Attraction is the force that drives bodies or people together, in social psychology the definition of interpersonal attraction is an attitude of liking or disliking.

Anna Moore Psychology coursework

Introduction

Attraction is the force that drives bodies or people together, in social psychology the definition of interpersonal attraction is an attitude of liking or disliking (negative attraction) (Bersheid, 1976) Many factors; proximity, similarity, reciprocity and physical appearance contribute to interpersonal attraction.

Proximity; If we come into contact with someone either socially or at work frequently we are more likely to form an attraction with them rather than someone who we rarely see. Adults reported an increased liking for a photo of a stranger simply as a result of being exposed to a photo many times (Moreland and Zajonc, 1982)

Reciprocity; The tendency to return feelings and attitudes that are expressed about us. We tend to like those who like us and reject those who reject us. When we are admired and complimented we are inclined to return those feelings and behaviours. Walster (1965) did a study about reciprocity, women in a waiting room were approached by a good looking male (confederate) who asked them for a date. They then entered the experiment room where they were made to feel either positive about themselves or negative about themselves. He found that the women who had been led to feel negatively about themselves felt considerably more attracted to their male admirer than those who had been led to feel positively about themselves. This is because the females who were feeling negatively about themselves were put in the temporary position of needing positive approval, they therefore gave more positive approval back to the person providing it.

John Thibaut and Harold Kelley’s social exchange theory is based on the belief that humans are selfish and will only do something if they stand to gain from it, i.e. people won’t stay in a relationship if they are not receiving as much back as they are putting in. Its all about a balance people weigh up in their heads the advantages and the drawbacks of the relationship and if the negative out weighs the positive then its not worth being in the relationship.

Similarity: Do opposites attract or do we like people who are similar to ourselves? Hundreds of statistical studies dating back to 1870 show that husbands and wives are not only significantly similar to each other in the following sociological features; age, religion, education and socio-economic groups but also physical and psychological characteristics such as height, eye colour and intelligence(Rubin 1973) this links with Murstein and his similarity of attractiveness in newly wed couples.

Matching hypothesis: People tend to choose persons similar to themselves in attractiveness and attitudes in formation of interpersonal relationships (Murstein)

Saying that opposites attract may only apply to certain personality traits such as dominance and submissiveness, The traditional sex-roles within a marriage are founded on opposites attracting and would not work based on similarity, however, even this difference between the two partners relies on a similarity favouring power roles within a marriage.

Despite this, research doesn’t continuously say that gender roles in a couple are of importance in long term relationships. Research tends to suggest that similarity is the basis to which determines “who fancy’s who”

And finally, physical attractiveness; although there is something slightly undemocratic about ...

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And finally, physical attractiveness; although there is something slightly undemocratic about it we often find ourselves making our initial judgements of people purely based on their physical appearance. From a very early age we are taught by fairy tales and Disney films that beautiful people are good and pure and that ugly portrays evil. The ‘baddy’ is always ugly in fairy tales! Unlike personality and ’niceness’ towards people appearance is an attribute to which we have very little control.

People don’t like to admit that they form opinions of people based on physical attractiveness; surveys have shown that people do not rank physical attractiveness as very important in the liking of an individual (Perrin, 1921; Miller & Rivenbank, 1970; Tesser & Brodie, 1971)

However, studies on the actual behaviour of people shows otherwise. Walster et al. (1966) set up ‘ the computer dance’ where each male or female was randomly paired with a partner of the opposite sex. At a break in the dance each person was required to fill out a questionnaire evaluating his or her dance partner. The results of the experiment revealed that it was physical attractiveness alone on which people based their opinions of their partner. There was no correlation between a persons liking for their partner with any of the measures of intelligence, social skills or ‘personality’.

Despite the results of Walster’s study, Murstein (1972) found that people tend to end up with partners who are closely matched to them in physical attractiveness. Judges rated photographs of each partner of 99 couples for physical attractiveness with no knowledge of who was paired with whom. The physical attractiveness ratings of the couples matched each other significantly more closely than did the ratings of the photographs that were randomly paired into ‘couples’.

Aim: We aim to recreate Murstein’s “similarity of attractiveness between newly married couples” study, thus investigating his matching hypothesis theory

Alternative hypothesis: There is a positive correlation between the perceived attractiveness of the female and the perceived attractiveness of the male that she marries

Null hypothesis: There is no significant correlation between the perceived attractiveness of the male and female and the perceived attractiveness of the male that she marries. Any significant correlation will be due to chance factors

We are going to use a directional hypothesis as we can predict the out come of the study due to similar studies to this having been done before.

We will use a significance level of 5% (P ≤ 0.05) As this is the standard level for psychological research to be tested at. This means that out of every 100 pieces of data collected 5 will be due to chance.

We are going to test the significance of our results using ‘Spearman’s Rho’ as we require correlational analysis and because our data will be ordinal

Method

Design:

We are going to use a non experimental method due to the nature of the research. There will be no IV or DV because we are not doing a true experiment we will be using a correlational design to complete our study. There are advantages to conducting the study in this way:

There is greater ecological validity
It is possible to compare to variables where it is not possible to conduct an experiment.

As well as disadvantages:

There is a lack of internal validity due to a lack of control
It is not possible to deduce cause and effect as you cannot say that it is purely someone’s attractiveness that makes them get married; there may be many other variables that are not possible to control.

The two variables we will be comparing are the perceived attractiveness of the female and the perceived attractiveness of the male in a couple.

Control of confounding variables:

Participant variability:

Standardised instructions will be used to make sure that the participants in the study are all given exactly them same instructions and are not given any extra information than others.
Participants will all be chosen from a similar catchment area so that there won’t be any regional difference in the perception of attractiveness
We will use participants aged between 15-50 because any one younger than 15 may have a different view of attractiveness as may someone over 50
We will have to make sure that none of our participants have taken part in a similar study before because this may bias their results
We will make sure that there is an equal spread of gender between the participants. Half male and half female.
None of the couples should be recognisable by participants in the study as this could result in biases. To deal with this non of the photos will be taken from local newspapers, nor will they be famous people
The photos will all be the same size and quality and will all be black and white photocopies of the originals so that no photos appear more attractive or different from the rest based on photo quality.

Situational variability:

The participants will all take part in the study at approximately the same time of day so that they are equally mentally alert.
Every participant will to the experiment in the same room with them same level of noise so that the levels of distraction from the task are equal
The room temperature will be constant, as far as possible. So that one set of participants aren’t really hot and stuffy when the others are at a comfortable temperature
To reduce order effects of practice and fatigue half of the participants will rank the male photos first followed by the female photos (group A), the other half of participants will rank the female photos followed by the male photos (group B). This is called counterbalancing it works because any effects that the order has is cancelled out by doing it in both orders.

Participants:

Participants names will not be used and their results will be assigned only a number and state of what gender they are we will inform them of this and explain that no one will know whose results are whose. They will be told that they may withdraw their results from the experiment if the wish to do so. They will also be fully debriefed about the true nature of the experiment and told what their results indicate.

We will be using a random opportunity sample taken of people aged between 15 and 50. We are going to conduct the experiment in school. We are going to be using to be using 30 participants 15 male and 15 female. There are 3 of us in our group and we will therefore have 10 participants each.

We will try to make sure that all our participants have similar backgrounds and are of the same ethnic background. This is because otherwise they may be attracted to a different sort of person and this would cause inter-participant variability.

Apparatus:

We have randomly selected 10 wedding photos from the internet by using a search engine and typing in “wedding photos” we then went on the websites that were found and selected photos of similar quality and size. We will cut these photos in half leaving two photos, a male and a female. We will then mount the 10 female photos on one piece of paper and the male photos on another piece of paper. The photos will be of similar size and quality so that none of the photos will appear different or stand out from the others as this would lead to situational variability.

The photos we are using have been selected from the internet and so we assume that the people on the photos have already agreed to be on show to the public eye. If any photos that were peoples own were used we would have to ask their permission to use them and explain to them the nature of the experiment and where there photo is of use.

None of the photos will be from local newspapers nor will they be of famous people as people being able to recognise the people in the photos may mean that they are biased in their rating of attractiveness.

The photos will be straight on views and not profiles so that you can see the persons whole face as this means their attractiveness is easier to judge. The people in the photos must not be in uniform as some participants may find people in uniforms more attractive than those not wearing uniforms. This would mean that their judgements would be biased.

We will write a set of standardised instructions and all three of us will have this set of instructions to read to the participants. None of us will give the participants and extra information. They will only be read what is on the sheet prior to the experiment.

We will devise a concise results table to record our results on before we do the experiment so that no results get lost or messed up.

Procedure:

We firstly wrote down which of the photos went together and then randomly assigned each half of the photo with a letter A-J. This was so that the participant would not know which photos went together.
We then cut out all the photos which were of equal size and were all rectangular in shape (see appendix for a copy of the photos.)
Participants were asked if they would like to take part in an experiment for a psychology study. They were told that they could withdraw at any time in the experiment, that their name would not be recorded, and that they could request that their results are not used. This was to make sure that our experiment followed ethical guidelines set by the BPS.
They were then read a set of standardised instructions (see participant variability) telling them how to do the experiment: ‘could you please rate these photographs in order of attractiveness starting with the most attractive first’
They were shown the male photos and asked to rank them in order of attractiveness, by sorting the photos which had been cut so that they are separated and can be lined up on a table. We recorded them in our table 1-10 in rank order, 10 being the most attractive, giving us ordinal data. Once they had completed this they were shown the female photos and asked to rank them in order of attractiveness (or vice versa if they are in group B. We are using counter balancing to balance the effects of practice and fatigue)
We will then show them the actual couples and tell them who they said were the most and least attractive and who they were married to. They will be told what their results indicate. We will also explain to them the true nature of the experiment and what the results are that we are looking for.
The participants will then be thanked for helping us with our study.