Research Paper on Social Psychology: Attraction and Intimacy

Introduction

Arguably, existing literature substantiates that intimacy and attraction are the universal emotions that have become common not only in families, and marriages but also in the society, as a whole. In particular, psychologists contend that intimacy is the sense of one being overly honest and open with a partner about their personal thoughts and feelings, which are often not expressed in other of their relationships. On the other hand, with reference to the social psychological context, the attraction is inclusive of proximity, physical attractiveness, reciprocity, and similarity. A growing body of psychological research substantiates that romantic attraction, which has proximity to intimacy, is primarily determined by physical attractiveness. Therefore, drawing from this conceptual base, this research paper seeks to evaluate existing research literature on the social psychology of attraction and intimacy.

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Firstly, researchers, Lehmiller, Graziano, and VanderDrift (2015) in their study investigated how social influence impacts interracial relationships, specifically between white heterosexual individuals and their African American counterparts. The study made use of the within-subjects experimental design, the conservative participants, at the end of the study, reported greater attraction as well as more intimacy and dating interest in White targets as compared to the Black targets. On the other hand, the liberal heterosexual participants indicated ratings that did not have significant differences from one another. This, according to the researchers, was an indication of the impacts of social influence on the perceptions of intimacy and attractiveness even in differing political climates.

In particular, the study points out that today, in the United States, interracial marriages have reached an all-time high. This, in essence, is characterized by a significant number of couples of different racial backgrounds, who according to statistics, make up about 8.4% of all the marriages in the United States. Based on this context, researchers have found the psychology of social influence to be a reliable factor that influences the perceptions of how individuals view their potential intimate or romantic partners (Castro, Hattori, Yamamoto, & Lopes, 2014). Consistent with these findings, the impact of social psychology was also substantiated through reports from members of interracial couples who report significant disapproval from their family members, friends, and the society at large. More specifically, one of the many nationality representative surveys evidenced that an approximate of two out of every five Americans confessed that they would not be comfortable if a member of their family married someone of another race. In this regard, although attraction and intimacy a solely dependent on the choices and the preferences of individuals, the society have a great impact on whether or not the intimacy will thrive. For example, Myers and Crowther (2009) contend that the high levels of perceived disapproval from members of the family and the society as a whole, predicts future breakups.

An evaluation of the studies done in the modern day today substantiates that interracial relationships primarily focus on the attitudes of the people towards them and the outcomes associated with involvements of such kind. According to the scholars of the current study, both the male and the females who participated in the study perceived the desirability of their potential romantic partner as a result of the influence they received from peer evaluations of various features of the target. For instance, some of these features were such as the partner's expressiveness, their attractiveness, and their working potential among many others. To a broader extent, a majority of the participants reported greater attraction as well as an intense feeling of intimacy towards their partners depending on whether their peers had evaluated the targets as being highly expressive, attractive and also having significant earning potential. The vice versa of these observations also carried a lot of weight. This means that, when peer evaluations of the target partner were low on the specified characteristics, the participants, in turn, found these targets as less attractive and as a result, no form of intimacy was developed (Fugere, Leszczynski, & Cousins, 2015).

In a similar regard, scholars who specifically focus on the impact that social psychology has on both attractiveness and intimacy substantiate that social psychology influence which is characterized by peer influence has a significant impact of the participants' judgments of the dating desirability as well as the physical attractiveness of their targets. Notably, when compared to a no information control condition, male and female participants whose decisions were biased when they were made to believe that peers had initially evaluated their prospective intimate target, indicated positivity as well as increased interests towards dating these targets. On the contrary, in many cases that the participants' peers evaluated the potential targets negatively, the dating, as well as the intimacy interest significantly, decreased leading to a consequent decrease in the chances that the participant may eventually end up developing a form of intimacy with the target. Therefore, drawing from this conceptual base, the researchers of the current study found out that the processes of social influence play a crucial and a significant role in the development of the initial attraction which in turn determines whether or not, intimacy will be initiated between the participants and the targets.

With reference to socially normative targets, scholars in the modern day today investigate the effects that peer influence has both intimacy and attractiveness. Schaefer and Thompson (2014) point out that the normative social targets are centered on whether the intimacy or the romantic target in question, is of a similar age or race with the participant. Despite the fact that there is no existing study clearly stipulates the extent to which social influence goes concerning the attraction judgment, the current study seeks to establish whether peer influence extends to the perceptions of targets of different races, or even the targets who bare varying demographic characteristics. Although the effects of social influence would replicate in cases where the demographic characteristics of the targets vary from one another, the attraction processes seem to be fundamentally different in extents where the participants are actually considering non-traditional relationships.

Also, racial disparities which may result in racial prejudice are said to characterize the social psychology that has significant impacts on the participants' attractiveness towards their targets. For instance, in the current study, the researchers found out that the white conservatives' desire for the African American intimate or romantic partners was substantially lower as compared to that of the white liberals. Therefore, borrowing from contentions on racial prejudice as made by (), the scholars argue that the disparity between the white conservatives and the liberals may be due to the fact that conservatism is deemed as a component that represents symbolic racism, which is a belief system that stems from the ideology that discrimination is a non-issue for the Black, and also the stereotype that people of color are too demanding and that they often get more than they actually deserve. However, Carnahan and Anderson (2015) give a disclaimer that regardless of the findings of the study, this does not mean that a majority or even all the conservatives are inherently racist. Instead, Adams (1977) argues that there could be several other factors that significantly play the role of explaining the existing link between low interracial dating desire and conservatism, other than prejudice, for instance reduced intergroup contact.

The conflict in theory of this particular study is based on the fact that the scholars of this current study primarily focused on white, heterosexual individuals who were intimately interested and attracted towards targets of the opposite sex, who were either White or Black. Besides, the primary why this particular study focused on heterosexual individuals other than participants from other sexual orientations was the fact that the participants were from a college setting and the recruitment of non-heterosexuals from college students proved to be a daunting task and hence insufficient numbers to examine them independently.

With reference to the results and findings of this particular study, reliable effects of social influence on the attraction of participants to prospective romantic or intimate targets. Controversies relating to the issue of attractiveness and intimacy, in this case, stemmed from the fact that a majority of the decisions made by the participants regarding their attractiveness to the individuals were overly dependent on the opinions of their peers. Besides, the participants of the current study found their targets who were either of their own race or a different race to be more attractive or as better intimate potentials as compared to those others from different races. In addition, the decisions made by the participants were in line with the thoughts presented to them by their peers.

Owing to the fact that interaction in a social psychological context refers to the positive feelings towards another person, the present research identifies a significant theoretical controversy. For instance, concerning physical attractiveness, the scholars found out that the target's physical attractiveness primarily determines romantic or intimate attractions. However, the controversy comes in when a person's attractiveness is biased by their peers' opinions relating to the appearance of the target. This, according to scholars, is what is deemed as the effects of social psychology on both attraction and intimacy. In a similar regard, with reference to the hypothesis of this particular study, both physical attractiveness and similarity were observed to be the most influential in the production of attraction which could eventually lead to intimacy (Van de Bongardt, Reitz, Sandfort & Dekovic, 2014). Besides attraction was in one way or the other, supported by the frequencies of attracting a future or a potential mate. Therefore, the fact that each and every person, the participants, takes notice when there is an attractive person in his or her midst leads to the conclusion that mature individuals are usually aware or the fact that the mere fact that a potential intimate partner is attractive is not a sufficient reason to sustain a relationship. Despite the fact that peer influence had a lot to do with choices in partners or intimate targets, made by the participants, it was also evident that when choosing partners, participants of the study also cared much about how the individual would fit in their lives.

With reference to the varying points highlighted in the current study, there are certain gaps in this regard that ought to be filled by future research. More fundamentally, future work should look into the differences in sexuality through the inclusion of participants from various other sexual orientations other than just heterosexual individuals. By so doing the studies will be in a position to determine whether sexuality has a role to play when it comes to the initial attraction and the initiation of intimacy with a potential partner. While the present study did attempt to recruit some of the homosexuals among the college students, the results were said to be insufficient owing to the fact that a majority of them did not want to give their honest opinion...