Limits to the association between similarity and attraction

While similarities influence attraction, high and low self-monitors appear to consider different kinds of info in assessing similarity.

• People high in self-monitoring: tend to be guided primarily by cues in the situation, particularly the reactions of others
  
  • tend to choose romantic partners on the basis of physical attractiveness and friends on the basis of similar recreational preferences.
• People low in self-monitoring: tend to be guided primarily by their own feelings and beliefs
  
  • tend to be guided more by similarities in personality traits and attitudes
    
    

In certain circumstances: similarity may not be rewarding (ex: people increasingly dislike a stigmatized person the more they are similar to themselves, as they do not want to see themselves as similar to them).

Reasons for the similarity-attraction relationship

1. It is rewarding to have someone agree with your opinions, for it bolsters your confidence in your own ideas. Similar values and interests provide opportunities for doing things together.
2. The consistency principle. According to the interpersonal balance model , liking someone while disagreeing with that person about something important is psychologically uncomfortable. Need to restore balance. between orientations towards persons and attitudes
3. Since our everyday experience is to like people who agree with us, we expect that the people we like are like us (challenges the proposition that we are attracted to someone as a consequence of perceived similarity).

The repulsion hypothesis

similarity itself has little effect on attraction, but people are repelled by those who are dissimilar.

• An example of the negativity effect
  For some reason, younger children respond more to dissimilarity-rejection and adolescents to similarity attraction.
  
  

Both similarity and dissimilarity attitudes influence attraction, but evidence shows that we tend to dislike people who are dissimilar to ourselves more than we like people who are similar to ourselves.

Limits to the reinforcement-attraction effect

• There is evidence that because individuals who have everything going for the remind us of our own inadequacies, they may not be liked as much as someone who appears to have at least some human failings. (RESEARCH)
• The gain/loss effect: when we perceive that someone has come to like us more over time, this is a more potent source of reward than is constant praise. (RESEARCH - the confederate was liked more in the gain condition than in the constant positive condition and disliked more in the loss condition than in the constant negative condition).
  
  • the gain effect tends to be stronger than the loss effect
• The principle of equity (fairness) in our social relations: while we want rewarding relationships, we also want to feel that we are neither exploiting someone else, nor being exploited ourselves.

Importance of self-disclosure

• People will reveal more about themselves to people they like than people they dislike
  
  • reciprocity norm is powerful in human affairs: we try to keep the 'books balanced', whether in sending greeting cards or in revealing personal information. -> BUT if too much is revealed, the other person is likely to become less rather than more open (not wanting to enter a relationship)
• Self-disclosure is also influenced by gender roles
• Verbal self-disclosure and intimate communication are supplemented by non-verbal communication (vocal inflections or dynamics can reveal or conceal our feelings etc).
• As a relationship deteriorates, the partners restrict the number of topics they are willing to talk about, but tend to 'bare it all' about these topics.

Equity exchange and relationships

• Equity: the perception of fairness -> we are motivated to maintain a sense of fairness between our friends and ourselves.
• Social exchange principle (trying to maximize rewards and minimize costs in our relationships) is most likely to apply between strangers and casual acquaintances and in the earliest stages of a relationship. As intimate partners, we have more to gain and more to give and we become increasingly concerned with building the relationship.
  
  

6 interpersonal resources that can be exchanged: love, status, information, money, goods, services.

• The value of some resources depends on the person who gives them (particularism)
  
  

Another complication of social exchange theory - egocentric bias: people tend to overestimate their own contributions.

Exchange vs communal relationships

Intimacy = transformation from exchange relationships to communal relationships

• Exchange relationships: people seek to maximize benefits and minimize costs
• Communal relationships: the goal is not reciprocity but providing a benefit for the other and continuing the relationship

Illusion and reality in close relationships

Illusions about the partner might be part of our schema of romantic love -> having positive illusions about their partners.

• Michelangelo phenomenon: intimate partners in a long-term relationship influence each other's personality characteristics, interests, and aspirations. In this way, they affirm each other, and yet shape each other towards an ideal that they have about their partner.

  
  

• While we generally think of having greater intimacy as being a desirable goal, sometimes, for some people in some relationships, this may be too much of a good thing, resulting in a desire at least by one partner for greater distance and less intimacy.

Commitment and investment

• we have an investment in the close relationship, defined in terms of both tangible things (possessions) and the intangibles, the time and emotional energy that we estimate that we have spent in sustaining the relationship. When we are conscious of such an investment, we may remain committed to a relationship although not necessarily satisfied with it.
• the commitment calibration hypothesis: adversity can indeed bring people together or drive them apart. It depends on 2 factors: the level of adversity that they face and their level of commitment to the relationship.
  
  

Common form of relationship - cohabitation: a committed relationship involving living together without marriage.

• offers a way to blend 2 opposing needs: independence and relatedness.

Intimacy and cyber-relationships

• Impersonal intimacy
• social compensation hypothesis: those who are frequent users of the Internet tend to be lonely, unattached people who lack the necessary social skills to find friends and lovers through the usual social activities.
  
  • Found to apply mostly among boys
• the 'rich get richer hypothesis: people who have strong social skills can use and benefit from them in the context of social websites
  
  • Found to apply mostly among girls.