Liking and Love

Shahbaz Aslam, Ph.D

 What Leads to Friendship and Attraction?
• What factors nurture liking and loving? Let’s start with those that help initiate attraction: proximity, physical
attractiveness, similarity, and feeling liked.

• Proximity: Geographical nearness. (more precisely, “functional distance”) powerfully predicts liking.
• INTERACTION: Even more significant than geographic distance is “functional distance”—how often people’s
paths cross. We frequently become friends with those who use the same entrances, parking lots, and recreation areas.
• ANTICIPATION OF INTERACTION: Proximity enables people to discover commonalities and exchange
rewards. But merely anticipating interaction also boosts liking. John Darley and Ellen Berscheid (1967) discovered
this when they gave University of Minnesota women ambiguous information about two other women, one of whom
they expected to talk with intimately. Asked how much they liked each one, the women preferred the person they
expected to meet.
• MERE EXPOSURE: The tendency for novel stimuli to be liked more or rated more positively after the rater has
been repeatedly exposed to them.
 Physical Attractiveness
• What do (or did) you seek in a potential relationship? Sincerity? Character? Humor? Good looks?
• Sophisticated, intelligent people are unconcerned with such superficial qualities as good looks; they know “beauty is
only skin deep” and “you can’t judge a book by its cover.” At least, they know that’s how they ought to feel. As
Cicero counseled, “Resist appearance.”
• ATTRACTIVENESS AND RELATIONSHIP:
• THE MATCHING PHENOMENON: The tendency for men and women to choose as partners those who are a “good
match” in attractiveness and other traits.
• THE PHYSICAL-ATTRACTIVENESS STEREOTYPE: The presumption that physically attractive people possess
other socially desirable traits as well: What is beautiful is good.
– FIRST IMPRESSIONS

– IS THE “BEAUTIFUL IS GOOD” STEREOTYPE ACCURATE?

 WHO IS ATTRACTIVE?
• Standards of beauty differ from culture to culture. Yet some people are considered attractive

• throughout most of the world.

• EVOLUTION AND ATTRACTION:

• SOCIAL COMPARISON:

• THE ATTRACTIVENESS OF THOSE WE LOVE:

 Similarity versus Complementarity
• “Love depends . . . on frequent meetings, and on the style in which the hair is done up, and on the color and cut of the
dress.” Leo Tolstoy
• DO BIRDS OF A FEATHER FLOCK TOGETHER?
• Friends, engaged couples, and spouses are far more likely than randomly paired people to share common attitudes,
beliefs, and values.
• LIKENESS BEGETS LIKING: At two of Hong Kong’s universities, Royce Lee and Michael Bond (1996) found that
roommate friendships flourished over a six-month period when roommates shared values and personality traits, but more
so when they perceived their roommates as similar. As so often happens, reality matters, but perception matters more.
• DISSIMILARITY BREEDS DISLIKE: Whether people perceive those of an other race as similar or dissimilar
influences their racial attitudes. Wherever one group of people regards another as “other”—as creatures who speak
differently, live differently, think differently—the potential for conflict is high. In fact, except for intimate relationships
such as dating, the perception of like minds seems more important for attraction than like skins. Most Whites have
expressed more liking for, and willingness to work with, a like-minded Black than a dissimilarly minded White.
 DO OPPOSITES ATTRACT?
• Complementarity: The popularly supposed tendency, in a relationship between two people, for each to complete
what is missing in the other.
• Are we not also attracted to people who in some ways differ from ourselves, in ways that complement our own
characteristics? We are attracted to people whose scent suggests dissimilar enough genes to prevent inbreeding and
offspring with weakened immune systems.
• Liking Those Who Like Us: Liking is usually mutual. Proximity and attractiveness influence our initial attraction to
someone, and similarity influences longer-term attraction as well. If we have a deep need to belong and to feel liked
and accepted, would we not also take a liking to those who like us? Are the best friendships mutual admiration
societies? Indeed, one person’s liking for another does predict the other’s liking in return.
• Our liking for those we perceive as liking us was recognized long ago. Observers from the ancient philosopher
Hecato (“If you wish to be loved, love”) to Ralph Waldo Emerson (“The only way to have a friend is to be one”) to
Dale Carnegie (“Dole out praise lavishly”) anticipated the findings. What they did not anticipate was the precise
conditions under which the principle works.
 ATTRIBUTION
• Ingratiation: The use of strategies, such as flattery, by which people seek to gain another’s favor.
• Our reactions depend on our attributions. Do we attribute the flattery to ingratiation — to a self-serving strategy? Is
the person trying to get us to buy something, to acquiesce sexually, to do a favor? If so, both the flatterer and the
praise lose appeal.
SELF-ESTEEM AND ATTRACTION
If you feel down about yourself, you will likely feel pessimistic about your relationships. Feel good about yourself and you’re
more likely to feel confident of your dating partner’s or spouse’s regard.

GAINING ANOTHER’S ESTEEM

When Sandra Murray and her co-workers (1996a, 1996b, 1997) studied dating and married couples, they found that the
happiest (and those who became happier with time) were those who idealized each other, who even saw their partners more
positively than their partners saw themselves. When we’re in love, we’re biased to find those we love not only physically
attractive but socially attractive, and we’re happy to have our partners view us with a similar positive bias
 What Is Love?
“Love is nature’s way of giving a reason to be living.”

• Passionate Love: A state of intense longing for union with another. Passionate lovers are absorbed in each other, feel
ecstatic at attaining their partner’s love, and are disconsolate on losing it.

• Passionate love is emotional, exciting, intense. Elaine Hatfield (1988) defined it as “a state of intense longing for
union with another”
 A THEORY OF PASSIONATE LOVE

• Two-factor theory of emotion: Arousal its label = emotion.

• According to this theory, being aroused by any source should intensify passionate feelings—provided that the
mind is free to attribute some of the arousal to a romantic stimulus. In a dramatic demonstration of this
phenomenon, Donald Dutton and Arthur Aron (1974) had an attractive young woman approach individual
young men as they crossed a narrow, wobbly, 450- foot-long suspension walkway hanging 230 feet above
British Columbia’s rocky Capilano River. The woman asked each man to help her fill out a class questionnaire.
When he had finished, she scribbled her name and phone number and invited him to call if he wanted to hear
more about the project. Most accepted the phone number, and half who did so called. By contrast, men
approached by the woman on a low, solid bridge, rarely called. Once again, physical arousal accentuated
romantic responses.
 Companionate Love
• companionate love: The affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined.
 What Enables Close Relationships?
What factors influence the ups and downs of our close relationships? Let’s consider three factors:
attachment styles, equity, and self-disclosure.
• Attachment:

• Preoccupied attachment: Attachments marked by a sense of one’s own unworthiness and anxiety,
ambivalence, and possessiveness.
• Dismissive attachment: An avoidant relationship style marked by distrust of others.

• fearful attachment: An avoidant relationship style marked by fear of rejection.

• Equity: A condition in which the outcomes people receive from a relationship are proportional to what
they contribute to it.
 How Do Relationships End?
Often love dies. What factors predict marital dissolution? How do couples typically detach from or renew their relationships?

• Divorce: “Keeping romance alive” was rated as important to a good marriage by 78 percent of American women

• People usually stay married if they

– married after age 20 .

– both grew up in stable, two-parent homes .

– dated for a long while before marriage .

– are well and similarly educated .

– enjoy a stable income from a good job .

– live in a small town or on a farm .

– did not cohabit or become pregnant before marriage .

– are religiously committed.

– are of similar age, faith, and education .

• The Detachment Process: Severing bonds produces a predictable sequence of agitated preoccupation with the lost partner, followed by deep

sadness and, eventually, the beginnings of emotional detachment, a return to normal living, and a renewed sense of self.
TAKE CARE……….