The Major Leading Cause of Romantic Attraction between Males and Females - Essay Example

Sample This research was conducted to investigate the major leading cause of romantic attraction between males and females among the four basic principles of attraction namely, reciprocity, similarity, security, beauty (i.e. physical attractiveness), etc. Although a good number of studies have been done already in this regard, the study under consideration was basically another try to search the causal factor of romantic attraction in a more controlled and confounding-free manner. In order to this, the researchers of this study first of all designed their study in a manner that could yield such results that can be more easily generalized on a wide scale i.e. the results that can possess high external validity along with the internal validity. Their first and foremost consideration was to design a study that could be done in a natural setting and in the most natural way possible. Therefore, instead of conducting a controlled experiment where confidants are used to act as a fake dating partner (as has been done previously in most of the researches), the researchers selected the real-life encounter method, speed-dating, which has recently started gaining popularity. It was hypothesized that since the four basic principles of attraction do not play their role in romantic attraction individually rather these principles also correlate with other factors such as demographics characteristics, personal values, attitudes, interests, and individual personality characteristics which includes introversion, extraversion, conscientiousness, neuroticism, agreeableness as well as affectivity and individuals’ level of self-esteem. Thus, all these factors were taken into consideration. Moreover, increasing the external validity of the research through studying romantic attraction in real-life setting i.e. speed-dating was also a main target of the researchers. The study included one hundred and eight heterosexual college students (54 males and 54 females). The average age of students was 19.5 years and all the students were selected on the basis of their current relationship status i.e. only those students were selected who were currently single. The participants were given course credits as reinforcement in exchange of the participation. The research was conducted in three weeks in total. Participants were supposed to participate in three sessions (pre-event, at-event, and post-event) that were conducted with one week’s gap. At the pre-event session, the participants were gathered together in a laboratory and after introduction to the study’s details; they were given a set of questionnaires which included a demographics sheet (sex, age, ethnicity, height, weight, and religion) along with questionnaires to rate their political attitudes, personal values, interests, personality characteristics (Big Five Inventory), affectivity (Positive and Negative Affect Schedule), and self-esteem (Rosenberg’s Self-Esteem Scale). After one week, the participants gathered again for the second session, the at-event, in this, all the participants were allotted an identity number and name tag and the room was arranged for a dyadic seating arrangement. All the participants were then given ten one-page questionnaires (which asked about their feelings and perceptions about the partner with whom they just had a date) to be filled after each of their speed-dates. The time duration allowed for one speed-date was five minutes. Again after one week of at-event, the last session took place i.e. post-event session. In this session, the participants were provided a feed-back sheet which included their response to the question that asked if they would be interested in seeing the partner from their speed-dates in future along with the photographs of each partner. Also, they were given two one-page questionnaires, a self-rating questionnaire and a partner-rating questionnaire, to be filled. According to the findings of this study, considering the physical characteristics of the participants, men were found to be heavier and taller than women. Also, it was found that men engaged in more sports activities whereas women were tilted more towards fun, art, and social activities whereas, both men and women, did not differ on their political attitudes and personal values. Furthermore, it was revealed that women scored higher on two personality characteristics namely, neuroticism and extroversion than men while men reported greater attraction than women. Moreover, in initial romantic attraction, the dyadic relationship (i.e., how much do these two individuals like each other?) accounted for initial romantic attraction more as compared to the actor (i.e., how much does this person like every partner?) and partner (i.e., how much does everyone like this partner?) variables. The correlation and meta-analysis between self-characteristics and romantic attraction revealed that self-characteristics predicted women’s attraction more than men’s. In addition to this, the correlation between partner characteristics and attraction indicated that partner characteristics matter to men with regard to attraction more than it matter to women. Moreover, no significant effect of the factor of similarity was found for the attraction between participants whereas a significant positive correlation was found between reciprocity and attraction only after the participants’ received a positive feedback from their speed-date partners (i.e. in the post-event session). Considering the overall research, the researchers’ idea of conducting a study in a more natural setting as compared to the previously done researches and utilizing the concept of speed-dating was remarkable. Furthermore, the usage of Social Relational Model and meta-analysis for the purpose of statistically analyzing the results served to evaluate the variables in more comprehensive manner. Nonetheless, despite the efforts of researchers to make this study able to depict high external validity, it still seems unfair to do so. One of the main reasons for this is the sample size used in the study which was small. Also, since the average age of the participants lied in the teenage group, it would not be fair to generalize the results on the college students in general. Furthermore, the use of self-rating questionnaires usually comes under the suspect of acting as a confounding since one cannot be sure whether the participants have answered honestly and truly or not. It should also be kept in mind that this study included only college students, thus, the results cannot be generalized on non-college students’ population. Lastly, since the study was conducted in a quite controlled manner, it possesses high internal validity. The study, due to its inclusion of wide domains of other factors that might possible be linked to the development of romantic attraction, has played an important role in providing many areas to take into account for future researches in this regard. Moreover, a large sample size, wide age group, along with the inclusion of non-college students adult (as researchers have pointed out) would be fruitful for replications of the present study. References Luo, S., & Zhang, G. (2009). What Leads to Romantic Attraction: Similarity, Reciprocity, Security, or Beauty? Evidence From a Speed-Dating Study. Journal of personality, 77(4), 933–964. Read More