Homophily in Romantic Coupling PDF

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Dr. Muraco...

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Monday, November 2, 2015

Homophily in Romantic Coupling Attraction

- Components that lead to attraction, according to prior studies: - Similarity/homophily • includes race, education levels, religion

- Geographic Proximity - Physical Attraction - Reciprocity: shared level of liking Similarity / Homophily

- Similarity leads to liking for both friendship and romantic relationship - Similarity in race, class, education, and religion - Byrne and Nelson (1965): Bogus Stranger • Participants read questionnaire about attitudes (about sex, tv shows) allegedly competed by another participant, the Bogus Stranger.

• Researchers manipulated responses to be similar to participant • Proportion of similarity more important than number of similar attitudes: 7 out of 10 traits

Attraction (2)

- Matching hypothesis (Walster, 1966): pick partners who are about equal in physical attractiveness to themselves

- Computer match date study (1966-1969): 750+ students rated on physical attractiveness by four judges, randomly paired men and women

• People w/ higher level of attractiveness, less satisfied with date!

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• Partners that were similar in terms of physical attractiveness expressed more liking for each other

Proximity

- MIT dorm study (Festinger, Schachter, and Back, 1950) - 300 students list their closest friends - When someone lived one door away, 41% likelihood they were a close friend; as the number of doors increased, the likelihood decreased (those living four doors away had 10% likelihood of being close friend)

Physical Attractiveness

- Dion, Berscheid and Walster (1972): Students viewed photos of people at varying levels of attractiveness.

• Based solely on the photographs, rated the most attractive people as more kind, outgoing, modest, and interesting

• Also perceived more attractive people as having better jobs, marriages, and lives

- Bias toward beauty; we ascribe positive attributes based on physical attractiveness

Attraction Conclusion

- Romantic attraction linked to similarity, proximity, physical attractiveness, and reciprocity

- How does it connect to today’s reading? • fairly high proximity nearly all groups demonstrated bias towards homophilyyyyy for dates and longterm relationships

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