1. Chapter 11 –
Attraction and
Intimacy
C. Saccaggi
C-Ring 427
6 & 7 May 2013

2. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(1) Proximity
 Geographical nearness: functional distance
(how often we interact)
 Interaction
 Availability
 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 (e.g. favourite
food)
 Exposure without awareness leads to liking
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3. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(2) Physical Attractiveness
 Attractiveness and dating
 Looks are a predictor of how often one dates
(for both men and women)
 Looks influence voting
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4. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(2) Physical Attractiveness (cont)
 The Matching phenomenon
 Tendency for men and women to choose as
partners those who are a “good match” in
attractiveness and other traits
 Men offer wealth and status, women offer
beauty and youth
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5. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(2) Physical Attractiveness (cont)
 Physical-attractiveness stereotype
 Presumption that physically attractive people
possess other socially desirable traits as well
 Influence of fairy stories? (beautiful princesses)
 First impressions
 Is the “Beautiful is Good” stereotype accurate?
 Attractive people are valued and favored, and
so many develop more social self-confidence
 Self-fulfilling prophecy
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6. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(2) Physical Attractiveness (cont)
 Who is attractive?
 Whatever people of any given place and
time find attractive
 Perfect average
 Symmetry
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7. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(2) Physical Attractiveness (cont)
 Evolution and attraction
 Assumption that beauty signals biologically
important information
 Health
 Youth
 Fertility
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8. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(2) Physical Attractiveness (cont)
 Social comparison
 Contrast effect (how attractive is everyone
else)
 Attractiveness of those we love
 We see likable people as attractive
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9. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(3) Similarity versus Complementarity
 Do birds of a feather flock together?
 Likeness begets liking
 We believe that people who are similar to us
have good characters
 Dissimilarity breeds dislike
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10. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(3) Similarity versus Complementarity (cont)
 Do opposites attract?
 Complementarity
 Popularly supposed tendency, in a relationship
between two people, for each to complete
what is missing in the other
 However, research consistently suggests that
people are most likely to be involved with
people they consider to be similar to them
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11. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(4) Liking Those Who Like Us
 Attribution
 Ingratiation
 Use of strategies, such as flattery , by which
people seek to gain another’s favor
 Self-esteem and attraction
 How we feel about ourselves determines how we
feel about our relationships
 Gaining another’s esteem
 We like those who gradually improve their
opinion of us
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12. What Leads to Friendship and
Attraction?
(5) Relationship Rewards
 Reward theory of attraction
 Theory that we like those whose behavior is
rewarding to us or whom we associate with
rewarding events
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13. What is love?
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Three components parts: Intimacy, Passion & Commitment

14. What Is Love?
(1) Passionate Love
 Emotional, exciting and intense
 Expressed physically
 Theory of passionate love
 Two-factor theory of emotion
 Suggests that in a romantic context, arousal from
any source, even painful experiences, can be
steered into passion
 Variations in love (culture and gender)
 Marriages for love vs arranged marriages
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15. What Is Love?
(2) Companionate Love
 Affection we feel for those with whom our lives are
deeply intertwined
 A deep, affectionate attachment
 Occurs after passionate love fades
 High divorce rates may be linked to the de-
valuing of this kind of love
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16. What Enables Close
Relationships?
(1) Attachment
 Our need to belong is adaptive
 Human beings struggle to survive in
isolation, we require support from others
 Parents and children
 Friends
 Spouses or lovers
Common elements in all close relationships:
mutual understanding, giving & receiving
support, valuing and enjoying being with the
loved one
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17. What Enables Close
Relationships?
(1) Attachment (cont)
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SECURE ATTACHMENT
Rooted in Trust and marked by
intimacy
PREOCCUPIED ATTACHMENT
Marked by a sense of one’s own
unworthiness and anxiety,
ambivalence and possessiveness
DISMISSIVE ATTACHMENT
Avoidant relationship style
marked by distrust of others
FEARFUL ATTACHMENT
Avoidant relationship style
marked by fear of rejection
Attachment Styles

18. What Enables Close
Relationships?
(2) 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 equity and satisfaction
 Dissatisfaction occurs as a result of perceived
inequities
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19. What Enables Close Relationships?
(3) Self-Disclosure
 Revealing intimate
aspects of oneself to
others
 We disclose to people
that we like
 Disclosure reciprocity
 Tendency for one
person’s intimacy or self-
disclosure to match that
of a conversational
partner
 Appropriate self-
disclosure deepens a
relationship
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20. How Do Relationships End?
 Divorce
 Rates varied widely by country
 Individualistic cultures have more divorce
than do communal cultures
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21. How Do Relationships End?
 Detachment Process
 Longer and more intense relationships have
more intense break-ups
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PASSIVE ACTIVE
CONSTRUCTIVE Loyalty –
Awaiting
improvement
Voice – seek to
improve
relationship
DESTRUCTIVE Neglect – Ignore
partner
Exit – End the
relationship