Chapter . Critical Learning Exercises - Interpersonal Attraction

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.

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.

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.

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.