Lecture 2: Attraction & Getting to Know Others

Question 1

Why are we attracted to others?

Answer 1

• We are generally attracted to people who bring us rewards
• instrumentality: the extent to which someone is able to help us achieve our present goals
• direct rewards: the evident pleasures people provide us; e.g. showing us interest or approval, being witty or beautiful, giving us money or advice
• indirect rewards: ones we’re not always aware of and are merely associated with someone else; e.g. being friends with someone whose name starts with the same letter as yours

Question 2

What are the three factors attraction can be attributed to?

Answer 2

1. Target factors (what makes someone “objectively” attractive)
2. Perceiver factors (what about “me” determines who I’m attracted to)
3. Situational & contextual factors (promote attraction generally)

Question 3

What are the three main target factors that make people attractive?

Answer 3

1. Faces
2. Bodies
3. Personality

Question 4

What makes an attractive face?

Answer 4

• Symmetry and averageness (i.e. nothing distracting/odd)
  
  • No perfectly symmetrical faces, but more symmetrical & average = more attractive
• This preference is universal (i.e. innate)
  
  • Shows cross-cultural consistency and infants show this preference about 14 hrs after birth

Question 5

Why do we like symmetrical and average faces?

Answer 5

1. Signs of developmental stability
   
   • Signals healthier genes and safe living environment (without disease, etc.)
2. Familiarity breeds liking
   
   • Most likely due to ease of processing (familiar = easier to process)

Question 6

Explain the Moreland & Beach (1992) study on the effects of the mere exposure effect on perceptions of attractiveness.

Answer 6

• mere exposure effect: repeated contact with someone usually increases liking for this person
• Female confederates attended a college lecture 0, 5, 10, or 15 times; result was that students rated the 15-time confederate as more attractive the others despite not having interacted with any of them

Question 7

Does more familiarity always lead to more liking?

Answer 7

• As we find more information about others, we may find that they’re actually obnoxious, disagreeable, or inept to some degrees
• Interestingly, people’s worst enemies are more likely to live near them (e.g. in the same condo) than far away
  
  • It’s rare to dislike someone too far away to annoy you

Question 8

What is most important for a woman’s physical attractiveness?

Answer 8

• A waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) of 0.7 for women is universally attractive
  
  • Even men who are born blind shown this preference
  • A waist-to-bust ratio of 0.75 is ideal, but WHR has more influence on men’s ratings of women’s attractiveness than bust size
• Men are more interested in women who have long hair, and judge such women as less likely to be engaged and more willing to have sex on a first date

Question 9

What male physical features do women find important?

Answer 9

• Women seem to prefer a WHR of 0.9 and shoulder-to-hip ratio of 1.2
  
  • However, a man’s WHR affects women’s evaluations of him only when he earns a healthy salary
• Prefer men who are taller than they are and find height differences to be more important than men do

Question 10

What personalities are attractive?

Answer 10

• Overall, people who are agreeable and conscientious (Big 5)
  
  • e.g. Warm, dependable, emotionally stable (not neurotic), mature, etc.
• These personality traits are very general, not specific (e.g. someone who lives cats vs. dogs)

Question 11

Explain the Lewandowski et al. (2007) experiment on the effects of personality on attractiveness.

Answer 11

• Question: Do the effects of attractiveness and personality interact with each other?
• Procedure: Ps presented with a series of photos which they rated for attractiveness
  
  • Then saw each photo again, paired with either a desirable or undesirable personality trait
  • DVs: How much would you like this person as a friend/a romantic partner? How physically attractive is this person?
• Results: Photos paired with desirable traits were rated as more attractive than the first time & photos paired with undesirable traits were seen as even less attractive, regardless of initial attractiveness rating and for both men and women
• Conclusion: A good personality can make someone appear more physically attractive and vice versa (being more attractive can make your personality appear better)
  
  • However, sometimes this effect isn’t seen; e.g. if someone’s physical appearance is so off-putting that your initial evaluation might lead you to not process their personality at all
  • Effect unambiguously seen because Ps were told to pay attention to personality specifically

Question 12

What’s most important: faces or personality?

Answer 12

• Generally, people rank: (1) warmth, loyalty; (2) attractiveness, vitality; (3) status, resources
  
  • Ideally, we’d like to have all three, but warmth and loyalty are the #1 priority
• What comes next depends somewhat on perceiver & situational factors
  
  • e.g. For short-term flings, women tend to have lower standards for personality/assets and look for guys who are hot

Question 13

What are the main perceiver factors in attraction?

Answer 13

1. Gender
2. Similarity/assortative mating
3. Goal pursuit orientation

Question 14

What are the main gender differences in preference for attractiveness?

Answer 14

• Men typically show preference for:
  
  • More feminine facial features
  • Younger faces (younger than them, but younger in general)
  • Choose physical attractiveness over signs of status, wealth (after warmth and loyalty)
• Women typically show preference for:
  
  • More masculine/dominant faces
  • Older faces
  • BUT look for signs of wealth/status over looks

Question 15

Are deal breakers universal?

Answer 15

• There does seem to be some universality in deal breakers
  
  • Such as women generally being cautious and choosy, and having more deal breakers than men
• People with a higher mate value have more deal breakers
• But generally, women value loyalty and warmth more than men
  
  • In the long-term, they’ll prefer men who are kind, understanding, and financially well-off to hot-but-poor or rich-but-cold guys

Question 16

What are some evolutionary perspectives that explain gender differences in preference for attractiveness?

Answer 16

• Men and women faced different adaptive problems
  
  • parental investment theory: the sex that invests more in offspring will be choosier
    
    • Male seahorses carry the babies and thus are more selective of who they mate with
• Men need only to find a fertile mate, whereas women need a partner who will invest resources in offspring
  
  • Women carry the babies to term, breastfeed, etc.
• Evolutionarily, then, women want to choose a mate to provide resources who will help during this process

Question 17

What are the 4 main pieces of evidence supporting the evolutionary perspective?

Answer 17

1. What men and women are sensitive to
   
   • Men are most sensitive to fertility cues: e.g. feminine features, youthful faces, long hair, waist-to-hip ratio of 0.7
   • Women are most sensitive to social status cues: e.g. dominant/masculine features, older faces, broad shoulders, height, signs of wealth
2. Influence of female ovulation/hormones on attractiveness
3. Babies are born with the same preferences for attractive faces that adults have
4. Physical attractiveness matters most to people who live in equatorial regions of the world where there are many pathogens that can endanger good health

Question 18

How does ovulation influence attractiveness?

Answer 18

Evolutionarily, women should want to mate with people during their time of ovulation (when they’re fertile) and look for a mate who will provide them the best genetic material

1. Women themselves feel more attractive & desirable nearing ovulation
   
   • Women tend to dress nicer/put more effort into their presentation
   • In one experiment, Ps were 50% more likely to rate photos of women which were taken at/near ovulation as more attractive (vs. non-fertile days)
2. Ovulation may be a target factor; i.e. women don’t change their behavior towards men while ovulating, but men tend to find women more attractive at this time
   
   • In one study of female lap-dancers, researchers found that women who weren’t using oral contraceptives gained twice as many tips while they were ovulating
   • Other women who were using oral contraceptives didn’t see this boost
3. When ovulating, women show different preferences in men
   
   • Have greater preference for masculine body shapes, facial features, deep voices; and confrontational, arrogant, and socially respected men
4. Women on hormonal contraceptives (HCs) show less overall preference for cues of genetic fitness (e.g. masculine features such as broad shoulders)
   
   • Discontinuing HCs is associated with greater marital satisfaction in wives with relatively attractive husbands, but lower satisfaction in wives with relatively less attractive husbands

Question 19

What are some problems with the evolutionary perspective?

Answer 19

• Some aspects of attractiveness seem to be culturally determined
• Variation in ideal weight – both across cultures and time
  
  • e.g. Slender women are only considered attractive during times of plenty
  • e.g. Black and Latina women in the US are more accepting of extra weight than white women are
• It’s based on assumption that women relied on men for resources

Question 20

What is Eagly & Wood’s (1999) social role theory?

Answer 20

• Challenges but does not discount the role of biology in attractiveness
• Historically, different biology leads to different role adoption → socialization to encourage role-consistent traits
  
  • Male role often associated with status and power (traditionally, at least)
  • Women’s most direct route to access to high status resources was through male mates
• Women aren’t naturally unable to provide for themselves and their offspring, but as a society we decided that it’s more acceptable for men to be providers

Question 21

What is the evidence for social role theory?

Answer 21

• Sex differences in preference for status is reduced in more female empowered cultures (e.g. Scandinavian countries)
  
  • However, sex differences for attractiveness is not affected
  • Women’s preference for good providers has overall decreased from 1939-1996 in US
    
    • Coincides with when women entered into the workforce in large numbers
• The more intelligent/successful women are, the less importance they place on status/wealth in men

Question 22

Explain Eagly et al.’s (2009) experiment providing evidence for social role theory.

Answer 22

• Procedure: Female and male participants (non-married, undergrad students) envisioned themselves as a married person with children
  
  • IVs: (1) gender, (2) role
    
    • Half of Ps imagined they were the homemaker
    • Half of Ps imagined they were the provider
  • Ps asked how important homemaker vs. provider traits were in a partner
• Results: When men and women imagined they were the provider, they placed more importance on homemaker traits
  
  • Women were overall more likely to place emphasis on provider traits, due to evolutionary and socialization factors
  • When men and women imagined they were the homemaker, they placed more importance on provider traits
• Conclusion: People want a partner who fulfills the opposite role to them, regardless of gender

Question 23

What are the costs of (not) being attractive?

Answer 23

• Actually no correlation overall between a woman’s beauty and the amount of time she spends interacting with men
  
  • Whereas unattractive men have fewer interactions with women than any sort — physical attractiveness has a bigger effect on the social lives of men than it does on women
• Physical attractiveness may even account for as much as 10 percent of the variability in people’s adjustment and well-being over their lifetimes
• People are more willing to misrepresent their interests, personalities, and incomes to get close to an attractive person than they are to fabricate an image for a plain partner
  
  • Attractive men and women are more dubious of the praise they receive when the complimenter is aware of their attractiveness
  • Whereas unattractive people find praise more compelling when the complimenter did know they were plain

Question 24

How do similarity and assortative mating influence attraction?

Answer 24

• We like people who are like us (“birds of a feather flock together”)
• assortative mating: People tend to pair up with others who (1) are demographically similar; (2) are equally physically attractive; (3) have similar personalities; (4) have similar attitudes, values
  
  • True for both romantic partners & friends
• Even disproportionately likely to marry someone with a similar name
• Perceived similarity more important than actual similarity for long-term relationships
• People who date people from other cultural groups?
  
  • Still similar in age, education, attractiveness, interests
  • Tend to have had closer contact with other ethnicities throughout their life, which enables them to more easily see similarities between themselves and someone from another cultural group

Question 25

Is there any truth to the saying “opposites attract”?

Answer 25

• This saying is less supported by research
• However, there are some domains in which dissimilarity is beneficial
  
  • Extraversion in the workplace
    
    • Might be better with some introverts in the group so that there isn’t always a clash of personalities going on
  • Regulatory focus in couples
  • Differences in instrumentality (they help us reach our goals) or complementarity (when people display skills we don’t have/they’re better at than us) can also fit well together

Question 26

What are the 7 reasons people might think that they’re in an “opposites attract” relationship?

Answer 26

1. Perceived similarities
2. Discovering similarities can take time
3. We’re attracted to people who are similar to our ideal selves (i.e. have traits we’d like to but don’t yet have)
4. Dissimilarity may decrease over time
5. Some types of similarity are more important than others
6. Matching is a broad process
7. Different types of behavior can fit well together sometimes

Question 27

How does perceived similarity influence relationships?

Answer 27

• Our perceptions of how much we have in common affect our attraction to each more than our actual similarity does
• People in long-term relationships tend to overestimate the similarities they share—and discovering how wrong they are (if they ever do) can take some time
• Others—friends, family, co-workers—may correctly observe that the partners are two very different people and infer, therefore, that opposites must attract
• Note: the partners aren’t together because their differences are desirable, they’re together because they think they’re not very different, and they’re wrong

Question 28

What is Murstein’s (1987) stimulus-value-role theory on why it takes time to discover similarities/differences?

Answer 28

• stimulus-value-role theory: we gain three different broad types of information about our partners as a new relationship develops
• Stimulus stage: attraction is based on information involving obvious attributes (age, sex, attractiveness)
• Value stage: attraction depends on similarity in attitudes and beliefs (e.g. taste in food)
• Role stage: when we finally find out if we agree on the basics of parenting, careers, and house cleaning, among other life tasks

Question 29

What are fatal attractions?

Answer 29

• fatal attractions: occur when a quality that initially attracts one person to another gradually becomes one of the most obnoxious, irritating things about that partner

Question 30

How do different types of similarity influence matching?

Answer 30

• Not all similarities are important, and housework and gender roles seem to be the two types of similarity which routinely matter
• Cohabiting couples who disagree with each other about the division of household labor are more likely to break up than are those who share similar views
• Spouses who share such work are more satisfied than those who divide it unequally

Question 31

How does the broad nature of matching lead to “opposites attract” situations?

Answer 31

• People may be trading one asset for another in order to obtain partners of similar mate values (either appearance or social status)
  
  • e.g. Fame, wealth, talent, looks, health, intelligence, etc.
• Thus, it’s this similar mate value, and not desired differences, which make them attractive to each other

Question 32

What is regulatory focus and how does goal pursuit orientation influence attraction?

Answer 32

• Regulatory focus theory describes two basic orientations toward goal pursuit
  
  • Promotion orientation = more focus on growth and advancements
    
    • Promotion-focused individuals display a more eager goal pursuit strategy
  • Prevention orientation = more focus on security and responsibility
    
    • Prevention-focused individuals display a more vigilant and cautious goal pursuit strategy
• People generally have a balance of both orientations as individuals (don’t want to be too risky or cautious) and it’s good to have a mix in relationships so a couple can approach goals differently (e.g. planning a vacation)

Question 33

Explain Bohns et al.’s (2013) experiment on complementarity in goal pursuit.

Answer 33

• Question: Many goals require both eagerness and vigilance – so do couples benefit from having complementary strategies?
  
  • Study 1: Dating couples
  • Study 2: Married couples
• Results: low goal congruence (or low self-other overlap, i.e. different goals) — doesn’t matter if they have the same or different strategies
  
  • When one partner has a stronger promotion orientation, relationship wellbeing is greater when the other partner has a stronger prevention orientation (and vice versa)
• Conclusion: Couples are happier when goal pursuit strategies are different/opposite in pursuing similar goals
  
  • Partner’s goal pursuit strategy is less relevant if we aren’t pursuing goals together
  • But most people aren’t notably only high in prevention or promotion focus (i.e. not extreme)

Question 34

What are the main situational & contextual factors that influence attraction?

Answer 34

1. Proximity
2. Reciprocity
3. Misattribution of arousal

Question 35

Why do we prefer partners who are closer in proximity to us?

Answer 35

• Distant relationships are more costly (e.g. airfare, travel time) and less rewarding (e.g. actually kissing is better than a video call)
• It’s difficult to reunite with long-distance partners because we have to get into a rhythm of being codependent again and may have forgotten the things that used to ignore us
  
  • About 1/3 of long-distance partners will break up within 3 months of reuniting
  • But lovers who are deeply committed to each other usually survive a separation

Question 36

Can we predict who will be attracted to who? Explain Joel et al.’s (2017) study on predicting romantic attraction from speed-dating situations.

Answer 36

• Ps were university students who completed over 100 self-report measures
  
  • These measures included personality, well-being, mating strategies, self-reported traits, and ideal-partner-preference for these measures
• Procedure: 4-minute speed dating paradigms
  
  • DV: Romantic desire for each person
• Results: Self-report measures could help predict who tended to like more people & was liked more by other people
  
  • However, they could not predict who would like who
• Why could they not predict attraction? There are several possible explanations
  
  1. Might not be measuring the right thing(s) about the individuals
  2. Relationships are extremely complex and we don’t have a large enough dataset to tell
  3. Dyadic-specific/situational factors may be more important (i.e. the whole is greater than the sum of the parts, and speed-dating isn’t a great environment to predict long-term compatibility)

Question 37

What is a mate value and how does it influence reciprocity in starting relationships?

Answer 37

• mate value: one’s overall attractiveness as a reproductive partner
• Formula for the likelihood that we will approach someone we’re interested in to try and start a relationship
  
  • A Potential Partner’s Desirability = His/Her Physical Attractiveness x His/Her Probability of Accepting You
• We base our own perceptions of mate value on our past experiences of acceptance and rejection

Question 38

Explain Bernstein et al.’s (1983) study on men’s perception of their own mate value.

Answer 38

• Movie was playing and men had the option of squeezing into a cubicle with an attractive woman or watching alone; manipulated whether the movie was same or different
• When the same movie was playing, only 25% sat with the woman
• When different movies were playing, 75% sat next to the woman (intentions more ambiguous, could just want to watch the movie)

Question 39

Explain the Capilano suspension bridge study on misattribution of arousal and attraction.

Answer 39

• Male Ps crossed either the suspension bridge or a more stable bridge
• Greeted at the end by the same attractive research assistant
• Gave them a piece of paper with her number on it if they had any questions about the study
• Those who had crossed the suspension bridge were more likely to call the female researcher (i.e. indicated attraction)

Question 40

Explain White et al.’s (1981) experiment on arousal and attraction.

Answer 40

• 2 IVs: (1) run on the spot for 15 s or 2 min (low vs. high arousal); (2) watch a video of a more/less attractive young woman
  
  • DV: desirability of target in the video
• Result: high vs. low arousal → more attractive woman’s attractiveness rating increased, but less attractive woman’s rating decreased
• Conclusion: higher arousal only increases attraction when the target was attractive in the first place
  
  • Other studies have also shown that negative arousal (e.g. watching a horror movie) which results in physiological responses also produces this effect

Question 41

How does the colour red affect perceptions of attractiveness?

Answer 41

• Women judged as more attractive when wearing red
• Or if photo is on a red background
• Why?
  
  • Perceived as more sexually receptive
  • Evolutionary – for some primates, red bottoms mean they’re ovulating
• Evidence of universality – even in cultures where red is related to negative feelings
• Similar effect for women viewing men – but different mechanism
  
  • Red linked to strength, power, and competitive dominance
  • Proposed mechanism, not absolute, most likely socialized

Question 42

Explain Walker & Vul’s (2014) experiment on the cheerleader effect.

Answer 42

• cheerleader effect: when several women together appear more attractive than they would individually
• Procedure: Ps rated the attractiveness of female (Experiment 1) and male (Experiment 2) faces
  
  • Stimuli: 100 group photos (of 3 targets, all the same gender)
  • Which were then used to create 300 individual portraits of the same targets
• Result: Ps rated both men’s and women’s faces as more attractive when seen in a group vs. in isolation
  
  • Increasing group size doesn’t matter (Experiment 4; i.e. not about some magic number of people being in a group), suggesting it is merely the presence of other faces that drives the effect
  • Effect also doesn’t seem to work as well with mixed-gender groups
• Why?
  
  • Looking at several people of the same gender increases ease of processing (averageness)
  • Someone in a group of friends is perceived as more social, and thus more attractive

Question 43

How do we signal availability and interest through our behaviours?

Answer 43

• Behaviours designed to attract notice (in general)
  
  • Laughing or speaking loudly, bumping into someone
• Behaviours designed to emphasize gender identity
  
  • Men: Displays of dominance, competence
  • Women: Tossing hair, swaying hips, licking lips (emphasizing that they are attractive and fertile)
• Interest in particular individual can also be conveyed through:
  
  • Leaning in, maintaining eye contact, standing close, touching
  • Behavioural synchrony (unconscious mimicking of another’s movements)

Question 44

What are the advantages and disadvantages to expressing interest non-verbally?

Answer 44

• Advantage: Interest can be denied if not reciprocated
  
  • Can signal to someone who is too far away to hear you (and you don’t want to shout at them)
• Disadvantage: Makes miscommunication or misunderstandings more likely
  
  • e.g. Can think that someone is reciprocating when they’re not

Question 45

What are the two roles involved in flirting?

Answer 45

• Role in initial encounters: Selectors/initiators
• Males approach behaviour is almost always signaled, nonverbally, by the female
  
  • Scientific term for this is proceptivity: behaviour enacted by a female to initiate, maintain, or escalate sexual interaction
• Goes back to sexual selection – women are more selective, have to give the green light

Question 46

Explain Moore’s (1985) experiment on nonverbal courtship patterns in women.

Answer 46

• Procedure: Observations of 200 randomly selected females in a singles bar
  
  • 18-35 years old; mostly white college students
  • Criteria: in a space with 25+ people & not accompanied by a male
  • 30 minutes, 2 trained observers
• Part 1: Cataloging Behaviours
  
  • Looked for any behaviours that resulted in male attention
  • Male attention defined as approaching/leaning in, initiating conversation, asking to dance, or touching
  • Catalogued 52 different gestures — mainly focused on eyes, mouth/lips, head/hair/neck, sounds/verbalizations, touching target, gestures, & posture/whole body movement
• Part 2: Validation of the Catalogue
  
  • 40 women in various contexts
  • Singles’ bar, university snack bar, university library, Women’s Center (control, no men here)
    
    • Varied by degree of expectation for looking for partners
  • Selection criteria: 25+ other people, not accompanied by male
  • Kept track of which behaviours women used, and how often
• Results: Number of nonverbal solicitation behaviors differed by context
  
  • More male approach behavior when females displayed more nonverbal flirting behaviours, and more variety of such behaviours
• Conclusion: There are a lot of different nonverbal behaviors women have to signal that they’re flirting

Question 47

Explain Renninger et al.’s (2004) experiment on nonverbal courtship patterns in men.

Answer 47

• Study 1: observed 40 males aged 21-34 at college bars on weekend nights
  
  • Looked at their behaviours for 30 min, asked them to complete a survey about which women they were interested in at the bar, then observed them for another 1 hour
  • Recorded glancing behaviour, physical space changes (e.g. space maximization), touching behaviour, and gestures
  • Overall: found a variety of nonverbal flirting behaviours available to men but less than those available to women
• Results (Study 1): Males who reported having higher levels of attraction to someone in the bar enacted more: glancing behaviours, space maximization, and automanipulations (e.g. scratching chin, arm)
  
  • Contact successful males exhibited more: short, directed glances; more location changes; more non-reciprocated touch to other males; and fewer closed-body movements
• Study 2: Are these behaviours more common in courtship-relevant contexts?
  
  • When females are present, such behaviours are much more common than when females are absent
  • Main difference between women: smaller repertoire and are more likely to incorporate their same-sex friends (e.g. punching a male friend in the arm)

Question 48

Flirting behaviour: what does it mean?

Answer 48

• Flirting doesn’t always represent a means to an end (i.e. interest in developing a relationship); can sometimes be just for fun
  
  • e.g. Platonic friends sometimes engage in flirting behaviours
• Actions that are intended to convey sexual interest (vs. friendliness/playfulness) involve:
  
  • More eye contact, smiling, touching
  • More intimate paralanguage (e.g. lowered tone for M, raised for F)
  • Smaller interpersonal distances
  • Note: more/smaller indicates an issue of degree rather than a situation with clear lines
• Misunderstandings happen, both in misperceiving friendliness as sexual interest and vice versa (not perceiving flirting as such)
  
  • More often by men than women
  • Because it’s a matter of degrees, it’s hard to know what the “average” is (e.g. what constitutes “extra” eye contact)?

Question 49

What are negative pickup lines (negs) and why are they used?

Answer 49

• neg: low grade insult wrapped in the package of a compliment; intended to undermine confidence and increase desire for approval
• Other “assertive” strategies:
  
  • Teasing
  • Isolation, getting someone by themselves
  • Competing with other men
• More interest in short-term sex (i.e. having a higher sociosexual orientation) predicts more use of these strategies (in M) and receptiveness to them (in W)
  
  • Also, W who are hold more sexist beliefs are more receptive to negs

Question 50

How does attraction and flirting work in online dating contexts?

Answer 50

• Most successful profiles:
  
  • More photos
  • Photos in which looking straight at camera
• 81% of the online daters report lying their online dating profiles
  
  • Women: about weight and age
  • Men: about height and wealth
  • Note: people seem to lie about what matters most to the other gender
  • BUT, generally, small degrees of deception that would be difficult to detect
• Men view 3x as many profiles, send 3x more “first-contact” messages
  
  • Some “first contact” messages more successful than others
    
    • Less use of pronoun “I”, more use of pronoun ”you”
• Overall reply rate is low
  
  • In one study: men replied to 26% of messages they received, women replied to 16%
  • Faster replies are more likely to result in continued communication

Question 51

How is online flirting different from flirting/signaling interest in real life?

Answer 51

• There’s a lot more disclosure happening between people meet face-to-face, i.e. no non-verbal communication happening before using verbal communication to express interest
  
  • Not necessarily bad, but it reverses the order of how expressions of interest generally happen
• Online refusal, unlike how in-person rejection usually involves trying to not hurt their feelings
  
  • But online people just don’t reply as a new form of rejection
  • Online rejections seem to sting a bit more due to this uncertainty – but it’s still unclear why this happens

Question 52

How do you go from online to offline dating?

Answer 52

• Goal of most (but not all!) online daters is to meet in real life
  
  • 2/3 of online daters report having been on a date with someone they met online
  • The other 1/3 may be because they’re waiting for the perfect person? Or most likely because they’re just using it as an ego boost or adding some excitement in their lives
• If they are going to meet up face-to-face, most people meet within a month of first online contact and frequently within a week
  
  • Chatting online for longer than 3 weeks results in less satisfaction after first meeting, possibly due to creation of more idealized impressions
  • Might not be that you’ve created a specific image of them because they’ve misled you, but you tend to fill in the gaps for this person with your own imagination

Question 53

How does online dating influence the dating pool?

Answer 53

• More extensive and convenient access to potential partners
  
  • But can be overwhelming and lead to people not wanting to “settle” & continued interest in “what’s out there”
  • Even though there’s a lot of potentials, people forget how much work and how many steps go into getting a first date
• Matching technology helps weed out potential matches with “red flags” or “deal breakers”
  
  • But promises of matching people particularly well-suited for each other are unfounded
  • And people can change their minds about deal breakers if they meet the right person
• Can communicate online prior to spending time, money, and effort going on a date
  
  • Too much OR too little communication can lead to disillusionment
  • Can still have misunderstandings because there are no non-verbal cues

Question 54

How does technology impact established relationships?

Answer 54

• Established couples who use technology primarily to express affection, which is associated with more positive communication in the relationship overall
• Sometimes (but less frequently) used for more serious or even negative communication, which is associated with more negative communication in the relationship
• But what is missing when we communicate through technology?
  
  • Non-verbal communication – with just words, you also lose nuance in communication

Question 55

Why does nonverbal communication matter?

Answer 55

• Perceived authenticity
• Multimodal – i.e. multiple channels being used to convey information
  
  • Including body movements, touch, relative position in space, etc.
• Tendency to use nonverbal channels (over verbal) to express some emotions (e.g. warmth, affection, and other expressions of intimacy)

Question 56

What are the 4 main ways we can signal intimacy nonverbally?

Answer 56

• Proxemics – e.g. less interpersonal distance, leaning, turning towards
  
  • Important for signaling support during disagreements/conflict
• Haptics – e.g. welcome touch on face (vulnerable body parts)
  
  • Important in early stages of relationships, may be less so later on
• Kinesics – e.g. smiling, synchronized gestures
• Vocalics – e.g. matching speed, amount of talking; more variation in pitch
  
  • In general, men are perceived as more affectionate when their pitch is low and women are perceived as more affectionate when average pitch is high

Question 57

What are display rules generally and what are the 4 main rules?

Answer 57

• display rules: cultural norms that dictate what emotions are appropriate in particular situations
• (1) Intensifying our expressions — exaggerating them so that we appear to be experiencing stronger feelings than we really are
• (2) Minimizing — trying to seem less emotional than we really are
• (3) Neutralizing — trying to withhold our true feelings altogether
• (4) Masking — replacing real feelings with an entirely different apparent emotion

Question 58

How do our eyes communicate attraction?

Answer 58

• Our pupils dilate when we’re looking at something that interests us, and others we judge to be sexually appealing
• Gazing at someone and holding eye contact signals their interest in us, and makes them more appealing to us
  
  • Lovers spend more time looking at each other than friends do, and friends look more than acquaintances do
  • When strangers spend time gazing into each other’s eyes, they end up liking each other more than they would have if they’d spent the time together looking someplace else

Question 59

What is the visual dominance ratio?

Answer 59

• visual dominance ratio (VDR): Compares the amount of time a speaker looks at a listener to the amount of time a listener looks at a speaker
  
  • A normal VDR is 40/60 (looking at listener 40% of time; speaker 60%)
  • A high dominance ratio is 60/40, flipping this on its tail — looking more at you when they speak, but not offering you as much attention

Question 60

What is interpersonal distance and what are the 4 zones?

Answer 60

• interpersonal distance: the physical space that separates two people—that is usually reserved for relatively intimate interactions.
• intimate zone: extends out from the front of our chests about a foot-and-a-half
• personal zone: 1.5-4 feet away; more likely to be interacting with friends than acquaintances when standing this close
• social zone: 4-12 feet away; more businesslike atmosphere
• public zone: beyond 12 feet away; used for structured interaction like that between an instructor and his or her students in a lecture class
• However, people’s preference for their zones tends to differ based on culture, and sex and status
  
  • As a general rule of thumb, people who don’t like to be near each other tend to keep larger distances

Question 61

How does smell communicate attraction?

Answer 61

• People are affected by chemosignals — i.e. chemicals emitted from our bodies, corresponding with different emotions)
• When people are exposed to the armpit odors of others who are happy, they feel happier, too
• Men who are born without a sense of smell only have 1/5 as many sexual relationships as normal men do

Question 62

What is paralanguage and how does it facilitate attraction?

Answer 62

• paralanguage: all the variations in a person’s voice other than the actual words he or she uses, such as rhythm, pitch, loudness, and rate
• Helps define relationships because lovers tend to talk to each other differently than friends do
  
  • When they start a phone call by saying ‘how are you?,’ men use a lower pitch with their lovers than with their friends, but women use a higher pitch
  • Strangers can usually tell whether a friend or lover is on the other end of the call
• People with appealing voices tend to have alluring faces and bodies, too
  
  • Interestingly, a woman’s voice becomes more attractive just before she ovulates each month

Question 63

What is mimicry and how does it facilitate attraction?

Answer 63

• mimicry: when people are enjoying their interaction, they tend to synchronize their nonverbal behavior automatically without thinking about it
• When this occurs, the conversation tends to flow smoothly, and, more importantly, they tend to like each other even when they don’t notice the mutual imitation taking place