David Myers

11e
Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others

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Chapter Eleven
What Leads to Friendship and Attraction?
What is love?
What Enables Close Relationships?
Who do Relationships End?

Live long dependence on one another

 “….puts relationships at the core of our existence.”
 A need to belong, connect to others in enduring relationships

 A need for competence and autonomy and relatedness

 (Deci & Ryan, 02)

 Ostracism is painful

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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Proximity
Geographical nearness; functional distance
 Where did you meet your closest friend, romantic partner?
Interaction
 Availability
Expected interaction
 Who is perceived to be more attractive?
 The person you expected to meet or one you didn’t expect to

meet? Darley & Berscheid (‘67)

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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Proximity
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
 Especially things associated with oneself!

 Exposure without awareness leads to liking (Zajonc)

 Who’s image do we prefer? Mirror image or real one?

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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Physical Attractiveness
Attractiveness and dating
 Looks are a predictor of how often one dates
 Are more men or women hooked on good looks?

 Looks influence voting

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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
Men advertise position, job status, wealth
Women advertise looks and youth
What % of men and women are “above average” in looks?
 Men – 67% Women – 72% (self reported) Hitsch et al ‘06)

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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 there an innate component?

 Do attractive people make more money?

 Is the "Beautiful is Good" stereotype accurate?

 Attractive people are valued and favoured, and so many develop more social

self-confidence
 Self-fulfilling prophecy - explains why we think “beautiful is good stereotype

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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Physical Attractiveness
Who is attractive?
 Whatever people of any given place and time find attractive
 Perfect average

 Would you want to be the most average?

 Symmetry

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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Physical Attractiveness
Who is attractive?
 Evolution and attraction
 Assumption that beauty signals biologically important

information
 Health

 Youth

 Fertility

 Why would symmetry be preferred?

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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Physical Attractiveness
Who is attractive?
 Social comparison
 Contrast effect – exposure to more attractive people led to

rating others and oneself as less attractive

 What should you do about this?

 Attractiveness of those we love

 We see likable people as attractive

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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Similarity versus Complementarity
Do birds of a feather flock together?
 Likeness begets liking
 Dissimilarity breeds dislike

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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

 Has “opposites attracts” been reliably demonstrated with

research?

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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Liking Those Who Like Us
The “Power of the Bad” -Baumeister et al., ‘2001
 Which carries more weight? A good or bad reputation?

Attribution
 Ingratiation
 Use of strategies, such as flattery, by which people seek to

gain another’s favor

 But be careful to disguise your motive when ingratiating

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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-esteem
 Embrace the “rebound” to get a boost in self esteem!

 Approval after disapproval is so rewarding!

Gaining another’s esteem

(-) -> (+) Overheard evaluations enhances liking for the other
(Aronson and Linder, ‘65)
Can you – should you be candid with your intimate
other?
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What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
Reciprocal self-disclosure (S. Jourard)
Gradually as the relationship develops
Relationship Rewards
Reward theory of attraction
 Theory that we like those whose behavior is rewarding to us
or whom we associate with rewarding events
 Proximity (exposure)

 Attractive people – associative benefits

 Similarity of attitudes

 We like to be loved and like to love

 We like those who like us

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What Is Love?
Passionate Love
Emotional, exciting, and intense
Expressed physically
Sternberg’s triangle
 Intimacy (liking)
 Passion (infatuation)

 Commitment (Decision

Romantic love (intimacy + passion)

Companionate love (intimacy + commitment)
Fatuous love (passion + commitment)
Consummate love (all three)
 Intimacy + passion + commitment
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What Is Love?

Passionate Love
Theory of passionate love
 Two-factor theory of emotion (Schachter & Singer, ‘62)
 Suggests that in a romantic context, arousal from any source,

even painful experiences, can be steered into passion

 Take him/her on a ride – literally (an arousing one)

 Get the dopamine surging (Aron, ‘05)

 “Adrenline makes the heart grow fonder”

 ----But control the attributional object

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What Is Love?

Passionate Love
Variations in love: culture and gender
 Marriages for love versus arranged marriages
 Men fall in lover more readily but fall out of love more slowly
 Surprise!

 Men – more focused on

 Playful and physical side

 Women – more focused on

 Intimacy and concern for partner

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What Is Love?

Companionate Love
Affection we feel for those with whom our lives are
deeply intertwined
Occurs after passionate love fades

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What Enables Close Relationships?

Attachment
Our need to belong is adaptive
 Parents and children
 Friends

 Spouses or lovers

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What Enables Close Relationships?
- “Love is a biological imperative”
Attachment
Attachment styles
 Secure attachment (70%)
 Rooted in trust and marked by intimacy

 Avoidant attachment (20%)

 Avoiding closeness

 Insecure attachment
 Clinging, then indifferent or hostile

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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 reciprocation is a non-issue

 No strings attached

 Perceived equity and satisfaction

 Faithfulness, happy sex, sharing household chores

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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

 Chris Kyle and the American Sniper…

 What role did self-disclosure play?

 “Women express…men repress” (Kate Millett, ‘75)

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How Do Relationships End?

Divorce
Rates varied widely by country
Individualistic cultures have more divorce than do
communal cultures

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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

Postscript: get real!

 Said the Skin Horse to the rabbit
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The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work
John M. Gottman & Nan Silver
1999 Crown pub

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