Weeks 5-8by Mimicker Welcome to the third edition of my write-up of a class I’m taking, “Social Psychology,” which is taught by Dr. Robert Cialdini. Stuff found in my posts are from his lectures and the text book from the class, “Social Psychology – Unraveling the Mystery,” which was written by Cialdini, Kenrick, and Neuberg. This week we will answer such questions as… "What exactly is love?" "How do women and men act differently when it comes to jealousy?" "Which would women prefer… a handsome man of low status, or an ugly man of high status?" "Does social proof really work in seduction?" "How do people in groups act differently than when alone?" ...and more. Alright, here we go… HOW WOMEN HURT EACH OTHER - Research suggests that, compared to men, women are generally more supportive of one another and more attentive to their relationships with close friends. Among adolescents, female friendships are more intimate and involving than males, and a teenage girl's self-esteem is tied more closely to having an intimate friend. Social inclusion is so critical that excluding a girl from a social group is the primary method teenage girls use to hurt one another. In college, these trends continue, and they tend to have more same-sex friends and are close to their friends. (I’m not sure if I mentioned it in one of my earlier posts, but it has also been found that females harm each other through more indirect ways than males do… for example, by spreading gossip to tarnish another woman’s image.) SOCIAL ISOLATION - Sometimes being in a crowd can be the loneliest of experiences, if other crowd members are ignoring you. Students in one study were led to believe they were participating in an experimental chat room. After a round of introductions, they were left out in the cold by the other group members, who ignored them in favor of talking about marching bands or a (made-up) rock group called "Hoodoo Meatbucket." This rejection experience seemed to fuel students' need to belong, making them particularly attentive to social information about strangers. In another study, students tossed around a ball as part of a three-person group. Imagine how you'd react if the other two people ignored you and started tossing the ball back and forth only to one another. Women who were thus ostracized later compensated by putting in special effort on a group task. As Wendi Gardner and her colleges observed, rejection often inspires us to work hard to be included. LONELY PEOPLE - When lonely people do get to be around others, they may act in ways that make them less attractive - they may talk more about themselves, change the topic more frequently, ask fewer questions about their conversational partners, and make more inappropriate self-disclosures than students who are not lonely. To make matters worse, lonely people set unrealistically high expectations for both themselves and others. After talking to others, lonely people rate themselves and others more negatively, and show less interest in seeing partners again. Based on numerous studies, Warren Jones and his colleague concluded, "lonely individuals are self-absorbed, non-responsive, negativistic, and ineffective in their interactions with strangers." And even when their conversational partners perceive them positively, the lonely students walk away from the interaction feeling as if they've done poorly. SELF-DISCLOSURE - One key aspect of being a friend is self-disclosure, sharing intimate information about oneself. Mutual disclosure is so important that complete strangers can be made to feel like friends after just half an hour of mutual disclosure of intimate details. You can often get others to like you just by opening up to them. And disclosing our private inner thoughts and secrets can lead to insights and make us feel better. LYING - To avoid making another feel uncomfortable, people sometimes simply make up something more pleasant. In other words, they lie. More lies come out of the mouths of people who are sociable, manipulative, and highly concerned with self-presentation. Some everyday lies are designed to serve the other person ("I told my roommate I was having a wonderful time at his party.") others are more self-serving ("I lied to appear honest") Manipulative people, and those with chronically poor relationships tell more self-serving lies. WOMEN LIKE WOMEN BETTER THAN MEN - Over a life span, men's status orientation may make them less desirable as friends. This has interesting implications for cross-sex friendship. As it turns out, men value the company of women, but women do not always reciprocate and would often rather hang out with women. Women find their same-sex friendships more meaningful and more enjoyable than relationships with men. Women show their appreciation of their friends in very direct ways. Men are not so directly appreciative. Women send a thank you note saying "That was really funny! I really value having you in my life! Let's have lunch again next Friday!" Men say, "I think I can find it in my heart to help your work on your pathetic gold swing again. Let's get together next Friday so you can watch how a master does it!" Small wonder that both sexes search for females in times of stress. Males emphasis on status and competition often leads them to create a somewhat different (and less supportive) social environment than the one in which females dwell. PEOPLE IN GROUPS AND LEARNING/PERFORMANCE – Let me preface this by saying we’ve only begun to explore groups in-class. I will have much more to write about groups, but I’ll tell you what I’ve learned about them so far… When performing an activity… do we perform the activity better in a group or alone? The social psychologist Pessin explored this question. In one experiment, he brought in people and had them learn a series of syllables in a certain order. People who were alone did better learning the syllables. However, when he brought back the same people, people who learned the syllables in a group remembered them better. So his results were inconclusive. So another researcher, Zajoc, did some more experiments. He found that people learned difficult tasks better when they were alone. And learned easy tasks better when they were in groups. The reason for this is that groups increase the desire to succeed. Also, to any stimuli there is a hierarchy of responses. The top response is called the “dominant response.” And the presence of other people increases the likelihood you’ll respond with the “dominant response.” When a task is unlearned, the dominant response is wrong. When a task is learned, the dominant response is right. Thus, people perform tasks they are good at, better in groups, and ones they are not good at, better alone. Cialdini gave a basketball analogy for this. Imagine you’re the coach of a basketball team. The game is on the line, and there is only a few seconds left. Your star player has had a bad game, and has missed most of his shots. However, one of the usually bad players, is having a very good game and making every shot. Which player would you rather have the ball in his hands in the final seconds? The answer is your star player, even though he hasn’t had a good game. He has the task mastered better, and under such pressure with so many people watching, his “dominant response” will come through and he will perform better. Even though the other player is having a good game, his “dominant response” is not the right one, since overall his mastery of the task is less. PEOPLE IN GROUPS AND RISKINESS – Are people more risky while alone or in groups? One researcher named Stoner asked this question. He had subjects come in, and put them in charge of an imaginary person. They were asked whether or not this person should stay at his stable job, or quit his job and start his own company (which was riskier but could if succeeded, provide many more benefits). They were given different chances that his company would survive, and asked what the riskiest chance they would take. People in groups moved more toward risky behavior than those alone. More research was done and it was found that the reason for this was that riskiness is one of our (the U.S.’s) dominant cultural values. People here like to be seen as slightly more risky and daring than average. And in a group, they have people watching them, so they try to come off as more risky and daring. Further research was done, and it was found that there are certain kinds of situations where groups moved toward the conservative direction. These situations involved harm. When people are in situations of potential harm, the cultural value is more conservative. And people like to see themselves as slightly more conservative than average in these situations. THE DEFINITION OF LOVE – What is love? Like many natural phenomena, it is not as simple as one might think. For one thing, love is multifaceted, with no single characteristic that defines it. For another, there’s more than one variety of love. We will deal with each of these issues in turn. (BTW, if you’ve read IN10SE’s Deep Rapport Builder, the following information is where he built his routine from…) One researcher found that love can be boiled down to three essential components. -PASSION: physiological arousal and a longing to be united with the other. There is consummate love (all three components together) (a good LTR) There is romantic love (intimacy + passion without commitment) (an affair) There is companionate love (intimacy + commitment without passion) (an old couple who have lost the passion for each other) There is fatuous love (passion + commitment without intimacy) (a couple who stays together just for the sex) There is infatuation (passion alone) (like a one night stand… or a stalker) There is empty love (commitment alone) (a married couple who don't like each other anymore, but stay together for their children) And there is liking (intimacy alone) (friendship) SEXUAL ATTRACTIVENESS - Whatever their sexual desires and attitudes, two individuals may differ in sexual behavior because one has more opportunities for sexual relationships than the other. Anyone who has lived through adolescence cannot help but notice the powerful role of physical appearance in determining who’s sexy and who’s not. Indeed, good-looking people are treated more warmly by the opposite sex, date more frequently, and are more sexually experienced. In fact, when lead to believe that a prospective date was good looking, college students were willing to tell outright lies about themselves to increase their chances of having that person choose them. After reviewing recent research on attractiveness, Zebrowitz and Rhodes point out that attractiveness can also be enhanced by positive expressions and behaviors and that we are attracted to those who are familiar to us. So we all look better if we hang around for a while, particularly if we’re smiling and being nice. The researchers also note that being physically attractive is NOT necessary or sufficient to make a person attractive and that “nature let a hundred flowers bloom.” AROUSING SETTINGS – Throughout the world, dances, like the one at which Romeo and Juliet fell in love, are important settings for meeting potential mates. Paul Rosenblatt speculated that the excitement of activity, rhythm, and anticipation of possible liaisons may be mistaken for sexual or romantic excitement. Furthermore, researchers have found a Romeo and Juliet effect among modern-day lovers, that is, parental interference can fuel romantic passion. As parents increasingly complain about a young couple’s relationships, for example, the partners increase their feelings of love for one another. Other studies suggest that any form of arousal may fuel passion. For example, one set of studies showed that the fear of a painful electric shock or of standing on a narrow, shaky suspension bridge over a rocky canyon fueled men’s attraction to an attractive woman in the same situation. Simply exercising strenuously for a few minutes can enhance a man’s attraction for a good-looking woman. In one amusing study, couples were brought into a laboratory and put through a rather unusual and arousing task together. The couples were Velcro-strapped together at the wrist and angle on one side and had to carry a cylindrical pillow between their heads while they crawled on their hands and knees across a gym mat and over a three-foot-high barrier. The participants found this game arousing and exciting; and, compared to other couples who shared a more mundane activity, the exhilarating game enhanced their feelings about the quality of their relationship. JEALOUSY AND SAME-SEX COMPETITORS - Students who had been in committed sexual relationships were asked in one study to make a rather unpleasant choice: Imagine that you discover that the person with whom you’ve been seriously involved has become interested in someone else. What would distress or upset you more: 1. Imagining your partner falling in love and forming a deep emotional attachment to that person. 2. Imagining your partner having sexual intercourse with that other person. The majority of the men reported they would be more distressed by the sexual infidelity. However, approximately 80% of the women said they would be more upset by the emotional attachment. Similar sex differences in the triggers of jealousy have since been found in Korea, Japan, Germany, Netherlands, and Sweden. Why the sex difference? Buss and his colleagues believe the difference is rooted in a basic biological fact: Women bear the children and are always absolutely sure that a given child is their own. For a man, it is less clear; indeed, genetic tests consistently reveal some percentage of children who could not possibly be offspring of the father of record. If his partner had sex with another man, he might unknowingly contribute substantial resources to raising another man’s child. On the other hand, because the father’s resources and support are very important to raising a child successfully, a woman stands to lose considerably if her partner falls in love with another woman – hence women’s greater concerns about emotional rather than sexual attachments. WOMEN’S PREFERENCES FOR STATUS - Numerous studies reveal that women are, compared with men, more motivated to seek a mate high in social dominance or status. For instances, students in one study rated the attractiveness of potential partners dress in either high or low status garb. In one case, this individual was dressed as a Burger King employee, wearing a blue baseball cap and a polo shirt displaying the company logo. In another case, he or she wore an upper-class ensemble including a blue blazer, and a gold Rolex wristwatch. Sometimes the person was physically unattractive, and sometimes he or she was good looking. Men preferred the good-looking woman regardless of her apparent social class, but women preferred a homely, well-dressed man to a handsome burger flipper. Likewise women are more sexually attracted to men who show nonverbal signs of self-assurance and confidence than to men who act meek and humble, whereas men don’t care either way about a woman’s dominance. Age and social status are linked differently for men and women. Women are the world tend to seek and to marry somewhat older men, who generally have more resources and social status. Men, on the other hand, show a more complex pattern: Older men are attracted to younger women, men in their 20s are attracted to women around their own age, and teenage men are attracted to slightly older women. Throughout the history of our species, females have always provided direct physical resources to the offspring – carrying them inside their bodies, nursing them, and taking primary care of them for years afterwards. Hence, it would have been advantageous for ancestral men to emphasize health and reproductive potential as the resource they sought in a mate. One of the cues to health and reproductive potential would be a woman’s age and physical attractiveness. Because men do not contribute their bodies to the offspring, biological theorists posit that ancestral females sought high status men who could provide resources, protection, or “good genes.” Men’s and Women’s ages were thus linked in a different way to the resources they provided for the offspring. Also, men evaluating potential dates place more emphasis on physical appearance. Other findings suggest that being seen with a physically attractive member of the opposite sex improves the social impression made by a man, but has no effect on the impression made by a woman. Indeed, to say that a man is physically attractive is to say he shows signs of social dominance, whereas a physical attractive woman shows not signs of dominance, but of youthfulness and fertility. Many studies suggest men and women make very different choices when it comes to mates. Women clearly prioritize social status over good looks; men prioritized attractiveness over status. DOMINANCE BY ITSELF ISN’T ENOUGH – Although women are initially attracted to socially dominant and competitive men, such traditional men are not particularly pleasant to live with. Women in long-term relationships with traditionally masculine men are less satisfied than women in relationships with more feminine or androgynous men. Although dominant men may be attractive to women, they are less likely to be loving, kind, and considerate in long-term relationships. Additional research suggests that, rather than being drawn to men who demonstrate pure machismo, women most prefer partners high in BOTH masculine assertiveness and feminine nurturance. Indeed, BOTH sexes will take a pass on competitive characteristics if it means getting a partner whom lacks nurturance and expressiveness. Alright, that's it, I'll reply to my own post and tell you how I see this all relating to pick-up... Mimicker This article was originally posted on FastSeduction.com. You may find more articles by Mimicker in the Archive Search or the Poster Zip Archives. |
