Lecture: What attracts us to another person?

Snyder, Breschied, Tanke: what's measured

#1 The male's judgments of the female "pre-conversation" #2 The male's part of the conversation (taped) #3 The female's part of the conversation (taped, separately)

#3 caused by

#2 Male Behavior

Value of physical attractiveness in relationships

consistently rated as desired in relationships.....not as the very top attribute, but always high in people's lists

Modern Beauty Stereotype Study Procedure

-"Stereotype directionality and attractiveness stereotyping: Is beauty good or is ugly bad" -Griffin & Langlois (2006) -Procedure: -183 female; 148 male undergrads at U. of Texas -Each person is shown 6 unattractive, 6 average, 6 attractive faces -Each person rates each face in terms of "sociability," "altruism," and "intelligence."

Why do we see beautiful people as good?

-2 explanations -Both assume that our own desire to associate with beautiful people -> leads to us seeing them as good people #1. Relational explanation: We treat attractive people better than others and this elicits "goodness" on their part. #2 Individualistic explanation: We project our desired behavior onto partners.

Why is being average desirable?

-Assumption is that it implies health/fertility. -If so, people attracted to "average" faces would be more likely to have their genes reproduced and, -A preference for "average" faces would evolve.

What is beautiful is good. - Study procedure

-Dion, K., Berscheid, E. & Walster, E. (1972). -Participants: 30 males; 30 females -They are told: This is a study "to compare person perception accuracy of untrained college students with clinicians" -You see photographs of people and make personality judgments. -They receive three pictures of females (or three of males). -Each set includes an attractive, an average, and an unattractive photo). -They judge how: Altruistic, self-assertive, exciting, stable, interesting, genuine, sensitive, outgoing, sincere, warm, sociable, etc. these people are. how likely these people are to marry, attain high job status, etc.

A meta-analytic review of research on the physical attractiveness Stereotype

-Eagly, A.H., Ashmore, R.D., Makhijani, M.G. & Longo, L.C. (1991). -What is beautiful is good, but...." -20 years later, a group lead by two social psychologists reviewed the accumulated literature on the "what is beautiful is good" stereotype with the help of their students -Their conclusions: 1. The "beautiful is good" exists and is replicable. 2. But, it does gets weaker the more information you have about a person. 3. The "beautiful is good" stereotype is stronger for some attributes than for others

not just judgments of health and attractiveness

-Fink, B., Neave, N., Manning, J.T. and Grammer, K. (2006). -Facial symmetry and judgments of attractiveness, health and *personality. -symmetrical faces judged more likely to be attractive, sociable, intelligent, lively, self-confident -asymmetrical faces judged more likely to be anxious

Why judging baby-faces to be attractive may be adaptive

-Fosters liking/attachment to helpless infants -Elicits helping -Elicits carefulness

evidence suggesting attractiveness is used to judge health.

-Gangestad, S. & Buss. D. (1993). -Pathogen prevalence and human mate preferences. -In countries where infectious pathogens are most prevalent; symmetry influences judgments of attractiveness most.

Beauty=Good Association is Weak for these traits

-Integrity (very weak effect) -Concern for others (no effect)

Does human facial attractiveness honestly advertise health?

-Kalick, S.M., Zebrowitz, L.A., Langlois, J.H., & Johnson, R.M. (1998). -164 Males; 169 Females -Attractiveness measured as adolescents. -Perceived health measured from photos. -Actual health assessed at adolescence, middle adulthood & later Adulthood. -Correlations of Perceived Attractiveness & Perceived Health: +.63 for all participants -Correlations of Perceived Attractiveness & Actual Health: adolescent - much smaller, if at all

what faces are attractive- study procedure

-Langlois, J.H. & Roggman, L.A. (1990) -Hypothesis: Average faces ought to be most attractive -average does not mean most common, it means what emerges from a composite -Start with pool of 336 male faces; 214 female faces -Randomly select 96 from each pool. -Randomly divide each set of 96 (males/females) into three sets of 32 pictures each. -Combine them creating "composite" faces... -From 2, 4, 8, 16, and 32 faces -Separately for males and for females -Separately for each set of 32 faces within those groups -Tabled results collapse across the three sets within males and within females.

What is beautiful is good- study results

-order: unattractive, neutral, attractive for: -index of desirable traits: -occupational status: -marital competence -social/professional happiness -likelihood of married

Clark study on why what's beautiful is good and how it branches off Snyder/Tanke/Berscheid

-Lemay, E., Clark, M.S., & Greenberg, A. (2010) - What is beautiful=good because what is beautiful is desired: Physical attractiveness stereotyping as projection of interpersonal goals. -Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid (1977): we believe what is beautiful is good because: a) we evaluate beautiful people positively, b) We behave positively toward them, and c) they respond positively in kind. -Lemay, Clark, & Greenberg (2010) don't disagree , but perhaps the "what is beautiful is good" finding could be explained in a different (additional) way too. -perhaps we desire relationships with beautiful people and project our Interest in relationships onto the beautiful person, essentially engaging in wishful thinking. -We showed that that is true. -We showed a link between physical attractiveness and perceived positive target attributes (i.e. we replicated the what is beautiful is good finding.) -this connection only held when people desired to bond with others... people engage in projection/wishful thinking only when they desire to bond with the other.

#1 The male's judgments of the female "pre-conversation" : RESULTS (and function)

-Males seeing the attractive photo judged the female (pre-interaction) to be: -More attractive and more sociable, poised, humorous, and socially adept (and less serious) than the unattractive woman. -This provides a manipulation check and replicates the "what is beautiful is good" effect.

Might we be hard-wired to be attracted to some people; not others?

-Physical attractiveness -Cuteness

Cute images study

-Sherman, G.D., Haidt, J., & Coan, J.A. (2009). -Viewing cute images increases behavioral carefulness -Two (similar) simple studies: 1. play operation, watch slides of cute or not images, play operation -improvement with cute slides -study was done with all female participants. -The cute slides also resulted in higher self-reported feelings of happiness and feelings of tenderness. 2. second study showed baby faces altered to be less or more cute otherwise the study was the same. -The results replicate. Again, viewing the cute slides led to self reports of more happiness and feelings of tenderness. -This study included both male and female participants.

Effects of having a physically attractive partner on person perception

-Sigall, H. & Landy, D: "Radiating Beauty" (1973) -Male participants -Come to a waiting room; two other people present, one male, one female -Male is average in attractiveness -Female is EITHER unattractive or attractive -Experimenter enters, greets participant, asks if he is there for her study (all participants are male) then -Asks female, "Are you here for the experiment?" -Her answer is experimentally varied -Male: Yes. - Female either says "no I'm here with my boyfriend"/holds his hand, or does not -dependent measure: = "My general, overall impression of the (male) subject is..." -Negative 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Positive

Griffin & Langlois Beauty Study Results

-Sociability, altruism, intelligence increase with increased attractiveness

Beauty=Good Association is Strong for these traits

-Social competence -Adjustment -Powerfulness/Assertiveness -Intelligence

Physical attractiveness- major points

-There is consensus on what is beautiful (and cute) -What is beautiful is considered to be good in many ways & we're beginning to understand why (I focused on two reasons) -How partner's attractiveness can lead others to judge you as attractive (a partner's attractiveness reflects on you) -What attractiveness (and cuteness) actually are. That is why have we evolved to detect them and what are the attributes associated with them.

Cultural assumption for attraction

-Traditionally, the assumption was that it was culturally determined -recent research suggests it may not be. -at least not entirely be determined by learning/culture.

One more attribute that affects judgments of female attractiveness:

-Waist to hip ratio -.7 leads to greatest judgments of attractiveness -Waist/hip ratios that influence judgments of attractiveness are also related to fertility

Human nature and faces

-We are hard wired to orient to the face (which carries much important social information) -Perhaps we are innately wired to extract averages and to value them.

what faces are attractive- study results

-average rating of attractiveness increased as more faces were added - Of the 96 faces, just 3 were judged to more attractive than the Composite - 80 judged as less attractive. -Langlois & Roggman (1990) conclude: Beautiful faces are only "average."

Options for explanation of what is attraction

-determined by culture?exposure to magazines and television? -personal preferences? - evolution account for just why some faces (and bodies) are judged to be more attractive

Rationale for Evolutionary Averageness

-evolutionary pressures operate against the extremes of the population, relative to those close to the mean (Barash, 1982; Dobzhansky, 1970). - features close to the mean should be less likely to carry harmful genetic mutations, and, therefore, should be preferred (Bumpus, 1899; Schmalhausen, 1949; Symons, 1979).

#3 Female Behavior Judged: RESULTS

-judges unaware of the conditions and hypotheses -"attractive" females judged to be more confidence, have enjoyed the conversation more, have liked their partner more

Effects of having a physically attractive partner on person perception: RESULTS

-male is more attractive when associated with attractive female than when unassociated -male is less attractive when associated (than unassociated) with unattractive female -confederate estimate of general impression they will make... consistent with results (aware of the effects of association)

#2 Male Behavior Judged: RESULTS

-males talking with "attractive" females were judged to have been more sociable, sexually warm, interesting, independent, sexually permissive, bold, outgoing, humorous, obvious, socially adept , confident, animated, comfortable, likely to take the initiative -to have enjoyed themselves more, and seemed to like their partners more

Snyder, Breschied, Tanke: procedure

-recruited male participants and female participants and seated them in separate rooms -they were told they would have phone conversations -1/2 the male participants are randomly assigned to see an attractive photograph of their "partner" -female: true partner=random, whoever signed up for that session, not shown a photo, unaware the male has seen a photo -conversation occurs naturally -two sides are recorded separately -demonstrated self-fulfilling prophecy

Why do we see beautiful people as good? - First explanation

-relational explanation -set forth by Snyder, Tanke & Berscheid in 1977 -We're nicer to beautiful people than we are to others. As a result, they respond in kind.

Infant Judgment of Attractiveness Study

-showed 34 infants (6-8 months old) pairs of adult women's faces -the pairs were of two attractive, two unattractive, or one attractive and one unattractive face (as judged by adults) -looking times measured - Results: When faces matched, more time was spent looking at the attractive pair -When faces did not match, more time was spent Looking at the one face that was more attractive -(They controlled for the attractiveness of the child's own mother.)

What is beautiful=good because what is beautiful is desired: Physical attractiveness stereotyping as projection of interpersonal goals. -Results

1. target attractiveness>> Perceived positive interpersonal attributes 2. target attractiveness>> desire to bond with the target 3. *** target attractiveness>>desire to bond with the target>>Perceived positive interpersonal attributes

Langlois, Roggman & Rieser-Danner (1990)

Infants' differential social responses to attractive and unattractive faces.

ATTRIBUTES OF CUTE FACES

Large head Large curved forehead Facial elements (eyes, nose, mouth) located relatively low • Large, round eyes • Small, short nose • Round cheeks • Small chin -Cute faces are consistently judged to be more attractive.

Additional evidence that we may be hard-wired to recognize attractive faces

Young infants show preferences for faces that adults judge to be more attractive

other facial features we read rapidly & automatically because adaptive to our ancestors

yes, cuteness