Critical Learning Exercises - Interpersonal Attraction

Instructions

Now that you have read the chapter, let's consider the theories and findings more closely. Read each of the questions below and type your response into the corresponding text box. After you submit your response you will be shown model feedback. You will receive full credit on submission, but your grade may change once your instructor reviews your response. Be sure to check the grade book for your final grade.

Question 1.

Over the past few decades, a dominant message in North American culture has been assert your individuality. Consumer messages tell people to stand out from the crowd, college orientation materials encourage first-year students to blaze their own path, and the trending message in spirituality is to let go of others’ influence and focus on one’s inner core. Compare this influence to this chapter’s claim that humans have an innate need to belong. Does the message to “stand out” conflict with our need to “fit in”? Or is there a way to live up to the cultural ideal of individuality while satisfying the need to belong?

Students will likely present different beliefs on whether a focus on individuality conflicts with our innate need to belong, and if we can achieve both. However, their responses may include a discussion of the text’s focus on our need to belong as being innately driven, belonging increasing psychological and physical health, the physical and psychological pain of rejection, and so on. Students may draw on the research showing the negative effects of not belonging or loneliness, which may happen if a person focuses too much on individuality and not enough on making social connections with others.

Question 2.

Recall that existential isolation is a nagging feeling that other people do not share our experience of reality. Do you think it’s possible to share your “I” with someone else’s? Can you ever truly know what the world is like from another person’s perspective? Think about times in your own life when you I-shared: What, if anything, made those encounters special?

Students’ opinions on the possibility of sharing our experience of reality with others, and their personal experiences of I-sharing, will differ. Students may include in their discussion how sharing a common experience can connect people, regardless of external differences that would normally keep them apart, using their own experience because we want to sense that others share our inner experiences of the world.

Question 3.

We read about the halo effect, a pervasive tendency to assume (perhaps even unconsciously) that physically attractive people have other valued traits and abilities. Although it is a positive judgment, it can still lead to biased and unfair treatment. Try to imagine an intervention to prevent or at least attenuate the halo effect. For example, how could you instruct teachers or managers to avoid unfairly benefiting attractive students or job candidates and neglecting or underestimating those who are less attractive?

There are a range of recommendations that may be made for how teachers or managers can avoid or lessen the halo effect in their judgments and treatment of others. Possible suggestions may include the following: anonymous grading or hiring that excludes what the student or candidate looks like; presenting evidence that attractive people are not more intelligent or better than those who are less attractive; making sure judgments and treatment are based on the individual’s merits; and so on.

Question 4.

The chapter introduced the study of infidelity in social psychology. We saw that men and women sometimes show different reactions to different types of infidelity, although there is some debate as to when and why. But in all the studies we discussed, people are asked to react to the real or imagined cheating of their romantic partner with another real person. But now consider how people respond when they discover their romantic partner privately views pornography. If Susan and Dave are dating, and Susan finds pornography on Dave’s laptop, will she interpret that as infidelity or not? If Susan is upset, how could we explain her reaction from an evolutionary perspective? After all, there are no real sexual or emotional consequences that would impact Susan’s chances of reproduction . . . or are there?

Students’ evaluation of Susan’s responses to finding pornography on Dave’s laptop will likely be based on the research showing that women tend to view their partner’s sleeping around or desire to sleep around as less upsetting than if their partner has fallen in love with someone else, or the research that finds that she would be equally upset by an imagined sexual versus emotional infidelity. Students may explain her reaction by the evolutionary perspective that women are more sensitive to threats to their emotional bond with a partner, and respond more jealously in response to emotional, rather than sexual, infidelity. They may argue that Dave’s secrecy could be interpreted by Susan as violation of their emotional and sexual bond, thus increasing Susan’s sense of jealousy.