Centipedes are not social. Neither are snails or brown bears. In fact, most animals are loners who prefer solitude to company. So why not us?

All animals must survive and reproduce, and being social is one strategy for accomplishing these two important goals. When it comes to finding food or fending off enemies, herds and packs and flocks can often do what individuals cannot, and that is why over millions of years many different species have found it useful to become social. But of the thousands and thousands of social species on our planet, only four have become ultrasocial, which means that they form societies in which large numbers of individuals divide labour and cooperate for mutual benefit. Those four species are the hymenoptera (i.e., ants, bees, and wasps), the termites, the naked mole rats, and us (Haidt, 2006). Even in this fine company we distinguish ourselves, because only we form societies of genetically unrelated individuals. Indeed, some scientists believe that the complexity of living in large social groups is the primary reason why nature endowed us with such big brains (Sallet et al., 2011; Shultz & Dunbar, 2010; Smith et al., 2010). If 10 000 years ago you had rounded up all the mammals on Earth and placed them on a gigantic bathroom scale, human beings would have accounted for about 0.01 percent of the total mass, but today we would account for 98 percent. We are the heavyweight champions of survival and reproduction because we are deeply social, and as you are about to see, much of our social behaviour revolves around these two basic goals.

Animals have a problem: survival. To survive, animals must find resources such as food, water, and shelter. The problem is that these resources are necessarily scarce, because if they were not, then the population would increase until they were. Animals often solve this problem by hurting or helping each other. Hurting and helping are antonyms and you might expect them to have little in common, but as you will see, these disparate behaviours are actually two solutions to the same problem (Hawley, 2002).

The simplest way to solve the problem of scarce resources is to take those resources and then kick the stuffing out of anyone who tries to stop you. Aggression is behaviour with the purpose of harming another (Anderson & Bushman, 2002; Bushman & Huesmann, 2010), and it is a strategy used by just about every animal on the planet. Aggression is used by animals as a way of getting the resources they need. The frustration-aggression hypothesis suggests that animals aggress when their desires are frustrated (Dollard et al., 1939). The chimp wants the banana (desire) but the pelican is about to take it (frustration), so the chimp threatens the pelican with its fist (aggression). The robber wants the money (desire) but the teller has it all locked up (frustration), so the robber threatens the teller with a gun (aggression).

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The frustration–aggression hypothesis is right as far as it goes, but many scientists think it does not go far enough. They argue that the cause of aggressive behaviour is negative affect (more commonly known as feeling bad) and that a frustrated desire is just one of many things that might induce negative affect (Berkowitz, 1990). If animals aggress when they feel bad, then anything that makes them feel bad should increase aggression—and evidence suggests that it does. Laboratory rats that are given painful electric shocks will attack anything in their cage, including other animals, stuffed dolls, or even tennis balls (Kruk et al., 2004). People who are made to put their hands in ice water or to sit in a very hot room are more likely to blast others with noise weapons or make others eat hot chili in subsequent experiments (Anderson, 1989; Anderson, Bushman, & Groom, 1997). The idea that aggression is a response to negative affect may even explain why so many acts of aggression—from violent crime to athletic brawls—are more likely to occur on hot days when people are feeling irritated and uncomfortable (see FIGURE 13.1). It is worth noting that not every kind of negative affect gives rise to aggression; for example, when people feel disgusted they actually become less likely to aggress (Pond et al., 2012).

Of course, not everyone aggresses every time they feel bad. So who does and why? Research suggests that both biology and culture play important roles in determining if and when people will aggress.

If you wanted to know whether someone was likely to engage in aggression and you could ask them just one question, it should be “Are you male or female?” (Wrangham & Peterson, 1997). Crimes such as assault, battery, and murder are almost exclusively perpetrated by men—and especially by young men—who are responsible for about 90 percent of the murders and 80 percent of the violent crimes in Canada (Boyce & Cotter, 2013). Although most societies encourage males to be more aggressive than females (more on that shortly), male aggressiveness is not merely the product of socialization. Studies show that aggression is strongly correlated with the presence of a hormone called testosterone, which is typically higher in men than in women, in younger men than in older men, and in violent criminals than in nonviolent criminals (Dabbs et al., 1995).

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Testosterone does not directly cause aggression, but rather, seems to make people feel powerful and confident in their ability to prevail (Eisenegger et al., 2010; Eisenegger, Haushofer, & Fehr, 2011). Male chimpanzees with high testosterone tend to stand tall and hold their chins high (Muller & Wrangham, 2004), and human beings with high testosterone walk more purposefully, focus more directly on the people they are talking to, and speak in a more forward and independent manner (Dabbs et al., 2001). Testosterone also makes people more sensitive to provocation (Ronay & Galinsky, 2011) and less sensitive to signs of retaliation. Participants in one experiment watched a face as its expression changed from neutral to threatening and were asked to respond as soon as the expression became threatening (see FIGURE 13.2). Participants who were given a small dose of testosterone before the experiment were slower to recognize the threatening expression (van Honk & Schutter, 2007). Failing to recognize that the person you are criticizing is getting angry is a good way to end up in a fight.

One of the most reliable ways to elicit aggression in males is to challenge their status or dominance. Indeed, three quarters of all murders can be classified as “status competitions” or “contests to save face” (Daly & Wilson, 1988). Contrary to popular wisdom, it is not men with low self-esteem but men with unrealistically high self-esteem who are most prone to aggression, because such men are especially likely to perceive others’ actions as a challenge to their inflated sense of their own status (Baumeister, Smart, & Boden, 1996). Men seem especially sensitive to these challenges when they are competing for the attention of women (Ainsworth & Maner, 2012).

Although women can be just as aggressive as men, their aggression tends to be more premeditated than impulsive and more likely to be focused on attaining or protecting a resource than on attaining or protecting their status. Women are much less likely than men to aggress without provocation or to aggress in ways that cause physical injury, but they are only slightly less likely than men to aggress when provoked or to aggress in ways that cause psychological injury (Bettencourt & Miller, 1996; Eagly & Steffen, 1986). Indeed, women may even be more likely than men to aggress by causing social harm, for example, by ostracizing others (Benenson et al., 2011) or by spreading malicious rumours about them (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995).

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William James (1911, p. 272) wrote that “our ancestors have bred pugnacity into our bone and marrow and thousands of years of peace will not breed it out of us.” Was he right? Although aggression is clearly part of our evolutionary heritage, that does not mean it is inevitable. Indeed, the number of wars and the rate of murder have decreased by orders of magnitude in the last century alone. As psychologist Steven Pinker (2007) noted,

We have been getting kinder and gentler. Cruelty as entertainment, human sacrifice to indulge superstition, slavery as a labor-saving device, conquest as the mission statement of government, genocide as a means of acquiring real estate, torture and mutilation as routine punishment, the death penalty for misdemeanors and differences of opinion, assassination as the mechanism of political succession, rape as the spoils of war, pogroms as outlets for frustration, homicide as the major form of conflict resolution—all were unexceptionable features of life for most of human history. But, today, they are rare to nonexistent in the West, far less common elsewhere than they used to be, concealed when they do occur, and widely condemned when they are brought to light.

Just as aggression varies with time, so too does it vary with geography (see FIGURE 13.3). For example, violent crime in the United States is more prevalent in the South, where men are taught to react aggressively when they feel their status has been challenged (Brown, Osterman, & Barnes, 2009; Nisbett & Cohen, 1996). In one set of experiments, researchers insulted American volunteers from Northern and Southern states and found that Southerners were more likely to experience a surge of testosterone and to feel that their status had been diminished by the insult (Cohen et al., 1996). When a large man walked directly toward them as they were leaving the experiment, insulted Southerners got “right up in his face” before giving way, whereas Northerners just stepped aside. Of course, in the control condition in which participants were not insulted, Southerners stepped aside before Northerners did, which is to say that when they are not being insulted, Southerners are more polite than Northerners.

Variation over time and geography shows that culture can play an important role in determining whether our innate capacity for aggression will result in aggressive behaviour (Leung & Cohen, 2011). People learn by example, which is why some researchers believe that watching violent television shows and playing violent video games can make people more aggressive (Anderson et al., 2010) and less cooperative (Sheese & Graziano, 2005; cf. Ferguson, 2010). But cultures can provide good examples as well as bad ones (Fry, 2012). In the mid-1980s, an unusual disease killed the most aggressive males in a particular troop of wild baboons in Kenya, leaving only the least aggressive males. A decade later, researchers discovered that a new “pacifist culture” had emerged among the descendants of the peaceful males. This new generation of male baboons was less aggressive, more likely to affiliate with females, and more tolerant of low-ranking males (Sapolsky & Share, 2004). If baboons can learn to get along, then surely people can too.

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Aggression is one way to solve the problem of scarce resources, but it is not the most inventive way, because when individuals work together they can often each get more resources than any could get alone. Cooperation is behaviour by two or more individuals that leads to mutual benefit (Deutsch, 1949; Pruitt, 1998), and it is one of our species’ greatest achievements—right up there with language, fire, and the electric guitar (Axelrod, 1984; Axelrod & Hamilton, 1981; Nowak, 2006). Every roadway and supermarket, every iPod and cell phone, every ballet and surgery is the result of cooperation, and it is difficult to think of an important human achievement that could have occurred without it.

So if the benefits of cooperation are clear, then why do we not cooperate all the time? Cooperation is potentially beneficial, but it is also risky, and a simple game called the prisoner’s dilemma illustrates why. Imagine that you and your friend have been arrested for hacking into your bank’s mainframe computer and directing a few million dollars to your personal accounts. You are now being interrogated separately. The detectives tell you that if you and your friend both confess, you will each get 10 years in prison for felony theft, and if you both refuse to confess, you will each get 1 year in prison for, oh say, disturbing the peace. However, if one of you confesses and the other does not, then the one who confesses will go free and the one who does not confess will be put away for 30 years. What should you do? If you study FIGURE 13.4, you will see that you and your friend would be wise to cooperate. If you trust your friend and refuse to confess, and if your friend trusts you and refuses to confess, then you will both get a light sentence. But look what happens if you trust your friend and then your friend double-crosses you: Your friend gets to go home and wash his car while you spend the next three decades making his license plates.

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The prisoner’s dilemma is more than a game. It mirrors the potential costs and benefits of cooperation in everyday life. For example, if everyone pays his or her taxes, then the tax rate stays low and everyone enjoys the benefits of sturdy bridges and first-rate museums. If no one pays taxes, then the bridges fall down and the museums shut their doors. There is clearly a moderate benefit to everyone if everyone pays taxes, but there is a huge benefit to the few noncooperators who do not pay taxes while everyone else does because they get to use the bridges and enjoy the museums for free. This dilemma makes it difficult for people to decide whether to pay taxes and risk being chumps or to cheat and risk having the bridges collapse and the museums shut down. If you are like most people, you would be perfectly willing to cooperate in this sort of dilemma but you worry that others will not do the same.

Life is a strategic game, and we value those who play it honourably and despise those who do not. When people are asked what single trait they most want those around them to have, the answer is trustworthiness (Cottrell, Neuberg, & Li, 2007), and when those around us fail to demonstrate that quality we react bitterly. For example, the ultimatum game requires one player (the divider) to divide a monetary prize into two parts and offer one of the parts to a second player (the decider), who can either accept or reject the offer. If the decider rejects the offer, then both players get nothing and the game is over. Studies show that deciders typically reject offers that they consider unfair because they would rather get nothing than get cheated (Fehr & Gaechter, 2002; Thaler, 1988). In other words, people will pay to punish someone who has treated them unfairly. Nonhumans also seem to dislike unfair treatment. In one study, monkeys were willing to work for a slice of cucumber until they saw the experimenter give another monkey a more delicious food for doing less work (Brosnan & de Waal, 2003). At that point the first set of monkeys went on strike and refused to participate further.

Cooperation requires that we take a risk by benefitting those who have not yet benefitted us and then trusting them to do the same. But whom can we trust?

A group is a collection of people who have something in common that distinguishes them from others. Every one of us is a member of many groups—from families and teams to religions and nations. Although these groups are quite different, they have one thing in common, which is that the people in them tend to be especially nice to each other. Prejudice is a positive or negative evaluation of another person based on his or her group membership, and discrimination is a positive or negative behaviour toward another person based on his or her group membership (Dovidio & Gaertner, 2010). One of the defining characteristics of groups is that members are positively prejudiced toward fellow members and tend to discriminate in their favour (DiDonato, Ullrich, & Krueger, 2011). The tendency to favour one’s own group is evolutionarily ancient (Fu et al., 2012; Mahajan et al., 2011), arises early in development (Dunham, Chen, & Banaji, 2013), and is easily elicited (Efferson, Lalive, & Fehr, 2008). Even when people are randomly assigned to be members of meaningless groups such as “Group 1” or “Group 2,” they still give preferential treatment to members of their own group (Hodson & Sorrentino, 2001; Locksley, Ortiz, & Hepburn, 1980). It appears that simply knowing that “I am one of us and not one of them” is sufficient to produce prejudice and discrimination (Tajfel et al., 1971). Because group members can be relied on to favour each other, group membership makes cooperation less risky.

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But if groups have benefits, they also have costs. For example, when groups try to make decisions, they rarely do better than the best member would have done alone—and they quite often do worse (Minson & Mueller, 2012). One reason is that groups do not fully capitalize on the expertise of their members (Hackman & Katz, 2010). For instance, groups (such as a school board) often give too little weight to the opinions of members who are experts (the professor) and too much weight to the opinions of members who happen to be high in status (the mayor) or especially talkative (the mayor). Groups are also susceptible to the common knowledge effect, which is the tendency for group discussions to focus on information that all members share (Gigone & Hastie, 1993). The problem with this is that the information everyone shares (the size of the gymnasium) is often relatively unimportant, whereas the truly important information (how a school in a different district solved its budget crisis) is known to just a few. In addition, group discussion often acts as an “amplifier” of initial opinions. Group polarization is the tendency for groups to make decisions that are more extreme than any member would have made alone (Myers & Lamm, 1975). A group whose members come to the table with moderate opinions (“We should probably just renovate the auditorium”) can end up making an extreme decision (“We are going to build a new high school!”) simply because, in the course of discussion, each member was exposed to many different arguments in favour of a single position (Isenberg, 1986). Finally, members of groups care about how other members feel and are sometimes reluctant to “rock the boat” even when it needs a good rocking. Groupthink is the tendency for groups to reach consensus in order to facilitate interpersonal harmony (Janis, 1982). Harmony is important (especially if the group is a choir), but studies show that groups often sacrifice the goodness of their decisions in order to achieve it (Turner & Pratkanis, 1998). For all of these reasons, groups underperform individuals in a wide variety of tasks.

The costs of groups go beyond bad decisions because people in groups sometimes do terrible things that none of their members would do alone (Yzerbyt & Demoulin, 2010). Lynching, rioting, gang-raping—why do we behave so badly when we assemble in groups?

One reason is deindividuation, which occurs when immersion in a group causes people to become less concerned with their personal values. We may want to grab the Rolex from the jeweller’s window or plant a kiss on the attractive stranger in the library, but we sometimes do not do these things because they conflict with our personal values. Research shows that people are most likely to consider their personal values when their attention is focused on themselves (Wicklund, 1975), and being assembled in groups draws our attention to others and away from ourselves. As a result, we are less likely to consider our own personal values and instead adopt the group’s values (Postmes & Spears, 1998).

A second reason why groups behave badly is diffusion of responsibility, which refers to the tendency for individuals to feel diminished responsibility for their actions when they are surrounded by others who are acting the same way. Diffusion of responsibility is the main culprit behind something you have probably observed many times—a phenomenon known as social loafing which refers to the tendency for people to expend less effort when in a group than alone. For example, individuals in large groups are less likely than individuals in small groups to clap loudly after a performance (Latané, Williams, & Harkins, 1979), exert effort in a team sport (Williams et al., 1989), leave good tips at restaurants (Freeman et al., 1975), donate money to charity (Wiesenthal, Austrom, & Silverman, 1983), and even say hello to passersby (Jones & Foshay, 1984). But the diffusion of responsibility has much more pernicious effects. For example, studies of bystander intervention—which is the act of helping strangers in an emergency situation—reveal that people are less likely to help an innocent person in distress when there are many other bystanders present, simply because they assume that one of the other bystanders is more responsible than they are (Darley & Latané, 1968; Latané & Nida, 1981). If you saw a fellow student cheat on an exam, you would probably feel more responsible for reporting the incident if you were taking the test in a group of 3 than in a group of 3000 (see FIGURE 13.5).

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If groups make bad decisions and foster bad behaviour, then might we be better off without them? Probably not. One of the best predictors of a person’s general well-being is the quality and extent of their group memberships (Myers & Diener, 1995). People who are excluded from groups are typically anxious, lonely, depressed, and at increased risk for illness and premature death (Cacioppo & Patrick, 2008; Cohen, 1988; Leary, 1990). Belonging is not just a source of psychological and physical well-being but also a source of identity (Ellemers, 2012; Leary, 2010; Tajfel & Turner, 1986), which is why people typically describe themselves by listing the groups of which they are members (“I am a Canadian architect”). Groups may cause us to misjudge and misbehave, but they are also the key to our happiness and well-being. Can’t live with ’em, can’t live without ’em.

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Cooperation solves the problem of scarce resources. But is that the only reason we cooperate with others? Are not we ever just…well, nice? Altruism is behaviour that benefits another without benefitting oneself, and for centuries, scientists and philosophers have argued about whether people are ever truly altruistic. That might seem like an odd argument to have. After all, people give their blood to the injured, their food to the homeless, and their arms to the elderly. We volunteer, we tithe, we donate. People do nice things all the time! Is not that evidence of altruism?

Well, not exactly. Behaviours that appear to be altruistic often have hidden benefits for those who do them. Consider some simple examples in the realm of animal behaviour. Birds and squirrels make alarm calls when they see a predator, which puts them at increased risk of being eaten but allows their fellow birds and squirrels to escape. Ants and bees spend their lives caring for the offspring of the queen rather than bearing offspring of their own. Although these behaviours appear to be altruistic, they actually are not because the helpers are genetically related to the helpees. The squirrels most likely to make alarm calls are those most closely related to the other squirrels in the den (Maynard-Smith, 1965), and although honeybees do raise the queen’s offspring, an odd genetic quirk causes honeybees to be more closely related to those offspring than they would be to their own. Any animal that promotes the survival of its relatives is actually promoting the survival of its own genes (Hamilton, 1964). Kin selection is the process by which evolution selects for individuals who cooperate with their relatives, and cooperating with related individuals is not really altruistic. Cooperating with unrelated individuals is not necessarily altruistic either. Male baboons will risk injury to help an unrelated male baboon win a fight, and monkeys will spend time grooming unrelated monkeys when they could be doing something else, but as it turns out, the animals that give favours tend to get favours in return. Reciprocal altruism is behaviour that benefits another with the expectation that those benefits will be returned in the future, and despite the second word in this term, it is not actually altruistic (Trivers, 1972). Indeed, reciprocal altruism is merely cooperation extended over time.

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The behaviour of nonhuman animals provides little if any evidence of genuine altruism (cf. Bartal, Decety, & Mason, 2011). So what about us? Are we any different? Like other animals, we tend to help our kin more than strangers (Burnstein, Crandall, & Kitayama, 1994; Komter, 2010) and we tend to expect those we help to help us in return (Burger et al., 2009). But unlike other animals, we do sometimes provide benefits to complete strangers who have no chance of repaying us (Batson, 2002; Warneken & Tomasello, 2009). We hold the door for people who share precisely none of our genes and tip waiters in restaurants to which we will never return. And we do more than that. As the World Trade Center burned on the morning of September 11, 2001, civilians in sailboats headed toward the destruction rather than away from it, initiating the largest waterborne evacuation in American history. As one observer remarked, “If you are out on the water in a pleasure craft and you see those buildings on fire, in a strictly rational sense you should head to New Jersey. Instead, people went into potential danger and rescued strangers. That’s social” (Dreifus, 2003). Human beings can be truly altruistic, and some studies suggest that they are actually more altruistic than they realize (Miller & Ratner, 1998).

All animals must survive and reproduce. Social behaviour is useful for survival, but it is an absolute prerequisite for reproduction, which does not happen until people get very, very social. The first step on the road to reproduction is finding someone who wants to travel that road with us. How do we do that?

With the exception of a few well-known rock stars, people do not mate randomly. Rather, they select their sexual partners, and as anyone who has lived on earth for more than 7 full minutes knows, women tend to be more selective than men (Feingold, 1992a; Fiore et al., 2010). When researchers asked an attractive person to approach strangers on a college campus and ask, “Would you go out with me?” they found that roughly half of the men and half of the women agreed to the request for a date. On the other hand, when the attractive person said to strangers, “Would you go to bed with me?” the researchers found that none of the women and three quarters of the men agreed to the request for sex (Clark & Hatfield, 1989). There are many reasons why a woman in this situation might turn down a sexual offer (Conley, 2011), but research suggests that women tend to be choosier than men in most other situations as well (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Schmitt et al., 2012).

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One reason for this is biology. Men produce billions of sperm in their lifetimes, their ability to conceive a child tomorrow is not inhibited by having conceived one today, and conception has no significant physical costs. On the other hand, women produce a small number of eggs in their lifetimes, conception eliminates their ability to conceive for at least 9 more months, and pregnancy produces physical changes that increase their nutritional requirements and put them at risk of illness and death. Therefore, if a man mates with a woman who does do not produce healthy offspring or who will not do her part to raise them, he has lost nothing but 10 minutes and a teaspoon of bodily fluid. But if a woman makes the same mistake, she has lost a precious egg, borne the costs of pregnancy, risked her life in childbirth, and missed at least 9 months of other reproductive opportunities. Clearly, our basic biology makes sex a riskier proposition for women than for men.

But if basic biology pushes women to be choosier then men, culture and experience can push every bit as hard (Petersen & Hyde, 2010; Zentner, & Mitura, 2012). For example, women may be choosier than men simply because they are approached more often (Conley et al., 2011) or because the reputational costs of promiscuity are higher (Eagly & Wood, 1999; Kasser & Sharma, 1999). Indeed, when sex becomes expensive for men (e.g., when they are choosing a long-term mate rather than a short-term date), they can be every bit as choosey as women (Kenrick et al., 1990). In fact, relatively minor changes in the courtship ritual can actually cause men to be choosier than women (see The Real World box). The point is that biology makes sex a riskier proposition for women than for men, but cultures can exaggerate, equalize, or even reverse those risks. The higher the risk, the more selective people of both genders tend to be.

For most of us, there is a very small number of people with whom we are willing to have sex, an even smaller number of people with whom we are willing to have children, and a staggeringly large number of people with whom we are unwilling to have either. So when we meet someone new, how do we decide which of these categories they belong in? Many things go into choosing a date, a lover, or a partner for life, but perhaps none is more important than the simple feeling we call attraction (Berscheid & Reis, 1998). Research suggests that this feeling is caused by a range of factors that can be roughly divided into three kinds: the situational, the physical, and the psychological.

One of the best predictors of any kind of interpersonal relationship is the physical proximity of the people involved (Nahemow & Lawton, 1975). In one study, students who had been randomly assigned to university housing almost a year earlier were asked to name their three closest friends, and nearly half named their next-door neighbour (Festinger, Schachter, & Back, 1950). We tend to think that we select our romantic partners on the basis of their personalities, appearances, and so on—and we do—but we only get to select from the pool of people we have met, and the likelihood of meeting a potential partner naturally increases with proximity. Before you ever start ruling out potential mates, geography has already ruled out 99.999 percent of the world’s population for you. Proximity not only provides the opportunity for attraction, it also provides the motivation: People work especially hard to like those with whom they expect to have interaction (Darley & Berscheid, 1967). When you are assigned a roommate or an office mate, you know that your day-to-day existence will be a whole lot easier if you like them than if you do not, and so you go out of your way to notice their good qualities and ignore their bad ones.

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Proximity provides something else as well. Every time we encounter a person, that person becomes a bit more familiar to us, and people generally prefer familiar to novel stimuli. The mere exposure effect is the tendency for liking to increase with the frequency of exposure (Bornstein, 1989; Zajonc, 1968). For instance, in some experiments, geometric shapes, faces, or alphabetical characters were flashed on a computer screen so quickly that participants were unaware of having seen them. Participants were then shown some of the “old” stimuli that had been flashed across the screen as well as some “new” stimuli that had not. Although they could not reliably say which stimuli were old and which were new, they did tend to like the old stimuli better than the new ones (Monahan, Murphy, & Zajonc, 2000). The fact that mere exposure leads to liking may explain why university students who were randomly assigned to seats during a brief psychology experiment were likely to be friends with the person they sat next to a full year later (Back, Schmukle, & Egloff, 2008). There are some circumstances under which “familiarity breeds contempt” (Norton, Frost, & Ariely, 2007), but for the most part familiarity seems to breed liking (Reis et al., 2011).

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Attraction can be the result of geographical accidents that put people in the same place at the same time, but some places and times are clearly better than others. In one study, Canadian researchers Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron observed men as they crossed the Capilano Bridge (in Vancouver) as it was swaying. An attractive female researcher approached the men, either when they were in the middle of the bridge or after they had finished crossing it, and asked them to complete a survey. After they did so, she gave each man her telephone number and offered to explain her project in greater detail if he called. Results showed that the men were more likely to call the woman when they had met her in the middle of the swaying bridge (Dutton & Aron, 1974). Why? You may recall from the Emotion and Motivation chapter that people can misinterpret physiological arousal as a sign of attraction (Byrne et al., 1975; Schachter & Singer, 1962). The men were presumably more aroused when they were in the middle of a swaying bridge, and some of those men mistook their arousal for attraction.

Once people are in the same place at the same time, they can begin to learn about each other’s personal qualities, and in most cases, the first quality they learn about is the other person’s appearance. You probably knew that appearance influences attraction, but this influence may be stronger than you thought. In one study, researchers arranged a dance for first-year university students and randomly assigned each student to an opposite-sex partner. Midway through the dance, the students confidentially reported how much they liked their partner, how attractive they thought their partner was, and how much they would like to see their partner again. The researchers measured many of the students’ attributes—from their attitudes to their personalities—and they found that the partner’s physical appearance was the only attribute that influenced the students’ feelings of attraction (Walster et al., 1966). Field studies confirm this finding. For instance, one study found that a man’s height and a woman’s weight were among the best predictors of how many responses a personal advertisement received (Lynn & Shurgot, 1984), and another study found that physical attractiveness was the only factor that predicted the online dating choices of both women and men (Green, Buchanan, & Heuer, 1984). Superficiality, thy name is human!

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Beauty gets us more than dates (Etcoff, 1999; Langlois et al., 2000). Beautiful people have more sex, more friends, and more fun than the rest of us do (Curran & Lippold, 1975), and they even earn about 10 percent more money over the course of their lives (see FIGURE 13.6) (Hamermesh & Biddle, 1994). We tend to think that beautiful people also have superior personal qualities (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972; Eagly et al., 1991), and in some cases they do. For instance, because beautiful people have more friends and more opportunities for social interaction, they tend to have better social skills than less beautiful people (Feingold, 1992b). Appearance is so powerful that it even influences how mothers treat their own children: Mothers are more affectionate and playful when their children are attractive than unattractive (Langlois et al., 1995). Indeed, the only real disadvantage of being beautiful is that it can sometimes cause others to feel threatened (Agthe, Spörrle, & Maner, 2010). It is interesting to note that men and women are equally influenced by the appearance of their potential partners (Eastwick et al., 2011), but men are more willing to admit it (Feingold, 1990).

So yes, it pays to be beautiful. But what exactly constitutes beauty? The answer to that question varies across cultures. In Canada, for example, most women want to be slender, but in Mauritania, young girls are forced to drink up to 19 L of high-fat milk every day so that they will someday be obese enough to attract a husband. As one Mauritanian woman noted, “Men want women to be fat, and so they are fat. Women want men to be skinny, and so they are skinny” (LaFraniere, 2007). In Canada, most men want to be tall, but in Ghana, most men are short and consider height a curse. “To be a tall person can be quite embarrassing,” said one particularly altitudinous Ghanaian man. “When you are standing in a crowd, the short people start to jeer at you,” said another (French, 1997).

Beauty may vary across cultures, but it is not entirely in the eye of the beholder. Different cultures have different standards of beauty, but those standards have a lot in common (Cunningham et al., 1995). For example, people in all cultures seem to have similar preferences about the ideal body, face, and age of their romantic partners.

But why? Is there any rhyme or reason to this list of scenic attractions? Some psychologists think so. They suggest that nature has designed us to be attracted to people who (a) have good genes and (b) will be good parents (Gallup & Frederick, 2010; Neuberg, Kenrick, & Schaller, 2010). The features we all find attractive happen to be reliable indicators of these things. For example:

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If the feeling we call attraction is simply nature’s way of telling us that we are in the presence of a person who has good genes and a propensity to be a good parent, then it is not any wonder that people in different cultures appreciate so many of the same features in the opposite sex. Of course, appreciation is one thing and action is another, and studies show that while everyone may desire the most beautiful person in the room, most people tend to approach, date, and marry someone who is about as attractive as they are (Berscheid et al., 1971; Lee et al., 2008).

If attraction is all about big biceps and high cheekbones, then why do not we just skip the small talk and pick our mates from photographs? Because for human beings, attraction is about much more than that. Physical appearance is assessed easily and early (Lenton & Francesconi, 2010), and it determines who draws our attention and quickens our pulse. But once people begin interacting they quickly move beyond appearances (Cramer, Schaefer, & Reid, 1996; Regan, 1998). People’s inner qualities—their personalities, points of view, attitudes, beliefs, values, ambitions, and abilities—play an important role in determining their sustained interest in each other, and there is not much mystery about the kinds of inner qualities that most people find attractive. For example, intelligence, sense of humour, sensitivity, and ambition seem to be high on just about everybody’s list, whereas “experienced serial killer” does not seem to make anyone’s list (Daniel et al., 1985).

How much wit and wisdom do we want our mate to have? Research suggests that people are most attracted to those who are similar (Byrne, Ervin, & Lamberth, 1970; Byrne & Nelson, 1965; Hatfield & Rapson, 1992; Neimeyer & Mitchell, 1988). We marry people with similar levels of education, religious backgrounds, ethnicities, socioeconomic statuses, and personalities (Botwin, Buss, & Shackelford, 1997; Buss, 1985; Caspi & Herbener, 1990). We are even attracted to those who use pronouns the same way we do (Ireland et al., 2010). In fact, of all the variables psychologists have ever studied, gender appears to be the only one for which the majority of people have a consistent preference for dissimilarity.

Why is similarity so attractive? First, it is easy to interact with people who are similar to us because we can instantly agree on a wide range of issues, such as what to eat, where to live, how to raise children, and how to spend our money. Second, when someone shares our attitudes and beliefs, we feel more confident that those attitudes and beliefs are correct (Byrne & Clore, 1970). Indeed, research shows that when a person’s attitudes or beliefs are challenged, they become even more attracted to similar others (Greenberg et al., 1990; Hirschberger, Florian, & Mikulincer, 2002). Third, if we like people who share our attitudes and beliefs, then we can reasonably expect them to like us for the same reason, and being liked is a powerful source of attraction (Aronson & Worchel, 1966; Backman & Secord, 1959; Condon & Crano, 1988). Although we tend to like people who like us, it is worth noting that we especially like people who like us and who do not like anyone else (Eastwick et al., 2007).

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Our desire for similarity goes beyond attitudes and beliefs and extends to abilities as well. For example, we may admire extraordinary skill in athletes and actors, but when it comes to friends and lovers, extraordinary people can threaten our self-esteem and make us feel a bit nervous about our own competence (Tesser, 1991). As such, we are generally attracted to competent people who—like us—have small pockets of incompetence. Why? It seems that people who are annoyingly perfect are perfectly annoying. Having a flaw or two “humanizes” people and makes them seem more accessible—and more similar to us (Aronson, Willerman, & Floyd, 1966).

Once we have selected and attracted a mate, we are ready to reproduce. (Note: It is perfectly fine to pause for dinner.) Human reproduction ordinarily happens in the context of committed, long-term relationships (Clark & Lemay, 2010). Only a few animals have such relationships, so why are we among them?

One answer is that we are born half-baked. Because human beings have large heads to house their large brains, a fully developed human infant could not pass through the mother’s birth canal. So human infants are born before they are fully developed. That means they need a lot more care than one parent can provide. If human infants were like tadpoles—ready at birth to swim, find food, and escape predators—then their parents might not need to form and maintain relationships. But human infants are remarkably helpless creatures that require years of intense care before they can fend for themselves, and that is one reason why human adults tend to do their reproducing in the context of committed, long-term relationships. (By the way, some baby birds also require more food than one adult caretaker can provide, and the adults of those species also tend to form long-term relationships.)

In most cultures, adults settle into committed, long-term relationships in which they live together, and often have children. (While such relationships have traditionally been celebrated with marriage, rates of marriage are declining in Canada, although rates of enduring relationships are not.) But when asked, people do not say that they got together to solve the big-headed baby problem; they say that they did it for love. The fact that people marry for love seems so obvious that you may be surprised to learn that it only became obvious in the past century or so (Brehm, 1992; Fisher, 1993; Hunt, 1959). Ancient Greeks and Romans married, but they considered love a form of madness (Heine, 2010). Twelfth-century Europeans married but thought of love as a game to be played by knights and ladies of the court (who happened to be married and not to the knights). Throughout history, marriage has traditionally served a variety of economic (and decidedly unromantic) functions—ranging from cementing agreements between clans to paying back debts—and in many cultures, that is how it is still regarded. In fact, it was not until the seventeenth century that Westerners started to think that love might be a reason to get married.

But what exactly is love? Psychologists distinguish between two basic kinds: passionate love, which is an experience involving feelings of euphoria, intimacy, and intense sexual attraction, and companionate love, which is an experience involving affection, trust, and concern for a partner’s well-being (Acevedo & Aron, 2009; Hatfield, 1988; Rubin, 1973; Sternberg, 1986). The ideal romantic relationship gives rise to both types of love, but the speeds, trajectories, and durations of the two experiences are markedly different (see FIGURE 13.7). Passionate love is what brings people together: It has a rapid onset, reaches its peak quickly, and begins to diminish within just a few months (Aron et al., 2005). Companionate love is what keeps people together: It takes some time to get started, grows slowly, and need never stop growing (Gonzaga et al., 2001).

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Recent Statistics Canada data indicate that for every two couples who get married, one couple gets divorced. But why? Although feelings of love, happiness, and satisfaction may lead us to a committed, long-term relationship, the lack of those feelings does not seem to lead us to break-up. Marital satisfaction is only weakly correlated with marital stability (Karney & Bradbury, 1995), suggesting that relationships break up or remain intact for reasons other than the satisfaction of those involved (Drigotas & Rusbult, 1992; Rusbult & Van Lange, 2003). Relationships offer both benefits (love, sex, and financial security) and costs (responsibility, conflict, loss of freedom). Social exchange is the hypothesis that people remain in relationships only as long as they perceive a favourable ratio of costs to benefits (Homans, 1961; Thibaut & Kelley, 1959). For example, a relationship that provides an acceptable level of benefits at a reasonable cost will probably be maintained, and one that does not will not. Research suggests that this hypothesis is generally true, but there are three important caveats:

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