Concepts of Attraction and Mating Preferences

Concepts of Attraction and Mating Preferences

  • Submitted By: tanya1
  • Date Submitted: 03/02/2009 1:41 PM
  • Category: Psychology
  • Words: 595
  • Page: 3
  • Views: 565

Coursework Introduction For many years, psychologists have been interested in looking at the concepts of attraction and mating preferences. They have looked into many different psychological theories of Interpersonal attraction. One of these includes the matching hypothesis theory (Walster et al 1966). The matching hypothesis can be explained in two aspects, which are physically attractiveness and matching. According to the matching hypothesis, people are attracted to others who have a similar level of attractiveness to themselves. It also states that we are likely to seek out people similar to others, whether it being intelligence, hobbies etc. Lastly the theory looks at self-esteem. When a person is feeling low in self-esteem, they are more likely that they will target someone who is less likely to reject them. Socio biological refers to the use of evolutionary ideas to explain the social behaviour of animals. In non human relationships, much of it is genetically programmed. However, the further we move up the evolutionary scale, the less this seems to be the case. Wilson (1975) argues that human sexual attraction and behaviour may be explained through an understanding of ‘survival-efficiency’. He believes that it is an interest of a man to impregnate as many women as possible so his genes can be passed onto the next person. He linked this to the idea that males would like their genes to be passed down into the next generation. Cross cultural variation represents the idea that human mate selection can be generalised to all cultures. Psychologists like to find out if their study is global rather then local. One psychologist who did this was Buss. Buss suggested that “In China, nearly every individual, both male and female, view virginity as indispensable”. The Socio Biological theory also emphasises the idea that the male generation seek for women who are most fertile. Buss carried out at study and asked people from 37 different cultures to state which...

Similar Essays