ATTRACTION How do relationships form? – Does that give us insight what happens to relationships after they are formed? • 3 questions: 1. Why do we like other people? 2. Why are we romantically attracted to other people? 3. How do we form intimate relationships with other people? The Reward Theory of Liking = Social Exchange theory: • We like people who are likely to reward us • We don’t like costly people For a person to be attractive – 2 conditions: ability to reward us + motivation to reward us 1. Ability to reward us: • Proximity/familiarity o Proximity: predicts who you are friends with in college dorm o Proximity induces encounter – if we encounter them often we are more likely to do nice things for them + vice versa o Marriage strongest predictor: geography (who you are likely to encounter) o Downside of proximity: enemies are also the ones closest to us (geographically) o Familiarity: We have more pos feelings towards familiar as opposed to unfamiliar things (same in animals and infants as well) ! Ex) pop songs ! Familiar qualities are comforting + thus appealing • Personality/pratfall effect o Most attractive traits in a person: sincere, trustworthy, honest – top 5 o Very worst: liar o What is better: perfect people or those with a few flaws? ! Study: people who get all the answers right on a tape vs. those that get all answers wrong in audition ! 4 conditions: great audition, great audition + spills drink, bad audition, bad audition + spill drink ! Most appealing: person who did well on audition + spilled drink= more attractive o Pratfall effect: ! Someone who is very attractive is even more attractive when they have a few flaws – more endearing (same strategy used in slapstick comedy) ! Why? Because we can relate to them more – perfection is intimidating ! Reveals similarity – find people similar to ourselves more attractive • Similarity/phantom other technique o Ask college students about their top 10 favorite things. Tell them they are about to meet a student (phantom) in other room and give them the phantom’s list. o Question: how much do you think you would like this person? o Effects of similarity on liking: the more similar – increased liking prediction o Similarity: better prediction of behavior, minimize conflict, validation of ourselves • These people have the ability to reward us + make us feel good 2. Motivation to reward us: • Reciprocity o We like people who like us – we like to be liked o Study: overhear confederate talking about subject – confederate either says he likes (condition 1) or dislikes (condition 2) subject. Subjects were treated the same by confederate in all conditions, difference was only what subject overheard. Confederate who said he didn’t like subject was also rated lower on a liking scale by subject himself = Reciprocity effect: we like people who like us + don’t like ppl who don’t like us • The importance of discrimination o The more someone likes us – does that increase our own liking? – No. o Not all liking is the same – does it matter how somebody likes us? o Study: interact with partner 6x over course of an hour. 4 conditions: partner loves you, partner disses you, partner first doesn’t like you but then does over course of experiment, person likes you but decreases in liking as time goes by. Most liked: person who started out not liking us as much but then did as time went by – person who we win over is most liked " in this condition we can take it personal: partner doesn’t just like everyone, but we ‘won’ them over bc of our own personality From Like to “Really Like” What’s the first and easiest thing you can notice about a potential partner? • Physical attractivenessHow much does physical attractiveness matter? • The computer dating studies: Certain universality in who is rated as more attractive than others – applies to across cultures + races as well " certain commonality present Tell students that a computer generated a match was generated for them " Number 1 predictor whether somebody wanted to see the partner again: Physical attractiveness (no number 2 predictor, only physical attractiveness, no difference between men + women) Men rate physical attractiveness as more important than women. But if you give them choices, physical appearance predicts men’s choices the same as women’s The matching hypothesis • We tend to find people who match us in physical attractiveness • People tend to ask out people who match them in attractiveness • People who are a 5/10 ask out other people who are a 5/10, but they know that the other person is a 5/10 – don’t think that the person is a 10/10 o Avoid rejection + find mate Why is physical attractiveness so powerful? • Shapes who we seek out • Evolutionary theory: seek out features that signal genetic fitness • Evolved a preference for such features (nice skin, nice hair…etc.) • Attractiveness: reward for oneself, because others rate us as more attractive if we have an attractive partner • Halo effect: o If we know something about a person that is positive, it casts a positive glow over all the less positive things like a halo o Physical attractiveness casts a halo over negative aspects o We tend to make favorable judgments of attractive people that are completely unrelated to personality • Role of physical attractiveness consistent with reward theory Reward Theory Revisited Are we ever attracted to people who don’t reward us? • Yes – it does sometimes happen: we can be romantically attracted to someone who is not rewarding (mean, abusive) Why does this ever happen? • Potential for reward presento Maybe that person will like us in the future – potential for liking o Person could change their mind o Winning someone over is the most attractive/satisfying thing (see above) ! Potential to win someone over is so rewarding and we don’t know yet if we can win them over (there is a potential there) ! Think they may be rewarded in the future • Playing ‘hard to get’ – wait to reward other person, but hard to get people are appealing o Easy to get: needy, not discriminating, anyone can have them o Hard to get: I must be very attractive in order to get that person who is hard to get • Potential for reward can be even more rewarding than reward itself in the beginning • Attachment theory (insecure