
Laurenceau et al - Using a diary method, they found real and perceived self-disclosure was positively correlated to levels of intimacy in married couples. Reflecting claims of social penetration theory.
Discuss the limitation of difficulty to establish cause and effect of self-disclosure.
Some people may be more willing to disclose due to personality or due to them being friends beforehand. It may be that relationship satisfaction and intimacy that leads to greater self-disclosure. This is a bi-directional model, limits credibility.
Discuss the limitation of self-disclosure due to it being culturally biased.
A lot of the research has been conducted in individualist cultures where self-disclosure may be more likely than collectivist cultures. High self-disclosure of sexual thoughts and feelings in individualist cultures is linked to relationship satisfaction whilst the opposite is true for a collectivist culture. Limited application to other cultures.
What do people find attractive?
According to an evolutionary basis, we find symmetrical faces more attractive than unsymmetrical places. Its a sign of genetic fitness.
We are more attracted to people with baby features - large eyes, delicate chin, a small nose. These characteristics trigger a caring instinct.
What is the Halo Effect?
Dion et al - physically attractive people are consistently rated a kind, strong, sociable and successful in comparison to unattractive people. Someone’s physical attractiveness makes us rate them more positively. Research has shown that attractive people get lighter criminal sentences.
What is the Matching Hypothesis?
Walster et al - We choose romantic partners who are more similar physical attractiveness to ourselves. We compromise as if we try to have a relationship with someone far more physically attrativeness than ourselves, we risk rejection.
Discuss research evidence and real world application into the Halo Effect.
Palmer and Peterson - physically attractive people were rated as more politically knowledgeable and important than unattractive people.
Implications for political process as more attractive politicians despite if they are less knowledgeable are deemed more suitable for office. Risk to democracy.
Discuss Research opposition into matching hypothesis.
Taylor et al - studied activity logs of a popular dating site, measured date choices not just preferences. Online daters sought meetings with potential partners who were more attractive than them. Did not consider own level of attraction when making decisions over who to date.
Discuss limitation of rating of attractiveness due to social sensitivity.
When someone is asked to rate their partner attractiveness they may rate higher to not offend their partner. Self-report participants may not want to be deemed superficial. Deciding who is or isn’t attractive is socially sensitive.
What is the Filter Theory?
How a person narrows down who they would date.
What are the stages of the Filter Theory?
Field of Availables -> Social Demography -> Similar in attitude -> Complementary-> Field of Desirables
What is Social Demography?
Class, Ethnic Group, Geographical location, level of education.
What is Similar in Attitude?
Values and Beliefs
What is Complementarity?
Slightly different in the same way e.g. extrovert and introvert.
Discuss a limitation of the Filter Theory, temporal validity.
Proposed in 1962, relationships have changed where social demography and geographical location don’t play a substantial part. Time has significantly widened the field of availables so theory is not representative of todays dating market.
Discuss a limitation of the Filter Theory due to research opposition.
Anderson et al - found in a longitudinal study that cohabiting partners became more similar in their emotional response over time, called emotional convergence.
Initially attracted to each other because they are similar.
Discuss the limitation of Filter Theory due to it being a bi-directional model.
Davis and Rusbult - attitude alignment effect in long-term relationships, romantic partners being their attitudes into like with each other’s.
Suggests similarity is an effect of initial attraction and not the cause.
