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Subject PSYCHOLOGY

Paper No and Title Paper no.7: SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Module No and Title Module no.18: INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION

Module Tag PSY_P7_M18

TABLE OF CONTENTS

1. Learning Outcomes
2. Introduction

3. Determinants of interpersonal attraction

3.1 Internal determinants
3.2 External determinants

3.3 Factors based on interaction with others

4. Theories of interpersonal attraction

4. 1. Social Exchange Theory

4.2. Equity Theory

4.3. Evolutionary theory

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5. Summary

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1. Learning Outcomes
After studying this module, you shall be able to

 To Know as to what is interpersonal attraction

 To Identify the various determinants of interpersonal attraction
 To Learn the various theories of interpersonal attraction

2. Introduction
Human beings are social animals. Forming and maintaining intimate and long term relationships with
others is a very crucial aspect of our social lives. Interpersonal attraction plays a key role in
relationship formation. A very pertinent question is “How do we get attracted to others and how do
we select mates?” There are many factors which determine interpersonal attraction. These can be
divided into internal and external determinants and factors based on interaction with others.

3. Determinants of attraction

Determinants
of attraction

Internal External Factors

based on
determinants determinants
interaction with others

Figure 1 showing the determinants of interpersonal attraction

3.1 Internal determinants of attraction

3.1.1 The need to affiliate

According to many researchers, the tendency to affiliate has a neurobiological basis. The need to
affiliate with others is one of the main concerns of humans and is crucial to psychological well being.
This also has an evolutionary advantage since interaction and cooperation with others helps in leading
a better life and secure life.

The need of forming and maintaining a least quantity of interpersonal relationships among human
beings is innately present. Therefore, unlike the Freudian view considering sexuality and
aggressiveness as the major driving psychological forces, and the radical behavioristic views that
considered every newborn as a blank tablet ‘tabula rasa’, the view of social psychologists is that
human beings are driven naturally towards establishment and maintenance of belongingness. Hence
the need to belong is found in some degree in all humans in all cultures, although there could be
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prevalence of individual differences in intensity and

strength with individual and cultural variations in how
people first express and then fulfill this need.

This would be pretty difficult or totally not possible for any culture to remove the need of
belongingness. This innate need presumably has an evolutionary basis. Development, formation and
maintenance of social bonds has both survival as well as reproductive benefits. Many of the survival
tasks like searching for food and defending oneself against foes can be best achieved by group work
or team co-operation.

Stanley Schachter
en.wikipedia.org

Does affiliation desires increase with anxiety?

Stanley Schachter, in late 1950s attempted to study whether anxiety leads to the desire for affiliation.
He brought female college students into the laboratory and created a stressful event.
Schachter introduced himself as “Dr. Gregor Zilstein” of the Neurology and Psychiatry Department.
He then told the subjects that they would receive a series of electrical shocks as part of an experiment
on their physiological effects.

In the “high anxiety condition”, participants were told that the shocks would be quite painful but
would cause no permanent damage. In the “low anxiety condition”, they were led to believe that the
shocks were virtually painless. In actuality, no shocks were ever delivered. The main intention was
merely to make the participants believe that they would be soon receiving these shocks.

After hearing this information, the women were told that there would be a ten-minute delay as the
equipment was being set up. The participants were told that they could spend time waiting either
alone in a room or in a room with another participant in the study. The preference of the participants
was the dependent variable in the study.

The results indicated that participants in state of higher anxiety intended to stay with others while
waiting. Even when the participants were not allowed to communicate with one another, being with

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other individuals was preferred. This goes to show that the

presence of others acts as a social distraction, taking the
attention off from the anxiety. Also it helps in comparing one’s emotional reactions to the stressful
event with another person.

It has also been found that cues that suggest possible harm, such as illness, danger, and disaster, seem
to increase the need to affiliate with others. Adults who are able to form attachments are more
supposed to reproduce than the one who fail to form them. Competition for limited resources also is a
very powerful factor that leads to formation of interpersonal connections.

Individual differences in the need to affiliate

There are individual differences in the need to affiliate. Generally individuals tend to seek an optimal
amount of social contact. When this need for affiliation is not fulfilled, an individual feels hurt, sad
and angry because he feels that he does not belong. However, there are some people who show a
dismissing avoidant attachment style in which they tend to avoid close relationships. Research by
Carvallo and Gabriel (2006) showed that participants high in dismissing avoidant attachment style
showed significant increases in positive affect and self esteem after learning that that they have been
chosen by other participants. This shows that even individuals who claim that they do not need others
also have need for affiliation.

Influence of the situation on the need to affiliate

Situational factors can also affect the need for affiliation. It is generally observed that after accidents
or natural disasters, people come together to help and comfort each other. Schachter’s (1959) work
showed that participants expecting to get an electric shock preferred to be with others as compared to
participants who did not expect to get a shock. This is because affiliation provides an opportunity to
communicate, compare oneself to other people and make a decision. All this gives cognitive and
emotional clarity to the individual.

Culture, gender, & affiliation

The need for affiliation is also shaped by cultural variables. Research has shown that people living in
individualistic cultures have a greater affiliation need as they have to develop relationships on their
own. They must also learn to establish relationships in various social settings. Even though the
relationships may be numerous in these cultures they may not be intimate.

Hofstede’s (1980) study of 22 countries showed a positive relationship between the degree of
individuation in a culture and the affiliation needs of its people.

3.1.2 Role of affect in attraction

Positive evaluations a person makes are lead by positive affect while negative evaluation a person
makes are lead by negative affect. We tend to like people who make us feel good and dislike those
who make us feel bad. Emotions also affect attraction indirectly. This is known as the associated
effect of emotions. This happens when another person is simply present at the same time that when a
person’s emotional state is aroused by someone or something. We evaluate that person positively
when we are in a good mood and negatively when in a bad mood. Examples of this phenomenon can
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be found in experiments on subliminal perception of

pleasant versus unpleasant pictures. The explanation for
this is based on classical conditioning. The relationship between affect and attraction also has
implications for social influence. The attempts at persuasion use the strategy of arousing positive
mood states whether it is the advertisers or salespersons who want us to buy a particular product, or
politicians who want us to vote for them.

3.2 External determinants of attraction

3.2.1 Proximity

It is generally said that close proximity fosters liking. Two people are likely to be acquainted if there
is physical proximity between them. Whether it is classroom seats, hostel rooms, residential flats or
office desks, proximity is a very important factor in attraction. However, with the advent of internet
and social media this may not stand to be very true but still it is a very important factor. Students
sitting on adjoining chairs are more likely to become friends. According to Zajonc (1968) repeated
exposure to a new stimulus results in an increasingly positive evaluation of that stimulus. Research
by Moreland and Beach (1992) has shown that the more times a particular assistant attended class the
more she was liked. With repeated exposure there is a decrease in negative emotions while an
increase in positive emotions increase. However, it has been seen that the repeated exposure effect
does not work when a person’s initial reaction to the stimulus is negative.

Proximity is a very important factor in attraction

It can be said that the best predictor of two people being friends is how far they live from each other.
Close proximity has also been found to affect intimate relationships. Bossard (1932) conducted a
study in which he plotted the residences of each applicant on 5, 000 marriage licenses in Philadelphia.
A clear relationship was found between proximity and love. In another study, Festinger, Schachter
and Back (1950) found that the closer people lived, the more friendly they became. They studied the
development of friendships in married graduate students staying at the MIT in USA. After World War
II, these couples were assigned randomly to 17 different buildings. Then the couples were asked to
name three of their closest friends in the housing units. Results showed that two-thirds of couples’
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friends remained in the same building and about two-thirds

were living on the same floor. Also people were about
twice as likely to become close friends with somebody who lived next door to them (20 feet away)
than to somebody who lived two doors down (40 feet away).

3.2.2 Physical attractiveness

Physical attractiveness is a very powerful factor which determines our liking for others. It also
influences interpersonal evaluations and mate selection. Researchers have found that most people
assume that ‘what is beautiful is good’. People have a strong tendency to attribute positive qualities to
physically attractive people and negative qualities to physically unattractive people. Attractiveness is
generally associated with positive traits, good interpersonal skills and high self esteem. This could be
because such characteristics are developed because of the way other people have reacted to their
appearance. That physical attractiveness is linked to positive traits is not always the case. In some
cases, physical attractiveness is also linked with negative assumptions for eg. Beautiful women are
perceived as materialistic.

Physical attractiveness is perhaps the most important predictor of interpersonal attraction. In a

pioneering demonstration of this effect, college students attended a dance party with a randomly
assigned partner they had not met previously (Walster et al., 1966). The major predictor of attraction
was the individual’s objectively coded physical attractiveness. Neural evidence has shown that reward
circuitry in the brain is activated in response to viewing physically attractive faces. People tend to be
attracted to physically attractive others even in friendships and platonic relationships and even three-
month-old babies prefer to gaze at the faces of attractive others.

What is attractiveness?

Since attractiveness is such an important factor in relationships, it is quite important to understand as

to who is considered to be attractive. One approach in understanding this is to identify individuals
who are rated as attractive and find out what they have in common. Cunningham et al (1995)
conducted a study on people from four different ethnic cultural groups and thirteen countries to rate
the facial attractiveness of photographed women of different races and found a high degree of
consensus on who was considered to be beautiful. The researchers found a preference for large,
wide-set eyes, a small nose and chin and prominent cheekbones. They also found out that women
judged as attractive can be put under two groups- those having childlike features and those having
mature features.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia

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Women judged as attractive can be put under two groups- those having
childlike features (L) and those having mature features (R).

Another approach is given by Langlois and Roggman (1990). They used computer digitizing to
combine multiple faces into one leading to a composite image. They reported that composite faces are
rated as more attractive than individual faces that were used to make that composite and that the more
faces that are averaged, the more beautiful the resulting face. They also found that people are more
attracted to symmetrical than to asymmetrical faces. Symmetrical faces are perceived as attractive
because they are markers of good health and reproductive fitness.

Singh (1993) reported that in general, men prefer a female body shape with a waist-to-hip ratio of
about .70. This is because it signals good health, youthfulness and fertility. Women are found to
prefer deep rather than high –pitched men’s voices because they associate them with masculinity and
dominance.

Perceptions of attractiveness are also influenced by situational factors. For example, when research
participants are shown pictures of very attractive people they rate a stranger as less attractive.

What is beautiful is good?

Dion, Berscheid and Walster (1972) examined whether physical

attractiveness affects beliefs about personality and expected
success of other people in various aspects of life like happiness,
prestige etc. The findings clearly showed that there exists
stereotyping based on physical attractiveness. Physically
attractive individuals are rated as having more desirable
characteristics and are expected to be more successful in life.

Other factors related to appearance that influence attractiveness

Apart from the main factors affecting interpersonal attraction, there are many other factors. A very
important factor that affects attractiveness is clothing. Other important factors are neatness, clothing
color, perceived age, height, body type, modesty etc. Another very important determiner of
attractiveness is a person’s first name.

Since physical appearance plays such an important role in interpersonal attraction, people make a lot
of efforts to enhance their physical appearance. Even physically attractive people worry about their
appearance. Most people experience appearance-rejection sensitivity. They worry about their
appearance and fear that they might be rejected by others.

3. 3. Factors based on interaction with others

3.3.1 Similarity

Similarity plays a very important role in interpersonal attraction. There is a famous saying that states
“birds of same feather flock together”. This finding was also confirmed in many studies. There is
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another saying that opposites attract. But there is strong

evidence that similarity and not complementarity is the
basis of attraction. It has been found that similar attitudes predict subsequent liking between students.
Many researches have shown that attraction is determined by proportion of similarity i.e when the
number of topics on which two people have similar views is divided by the total number of topics on
which they have communicated, the resulting proportion is put in a simple formula – the higher the
proportion of similarity, the greater the liking (Byrne & Nelson, 1965). Rosenbaum (1986) proposed
the ‘repulsion hypothesis’ as an alternative to this. According to this hypothesis, information about
similarity has no effect; people are repulsed by information about dissimilarity. Many researches have
been done on similarity-dissimilarity in relation to physical attractiveness; self-concept; religious
practices and the findings indicate that similarity is a very important determinant of attraction.

Interests and
Activities

Physical
Personality Appearance

Similarity in
various aspects

Social Skills Attitudes

Social and
Cultural
Background

Figure 1: Showing the similarity in various aspects in interpersonal attraction

The effect of similarity-dissimilarity on attraction can be explained by the following theories:

(i) Balance theory (Newcomb, 1961; Heider, 1958) - According to this theory, when two people
like one another and find out that they are similar to each other in some way, this leads to a
state of balance which is emotionally pleasant. Whereas, when two people like one another
and find out that they are dissimilar to each other in some way, this leads to an unpleasant
emotional feeling which is also a state of imbalance which is emotionally unpleasant. In this
case, they try to achieve balance by trying to change oneself or the other person, either by
misperceiving the dissimilarity or by disliking each other.
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Fritz Heider gave the balance theory

http://psychology.unl.edu/symposium/pictures

(ii) An explanation as to why similarity is important is given by social comparison theory given
by Festinger (1954). According to this theory, we compare our attitudes and beliefs with
others because the only way to judge the accuracy of the attitudes and beliefs is when others
agree with us. Therefore, we turn to others to obtain consensual validation.

(iii) Adaptive response to potential dangers (Gould, 1996) - According to this theory, we have
strong inherited tendencies to fear and hate anyone who is different from us. This is important
from an evolutionary perspective since it helps in survival and reproductive success but it
may also become the basis of prejudice, discrimination and hate crimes.

3.3.2 Reciprocity

Scholars have explored the reciprocity effect ever since Backman and Secord (1959) published their
landmark study. Reciprocity effect refers to the tendency where people tend to be attracted towards
others who tend to like them. In the 1950s, researchers argued that people are attracted to each other
on the basis of complementarity of needs. According to this principle, we tend to like those who like
us and dislike those who dislike us.

This emphasis on the reward potential of being liked by others is emphasized by interdependence
theory and social exchange theory which states that the social approval of others is a “generalized
reinforcer.” In one set of studies, Walster and colleagues (1973) sought to demonstrate that men tend
to be attracted to women who “play hard to get” but their conclusion based upon six studies was that
men are attracted to women who are easy for them to get but hard for other men to get. The above
findings suggest only if the liking makes them feel special, people tend to be attracted to others who
like them.

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What do we desire in others?

Cottrell, Neuberg and Li (2007) asked undergraduate students to rate 31 positive characteristics in
terms of how important it is for their ideal person to have. Results showed trustworthiness and
cooperativeness as most important factors followed by agreeableness and extraversion. Later, the
researchers asked the participants to rate 75 traits as important for their ideal persons of different
groups and relationships. Across all seven relationships, again trustworthiness and cooperativeness
were rated as most important followed closely by agreeableness. Other traits were rated as more or
less important depending on the kind of relationship the participant had with this imaginary ideal
person.

3.3.3 Familiarity

When people come across a novel situation, they try to assess the extent to which it signals danger.
This helps in ensuring survival and well being. The preference for familiar others is hence adaptive.
Additional evidence in support of the attraction-promoting effects of familiarity comes from research
on the mere exposure effect, which suggests that people tend to experience greater attraction to
familiar stimuli, including familiar people, than to unfamiliar stimuli (Zajonc, 1968).

This effect cannot be explained by other factors frequently confounded with familiarity, such as the
quality of the direct experience, and it emerges even when the perceivers are not aware about gaining
familiarity. In one interesting demonstration, female research assistants posed as students in a lecture
course. By random assignment, they attended 0, 5, 10, or 15 of the 40 lectures (Moreland & Beach,
1992). Although these women did not interact with the students in the course, those students rated the
women as more attractive as the number of classes the women attended increased, despite having no
recollection of having ever seen the women.

Familiarity promotes attraction

One of the main reasons why familiarity promotes attraction is that the humans have an inbuilt need
to bond with others. In one of the studies, pairs of completely unknown strangers had an experience
of greater attraction toward one other when they were randomly assigned to stare into eyes of each
other for at least two minutes than if they were assigned to stare at one other’s hands or were engaged
in asymmetric eye contacts(Kellerman, Lewis, & Laird, 1989). The results of this give an idea that

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experience of brief intimate moments with the other

individual causes sense of attraction towards that
individual even if the choice of the individual was to not interact with the other individual.

4. Theories of Interpersonal Attraction

There are many theories to explain interpersonal attraction like social exchange theory, balance or
cognitive consistency theory, equity theory and evolutionary theory.

4. 1. Social Exchange Theory

Social exchange theory states that people’s feeling about a particular relationship is dependent on
their evaluation of the cost and rewards of being in that particular relationship, the perception of them
being into a type of relationship they believe to be deserving and their chances of them being in a
better relationship with some other better person.

The relationship’s outcome is found through subtracting the costs from the rewards. The level of
satisfaction obtained through the outcome is dependent on individual’s comparison level and the
likeliness of the individual to stay in an unsatisfactory relationship is detrimental by the level of
comparison for alternatives. The theory is mostly supported by the research evidence.

4.2. Equity Theory

This theory argues that happiest are the people when they are into relationships where the rewards,
costs and the contributions that both the parties make to the relationship are roughly equal. According
to equity theory, both under and over benefited partners might be motivated to restore equity. Though
research finds that this is truer for the one’s under benefited.

4.3. Evolutionary theory

The evolutionary theory states that attraction to the opposite sex occurs when someone has physical
features which indicate that he or she is very fertile. This happens since it increases the chance of
one’s genes being passed down to the next generation.
This theory also suggests that fertility in a mate is more important to men than to women. According
to this theory, a woman places more emphasis on a man's ability to provide resources and protection
since these are important in ensuring the successful raising of the offsprings.
The balance theory discussed above is another important theory of interpersonal attraction.
Thus, interpersonal attraction plays a key role in relationship formation. Given the importance of
interpersonal attraction, finding out who is attractive and what factors lead to attraction has always
been and will continue to be an important area of research.

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5. SUMMARY

 Human beings are social animals and forming and maintaining relationships with others is a
very crucial aspect of our social lives. Interpersonal attraction plays a major part in
relationship formation.
 The main attraction’s internal determinants are the need of affiliation and affect.
 The external determinants of attraction are proximity and physical attractiveness.
 The factors of interpersonal attraction based on interacting with others are similarity,
reciprocity and familiarity.
 The main interpersonal attraction theories include the theory of social exchange, theory of
equity, evolutionary theory and balance theory.

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