Same Level Of Physical Attractiveness example essay topic

319 words
When it comes to interpersonal attraction and intimate relationships, it is popularly believed that love is what makes the world go round, although Rubin and McNeil (1983) believed it had more to do with liking. They proposed that love, was not an 'intense physical symptom' but that it was a particular sort of attitude that one person has towards another. Dion et al (1972) picked up on this opinion of love being merely an attitude and devised the attractiveness stereotype. He found that photos of more attractive people were credited with more desirable qualities, thus forming the hypothesis that attractive people have more attractive personalities. Another hypothesis about attractiveness formed was the social exchange theory, proposed by Roger Brown (1986).

This predicts that individuals who are willing to become romantically involved with each other will be fairly closely matched in their ability to reward one another. Brown's hypothesis seems to have similar grounds to that of Berscheid et al (1971). He claimed that couples who have affectionate relations should appear to be of the same level of physical attractiveness to outside observers. It is this statement, which may have led to Murstein's work on the 'matching hypothesis' in 1972. He took photographs of 99 couples.

Participants (Judges) rated the photographs on a five-point scale on their level of attractiveness without knowing who the couples were. The couples also had to rate their own partners physical attractiveness. The participants' ratings strongly supported the matching hypothesis and partners received very similar ratings and theses were more alike than the same ratings given to random couples (i.e. the actual couples randomly sorted into couples to form a control group). He concluded that 'Individuals with equal market value for physical attractiveness are more likely to associate in an intimate relationship... than individuals with disparate values'. Cardwell et al (1992).