PSY 345 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Analog Science Fiction And Fact, Symmetry In Biology, Physical Attractiveness
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Attraction, Rejection, and Intimate Relationships
What is attraction?
- Attraction involves positively evaluating another person and manifesting behavior to
approach them or strengthen a social relationship with them
- Doesn’t always have to be sexual, can also be behavioral
What is rejection?
- This involves either the internal cognition a person experiences when other people
negatively evaluate him/her or social interactions that have the tendency to exclude a
person or weaken a social relationship
- You can feel rejection, this feeling could come from being rejected from employer
- Often times research involving attraction/rejection looks at individuals meeting for the
first time or people’s appraisals of individuals they never actually meet in the first place
- There are benefits and disadvantages to this approach to attraction research…
- For Example
o You may find that a person you meet at first is annoying or doesn’t make a good
first impression, but over time and experience with the person you might find that
you are increasingly attracted to them
- However, if you first impression of a person is negative, this is usually enough to steer
you away from them in the first place and you likely wont spend time with them in the
future
- For Example
o Studying how people feel attraction by showing pictures/videos of another
individual excludes the roles of other senses like smell, sound, touch, and taste
- Your attraction level when meeting someone for the first time can depend heavily on how
they smell, how they sound, how touchy-feely they are
- In a bizarre finding, men rated women they met in person as more attractive in physically
appearance and scent when the women were ovulating
- Even more bizarre, one research study showed that strippers in a gentlemen’s club earned
more money in tips when they were ovulating, less money when they were neither
ovulating nor menstruating, and the least amount of tips when they were closest to
menstruation
- When researchers study attraction, they frequently use terms to describe the “attractor” or
the “target” as someone who inspires attraction in another person
- When using the term “perceiver,” they refer to a person who is experiencing the internal
social cognition in discussion (attraction)
- Note: this is for clarity purposes only, since often times a person may simultaneously
take on both the role of the target or the perceiver of attraction
Variables that Predict Experiences of More or Less Attraction
1. Target Factors
o Physical attractiveness is one of the most influential factors in inspiring attraction
in the perceiver and leading people to feeling attraction for the perceiver
o An early study on physical attraction showed that when college students were
randomly assigned dance partners (that they hadn’t previously met before) the
single best predictor of attraction was the partner’s physical attractiveness
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
Document Summary
Attraction involves positively evaluating another person and manifesting behavior to approach them or strengthen a social relationship with them. Doesn"t always have to be sexual, can also be behavioral. This involves either the internal cognition a person experiences when other people negatively evaluate him/her or social interactions that have the tendency to exclude a person or weaken a social relationship. You can feel rejection, this feeling could come from being rejected from employer. Often times research involving attraction/rejection looks at individuals meeting for the first time or people"s appraisals of individuals they never actually meet in the first place. There are benefits and disadvantages to this approach to attraction research . However, if you first impression of a person is negative, this is usually enough to steer you away from them in the first place and you likely wont spend time with them in the future.
