Ch. 11 Attraction and Relationships

Friendship

What are the role of friends? - One thing that friends sometimes do is offer advice • Giving advice benefits the recipient by providing new information, however the recipient might see it as a threat to their autonomy • North American culture values autonomy, so unsolicited advice is often perceived negatively • Russian culture is more collectivistic, so threats to autonomy are less of a concern - Advice is largely viewed as supporting relationships

What are the universals of physical attractiveness?

- Clear complexion - Bilateral symmetry - Average features (average size proportion features)

Role of Physical Attractiveness to Life Outcomes in the US and Ghana (Anderson, Adams & Plaut)

- Participants indicated how satisfied they were with various life outcomes (ie. their career, abilities, etc.) - The researchers took a photo of the participants - then people of their culture rated them on their attractiveness Correlation between Physical Attractiveness and Life Outcomes • Physically attractive Americans were more satisfied with their lives in general • Physically attractive Ghanaians were not more satisfied with their lives - Negative correlation, not no correlation • Other research finds that the relation between attractiveness and well-being is stronger in urban American than it is in rural Ghana • The tyranny of the beautiful may not generalize well beyond WEIRD cultural context - Arguably because Ghanians have less relational mobility than Americans

Two Things about Average Features:

1) Average features are less likely to contain genetic abnormalities, and are more symmetrical 2) Further, we can process any kind of stimulus that is closer to a prototype easier than one that is further from a prototype - easy processing is associated with a pleasant feeling that gets interpreted as attractive

Assumptions that many Westerners Have About Love

1) Belief that you will only love someone you have chosen for yourself - But in many cases, this isn't true 2) Love is ultimately an individualistic choice - Where arranged marriage is common: people usually trust their families to make the right decision for them 3)Marriage that does not have love at the foundation is bound to be miserable - Studies have shown that those in arranged marriages are at least as satisfied with their marriages as those in love marriages

Two Variables that have been found which mediate this cultural difference in the similarity-attraction effect

1) Relational Mobility: Ease at forming new relationships - people in high relational mobility contexts show a stronger similarity-attraction effect 2) Self-Esteem - The higher one's self-esteem, the more one likes people who are similar to them The more you think you're great = the more you're attracted to those who are similar to you

Four Elementary Forms of Relationships (Alan Fiske)

Alan Fiske argues that all relationships are based on one or more of four basic elements of sociality 1) Communal Sharing - Members of a group emphasize their common identity rather than consider their idiosyncrasies - Every person is treated the same and has the identical rights and privileges Ie. you see this in a Family 2)Authority Ranking - People are linearly ordered along a hierarchical social dimension - People with higher ranking have prestige and privileges that those with lower ranking do not Ie. Military 3)Equality Matching - Based on the idea of balance and reciprocity - People keep track of what is exchanged and are motivated to pay back what has been exchanged in equivalent terms Ie. Taking turns, exchanging dinner invitations and car-pooling are examples of Western situations Ie. in non-Western societies: rotating credit association is quite common 4) Market Pricing - Concerned with proportionality and ratios - All the features of benefits that are exchanged can be reduced to a single underlying dimension, usually money - Calculate the ratios of the goods that are exchanged so that the transaction will be equivalent in value for both parties • Also possible that people might have single relationships that are governed by all four elements

Changes of Body Ideals for Women in the West

Body ideals have become unusually thin - they've become thinner over the past decades, while ironically = average body weights have increased - People care alot about physical attractiveness - North Americans spend more money on beauty products than on education

Composite Photos and Attractiveness

Composite photos tend to be viewed as more attractive than approx. 95% of photos that make up the composite Findings: - People rated the mixed-race composites and Eurasian composites to be most attractive - Mixed race faces may be viewed as more attractive because they represent the average of all faces seen - Whereas average facial features are perceived as attractive, when we consider people's weight, height, muscles, breasts, and hips, often it's bodies that depart from average that are seen as more attractive - The kinds of body weights that are perceived to be most attractive vary considerably across cultures

Japanese and Similarity-Attraction Effect

Don't show a reliable similarity-attraction effect compared to a stronger magnitude found amongst Westerners

Study: Advice-Giving between Americans and Russians (Posters describing Parenting Challenge)

Findings: - Americans only offered advice if it was explicitly requested - Russians offered more advice, regardless of whether it was requested - The Russian advice giving was not affected much by whether it was requested - In interdependent contexts advice is given more, as the benefits of supporting others outweighs the perceived threats to autonomy

Relational Mobility Study: Examining the Number of Times People Have Moved (Oishi, Lun & Sherman)

For Americans: Who have never moved: their identity is wrapped in both their personality traits and the groups to which they belong (bigger part of identity) Who move more frequently: personality is known by people in the new community, but some of their group memberships might not be - Americans who have never moved view group membership to be almost more important as personality traits for their identity - Those who move value personality traits more and group memberships less

Ghanians vs. Westerners with Enemies

Ghanians also report having more enemies than Americans (71% vs. 26%) - Many westerners say they don't have enemies because they avoid people they don't really like, so many enemyships don't develop - this view seems naïve to many Ghanians since they view enemyships as a natural state of life **When Westerners acknowledge having enemyships they most often identify outgroup members - For Ghanians, enemyships are most often identified as ingroup members

Are Friendships Only Positive?

In low relational mobility contexts, you're not in a position to really choose who all of your friends are - you have to deal with them regardless if you like them or not - Kind of like many people's relationships with their in-laws (they are there whether you like it or not) - Friendships in many low mobility contexts, particularly Ghana, is a more ambivalent construct - Ghanaians report having fewer friends than Americans, and feel that someone who has many friends is foolish • Maybe the term "friend" is different in Ghana than it is here in Canada

Low Relational Mobility

In other cultures (more often non-Western ones) there is less freedom in deciding who are your relationships - Significant relationships come from various ingroups (ie. family, neighbourhood, school, office) - They perceive that they have few opportunities to form new relationships, and their past relationships, and their commitments and obligations to them, continue to guide them - Relationships viewed as stable, often lifelong connections that provide both benefits to the individuals involved and costs in order to maintain them - Relationships in low-relational-mobility contexts are not always positive (don't get along with father in law etc.)

High Relational Mobility

In some cultures (particularly western ones), people have much freedom in deciding who they will have relationships with. - They can associate with people who are not from their ingroups - they feel they can find new relationships and not feel overly bound by their old relationships - Highest relationally mobile context: life of the American college student (ie. tinder is the ultimate extreme since physical attractiveness if weighted very heavily)

Is love a necessary feature for a marriage?

In some cultures yes but not in others - Current attitudes in the US, particularly among women are very different from what they were a few decades ago Goode (1959) found that the larger the number of important family relationships that one needs to consider, the more problematic it becomes to ignore their concerns and follow the passions of one's heart

Halo Effect

It is cognitively more straightforward to assume that they have other positive features as well (if we think they are very attractive)

Tyranny of the Beautiful

Much research: largely conducted with Westerners, finds that physically attractive people receive many other kinds of benefits - one explanation is that because the first thing we often learn about someone is their level of attractiveness (we see it immediately)

More Residentially Unstable American Neighbourhoods Have:

Made up of people who are constantly moving - More "fair-weather" sports fans - Only cheer when the team is winning - Higher crime rates and lower pro-community action - Less involved in making the community a better place More national chain stores per capita, and more goods sold at those stores (relative to local stores)

Simpatico

Maintaining harmonious relationships, and on making expressive displays of graciousness, hospitality, and personal harmony - Latin-Americans also expect interactions with others to be dominated by positive social behaviours and to have fewer negative social behaviours compared with the expectations of European-Americans - In general, Latin-Americans act in more sociable ways that European-Americans and spend more time socializing with others

Similarity-Attraction Effect

May reveal the ultimate egotism - we're most attracted to ourselves - research conducted with westerners, shows that people are attracted to those who are similar to themselves - similarity is attractive in a wide variety of different domains: attitudes, beliefs, personality etc. Study done: - Canadians seemed to like the target more if they felt similar to them than if they did not

Other Bases of Interpersonal Attraction

Propinquity Effect: people are more likely to become friends with people with whom they frequently interact - our friendships are not so much chosen by us but are chosen by the situational forces that bring us together Mere Exposure Effect: more we are exposed to a stimulus the more we are attracted to it (culturally universal)

In 1951: Attractiveness of Women

Some anthropologists concluded that universally (based on evidence), heavier women were found to be more attractive - the data available at that time was largely consistent with this

Bilateral Symmetry

• Another marker: how similar the left side of the body is to the right side of the body • According to evolutionary biologists: bilateral symmetry is an indicator of developmental stability • When an organism develops under ideal conditions: they are equal - Genetic mutations, pathogens or stressors in the womb can lead to asymmetrical development On average, asymmetrical faces are viewed as less attractive • This is especially so in hunting-gathering societies where rates of infant mortality are higher (ie. Hadza in Tanzania) - Even more of a premium to have a healthy mate

Are Arranged Marriages Satisfying?

• Arranged marriages may be puzzling to Westerners, but they are often quite successful - Most arranged marriages end up becoming loving relationships, even if they start out without love Studies find that arranged marriages are at least as happy as love marriages (ie. Turkish, Israeli, Indian, Chinese, and Japanese - although NOT by women in China and Japan preferred the love marriages) Indian Couples - It was the marriages that started off with less love that ended up with more love

Average Features

• Faces with averagely proportioned features are more attractive than faces that deviate from average - Women: larger eyes are more attractive - Men: larger chin feature seen as more attractive

Clear Complexion

• People are attracted to healthy mates • Skin signals health more directly than any other visible aspect • On average: healthier people will have a clearer complexion • The cosmetics industry provides people with ways to make their complexion look clearer • People have strong aversive reactions to skin conditions • Our ancestors who preferred blemish-free skin would have been more likely to have healthy mates and to produce surviving offspring • Perfect skin preferences would have become more common in the human gene pool

Romantic Love

• Romantic love is an evolutionary adaptation to ensure that children had adequate resources and protection - Romantic love exists everywhere - 89% of subsistence societies have shown clear support of it, and it's likely that it exists in the remaining 11% (human universal - at least a functional universal) However, the idea of marriages being based on romantic love is not universal - Arranged marriages have been common in many cultures • If you didn't have strong feelings of parental love - your kids would be more vulnerable - Romantic love builds on this, because evolution is surviving offspring

Critical Role of Idealization

• Study found that those people who idealized their partner the most (ie. they viewed the individual in the most unrealistically positive terms compared with how they viewed other people, and with how their partners viewed themselves) also loved their partners the most and were more likely still to be together in their relationship several months later Magnitude of idealization was significantly greater among European-Canadians that it was among Japanese, whereas Asian-Canadians fell in between - Idealization is less emphasized in more collectivistic cultures