lecture 10 - “A Better You”: Romance Flashcards
Attachment and Romance
- Can science help me to attract others?
- What kind of attachment might arise?
- How likely is it that I will “fall in love” and how would this feel?
Scientific Guide to Romance
Physical attractiveness
- Physically attractive people are liked better (Dion et al., 1972) –
assumed to have better traits and better life outcomes. - halo-effect - attractive people are viewed as having lots of favourable characteristics that may or may not actually be true in reality eg better social traits - Complex effects of being around attractive others (Kernis &
Wheeler, 1981)
Friend = assimilation effect.
(Their qualities “transfer” to you,
so their higher attractiveness becomes
your perceived attractiveness.) - self-fulfilling prophecy
Stranger = contrast effect.
(They are compared to you; so their
higher attractive decreases your
attractiveness.)
Scientific Guide to Romance
More than looks…
- Warmth
- Showing a positive attitude (Folkes & Sears, 1977)
- Liking various things == being liked yourself. -people rate a large no of objects and show these profiles of evaluation to perceivers and other people who are judging them and people like people who have favourable attributes towards lots o f different objects
- Smile, be attentive, express emotions (Friedman et al., 1988)
- “Being extraverted” – part of a larger pro-extravert bias (Susan Cain, 2016)
- Competence
- Be socially skilled, intelligent, competent
- Be “less than perfect” – pratfall effect (Aronson, Willerman, & Floyd,
1966)
Aronson et al - pratfall effect
when you first meet a highly capable person you like it when they make a small mistake of some kind. it removes the illusion of them being completely perfect and that makes them more attractive to us.
subjects in a lab and are introduced to some who has performed a cognitive test - a bunch of quiz qus that show intelligence
grey = average ability - not well
blue = superior ability - nearly perfect score
in pratfall condition person spills coffee on themselves - has polarising effect on people makes intelligent people more attractive
pop psychology
Ongoing claims that men and women’s dating strategies
and sexual interests differ.
* More contentious than pop psychology might suggest.
scientific guide to romance - clark and Hatfield 1989
men and women are approached by the other sex and they hit on them in various ways so the conditions are their strategies for this eg ‘ do you want to come back to my flat’
‘do you want to go to bed with me’
shows it parts of a broader evolutionary cycle - men are interested in low stake sexual behaviours where they have the chance to spread their genes strategy and women use a more safeguard kind of approach where they are not interested in quick, low stakes sexual opportunities
date - men and women have similar levels
flat - lower for women than men
bed - lower for women than men
Scientific Guide to Romance
- Method considerations with Clark/Hatfield study
- Participants were straight, so the “men” were also
participants approached by women and vice versa. Women
approaching so boldly are viewed as intelligent, successful,
sexually skilled. - If you recruit bisexual women, for instance, their responses
depend on who approaches – much more likely to go home
with a woman vs man. - Men doing this felt to be “creepy” – but famous target
(Brad Pitt) → gender difference gone.
Conley, T. D. (2011). Perceived proposer personality characteristics and gender differences in
acceptance of casual sex offers. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 100, 309-329.
scientific guide to romance - pick up lines - kleinke, meeker and staneski 1986
most and least preferred pick up lines by men and women
in general situation - most preferred ‘Hi’
least preferred - ‘your place or mine?’
Bar - most preferred - Want to dance?
least preferred - Bet I can outdrink you!
Restaurant - most preferred - I haven’t been here
before. What’s good on
the menu?
least preferred - I bet the cherry pie isn’t as
sweet as you are.
Supermarket - most preferred - Can I help you to the car
with those groceries?
least preferred - Do you really eat that
junk?
- Undergraduate women rated the humorous lines more favourably than did undergraduate men. * Women also rated the sexually loaded lines less favourably than did men (similar to Clark/Hatfield!). * Perceiver personality also affects these results. - humorous 'chat-up lines' attract extraverted when specifically
Cooper, M., O’Donnell, D., Caryl, P. G., Morrison, R., & Bale, C. (2006). Chat-up lines as male displays:
Effects of content, sex, and personality. Personality and Individual Differences, 43, 1075-1085.
types of love
On Monday, Cpl. Floyd Johnson, 23, and the then Ellen
Skinner, 19, total strangers, boarded a train at San
Francisco and sat down across the aisle from each other.
Johnson didn’t cross the aisle until Wednesday, but his
bride said, “I’d already made up my mind to say yes if he
asked me to marry him.” “We did most of the talking with
our eyes,” Johnson explained. Thursday the couple got off
the train in Omaha with plans to be married. Because they
would need to have the consent of the bride’s parents if
they were married in Nebraska, they crossed the river to
Council Bluffs, Iowa, where they were married Friday.
Strong experiences of love were foreign to many young
people surveyed in 1977: only 40% of people agreed
that an intensely romantic love experience (like the
previous slide or other examples – e.g., Romeo and
Juliet) seemed familiar.
Types of Love
Kanin, Davidson, & Scheck (1970): - self-report feeling when people do feel love - most people agree that to them love feels like a positive thing and feeling excited or can be very varied
presented as % “strong agree” or +
* Boosts to well-being (79%)
* Difficulty concentrating (37%)
* Floating on a cloud (29%)
* Nervous (22%)
* Giddy and carefree (22%)
types of love
Passionate
love
An emotional,
sexual,
highly
charged
state
Length of relationship increases - this evolves within a relationship
Companionate
love
An
affectionate,
practical,
caring type
of love
(Hatfield, 1988)
experiences of love change within a relationship
types of love
- Culture can greatly shape romantic
trajectories. - Love is a prerequisite for marriage more
in Western societies and more very
recently (Levine et al., 1995) - Models of love: in arranged-marriage
cultures, love seen as growing rather
than a prerequisite to form
relationship. - In 1967, many Americans (65% men,
24% women) would marry someone
they weren’t in love with, so long as
had “right qualities”. By 1976,
dropped to ~20% each! - a massive change within a culture - arranged marriage cultures maybe different - relationships may become more positive overtime but in western cultures there is more satisfaction at the beginning of a relationship
Suffocation Model - times change
Romance was once about economic transaction, survival, childbearing.
In contemporary societies, more about meeting psychological needs. - we expect partners to do a lot more than have a job or take care of a child. we want people who make us feel as though we are self-affirmed - more abstract needs
Finkel, E. J., Cheung, E. O., Emery, L. F., Carswell, K. L., & Larson, G. M. (2015). The
suffocation model: Why marriage in America is becoming an all-or-nothing
institution. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(3), 238-244.
maslows pyramid of need
image in notes
self-actualisation
esteem
belonging and love
safety
physiological
Suffocation Model
Increasingly challenging to meet needs of modern love-seekers.
Higher needs are more idiosyncratic, abstract.
YET: Less time for mutual need-fulfillment, with most households
seeking dual full-time income.
Finkel, E. J., Cheung, E. O., Emery, L. F., Carswell, K. L., & Larson, G. M. (2015). The
suffocation model: Why marriage in America is becoming an all-or-nothing
institution. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 24(3), 238-244.
the number of dual-earner couples with at least one child aged under 16, 1976 to 2015 - increased by 100% in a period when the population increased only + 50%
so no time to help partner self-actualise
Summary
- Warmth, competence, and physical attractiveness
increase attraction - Love that starts ‘Passionate’ will transition to
‘Companionate’. - Love can reflect a strong attachment, but types of
love may vary in their passion, commitment, and
intimacy
