Exam 4 Chapter 14 Interpersonal Attraction

Therefore, it is important to consider the evidence that the need to establish and maintain intimate bonds with others has an evolutionary basis. Here are four pieces of evidence:

1. The motive to belong is universal. In every culture that has been examined, people care deeply about forming and maintaining romantic bonds, parent-offspring attachments, and close relations with siblings, friends, and group members (e.g., Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1989). 2. Innate affiliation behaviors. Soon after human infants exit the womb, they instinctively engage with other people (Murray & Trevarthen, 1986). They pay special attention to other people's faces, and they delight in mimicking others' facial expressions (Meltzoff & Moore, 1977). They also pay particular attention to human voices, especially when others use baby talk (Cooper & Aslin, 1990). These tendencies are seen in children born all over the world, and they are not seen in other species. 3. Rejection hurts—literally. Earlier we noted that the experience of social rejection causes a great deal of subjective distress. Here we add that the human nervous system responds to rejection with a stress response similar to our response to physical pain. Even minor forms of rejection—such as hearing someone spread unkind gossip about oneself—increases stress-related cardiovascular arousal and a flood of the stress hormone cortisol. Similarly, as we noted in chapter 6, when people experience rejection (for example, when they are playing an interactive computer game with others and they are ignored), they show increased activation of the anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain that processes physically painful stimuli (Eisenberger et al., 2003). 4. According to MacDonald and Leary (2005), the similarity of the stress responses to physical pain and social rejection makes perfect sense if we think about the need to belong as an evolved tendency. Those individuals who felt horrible pain when they were rejected were presumably more motivated to alleviate that pain by repairing their relationships, thereby increasing their chances of producing offspring who would survive and thrive. Those who were less rattled by social rejection simply may have gone off on their own, but such people would be less likely to survive and continue to contribute to the human gene pool. However, people who are too afraid of rejection—that is, high in rejection sensitivity—may avoid seeking social relationships so much that they become dysfunctional. Indeed, people especially high in sensitivity to rejection do not function well socially (Downey & Feldman, 1996). Reproductive success. Adults who form stable close relationships are more likely to reproduce than those who fail to form them. Long-term relationships tend to increase the chances that the offspring will survive and reach maturity (Buss & Schmitt, 1993).

When the Need to Belong Is Chronically Unmet, Mental and Physical Health Decline

A hallmark of a need is that if it goes unsatisfied for a long time, people suffer negative consequences. It is in this respect that we see perhaps the strongest evidence for the claim that the need to belong qualifies as a true need. Hundreds of studies support the overall conclusion that when people are isolated for long periods of time, their mental and physical health deteriorates.

Psychological need:

A mechanism for regulating behavior to acquire the tangible or intangible resources necessarily for survival and well-being.

Gain-loss theory:

A theory of attraction that posits that liking is highest for others when they increase their positivity toward you over time. They noted that in some contexts, a compliment from a stranger, or someone you know but never has complimented you, is more potent than a compliment from a friend or spouse. They proposed that this is because we have a long history of being complimented by a friend or romantic partner, so one additional compliment is expected and doesn't affect us much: You already know the person likes you. But the unexpected compliment from a stranger or an acquaintance who has not expressed liking for you before is more unexpected and fresher, and thus may have a bigger impact on your self-esteem and your liking for the complimenter. On the flip side of the same coin, a criticism will have more impact if it comes from a friend or romantic partner because they usually say positive things to you.

If You Like Me, I'll Like You!

All else being equal, if you find out that someone else likes you (more than he or she likes others), it makes you more likely to like them too (Condon & Crano, 1988; Curtis & Miller, 1986; Eastwick et al., 2007). In one study, people's reports of how they fell in love or formed a friendship with a person indicated that a key factor was realizing that the other person liked them (Aron et al., 1989). In fact, when compared with attitude similarity, being liked by another is a stronger initial factor in attraction (Condon & Crano, 1988; Curtis & Miller, 1986). One obvious explanation for the reciprocity of liking effect is based on self-esteem. Our self-esteem benefits when others like us (Becker, 1962; James, 1890; Leary et al., 1995), so we like those who enhance our self-esteem. Another plausible explanation is that we expect someone who likes us to treat us well, so the anticipation of rewards enhances our liking for that person (Montoya & Insko, 2008).

Mating strategies:

Approaches to mating that help people reproduce successfully. People prefer different mating strategies depending on whether they are thinking about a short-term pairing or a long-term commitment. For men, there may be some benefit to a mating strategy of pursuing every available sexual opportunity and to focus more on a short-term mating strategy. If a man mates with as many women as possible in short-term relationships, he probably won't be able to provide high-quality parenting to every child he fathers, and so many of those children will not thrive as well as they would with high investment from both parents (Allen & Daly, 2007). But what a man lacks in parental quality he might make up in sheer quantity: Chances are that at least some of those children will survive to propagate the man's genes. Women, in contrast, would get no reproductive benefit from being highly promiscuous. Instead, women would benefit from a mating strategy of choosing their mates carefully, seeking out partners with good genes who would contribute resources to protect and feed their offspring. In other words, women might prefer a long-term mating strategy.

How can we account for these universal patterns in the preferences men report?

An evolutionary perspective suggests that the challenge men face when attempting to reproduce is finding a mate who is fertile—put simply, capable of producing offspring. But how can men deduce a potential mate's fertility level? One useful clue is a woman's age. Women are not fertile until puberty, and their fertility ends after they reach menopause around age 50. As our species evolved, men who were attracted to features of women's faces and bodies that signal that they are young (but not too young) were more likely to find a fertile mate and successfully reproduce. Those attracted to women with other features were less successful in populating the gene pool. As a result, those preferences may be built into modern men's genetic inheritance (Buss, 2003).

Symmetry

Another feature of faces that both men and women find attractive is bilateral symmetry (Thornhill & Gangestad, 1993). The preference for "average" and symmetrical faces is universal. Men and women from all over the world—in the United States, China, Nigeria, India, and Japan—agree that "average," symmetrical faces are more attractive than faces with exaggerated features or asymmetries (Rhodes et al., 2002).

The Physical Attractiveness Stereotype, AKA the Halo Effect

Another reason we might care about someone's attractiveness is that we assume it will mean that they have other positive characteristics. in Western cultures people see beautiful people (compared with those of average attractiveness) as happier, warmer, more dominant, mature, mentally healthy, and more outgoing, intelligent, sensitive, confident, and successful—though not more honest, concerned for others, or modest (e.g., Eagly et al., 1991; Feingold, 1992b; Langlois et al., 2000). This tendency to see attractive people as having positive traits, to see beautiful as good in a global sense, is referred to as a physical attractiveness stereotype, or halo effect (Dion et al., 1972). The effects of a physical attractiveness stereotype have been shown in a number of studies, many of which simply asked people to judge others, or work attributed to them, on the basis of only a photograph (Anderson & Nida, 1978; Cash & Trimer, 1984). For example, people evaluated an essay supposedly written by an attractive person more positively than that very same essay when it was supposedly written by an unattractive person (Landy & Sigall, 1974).

Physical attractiveness also may be important in many cultures because the hotter the person we're with, the more we can BIRG (bask in their reflected glory). Consider a study by Sigall and Landy from 1973.

As a participant in this study, you show up at the lab and find two other people in the waiting room. These two people are actually confederates. One is an average-looking guy, and the other is a naturally good-looking woman. For half of the participants, her appearance accentuates her attractiveness. She wears makeup and is tastefully dressed. But for the other half of the participants, she wears an unflattering wig, no makeup, and unbecoming clothes to mask her attractiveness. After a few minutes, an experimenter enters and asks the other people if they are here for a study on perception. Half the time the woman holds the man's hand and says, "No, I'm just waiting with my boyfriend." This leads you to infer that she is in a relationship with the man. The other half of the time she does not hold the other confederate's hand and replies, "No, I'm just waiting for Dr. X." Subsequently both you (the participant) and the man are led to different rooms, and under the pretext of a person-perception study, you're asked to give your impressions of him. participants formed more positive impressions of the man when he was the boyfriend of the attractive woman (the condition labeled Associated) than when he was unassociated with the attractive woman. They formed the least positive impressions when he was the boyfriend of the unattractive woman. This shows how our impressions of people are influenced by the attractiveness of those with whom they are associated. When we date attractive people, other people see us more positively than if we dated unattractive people.

Culturally Valued Attributes

As cultural animals, we also are drawn to people who have talents or have achieved things that our culture values (e.g., Fletcher et al., 2000). Being connected to, or simply being near, another person with culturally valued attributes can enhance our own self-esteem. This connects with our discussion of Tesser's (1988) self-evaluation model in chapter 6: When someone else is talented in a domain that you don't claim for yourself, it is easy to identify with him or her and gain self-worth from doing so.

Rejection

Aside from feeling lonely, the experience of being rejected outright or pushed away by close others takes a serious toll on mental and physical health (Cohen, 2004; Ryff & Singer, 2000). When people are rejected or stigmatized, they report feeling very distressed (Leary, 2001; Smart Richman & Leary, 2009; Williams, 2007).

so what is true of the stereotype?

Attractive people are generally more outgoing, popular, and socially skilled (Feingold, 1992b; Langlois et al., 2000), but they are not higher in self-esteem, life satisfaction, mental health, sensitivity, or intelligence (Diener et al., 1995; Feingold, 1992b; Sparacino & Hansell, 1979; Major et al., 1984). when researchers conduct phone interviews with attractive versus unattractive people, more attractive people are rated by interviewers (who don't know what they look like) as more likable and socially skilled (Goldman & Lewis, 1977).

Attraction to Those Who Fulfill Needs

Beyond having talents, achievements, and desirable traits, people also can be attractive to us because they help to satisfy our psychological needs. One is the need to sustain faith in a worldview that gives meaning to life. Another is to maintain a strong sense of self-esteem. We like people who help validate these psychological resources. These include people who seem similar to us, who like us, and who flatter us.

Do Men Prefer Beauty? Do Women Prefer Status?

Buss's (1989) initial research suggested that these gender differences exist across the 37 countries he assessed (see FIGURE 14.5) (Buss, 2008; Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Feingold, 1992a; Geary, 2010). And when given pictures and background information of potential dating partners, men were more likely than women to base their preferences on appearance, selecting the more attractive women (Feingold, 1990). In contrast, the better predictor of women's interest in a man was his income (see FIGURE 14.6). In studies of online dating, wealthier guys get more e-mails from the ladies (Hitsch et al., 2010). Such evidence seems to support our stereotypes about what men and women want. these results are limited. For example, note that in these studies participants are indicating only whom they think they want to go out with. Studies that examine what happens when people actually meet and interact reveal a different picture. As far back as 1966, Walster and colleagues recruited students for a "welcome dance" at the University of Minnesota. They measured the students' personality traits, rated their physical attractiveness, and then later randomly matched men and women up for the evening. What was the best predictor of whether the students wanted to see their partners again after the dance? For men and women equally, it was the physical attractiveness of the partner. Eastwick and Finkel (2008) got the same results from their speed-dating paradigm. Men more than women self-reported valuing physical attractiveness, but when it came to choosing a live dating partner, both sexes were equally influenced by physical attractiveness. In fact, a recent meta-analysis confirms that across many studies, once live interaction occurs with a potential romantic partner, physical attractiveness is equally predictive of liking and interest for men and women (Eastwick et al., 2013). The same is true for the gender difference in focus on wealth and status. Once live interaction with a potential partner occurs, the wealth and status of a potential partner are only slightly influential and equally so for both women and men (Eastwick et al., 2014).

Women's preference for higher-status men makes rational sense in a historic or cultural context in which women rely on men for protection and support (Eagly & Wood, 1999; Wood & Eagly, 2002, 2007).

But this sociocultural perspective suggests that in societies with greater gender equality—that is, societies in which women's occupation of powerful positions and their earning capacity are similar to men's—the greater female emphasis on finding a mate with status and economic resources should be reduced, and in fact it is (Eagly & Diekman, 2003; Wood & Eagly, 2002; Zentner & Mitura, 2012). If we look at the distribution of wealth in each of the countries in Buss's (1989) study of mate preferences, we find that the more women had direct access to economic power, the more they reported that physical attractiveness mattered to them in selecting a long-term mate (Eagly & Wood, 1999; Gangestad, 1993). Also, when they are looking for a short-term fling, women prefer physically attractive mates as much as men do (Li & Kenrick, 2006). Finally, women who are higher in intelligence also indicate less emphasis on the status of potential male partners (Stanik & Ellsworth, 2010)

The effects of divorce provide another way to look at the consequences of separation and rejection.

Compared with people who are happily married, those who just got divorced are much more likely to be admitted to hospitals for psychological problems (Bloom et al., 1979). After a divorce, people's blood pressure increases, and their immune systems become weaker (Kiecolt-Glaser & Newton, 2001), and they are more likely to die an early death than individuals in long-term unions (Sbarra et al., 2011).

When the Need to Belong Is Satisfied, People Thrive

Compared with people who live more isolated lives, people who have pleasant interactions with a network of close friends, lovers, family members, and coworkers have higher self-esteem (Denissen et al., 2008; Leary & Baumeister, 2000), feel happier and more satisfied with their lives (Diener et al., 1999), and have better mental health (Kim & McKenry, 2002). Across different cultures, people who marry and stay married are happier overall than are those who are less committed to an intimate partnership (Diener et al., 2000). With regard to physical health, people who feel socially connected have stronger cardiovascular, immune, and endocrine systems, and they are less likely to die a premature death (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008; House et al., 1988; Uchino, 2006; Uchino et al., 1996).

REVIEW The desire to form social relationships is a fundamental part of human nature.

Evidence of a fundamental need to belong -Like hunger, the need to belong can be satisfied. -Belonging promotes mental and physical health. -Loneliness takes a toll on mental and physical health. Evidence that the need to belong has an evolutionary basis -People of all cultures share the need to belong. -Newborn infants instinctively engage other people. -Social rejection activates the same stress responses as physical pain. -Long-term relationships promote successful procreation and raising of offspring.

Scientists are not currently in agreement about whether women's mate preferences vary by ovulatory cycle. In 2014, two different meta-analyses were published drawing quite different interpretations about the strength of the evidence for these effects (Gildersleeve et al., 2014; Wood et al., 2014).

First, most of these studies have been conducted only with participants from Western cultures, and it's difficult to tease apart how culture might inform what is considered to be attractive. Before jumping to conclusions about innate differences, we need to see whether the findings we're discussing (e.g., women's preferences during specific phases of their menstrual cycle) replicate across non-Western cultures. Second, even if there are some biologically driven components to attraction that differentiate the sexes, it's also important to remember that men and women are far more similar than they are different in terms of the traits they rate as highly preferable in a romantic partner. If we focus solely on the differences, we risk losing the broader perspective on human attraction.

Transference

First, some attributes may evoke positive feelings because we associate them with people we like or positive experiences we had in the past. For example, Collins and Read (1990) found that people are often drawn to romantic partners who have a caregiving style similar to that of their opposite-sex parent. More generally, in a finding consistent with the Freudian concept of transference (Freud, 1912/1958), Susan Andersen and colleagues discovered that if a newly encountered individual resembles a significant other in your life whom you like or dislike, you will carry over those feelings to the new person (Andersen & Baum, 1994; Andersen et al., 1996). Often these associations can even be fairly subtle, such as sharing the same birthday or wearing a similar style of eyeglasses.

The benefits of physical attractiveness continue into adulthood, with implications for several positive outcomes.

For example, for each point increase on a 1 (homely) to 5 (strikingly attractive) scale of attractiveness, people are likely to earn an average of about $2,000 more a year (Frieze et al., 1991; Roszell et al., 1989). Other life domains are affected as well. For instance, attractive defendants are less likely than unattractive defendants to be found guilty when accused of a crime (Efran, 1974), and when they are found guilty, they are given lighter sentences (Stewart, 1980). This bias in the legal domain is strongest in jurors who rely on their emotions and gut-level reactions in their decision making (Gunnell & Ceci, 2010).

Evolution and Belonging

From an evolutionary perspective, early humans who successfully formed close social bonds were more likely to survive and reproduce than were the loners, outcasts, and misanthropes. As a result, more and more people were born with gregari-ousness built into their genes. In this way, over thousands of generations, the need to belong came to be a basic characteristic of our species (Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Simpson & Kenrick, 1997).

Evolution in Context

Furthermore, although men more than women report a greater interest in physically attractive mates, whereas women report a greater interest in mates with higher status, these gender differences in stated preferences are not found in studies of actual evaluation and dating patterns and are reduced in countries with greater gender equality. Thus, sociocultural influences seem to play a role in shaping women's changing prioritization of attractiveness and status in a mate. However, evolutionary psychologists further posit that men and women are attracted to different physical attributes that helped them to solve sex-specific challenges to successful reproduction. And the current evidence does suggest that modern men have inherited a preference for youthfully mature, low-waist-to-hip-ratio partners, because these partners are most likely to be fertile. But researchers continue to debate whether during times of peak fertility, women have an increased preference for men with physical attributes that suggest dominance. In every culture, both sexes look for partners who offer warmth and loyalty, which are always rated above physical attractiveness and status (Buss, 1989; Tran et al., 2008). Everyone, it seems, desires a partner who is agreeable, loving, and kind. The broader point is this: The study of gender differences in attraction is addressed by some researchers from an evolutionary perspective and by others from a sociocultural perspective. The truth might lie somewhat in the middle. The most important thing to keep in mind is that much like other forms of human behavior, attraction stems from an intricate web of influences derived from each person's biology, culture, and immediate social context.

More recently, Reis and colleagues (2011) systematically varied how many chats, ranging from 1 to 8, participants had with a same-sex fellow student.

Generally, the more chats, the more the participants liked the other person. Additional measures in the studies showed that more conversation led to more liking because it increased comfort and satisfaction with the other person and a sense that the other person was responsive to them. These findings fit the mere exposure notion that by increasing familiarity, proximity leads to greater comfort and attraction. It also suggests another explanation for the proximity-liking effect: that the more interactions we have with people close by, the more attentive to us they seem. And it may not be just our perceptions of responsiveness that are influenced by repeated interaction. Chances are that the more we see people, the more they actually do respond to us and our needs.

The Averageness Effect

The tendency to perceive a composite image of multiple faces that have been photographically averaged as more attractive than any individual face included in that composite. the more faces that are combined to create a composite face, the more attractive that face is perceived to be. However, it's also the case that composites of sets of faces that are attractive to begin with are viewed as more attractive than composites of nonselective samples of faces.

Tesser's (1988) self-evaluation maintenance model (described in chapter 6) suggests another way that dissimilarity can help a relationship.

If friends or partners are both strong in the same domains of abilities and accomplishments, it can lead to threatening social comparisons and friction. This implies that people will get along if they are good at different things—if, for example, one person is great at math and the other is a great writer. That way, each person can take pride in the other's accomplishments rather than experiencing self-esteem threat from them (Pilkington et al., 1991). To test this idea, Tesser (1980) studied the biographies of famous male scientists. He found that the scientists had had better relationships with their sons if the sons went into a field different from their own

Another physical feature linked to fertility in women is waist-to-hip ratio (FIGURE 14.4).

If you measure the circumference of your waist at its narrowest point, and divide that by the circumference of your hips at your broadest point (including your butt), the number you get is your waist-to-hip ratio. Men are most attracted to women's bodies with a waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7—a very curvy "hourglass" figure in which the waist is 30% narrower than the hips (Furnham et al., 2005; Singh, 1993). Black men prefer women with heavier physiques than do White men, and yet both Black and White men prefer the same curvaceous 0.7 waist-to-hip ratio (Singh & Luis, 1995). Women with a waist-to-hip ratio near the attractiveness norm of 0.7 have a particular mix of hormones (estradiol and progesterone) that allows them to become pregnant more easily and to enjoy better physical health than do women with fewer curves (Lassek & Gaulin, 2008). So there is some evidence that the physical attributes that appeal to men around the world are signs of women's fertility

halo effect studies

In one alarming study, cuter premature infants were treated better in hospitals and consequently fared better than their less cute fellow preemies (Badr & Abdallah, 2001). Young children show preferences for other attractive children (Dion & Berscheid, 1974). Attractive babies get more attention from parents and staff even before leaving the hospital (Langlois et al., 1995). Halo effects continue to occur in nursery school, with attractive children being more popular (Dion, 1973). But maybe it weakens by the time children get to elementary school? No—attractiveness biases occur there as well. Clifford and Walster (1973), for example, gave fifth-grade teachers identical information about a boy or a girl but manipulated whether the information was paired with an attractive or unattractive photograph. When asked how intelligent the student was and how successful the student was likely to be in school, teachers saw the attractive child as both more intelligent and more likely to be successful.

One method that tries to tease apart reported and actual preferences is to create a situation that resembles speed dating.

In one set of studies, Eastwick and colleagues (Eastwick, Eagly et al., 2011; Eastwick, Finkel et al., 2011) had male and female participants sit at individual tables as a parade of potential partners (or "dates") rotated through, spending about 4 minutes with each participant. Later, the participants were asked whom they would have liked to see again. The researchers found that the traits the participants reported caring about in a prospective romantic partner failed to predict how interested they were in others who had or did not have those qualities when they met them face to face.

What made it advantageous for our ancestors to form and maintain social relationships?

In those environments, being embedded in a network of social relationships helped people survive and have children who would grow to maturity and also reproduce. Most obviously, heterosexual relationship bonds provide the opportunity to have sex, which obviously increases chances of reproduction. Also, hominid infants were especially vulnerable and dependent for many years after birth. Thus, infants with a tendency to form close attachments to their parents would have been more likely than aloof offspring to receive the care and protection they needed to survive until they could function on their own (Bowlby, 1969, 1973, 1980; Buss, 1994). Also, friendships were a means for non-kin to cooperate in finding food, build shelters, and explore the environment. They also helped people avoid the costs of competition and aggression (Fehr, 1996; Trivers, 1971). Such friendships might also have contributed to survival by improving individuals' ability to defend against predators' attacks.

Cultural Influences

In today's United States, by the age of 44, almost everyone—95 percent of the population—has had sexual intercourse before marriage (Finer, 2007). Although on average American men and women do not marry until their mid- to late 20s, they usually have sex for the first time around the age of 17. In fact, by the time Americans reach 20 years of age, only 15 percent have not yet had sex (Fryar et al., 2007). These are very different patterns than those researchers see in the first half of the twentieth century. Most people back then waited two to three years longer to begin having sex (Wells & Twenge, 2005). men tend to exaggerate the number of partners they've been with, whereas women tend to minimize that number (Willetts et al., 2004). More generally, cultures vary in the permissiveness of their attitudes regarding sex, presumably as a result of particular historical, political, and religious influences. Americans have more conservative sexual attitudes than people in many other technologically advanced countries (Widmer et al., 1998). For example, when asked about their attitudes about sex before marriage, sex before age 16, extramarital sex, and same-sex relations, Americans are stricter than respondents in a variety of other countries

Is Appearance Destiny?

Indeed, some research suggests that someone's perceived attractiveness at age 17 does not predict the same person's perceived attractiveness at ages 30 and 50 (Zebrowitz, 1997). Finally, even though some physical attributes are considered universally attractive, experience with a person can also elevate his or her beauty. Research clearly shows that people who are viewed positively or as familiar and who are liked or loved are all rated by perceivers to be more physically attractive (e.g., Gross & Crofton, 1977; Lewandowski et al., 2007; Price & Vandenberg, 1979). And the happier a couple is with their relationship, the more physically attractive they view each other as being (Murray & Holmes, 1997).

However, a few studies show ways in which opposites may attract.

One way is that highly masculine men tend to be attracted to highly feminine women (Orlofsky, 1982). In addition, Dryer and Horowitz (1997) found in two studies that after a brief interaction, female students high in dominance preferred a submissive partner, and females high in submissiveness preferred a dominant partner. So it appears that for the traits of dominance and submission, complementarity contributes to attraction. The same applies to fiscal habits: People who tend to scrimp and save often marry people who like to spend. Still, their different spending styles contribute to conflicts over finances, which reduce marital well-being (Rick et al., 2011). Other studies show that people partner up with a dissimilar other if they are looking for a short-term, low-commitment relationship, presumably because they find their differences to be novel and exciting (Amodio & Showers, 2005).

REVIEW Several factors affect how we choose others with whom we form close relationships.

Proximity -Physical proximity is an important factor in developing relationships, although its importance is tempered by social media. Reward model -People like others whom they associate with positive feelings and dislike those associated with negative feelings. Attributes of the person -People like those who remind them of others they like. -People like those with culturally desirable attributes. -Self-reports of traits that people prefer often don't predict their liking of people they meet who have those traits. Our psychological needs -People tend to like others who fulfill their needs for meaning and self-esteem. Specifically, those who: -are perceived as similar to the self. -reciprocate liking. -flatter them.

Parental investment:

The time and effort that parents must invest in each child they produce.

A number of factors can influence which motive tends to affect sexual behavior.

It is important to recognize that although sex obviously serves the biological function of reproduction, many psychological motives influence people's decisions to have sex. When college students were asked to list all of the reasons why they or someone they know had recently engaged in sexual intercourse, they mentioned 237 reasons (Meston & Buss, 2007). Most of these reasons had to do with seeking positive states such as pleasure, affection, love, emotional closeness, adventure, and excitement. Students also mentioned more calculating and callous reasons, albeit less frequently. Some used sex as a way to aggress against someone ("I was mad at my partner, so I had sex with someone else"), to gain some advantage ("I wanted a raise"), or to enhance their social status ("I wanted to impress my friends"). Lynne Cooper and colleagues (1998) have shown that many of these reasons for sex boil down to five core motives. Specifically, she finds that the among both college-student and community samples, the most frequently endorsed motives for sex are (in descending order) to enhance physical or emotional pleasure, to foster intimacy, to affirm one's sense of self-worth, to cope with negative emotions, and to gain partner or peer approval.

Why Is Physical Attractiveness Important?

It takes much less time to assess someone's looks than his or her honesty, intelligence, and other qualities; some evidence suggests it takes as little as 0.15 seconds (Zajonc, 1998). So when you meet someone, the very first impression you form will be based on his or her looks.

An Evolutionary Perspective

Robert Trivers (1972) proposed that reproductive success means different things to men and women because the sexes differ in their inherent parental investment. Men's parental investment can be relatively low. If a man has sex with 100 different women in a year, he can, in theory, father as many as 100 children with little more time and effort than it takes to ejaculate. Women have a much higher level of parental investment. The number of children they can bear and raise in a lifetime is limited, and they have to commit enormous time and energy to each child lest it die before reaching maturity. Trivers argued that because men and women differ in the necessity of their parental investment, they evolved to have different mating strategies

Loneliness also can take a toll on physical health. During times of loneliness, college students have weaker immune systems, making them more vulnerable to catching a cold or flu (Pressman et al., 2005).

Looking across the life span, we see that people who have few friends or lovers are likely to die at a younger age than those who are happily connected to others. In one study, people who lacked close social bonds were two to three times more likely to die over a nine-year span (Berkman & Glass, 2000). In fact, when it comes to predicting people's physical health, loneliness is as significant a risk factor as smoking and obesity (Hawkley et al., 2009).

14 D Gender differences in sexual attitudes and behavior -Although there is important variation within each gender, many findings support the idea that, compared with women, men have more permissive attitudes about sexuality in and out of relationships:

Men are much more likely than women to say that they would enjoy casual sex outside the context of a committed relationship, whereas women prefer to engage in sexual activities as part of an emotionally intimate relationship (Hendrick et al., 2006; Oliver & Hyde, 1993; Ostovich & Sabini, 2004). If you ask teenagers how they feel about having sex for the first time, most of the young men cannot wait to lose their virginity, and only one third of them view the prospect with a mix of positive and negative feelings. Young women have a different view: Most are ambivalent about having sex, some are opposed, and only a third of them are looking forward to their first experience of sex (Abma et al., 2004). If you went on a date with someone and didn't have sex, would you regret it? Men report regretting not pursuing a sexual opportunity much more often than women do (Roese et al., 2006)

The differences between men and women go beyond what they say. When we look at what people are actually doing, men on average have higher sex drives than women do:

Men experience sexual desire more frequently and intensely than do women, and they are more motivated to seek out sexual activity (Vohs et al., 2004). Young men experience sexual desire on average 37 times per week, whereas women experience sexual desire only about 9 times per week (Regan & Atkins, 2006). Men also spend more time fantasizing about sex than women do: Sex crosses men's minds about 60 times per week; for women, only about 15 times (Leitenberg & Henning, 1995; Regan & Atkins, 2006). Men spend more money on sex. Not only do men spend a lot of money on sexual toys and pornography (Laumann et al., 2004), men are much more likely than women to pay for sex. One study found that, among Australians, 23 percent of men said that they paid for sex at least once, but almost none of the women had (Pitts et al., 2004). Men masturbate more frequently than women do (Oliver & Hyde, 1993). Among people who have a regular sexual partner, about half of the men still masturbate more than once a week, whereas only 16 percent of women pleasure themselves as frequently (Klusmann, 2002). Men are more likely to be sexually unfaithful to their romantic partners. Although most husbands and wives never have sex with someone other than their partner after they marry, about one out of every three husbands, compared with only one out of five wives, has an extramarital affair (Tafoya & Spitzberg, 2007). Where polygamy is practiced, such as in some African cultures, it is almost always men who have the multiple spouses (Zeitzen, 2008). These and other facts paint a pretty clear picture: On average, men are more sex driven than women, and are interested in more frequent sex with more partners. A big question, of course, is why these differences exist.

First, following up on Buss's original research, studies have replicated his pattern of sex differences.

Men's greater worry over sexual infidelity and women's greater concern with emotional infidelity have been found across cultures (Buss et al., 1999; Buunk et al., 1996; Geary et al., 1995) and also show up when people consider online relationships (Groothof et al., 2009). A meta-analysis of studies that have presented participants with the choice between sexual and emotional infidelity shows this sex difference to be of moderate size, although stronger among college-age, heterosexual participants (Harris, 2003). The sex difference goes beyond what people say. When male and female college students imagined these two types of infidelity, their bodies reacted somewhat differently depending on their gender. Male participants imagining their partners sexually cheating on them had elevated skin conductance, indicative of an increased sympathetic response of the fight-or-flight type. Women showed higher levels of skin conductance when imagining that their partners had become emotionally attached to someone else (Buss et al., 1992).

Perceived Versus Actual Similarity

Several studies show that what is important for attraction and relationship commitment is how much people perceive that they are similar to another, and not necessarily how similar they are from an objective point of view (Montoya et al., 2008). For example, people's initial attraction in a speed-dating context, and their satisfaction in long-term relationships, are better predicted by perceived similarity than actual similarity (Dyrenforth et al., 2010; Tidwell et al., 2013).

Status and Access to Scarce Resources

Most people judging Caucasian individuals now consider tanned skin more attractive. This is what Chung and colleagues (2010) discovered when they manipulated the skin tones of women on the web site hotornot.com and had people rate the attractiveness of different faces. What about for judgments of African Americans? Evidence shows that lighter skin tones are considered more attractive than darker complexions (Frisby, 2006). This may help to explain why Caucasians frequent tanning salons as well as the push for skin-lightening products among darker-skinned minority groups. Body size and weight are similarly influenced by cultural trends and values. In cultures and societies in which resources such as food are scarce, men tend to prefer heavier women, but in cultures and societies with an abundance of resources, men prefer thinner women (Anderson et al., 1992; Sobal & Stunkard, 1989). Conditions of scarcity or plenty thus influence what is desired.

However, other researchers have had problems with this interpretation and the data on which it has relied.

One argument is that the existence of these sex differences actually has been overstated (Harris, 2003). Forcing people to choose between a love affair and a lustful liaison is a rather contrived scenario, a bit like asking whether someone would prefer a kick in the head or a punch in the stomach. Neither is particularly desirable, and by focusing on sex differences in preferring one choice over the other, we might be ignoring a rather obvious but important point: that both sexes would experience jealousy in either case. When people are asked about each kind of infidelity independently rather than being forced to choose between one or the other, the normally observed sex difference seems to disappear (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Harris, 2003; Sagarin et al., 2003). Perhaps these differences are more a function of cultural learning than evolved propensities. For example, women tend to assume that a man in love will also be having sex, whereas men assume that a woman having sex will also be in love (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996; Harris & Christenfeld, 1996). So women might be more bothered than men by emotional infidelity because they are more likely to assume that their partner has or is very likely to consummate the affair (DeSteno et al., 2002). Another culturally based argument is that men derive more self-esteem from their sex lives than women do, whereas women derive more self-esteem from being emotionally bonded to a partner than men do (Goldenberg et al., 2003). Therefore, it's no surprise that a partner's emotional disloyalty would trigger greater self-esteem concerns for women, whereas a partner's sexual disloyalty would trigger greater self-esteem concerns for men.

Research to support the reward model

One early test of this idea had participants simply sit in a room for 45 minutes and fill out some questionnaires. One of the questionnaires described a stranger's attitudes on various issues. The experimenter varied the temperature in the room so that it was either comfortable or unpleasantly hot. Participants were then asked to indicate how they felt about the stranger. As the reward model predicts, participants liked the stranger better if the room was comfortable than if it was not (Griffitt, 1970). Researchers have used a variety of other methods to make the same point. For example, one study had participants overhear bad or good news on a radio broadcast and then evaluate a stranger (Veitch & Griffitt, 1976). They liked the stranger better if the radio broadcast good rather than bad news. So sometimes, we may like or dislike someone because they just happen to be there when something pleasant or unpleasant happens to occur.

Why Are "Average," Symmetrical Faces Attractive? -evolution

One influential answer comes from evolutionary psychology. It seems plausible that a big challenge to successful reproduction was—and continues to be—finding a healthy person to mate with. Because diseases and developmental disorders can be passed on genetically, our ancestors who mated with healthy partners were more likely to have healthy offspring, who themselves went on to reproduce, than were those who mated with unhealthy partners. For example, the more infectious diseases experienced by a mother during pregnancy, the more likely her infant is to show departures from perfect facial and bodily symmetry (Livshits & Kobyliansky, 1991). Indeed, some research shows that men and women with more symmetrical faces are healthier than are people whose faces have odd proportions. For example, studies have found that symmetrical-faced individuals tend to have fewer respiratory and intestinal infections than less symmetrical individuals (Thornhill & Gangestad, 2006) and have higher potential fertility (Jasienska et al., 2006; Soler et al., 2003).

Proximity: Like the one you are with

One simple determinant of social relationships is known as the propinquity effect, propinquity meaning closeness in space. The original idea was that you can't form a relationship with someone unless you meet them, and the closer you are physically to someone else, the more likely you are to meet and therefore form a relationship with him or her. With the proliferation of Internet technology in many contemporary cultures, this is not so true anymore. Facebook, Twitter, blogs, message boards, and other apps make it more and more possible to form relationships with people we rarely, if ever, actually meet. This includes people from around the globe and in cyberspace with whom we share an interest. Before the Internet, people sometimes developed relationships with "pen pals," friends known only through an exchange of letters. So for a long time, physical propinquity has not been necessary for developing a social relationship; nevertheless, it's less important, at least for casual relationships, than ever before. At the same time, face-to-face social interactions are more important and beneficial to mental health and life satisfaction than cyber socializing

Many of these studies look at the experience of loneliness, or the feeling that one is deprived of human social connections (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008).

People find it very stressful to be entirely alone for a long period of time (Schachter, 1959). In fact, people claim to feel more fulfilled in an unhappy relationship than they do when in no relationship at all (Kamp Dush & Amato, 2005). Loneliness is such a miserable state that people often try to numb their pain by turning to alcohol or drugs (Rook, 1984). Over time, loneliness contributes to a range of mental health complications, including depression, eating disorders, and schizophrenia (Cacioppo et al., 2006; Segrin, 1998).

Similarity in Attitudes

People who become friends, lovers, and spouses tend to be similar in socioeconomic status, age, geographical location, ethnic identity, looks, and personality (Byrne et al., 1966; Caspi & Herbener, 1990; Hinsz, 1989). But particularly powerful is similarity in attitudes and overall worldview. Support for these intuitions comes from many studies showing that people with similar attitudes are more likely to be liked, become friends, and become romantic partners (Byrne, 1971; Griffitt & Veitch, 1974; Newcomb, 1956). In one early study, Newcomb (1956) examined attitudes of transfer students moving into a college dorm. When he tracked liking among those in the dorm, as more time passed, sharing similar attitudes became an increasingly stronger predictor of liking. Also, people who marry are likely to have more satisfying, longer-lasting marriages to the extent they perceive their attitudes to be similar (Bentler & Newcomb, 1978; Cattell & Nesselroade, 1967; Houts et al., 1996). It is interesting to note that the causal arrow works both ways. Just as perceived similarity increases attraction, attraction increases perceived similarity. If we like someone, we also tend to assume he or she has similar attitudes (Miller & Marks, 1982). In addition, couples tend to think their attitudes are more similar than they actually are (Kenny & Acitelli, 2001; Murray et al., 2002).

Reward model of liking:

Proposes that people like other people whom they associate with positive stimuli and dislike people whom they associate with negative stimuli. In the reward model, a new person begins as a relatively neutral stimulus. If exposure to the person is temporally linked to a second stimulus you already like, the positive feelings evoked by the second stimulus start to become evoked by the person. Conversely, if the second stimulus evokes negative feelings in you, some of those negative feelings start to become linked to the person. This raises the question, What are these second stimuli that influence our liking for others? When we think of why we like someone, we usually talk about that person's attributes, and that is certainly part of the total picture. But the reward model suggests that we could come to like (or dislike) someone not because of any attribute they have or behavior they engage in, but simply because they happened to be around when we were feeling good (or bad). The idea seems to fit the rather unfair practice of ancient Roman rulers who sometimes would kill messengers who brought bad news (prompting the old expression "Don't kill the messenger").

Men also seem to pick up on women's fertility unconsciously and play the part of the dominant man. Men who sniffed T-shirts worn by women who were in the fertile phase of their cycle showed a bigger spike in their testosterone levels than did men who sniffed T-shirts worn by women who were not fertile (Miller & Maner, 2010).

Testosterone plays a role in dominant behavior, aggressiveness, and risk taking. These results suggest that men's hormonal reactions increase their chances of appearing attractive to fertile women and thus mating with them.

Final Thoughts

Regarding the sex-difference issue, it is also worth noting that research finds that both men and women report feeling angry when they think about a partner sleeping with someone else, but feel sad and hurt if they imagine their partner having an emotional connection with someone else (Green & Sabini, 2006; Sabini & Green, 2004). One explanation for these reactions is that we all get angry when someone fails to control his or her impulses, but we feel a sense of loss if we imagine that our partner could leave us for another.

Why Are "Average," Symmetrical Faces Attractive? another explanation is that more average-appearing and symmetrical faces simply seem more familiar and are thus easier for us to process as faces.

Research has not always supported the idea that facial averageness and symmetry are indicators of physical health (e.g., Kalick et al., 1998; Rhodes et al., 2001). But other evidence shows that people like faces more to the extent that they look like very familiar faces—their own (Little & Perrett, 2002)! Also spouses, siblings, and close friends, who tend to stay near each other, agree more in their ratings of facial attractiveness than pairs of strangers do (Bronstad & Russell, 2007). Such evidence has led some researchers to argue that the preference for averageness may be a byproduct of liking for familiarity and stimuli that are easily processed rather than the legacy of an evolved mechanism to read these cues as signals of health.

One saying floating around in our culture is that "playing hard to get" can increase one's attractiveness. Evidence doesn't generally support that idea, but it does support the idea that people are more attractive if they seem hard for others to "get" (Eastwick et al., 2007; Wright & Contrada, 1986).

Some people are very free with compliments and seem to like everybody. Other people are very discriminating, doling out compliments only to the lucky few. Compliments and liking increase attraction more if the person giving them out seems discriminating rather than giving out compliments freely or seeming to like virtually everyone.

Flattery

Studies show that the more nice things someone says about us, the more we like them (Gordon, 1996; Jones, 1990). The benefits of flattery even extend to computers. When participants received randomly generated positive performance evaluations from a computer, they liked the computer better—even if they knew the positive evaluations were randomly generated and not contingent on their performance (Fogg & Nass, 1997) Flattery doesn't always work, however. If it is clear the flatterer has an ulterior motive, the compliments are not quite so effective (Gordon, 1996; Matsumura & Ohtsubo, 2012). Still, we generally prefer someone who says nice things about us (even if that person's motives are suspect) to someone who doesn't have anything nice to say at all (Drachman et al., 1978). This is because any compliment will still make us feel good (Chan & Sengupta, 2010). We usually are more motivated to embrace positive feedback than to question its validity (Jones, 1964, 1990; Vonk, 2002).

media and attractiveness

Supporting this cultural media explanation, Smith and colleagues (1999) found that in popular Hollywood movies, there was a positive correlation between how physically attractive the main character was and how virtuous and successful the character was in the film. In a second study, they showed college students a film reinforcing the beautiful-is-good stereotype. Subsequently, the students were asked to give their impression of two people they thought were applicants to graduate school. They thought more highly of the physically attractive applicant than the less attractive applicant, even though the two applicants had similar academic credentials.

REVIEW Research reveals the importance of physical attractiveness, what people find physically attractive (and why), and the consequences for relationships.

The importance of physical attractiveness -Sexual and aesthetic appeal do predict liking. -Association with attractive people can bolster self-esteem. -Attractive people are stereotyped to have positive traits. Common denominators of attractive faces -Composite and symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive, perhaps as a reflection of good health or because they seem familiar. Gender differences in what is attractive -Men universally prefer a waist-to-hip ratio that suggests fertility. -At times of peak fertility, women seem to be more attracted to more masculine faces. -Men report an ideal preference for attractiveness and women an ideal preference for social and financial status. -In actual relationships, men and women are equally influenced by physical attractiveness and, to a lesser extent, partner status. -Women's stated preference for higher-status men might also be changing as women achieve greater equality. -Both men and women rank warmth and loyalty above all other factors. Cultural and situational factors -Standards of beauty vary across cultures and over time. -Scarcity and status influence trends. -Mass media have been influential in creating impossible standards of beauty that may be hurtful to self-image, especially for women. Is appearance destiny? -Attractiveness can change across time and place. -People can control their perceived attractiveness by being positive in expression and behavior.

Mate guarding:

The process of preventing others from mating with one's partner in order to avoid the costs of rearing offspring that do not help to propagate one's genes.

For Men, Signs of Fertility

The psychologist David Buss (1989) asked thousands of men and women in 37 cultures what they found attractive in a romantic partner. Across these cultures, men and women judged the attractiveness of the opposite sex on the basis of many common attributes. Both men and women gave their highest rating—and equally high ratings—to kindness, dependability, a good sense of humor, and a pleasant disposition. But women and men differ in some ways as well. One gender difference concerned preferred age. Across many cultures, men universally prefer their sexual partners to be younger than themselves. It is no surprise that men report a preference for female features that signal a potential mate's youth. For example, men like facial features that resemble to some extent those of a baby: large eyes, a small nose, a small chin, and full lips (Jones, 1995). But, in fact, men are most attracted to women whose "baby-faced" features are combined with features that signal maturity, such as prominent cheekbones and a broad smile (Cunningham et al., 2002).

Common Denominators of Attractive Faces

There are indeed important differences among individuals, cultures, and historical periods in assessments of what is attractive (Darwin, 1872; Landau, 1989; Newman, 2000; Wiggins et al., 1968). But research shows that people actually agree about who is (and isn't) physically attractive much more than they disagree (Langlois et al., 2000; Marcus & Miller, 2003). newborn infants—too young to be aware of their culture's local beauty standards—prefer to gaze longer at the faces that adults find attractive than at those adults find unattractive (Langlois et al., 1987; Langlois et al., 1991; Slater et al., 2000).

Aronson and Linder tested this hypothesis by having participants overhear a series of evaluations of them by a discussion partner who was a confederate of the experimenter.

There were four patterns of evaluations: consistently positive, consistently negative, initially negative and then becoming positive (gain), and initially positive and becoming negative (loss). The participants liked the confederate best in the gain condition, second best in the consistently positive condition, even less in the consistently negative condition, and least in the loss condition. Positive judgments from someone who was initially negative and negative judgments from someone who was initially positive polarized people's attitudes for the evaluator. Aronson and Linder noted that this phenomenon may put a long-term spouse at a disadvantage relative to new people the spouse meets: The spouse's compliments will have less impact, and his or her criticisms will have more impact. Married 10 years, Rondae may compliment his wife, Renée, on how nice she looks to little apparent effect as they head to a party, and then observe that she is quite overtly pleased when someone at the party says the same thing.

So do beautiful people really get special treatment that then makes them more socially skilled? Snyder and colleagues (1977) set up a study to test this idea.

They had a male and female participant show up (separately) to their lab and escorted them to separate cubicles such that they never saw each other. The male participant was told to interview the female through a microphone setup, and their conversation was recorded. In a critical step, before the interview, the male participant was given some information about the participant, including a photograph. The photograph either depicted a very attractive or a rather unattractive woman. Thus, the male participant thought he knew what the person he was talking to looked like, but in actuality, the photograph was of a different person. Later, independent judges who did not know what the study was about rated the female participants on various characteristics only on the basis of listening to the tape-recorded interview. When the male participant thought he was talking to an attractive woman, the independent judges actually rated her more positively (e.g., friendlier and more open). Thinking that he was talking to an attractive woman, the male participant was more pleasant, and elicited pleasantness in return. This effect occurred when women conversed with men they thought were attractive or unattractive (Andersen & Bem, 1981). Indeed, meta-analyses have found that people are equally positive in their treatment of attractive men and women (Eagly et al., 1991; Feingold, 1992b; Langlois et al., 2000).

we tend to like people who are more familiar. Moreland and Beach (1992) assessed this phenomenon more systematically.

They had typical college-age female confederates of similar appearance attend a class 0, 5, 10, or 15 times during a semester—without ever speaking to anyone in the class. At the end of the semester, they showed photos of each confederate to the students in the class and asked them to evaluate each confederate on dimensions such as honesty, popularity, and likeability. The more the confederate attended the class, the more positively she was rated.

The first empirical breakthrough in examining this factor was a study by Festinger and colleagues (1950). Proximity studies

They interviewed residents in a new apartment complex. As in most apartment complexes, the apartment manager had placed residents in their particular apartments in an essentially random fashion. Festinger and colleagues saw this as a natural experiment that gave them the opportunity to study whether and how proximity influences friendship formation. They found that the physical location of one's apartment within the complex had a large impact on who made friends with whom and on how many friendships one formed within the complex. For example, people were nearly twice as likely to form a friendship with the person in the next-door apartment as they were to form a friendship with the person who lived two doors away. In a similar study of classroom friendships, students were more likely to get to know a classmate who sat next to them than those who sat just a few seats away (Byrne, 1961).

Nelson and Morrison (2005) took the analysis one step further. They reasoned that not only would cultural and temporal trends in scarcity influence perceptions of attractiveness, but these influences might also operate differently depending on the situations people are in.

To test this hypothesis, they asked people how much money they currently had in their pocket and later asked them to estimate the ideal body weight of an attractive opposite-sex person. When men had more cash on hand and they were reminded to make an estimate, they suggested that a really attractive woman would weigh about 125 pounds. But when they had less cash on hand and were reminded to make an estimate, they said she would weigh about 127 pounds. In a clever follow-up study, Nelson and Morrison interviewed participants either before they entered, or after they came out of, the dining hall at their university. Walking into the cafeteria and presumably hungry, men preferred women who weighed approximately 125.5 pounds. But after they had chowed down and were no longer hungry, their preferences were more in the ballpark of 123 pounds. So we see that for men, the current motivational state of having or not having resources influences what they consider an attractive body weight for women. This could reflect men's wanting what for the moment seems scarcer, or men's feeling more able to shoot for the thinner cultural ideal when they feel they have more resources. One interesting finding was that across all of Nelson and Morrison's (2005) studies, women were not influenced by their own resources when judging the attractiveness of men. This might be because body weight is a less critical aspect of how women perceive male physical attractiveness, or because women are less influenced by situational factors when judging attractiveness.

14 C Physical Attractiveness

Todorov and colleagues (2005) showed students photographs of two of the major political candidates from each of 95 different Senate races and 600 different races for the House of Representatives in the United States. Simply by viewing these candidates' pictures and judging their physical attractiveness, students correctly guessed the winner of each contest in 72% of the Senate and 67% of the House races.

Given the evolutionary explanation, it is not surprising that men all over the world show a greater desire than women for brief affairs with a variety of partners, and that when they enter a new romantic relationship, they are more eager than women to jump in the sack (Schmitt, 2005).

What's more, women are indeed more careful and deliberate than men in their choice of sexual partners. They are less interested than men are in casual, uncommitted sex (Gangestad & Simpson, 1990). They will not have sex with a partner unless he meets a fairly high bar of intelligence, friendliness, prestige, and emotional security, whereas men set the bar much lower for the personal qualities they demand in a potential sexual partner (Kenrick et al., 1990).

Your Cheating Heart: Reactions to Infidelity

When researchers first examined how people react to infidelity, they found evidence of a significant difference between men and women. In an early set of studies, 49% of men but only 19% of women said they would be more upset if they caught their partner sleeping around than if their partner had fallen for another person (Buss et al., 1992). Of course, this means that 81% of women, compared with only 51% of men, said they would be more bothered by learning that their partner had fallen in love with someone else. These monogamous tendencies are thought to have evolved, and led to cultural rituals that sanction them, because there was an adaptive advantage to having the proud papa available to provide resources, protection, and a role model for developing kids (Geary, 2010). Romantic attachments provide the emotional glue to bond couples together. From this theory of evolved cost-benefit analysis, women could have evolved a greater sensitivity than men to any suggestion of that emotional bond's dissipating, and their partners' leaving them with the burden of child rearing. For a man, mate guarding would have served the propagation of his genes by keeping his mate from cheating on him, leading to a situation in which he expended a lot of resources raising some other man's offspring. Thus women may have evolved to experience jealousy primarily in response to emotional infidelity, whereas men may have evolved to experience jealousy primarily in response to sexual infidelity.

The strongest evidence of the evolutionary perspective can be found in studies on women's mate preferences at different times of their monthly menstrual cycle.

Women are fertile for only a few days preceding ovulation each month. This is the time when they are most likely to conceive if they have sex and so it also is the time when issues of genetic transmission are most relevant. During this stage of the menstrual cycle, some research suggests that women report preferring more masculine faces, that is, faces with strong jaws and broad foreheads (think George Clooney) rather than youthful boyishness (think Tobey Maguire). In addition, during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle, women seem to prefer men who have deeper, more masculine voices (Puts, 2005) and who present themselves as more assertive, confident, and dominant (Gangestad et al., 2004; Gangestad et al., 2007; Macrae et al., 2002). Thus, during the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle (as opposed to the nonfertile phase), when the probability of conception is relatively high, women might become more attracted to men who show signs of power and dominance. Presumably, over the millennia, women genetically prone to mate with more dominant men were more likely to have their genes live on in future generations. In a related study, female strippers reported earning higher tips for lap dances during high-fertility phases (Miller et al., 2007), suggesting that women may appear more sexually appealing or behave in more appealing ways to men during fertile phases.

Personality Traits

people generally report preferring certain traits in their partners and friends. Not surprisingly, these include friendliness, honesty, warmth, kindness, intelligence, a good sense of humor, emotional stability, reliability, ambition, openness, and extraversion (e.g., Sprecher & Regan, 2002). The culture promotes the valuing of these traits. For example, people report that agreeableness and emotional stability are more valued in a close friend than in a study group partner, whereas intelligence is reported to be more valued for a study group partner than for a close friend (Cottrell et al., 2007). in fact, when we examine what traits people in different cultures claim they like, the traits they value mirror aspects of the culture. This was observed in a large Internet survey of participants from 53 nations. When they were asked to rate the importance of various attributes of a romantic partner, participants from modern, individualistic nations rated humor and kindness higher, and dependability and intelligence lower, than did participants from more traditional collectivistic nations (Lippa, 2007).

exceptions to the proximity effect—

the roommates who grate on each other, the annoying neighbor, the cultural groups that share a border and can't get along. Indeed, research has found that the mere exposure effect does not occur if the stimulus is initially disliked or is associated with negative outcomes (e.g., Brickman et al., 1972; Swap, 1977). If repeated exposure to others due to close proximity only reminds people of ways that they differ from one another, they can like others less rather than more (Norton et al., 2007). This brings us to our first broad theory of attraction, often known as the reward model of liking.

Cultural and Situational Influences on Attractiveness

there are often considerable cultural and subcultural differences in what people find fetching (e.g., Darwin, 1872; Fallon, 1990; Ford & Beach, 1951; Hebl & Heatherton, 1998). Moreover, people in different cultures are attracted to those who exemplify the traits that their culture values (Wheeler & Kim, 1997). a study of female models appearing in women's magazines from 1901 to 1981 found that bust-to-waist ratios varied over time, with a more slender look becoming popular more recently. Similarly, a study of Playboy centerfolds from 1953 to 2001 also showed a trend toward thinner figures and a lower bust-to-waist ratio (Voracek & Fisher, 2002).

14 A The need to belong

when people are unable to satisfy their need to belong in their existing relationships, they turn to other relationships. For example, people in prison cope with the stressful separation from their biological family by forming substitute "families" with other prisoners (Burkhart, 1973). All genetically inherited traits vary from person to person, and the need to belong is no different. People have different levels of this need and so differ in how many social relationships they want and how intimate they want them to be. Measures of need for affiliation (McAdams, 1989), need for intimacy (McAdams, 1980), need to belong (Leary et al., 2013), and attachment style (Hazan & Shaver, 1987) have been developed to capture this variability.

Media Effects

women are less likely to be represented in some mass media such as feature films and television, but when they are, they are more likely to be physically attractive and dressed in revealing clothing (e.g., Smith et al., 2013). Indeed, after men looked at Playboy centerfolds, they tended to see typical women and even their own wives as less attractive (Kenrick et al., 1989). And it is not only men's perceptions that are affected; women's own self-perceived attractiveness also suffers (Thornton & Maurice, 1997). Mass media can be downright harmful to women's self-images. A recent meta-analysis documented that at least 144 studies showed that media depictions of women—often falling under the rubric of the modern thin ideal we noted earlier—do indeed cause women to have problems coming to terms with their own body shapes and sizes, sometimes contributing to the development of serious eating disorders such as anorexia and bulimia (Grabe et al., 2008).

For Women, Signs of Masculinity and Power

women generally prefer their mates to be the same age as themselves or older (Buss, 1989). But consider what made it challenging for women to reproduce successfully in the primeval social environment. During the many months of pregnancy, it was more difficult for them to go out on their own to forage for food, build shelters, and fend off saber-toothed tigers. What's more, they had to nurse the child and stay by its side to ensure that it didn't die. Given these challenges to survival and reproduction, what features do you suppose women looked for when evaluating potential mates? They might have pursued men whose physical features they associated with masculinity, virility, and social power, as well as men who could be counted on to invest resources in protecting and providing for them and their offspring. For example, women find most attractive those men who have a waist-to-hip ratio around 0.9, yielding a V shape that signals more muscle than fat (Singh, 1995). Height is also important in standards of male attractiveness. Taller men tend to be seen as more attractive, and it's especially important that a man be at least somewhat taller than the woman who is considering dating him (Shepperd & Strathman, 1989). Other signs of masculinity are seen in a man's face. Preferences run to prominent cheekbones and a large chin (e.g., Cunningham et al., 1990).