Personal relationships Essay Example for Free

Personal relationships Essay As human beings we all have similar interests however, Rosenbaum (1986b) proposed a repulsion interpretation for this well –established relationship. According to Rosenbaum, attitude similarity does not lead to liking, but attitude dis-similarity does indeed lead to repulsion. Attraction toward a person described by the individual’s personality alone differs when paired with a photograph or political affiliation. With the popularity of social networking and the internet it might be useful to research the subjects of physical attractiveness and similarity when the intimacy factor is absent. Although 94% of internet daters deny that their profile contains any fibs (Gibbs et al,. 2006), psychologists Toma et al. (2008) decided to measure the heights and weights of 80 internet daters, as well as checking their driving licences for real age. When this data was checked against their profiles, it was found at least nine out of ten had lied on at least one of the attributes measured. The most frequent anomaly was in regards to weight. Women tended to shave pounds off, while men gave themselves a boost in height. Even though the vast majority fibbed on their profile it was only by a small amount as most people want to meet up eventually. Toma and Hancock (2010) took photographs of the internet daters and compared them to their online profile pictures. Although less physically attractive people were the most likely to choose a self-enhancing photo, overall the differences were minimal towards the lab photo. Scholars say a certain amount of fibbing is socially even necessary to compete in the online dating world. By boosting one’s attributes, they can increase their chances of a relationship developing in the future. So this would point to the fact that we value goods looks not just in other people but also in ourselves. Opposites attract, well this is not the case when it comes to internet dating. Fiore and Donarth (2005) examined data from 65,000 online daters, the found that people were choosing based on similarities to themselves. That includes ethnicity and religion. Of all the data analysed 80% of the contacts initiated by white members were to other white members, and only 3% were made to black members. Online dating agencies have taken advantage of this fact by setting up dating websites to caterer to this for example JustChristian. com, or Afrointrodution. com. Although researching internet dating is a good way of examining interpersonal relationships, there is only limited data on how well it works. Most of the research is based on heterosexual daters therefore ignores the comparison with homosexual daters. Most people think of it in consumerist terms (Heino et al, . 2010) users are â€Å"Relation shopping†, looking at other people’s features weighing them up, then choosing potential partners, as though from a catalogue, its human relationships reduced to check boxes. Social psychological studies have not so much influenced our opinion on interpersonal attraction, but reinforced the reasons why we find people attractive for example; physical attraction, proximity, familiarity or reciprocal liking. Most of the research is potentially artificial focusing on forced social settings or attitude surveys. It can ignore ecological or cultural relationship criteria. What is prevalent though is the need to form relationships with other people maybe for romantic reasons or friendship. References 1. : Walster et al. 1966. (N/A). Matching hypothesis. Available http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/matching_hypothesis. Last accessed 28th Jan 2012. 2. Duck S. (1995). Repelling the study of attraction. The Psychologist, N/A (8), 60-63. 3. http://www.prenhall.com/divisions/hss/app/amberdigital/aronson/content/10.pdf. (accessed on 28/01/2013) 4. Arthur Aron, Jodie L Steele, Todd b Kashdan, Max Perez (2006)When similars do not attract: Test of a prediction from the self- expansion model, personal relationships 13, 387-39 5. P H Aronson Interpersonal attraction from first impressions to close relationships chapter 10 http://www.prenhall.com/divisions/hss/app/amberdigital/aronson/content/10.pdf 6. http://www.nytimes.com/2011/11/13/fashion/online-dating-as-scientific-research.html?pagewanted=all_r=0 7. http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/09/online-dating-10-psychological-insights.php