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Social Psychology
David Myers
10e
Copyright 2010 McGraw-Hill Companies
Chapter Eleven
• Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving
Others
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Proximity
– Geographical nearness; functional distance
– Interaction
• Availability
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Anticipation of Interaction
– Mere exposure
• Tendency for novel stimuli to be liked more or rated
more positively after the rater has been repeatedly
exposed to them
– Exposure without awareness leads to liking
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Physical Attractiveness
– Attractiveness and dating
• Looks are a predictor of how often one dates
• Looks influence voting
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Physical Attractiveness
– The Matching phenomenon
• Tendency for men and women to choose as partners
those who are a “good match” in attractiveness and
other traits
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
 Physical Attractiveness
 Physical-attractiveness stereotype
 Presumption that physically attractive people possess
other socially desirable traits as well
 First impressions
 Is the “Beautiful is Good” stereotype accurate?
 Attractive people are valued and favored, and so many develop
more social self-confidence
• Self-fulfilling prophecy
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Physical Attractiveness
– Who is attractive?
• Whatever people of any given place and time find
attractive
– Perfect average
– Symmetry
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Physical Attractiveness
– Evolution and attraction
• Assumption that beauty signals biologically important
information
– Health
– Youth
– Fertility
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Physical Attractiveness
– Social comparison
• Contrast effect
– Attractiveness of those we love
• We see likable people as attractive
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Similarity versus Complementarity
– Do birds of a feather flock together?
• Likeness begets liking
• Dissimilarity breeds dislike
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Similarity versus Complementarity
– Do opposites attract?
• Complementarity
– Popularly supposed tendency, in a relationship between two
people, for each to complete what is missing in the other
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Liking Those Who Like Us
– Attribution
• Ingratiation
– Use of strategies, such as flattery , by which people seek to
gain another’s favor
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Liking Those Who Like Us
– Attribution
• Self-esteem and attraction
– How we feel about ourselves determines how we feel about
our relationships
What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
• Relationship Rewards
– Reward theory of attraction
• Theory that we like those whose behavior is rewarding
to us or whom we associate with rewarding events
What Is Love?
• Passionate Love
– Emotional, exciting, and
intense
• Expressed physically
Figure 11.7
What Is Love?
• Passionate Love
– Theory of passionate love
• Two-factor theory of emotion
– Suggests that in a romantic context, arousal from any source,
even painful experiences, can be steered into passion
What Is Love?
• Passionate Love
– Variations in love:
culture and gender
• Marriages for love versus
arranged marriages
Figure 11.9
What Is Love?
• Companionate Love
– Affection we feel for
those with whom our
lives are deeply
intertwined
• Occurs after passionate
love fades
Figure 11.7
What Enables Close Relationships?
• Attachment
– Our need to belong is adaptive
– Parents and children
– Friends
– Spouses or lovers
What Enables Close Relationships?
• Attachment
– Attachment styles
• Secure attachment
– Rooted in trust and marked by intimacy
• Preoccupied attachment
– Marked by a sense of one’s own unworthiness and anxiety,
ambivalence, and possessiveness
What Enables Close Relationships?
• Attachment
– Attachment styles
• Dismissive attachment
– Avoidant relationship style marked by distrust of others
• Fearful attachment
– Avoidant relationship style marked by fear of rejection
What Enables Close Relationships?
• Equity
– Condition in which the outcomes people receive
from a relationship are proportional to what they
contribute to it
• Long-term equity
– As people observe their partners being self-giving, their sense
of trust grows
• Perceived equity and satisfaction
What Enables Close Relationships?
• Self-Disclosure
– Revealing intimate
aspects of oneself to
others
• Disclosure reciprocity
– Tendency for one
person’s intimacy or
self-disclosure to match
that of a conversational
partner
Figure 11.11
How Do Relationships End?
• Divorce
– Rates varied widely by country
– Individualistic cultures have more divorce than do
communal cultures
How Do Relationships End?
• Detachment Process
– Alternatives to exiting a relationship
• Loyalty
– Waiting for conditions to improve
• Neglect
– Ignore the partner and allow the relationship to deteriorate
• Voice concerns
– Take active steps to improve relationship