Three Key Studies of Sociocultural Theories of Attraction (DP IB Psychology)

Key study one: Festinger et al. (2011)

Aim: To investigate the idea that proximity is a key factor in the formation of relationships

Participants: 

• Students at M.I.T. college who lived in rooms on 17 of the blocks on campus

• The blocks each had five rooms along the ground floor and five along the top floor with staircases at the end of each row

Procedure:

• Participants were interviewed and observed regularly across the course of the study

• At the conclusion of the study the participants were asked to name their three closest friends 

Results: 

• Friendships occurred more between students who lived on the same floor as each other compared with those living on a different floor

• The students who lived closest to the staircases were more likely to have made friends with those on a different floor compared to students whose rooms were away from the staircases

• Students who shared the same bed times or meal times were also more likely to form friendships

• 65% of the participant friendship pairs lived in the same building with 44% living next door to each other

• The expression of closeness to another student reduced as the distance between them reduced

• 41% expressed closeness when the distance was one door away, falling to 10% when the distance was four doors away

Conclusion: Proximity is a key factor in determining the formation of friendships

Evaluation of Festinger et al. (1950)

Strengths 

• The study is high in ecological validity:

  • The methods (interviews and naturalistic observations) mean that no variables were manipulated by the researchers

  • Lack of manipulation and the use of longitudinal design means that demand characteristics are unlikely to have affected the findings

• The use of 17 blocks located across the M.I.T. campus means that:

  • the researchers did not confine themselves to just one accommodation block

  • this use of several blocks makes their research more representative of the student body

Limitations 

• There may have been an array of extraneous variables that affected the study but which have nothing to do with what was being investigated, for example:

  • Some friendships may have been based on shared interests/activities

  • Some friendships may have been based on personality variables

  • Some friendships may have been between people who attended the same school as children

• The research is extremely dated:

  • In the 21st century friendships often develop remotely via online platforms

  • This lack of current relevance means that the study lacks temporal validity

Key study two: Moreland & Beach (1992)

Aim: To investigate the mere exposure effect on ratings of familiarity and attractiveness

Participants:

• 130 students from a university in the USA

• The participants were naïve (unaware) as to their involvement in the study

• This was an opportunity sample which drew participants from the specific classes they were taking at the time the study was conducted 

Procedure:

• The researchers set up a real-life, real-time field experiment using a longitudinal design

• The researchers used four female confederates of college age who were rated as physically similar to each other

• The confederates were instructed to attend college classes with the participants but not to interact with them; in other words, to be ‘merely’ present

• The confederates attended classes either:

  • 0 times

  • 5 times

  • 10 times

  • 15 times 

  • each confederate was allocated only one of these conditions

  • number of classes attended per confederate was the independent variable

• After the experimental phase was over the participants were then asked to:

  • look at photographs of each of the four confederates

  • rate each woman on specific variables including how familiar and how attractive they were

Results

• There was strong support for mere exposure influencing attraction:

  • the female confederate who had been seen the most times (15 in total) by participants was rated as being more attractive and likeable than the females who had been seen less often

Conclusion: The mere exposure effect may produce a feeling that a familiar face is preferred because it stimulates a ‘fellow feeling

Evaluation of Moreland & Beach (1992)

Strengths

• The use of naïve participants and in a real-life, real-time environment makes the study high in ecological validity

• The implementation of four levels of the independent variable means that the researchers had some degree of control over the procedure, which is not easy to achieve in naturalistic conditions

Limitations

• The fact that this was a field experiment does mean that there may have been an array of extraneous variables that could have confounded the results, for example:

  • The more highly-rated confederate could have conformed more to conventional beauty standards than the others

  • The more highly-rated confederate may have resembled a popular film or music star

  • An evolutionary mechanism could have influenced the rating:

    • Someone who becomes familiar presents less of a threat than an outsider

    • Someone familiar may be viewed as ‘one of us’ i.e. part of our ‘tribe’

• Replicating the study would be possible but the researchers could not be confident that they would obtain the same results because:

  • they would have to use a different sample from another college or at a different time

  • this reduces the reliability of the findings

Key study three: Gupta & Singh (1992)

Aim: To investigate the success of arranged marriages compared to love marriages

Participants:

• 50 couples who were students at the University of Rajasthan in India 

• 25 of the couples had married for love; the other 25 couples had an arranged marriage.

• Some of the couples had been married for less than a year; others had been married for twenty years, and the rest fell somewhere between these two extremes

Procedure:

• Each participant was interviewed separately

• Each participant was asked to give their responses to questions based on a scale of liking and loving which measured the following variables:

  • Attachment: The need to be cared for and be with the other person.

  • Caring: Valuing the other person’s happiness and needs as much as your own.

  • Intimacy: Sharing private thoughts, feelings, and desires with the other person.

• The participants were given statements based on the levels of attachment, caring and intimacy shown by them or to their partners, for example:

  • I feel that I can confide in X

  • I feel very possessive towards X

Results: 

• The higher the score, the more ‘in love’ the couple was deemed to be

• Those couples who had married for love and those who had been married for one year or less scored on average 70 out of 91 points

• Love marriage couples who had been married 10 years or more had an average score of 40 out of 91

• Arranged marriage couples scored 58 out of 91 for those married one year or less and 68 out of 91 for those who had been married for 10 years or more 

• In short, the couples in love marriages started out strong and ‘in love’ but this declined rapidly as the years passed

• The arranged marriage couples started out with fewer feelings of liking/loving but as the years progressed so did their feelings of liking/loving

Conclusion: Arranged marriages are more successful than love marriages over time

Evaluation of Gupta & Singh (1982)

Strengths

• The fact that this study was carried out by Indian researchers using Indian participants means that it is high in cultural relativism: 

  • the idea that behaviours, beliefs, morals and attitudes are meaningful from within that culture itself and that one perspective alone is not absolute

• The use of the liking/loving scale makes the study replicable:

  • it could be carried out repeatedly to test for external reliability

Limitations

• The sample size of 50 is small, and only represents married couples from one university in India, and therefore the results cannot be easily generalised

• A scale is a limited method of measuring complex variables such as feelings and emotions