SPY - Influences on Attraction and Altruism Lesson

 

Influences on Attraction and Altruism

Attraction

Another important connection between people is attraction. What makes us like or love certain people? What causes their attraction to us? Social psychologists study these questions to understand romantic and platonic attraction between people. Attraction is influenced by proximity, similarity, and an evaluation of physical attractiveness. 

Before you start to like someone, you have to interact with the person in some way. Thus, proximity, which is geographic nearness, is the primary factor in attraction. Proximity works partially because of the mere exposure effect, which says that repeated exposure to a stimuli leads to increased liking. When we go to the store, we're more likely to buy products that we are used to buying - Pepsi if we grew up with Pepsi or Coke if we grew up with Coke. Attraction to people works the same way; we tend to like the people most that we're around the most. People are likely to love and marry the people who are physically close to them: sitting in the same class, working in the same office, living in the same neighborhood. In one interesting study, psychologists had a female actor attend a college class zero, five, ten, or fifteen times. At the end of the semester, students were asked to rate the attractiveness of this woman who had never spoken in class. The people who'd seen her the most number of times rated her as more attractive than the people who'd seen her fewer times. Exposure to her increased their liking of her. This also means that you can change your preferences by exposing yourself to new stimuli. Try a food several times, and you'll probably start to like it. Hang out with new people several times, and you'll be likely to enjoy their company.

Once you've met someone, you're likely to keep liking them if they're a lot like you. Similarity leads to increased attraction because it makes you feel good to have your opinions reinforced by someone else and because it gives you an opportunity to enjoy things with someone else.

Finally, physical attractiveness plays a role in attraction, even when people say they don't consider the physical component. Although some aspects of beauty are culturally bound (like weight or skin color or style of clothing), several factors cross cultural boundaries. In most cultures studied, people are most attracted to faces with average features: eyes, noses, and mouths that are medium in proportion. Women are typically deemed most attractive when they have a youthful appearance, and men are most attractive when they seem masculine, mature, and wealthy.

Together, these three qualities (proximity, similarity, and physical attraction) add up to the reward theory of attraction. In any relationship there are rewards and costs, and we like the people who offer more rewards than costs. If my friend likes the same music and movies as me, it's rewarding to listen to music and watch movies with her. If she's attractive, it makes me feel good to be around her. If she lives nearby and takes the same classes as me, it's easy to hang out. All of these qualities are rewarding to me, so I'm likely to continue our friendship. However, if her opinions are very different from mine, she lives far away, and she's terribly ugly, it's going to cost a lot to continue our friendship. Do the rewards add up to more than the costs? That's always the question in reward theory.

Helpfulness

Social psychologists also seek to understand how we are also influenced to help others by social forces. One time I saw a little girl run into a street, and I didn't do anything to stop or help her. There were a lot of adults around and not many cars, and I assumed the adults with her would get her back to safety. I didn't step in to help, although I noticed a problem and could have done something. In a famous news story, a woman named Kitty Genovese was brutally attacked, raped, and murdered within hearing distance of dozens of people. No one stepped in to help her though.

Bystander intervention is most likely if:

• the bystander notices a problem
• the bystander interprets it as an emergency
• the bystander feels some responsibility to help

In my example above, I noticed the problem when the child ran into the street, but it didn't seem like an emergency because there wasn't a car immediately in danger of hitting her and I felt like the people with her had more responsibility to help her than I did.

Often, no one helps because the bystander effect occurs. The bystander effect is the tendency for any given bystander to withhold help if other bystanders are present. Two components factor into the bystander effect: pluralistic ignorance and diffusion of responsibility. Pluralistic ignorance is our tendency to guess what everyone else is thinking and go along with it. If it looks like other bystanders are withholding help because the victim doesn't really need help, we're less likely to offer help. Diffusion of responsibility is the feeling that responsibility is shared amongst all the bystanders, so you feel less responsibility to do anything. If I'd been the only person around, I probably would have helped the child, but no one else seemed worried so I did nothing. If someone hearing Kitty Genovese scream thought no one else could hear, that person probably would have helped. But since the people knew there were many others around, they didn't do anything.

So when do people help others? Altruism is the unselfish regard for the welfare of others. Some factors make us more likely to be altruistic.

People are likely to help others if it offers some benefit to them. We weigh the rewards and consequences of our actions, and carry out the actions that offer the most rewards and the least consequences; this is social exchange theory. You might feel good if you help the lonely kid feel better at lunch, but will it cost a lot of energy and will anyone make fun of you for doing it? If the benefits outweigh the costs, you'll help.

We are likely to help others if that person has helped us; this is the reciprocity norm. If a salesperson gives me a sample, I'm likely to purchase something from them. If your mother lets you stay out later one night, you're likely to offer to do an extra chore.

People are likely to help those who seem to need help, as judged by the social responsibility norm. In some societies, children, the elderly, pregnant women, and disabled people are seen as deserving of extra help, and bystanders are more likely to help these people.

Complete the practice with attraction and altruism activity below:

 

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