Social Psychology Final Exam Review Attraction and Exclusion This is the lecture on attraction Much of this focuses on romantic attraction but there s also attraction to potential friends That counts as attraction too Later we ll have a lecture on what people do once they are in a romantic relationship What sorts of things help keep people together and happy and some things to avoid But for now we ll talk about attraction This lecture will proceed as follows We ll first talk about situational factors that influence attraction These are factors that have nothing to do with the qualities of the person you re attracted to just things like proximity which we call propinquity and mere exposure seeing them a lot Then we ll talk a bit about some universally attractive features people have These are things that people find attractive across cultures There s good reason to think many of these features evolved for specific reasons Then we ll talk a little bit about cultural variation Different cultures have different standards of beauty It s important to recognize that Then we ll talk about differences between men and women in what they look for in a partner and what they tend to want from that partner a relationship and or sex Take close notes here This could be your ticket to dating town Need to belong Humans have a fundamental need to belong Prisoners in solitary confinement talk through the toilets Death rates higher for less connected people Babies die without touch Attraction is the first step to belonging Attraction liking doesn t have to be romantic We are attracted to friends musicians mentors etc Humans not only like social affiliation they need social affiliation Thing Slicing Judging a person s attributions from very minimal non interactive information How quickly do people judge others Nonverbal behaviors say a lot o Here are some nonverbal behaviors that can be judged within seconds with reasonable not perfect accuracy o Active o Attentive o Likeable o Warm How soon is too soon to make a judgment about a professor One month One week One minute Correlations with end of semester ratings of teachers o 10 second clip r 0 72 o 2 second clip r 0 54 Ratings of teachers based on very short soundless video clips are surprisingly closely related to ratings of teachers at the end of the semester Social Psychology Final Exam Review Mimicry Similarity Chartrand Bargh 1999 o C and P engaged in interaction o C mimicked P s body language or not o How much did P like C The research overwhelmingly supports similarity You may think it is fun to date a person whose viewpoint complements your own or whose personality traits are foreign to you but the research indicates that these differences will not increase your attraction to your partner or your relationship satisfaction How do we know that similarity begets liking There is a lot of research in support of this hypothesis There is even research suggesting that similarity of body posture movements and mannerisms is enough to promote liking How did researchers test that idea Imagine that you arrive at the lab to participate in an experiment You will complete a task with a partner This partner however is actually a confederate The confederate is instructed to mimic your body language or to not mimic your body language In the mimic condition the confederate would slouch if you slouched The confederate would rub her forehead if you rubbed your forehead At the end of the interaction the participants was asked to rate how much they liked the confederate How likeable was the other participant How smoothly you would say your interaction went with the other participant What do you think Can something as small as mirroring the body position of another person increase your liking for them The answer is YES Participants who were mimicked by the confederate reported that they liked the confederate more than participants who were not mimicked Keep in mind that both confederates were carefully trained to be equally pleasant during the interaction The only difference was whether they mimicked the participant The effect is pretty amazing Even more interesting is that this effect occurs both ways We not only like people better who mimic us we also tend to mimic others when we are attracted to them We are wired to connect to other people without even being aware of it or consciously making an effort When you mimic the movements of an attractive member of the opposite sex e g crossing your leg you are not usually consciously deciding to increase your similarity to them Instead you do this automatically This should increase their attraction to you Note you might want to try making people like you by mimicking them Be careful if you use this as a deliberate strategy If they find out you re doing this on purpose they might get mad or feel like you re using them and then it will backfire Or they might think you re clever Use your best judgment Note We also mimic others when attracted to them Finding a friend Propinquity the state of being close to someone or something proximity Segal 1974 Social Psychology Final Exam Review Finding a Partner Propinquity Mere Exposure Moreland Beach 1992 o Police trainees assigned seats o Who were closest friends after 6 weeks Here s the first situational factor that affects who we are attracted to Think about your closest friends from your childhood Where did they live A fair majority probably lived on your street or in your neighborhood or apartment complex What about your closest friends so far in college Your closest friends are often the people who live closest to you You are more likely to develop a friendship with the person who lives next door to you than to develop a friendship with the person who lives all the way down the hall and uses a different staircase than you use How do social psychologists study how proximity affects relationships Check out this study In a police academy police trainees were assigned to sit next to each other based on alphabetical order and housing in dorms was also based on alphabetical order At the end of six weeks the police trainings were asked to report about their closest friendships What did they find After six weeks people were closest with the people whose last name fell next to theirs in the alphabet This means that the proximity of sitting next to and living next to people had a strong effect on friendship development o 4 women enrolled in class o Each showed up different amounts of time
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