Strangers in a Strange Lab: How Personality Shapes Our Initial Encounters with Others

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Author: William Ickes

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Strangers in a Strange Lab

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Strangers in a Strange Lab How Personality Shapes Our Initial Encounters with Others

William Ickes

1 2009

1 Oxford University Press, Inc., publishes works that further Oxford University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education. Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shanghai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam

Copyright Ó 2009 by Oxford University Press, Inc. Published by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press, Inc. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Ickes, William John. Strangers in a strange lab : how personality shapes our initial encounters with others / William Ickes. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-19-537295-3 (hardcover : alk. paper) 1. Social interaction. 2. Personality. 3. Social psychology. I. Title. HM1111.I36 2010 155.90 27–dc22 2009003488 9 8 7

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Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

To my colleagues and collaborators: this one’s for you.

Instructors: Visit the companion web site for discussion questions http://www.oup.com/us/stranger

Contents

1

Some People, Other People

1

2

Strangers in a Strange Lab

16

3

Sex

4

Race/Ethnicity

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Birth Order 72

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Physical Attractiveness

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The Taijitu of Androgyny 103

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The Big Five

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Shyness and Self-Consciousness

34 53

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121 142

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Self-Monitoring

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How It All Adds Up: An Integration

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Acknowledgments References Index

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1 Some People, Other People

Some people feel mutual attraction, Other people feel mutual dislike. Some people will make a connection, Other people will just take a hike. Some people will get it together, Other people will keep it apart. Some people are right for each other, Other people are wrong from the start. Some people just fit well together, Other people don’t fit well at all. Some people make each other larger, Other people make each other small. Why is it that some people get along, whereas other people don’t? Why do some people’s personalities bring them together, whereas other people’s personalities push them apart? More generally, how do people’s personalities affect the quality–and the quantity–of the interactions they have with others? These questions are important. Unless we have perfected the art of hermitry, we all have to deal with other people during the time we spend on this planet. There are, perhaps, long periods of time when we can hold the social world at bay by staying at home reading, watching TV, listening to music, surfing the Internet, and so on. Sooner or later, however, all of us have to interact with other people.

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We must do such things as sign for a delivery, get a tooth pulled, protest a billing error, or deal with the consequence of ignoring a summons for jury duty. Of course, most of us aren’t hermits; we want to be involved with other people, at least in some of the more enjoyable ways. Most of us want to swap stories, trade favors, share experiences, fall in love, have sex, get married, raise a family, and live to a ripe old age with people we care about. But we’re usually pretty choosy about the people we want to do these things with. After all, we don’t want to swap stories with a bore who tells us the same old stories over and over again. We don’t want to trade favors with a person who is happy to receive all the favors we give but consistently fails to reciprocate. We don’t want to fall in love with someone who is likely to break our heart. We don’t want to have sex with someone who isn’t ‘‘safe’’ to have sex with. And we don’t want to marry a philandering narcissist or to put ourselves under the heavy thumb of a control freak. If we want to avoid such unpleasant outcomes, we need to know something about what kinds of people get along well together and what kinds of people don’t. More specifically, I need to know what kinds of people I am likely or unlikely to get along with, and you need to acquire the same knowledge in regard to yourself. But where can we go to get this knowledge? And, more importantly, how can we be confident that the knowledge we obtain is valid?

APHORISMS One way to acquire such knowledge (not my favorite) is to rely on aphorisms. An aphorism is a pithy little saying that is intended to convey a small nugget of folk wisdom. According to its definition on the website www.answers.com, an aphorism is ‘‘a tersely phrased statement of a truth or opinion; an adage.’’ Not all aphorisms are equally valid, and some are clearly better than others. For example, in my opinion, the aphorism ‘‘A fool and his money are soon parted’’ is one of the better ones. I haven’t done any research on the topic, but I’d be willing to bet that this adage holds true nearly all of the time. (Of course, if my insight is poor, that might actually be a fool’s wager!) On the other hand, there is reason

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STRANGERS IN A STRANGE LAB

to doubt the validity and generality of certain aphorisms that seek to describe the kinds of people who are likely to gravitate to each other and ‘‘hit it off.’’ For example, one of these aphorisms holds that ‘‘Birds of a feather flock together,’’ whereas another aphorism says that ‘‘Opposites attract.’’ If taken as valid generalizations, both of these statements can’t be true because they are logically inconsistent with each other. The first statement suggests that similar people are the ones most likely to gravitate toward each other, whereas the second statement suggests that dissimilar people are the ones most likely to do that. Either the first statement is true most of the time and the second statement is true only occasionally or not at all, or the second statement is true most of the time and the first statement is true only occasionally or not at all. Worse yet, there is a third possibility. Given their inherent contradiction of each other, it is possible that both statements are untrue and that neither of them can be trusted. You can see the problem here. Although aphorisms may be highly memorable and often amusing, they are not our best source of information about what kinds of people are likely to get along well together and what kinds of people aren’t. If we want to know whether similar people are more likely than dissimilar people to attract each other and to get along well, we should probably look elsewhere for our answer.

POPULAR CULTURE Suppose we examine popular culture? Perhaps the answer we are seeking can be found there–in fables, books, plays, and films, or even television programs. After all, people have, for centuries, relied on popular culture to help them interpret the world around them and navigate more effectively in it. When we make even a cursory inquiry into what popular culture has to tell us about how similar versus dissimilar people are apt to relate to each other, the answer we get is more complicated than we can express in a simple and unqualified aphorism or two. As we will see, more complicated and qualified aphorisms are needed: ‘‘Opposites usually don’t attract each other, but sometimes they do,’’ and ‘‘Birds of a feather usually do flock together, but sometimes they don’t.’’

SOME PEOPLE , OTHER PEOPLE

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There is one simple observation that we can make, however. For if it is not generally true that opposites attract each other, it is generally true that ‘‘opposites’’ attract attention–the attention of all the rest of us. Indeed, it appears that for as long as people have been telling stories to each other, they have been fascinated by opposites– or, as I like to call them, ‘‘odd couples.’’ Odd couples are composed of two individuals whose personalities are distinctly–and even diametrically–different. Here are a few famous and not-so-famous examples of odd couples that have captured the public’s interest and imagination:

The Bible Esau and Jacob were an odd couple even as unborn fraternal twins. According to one religious scholar, Esau kicked in his mother’s womb whenever she passed a place of idolatry, whereas Jacob did his kicking whenever she passed a place where the Torah was studied. Out of the womb, Esau grew to be a hairy man; Jacob a smooth one. Esau was a man of the earth–a ruddy-skinned outdoorsman. Jacob was a dweller in tents–a scholar who liked to stay inside and read. Eventually, Jacob tricked Esau out of his birthright, and their relationship never recovered.

Aesop’s Fables The hard-working Ant toiled through the summer months to store up food for the winter, while the carefree Grasshopper chirped and sang the days away. When the inevitable cold front arrived, the industrious Ant was warm and well-fed in its underground burrow and the lazy Grasshopper was dead. What lesson did the lazy Grasshopper learn? None. It was dead.

Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde Henry Jekyll is a kindly English physician who is dedicated to acts of charity and the preservation of life. His nemesis, Edward Hyde, is a selfish libertine whose epic drinking bouts lead him to acts of depravity and murder. Inconveniently, the two of them share the same body. If you think this arrangement can’t end well, you’re right.

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Gone with the Wind Scarlett O’Hara is the quintessential Southern belle: vain, willful, and capricious. Melanie Hamilton is her temperamental opposite: modest, compliant, and loyal. They both fall for Mr. Ashley Wilkes, and several hundred pages of drama ensue.

The Odd Couple Felix Unger, a newswriter, is a neurotic, fastidious fussbudget who has just been evicted by his wife. He moves in with Oscar Madison, a recently divorced sportswriter who is the epitome of slovenliness. They each rail against the excesses of the other’s contrasting personality and, three acts later, you understand perfectly well why their wives couldn’t live with them.

Harold and Maude Harold is a young man in his 20s whose joy in life has been all but extinguished by his wealthy and domineering mother. Obsessed with death, he stages mock suicides and attends the funerals of strangers. At one of these funerals, he strikes up an acquaintance with Maude, a woman nearing her 80th birthday whose exuberance and joie de vivre seem almost as obsessive as Harold’s preoccupation with death. These opposites attract each other to such an extent that they initiate an unusual (some would say creepy) love affair.

Night Shift Chuck Lumley is a mild-mannered former stockbroker who has fled the stress and unpredictability of Wall Street to take a quiet and undemanding job as a night-shift attendant at the New York City morgue. To his extreme displeasure, he is quickly saddled with a new co-worker, Bill (‘‘Blaze’’) Blazejowski. Bill is Chuck’s temperamental opposite: a manic, fast-talking extravert who craves attention and excitement. By virtue of his more intense personality, Bill wins their subsequent battle for control of the morgue, turning it into a late-night brothel in which the meaning of the word ‘‘stiffs’’ expands to include a whole new set of clientele.


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Wife Swap Nowhere is the public’s fascination with contrasting personalities more evident than in the international TV series Wife Swap. In each episode, two housewives who are polar opposites in one or more respects go to live for two weeks with each other’s families. Sexual wife swapping isn’t part of the deal. Instead, each wife confronts the reality of the other wife’s contrasting lifestyle. During the first week, the visiting ‘‘wife’’ has to assume the actual wife’s rules and responsibilities, as outlined in a house manual that each wife leaves for the other. During the second week, the visiting ‘‘wife’’ has the opportunity to change things by providing her host family with her own set of rules which they must follow. By switching the focus back and forth from one household to the other, the show’s producers are able to illustrate the dramatic contrasts in the two wives’ personalities as they first react against a new environment that doesn’t suit them at all and then attempt to make that environment conform more closely to their own personality, values, and lifestyle preferences. As examples of how different the swapped wives can be, here are a few capsule summaries of episodes from the American edition of Wife Swap, as described on the website TV.com: Pitts/Polchios: On the premier episode, Caprice, a tidy and orderly mom, swaps lives with Bambi, a carefree and fun mom. Flummerfelt/Bray: An assertive, domineering wife of an inter-racial couple swaps lives with a subservient, stay-at-home wife from a very different minded inter-racial couple. Hodge/Kolpin: An animal rights activist mother who eats only raw food and has a vegan cat that doesn’t eat meat swaps lives with a back-country mom whose motto is ‘‘Kill it and grill it.’’ Stonerock/Finley: An outdoorsy mom who is married to a pastor swaps lives with a computer junkie wife of an atheist disc jockey.

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King/Reeves: A mother who pinches her pennies and strongly believes in teaching her children responsibility trades places with a mother who spends too freely and spoils her son at her husband’s expense. Kinison/Czerniawski: A tattooed mother, a freak show swaps places with a former Miss Teen. Thompson/Askam: Wiccan high priestess; traditional wife and mother. The old aphorism says that opposites attract, with the implication being that they attract each other. That is often not the case on Wife Swap, however. The last segment of each episode brings the two married couples together to discuss their experiences in front of the camera, and the results can be ugly. In many cases, wives who were appalled by what they found in each other’s homes– evidence of values, attitudes, and lifestyle preferences that they personally found offensive–are blunt and even vehement in their criticism of each other during this final ‘‘debriefing’’ session. The happier ending, in which both wives report that they have gained valuable insights while living in each other’s worlds that they can now use to make their own world better, is by no means guaranteed. Opposites also don’t attract each other in many of the other cases we have considered. For example, Esau and Jacob seem to have been pulling in different directions before they were even born. The Ant and the Grasshopper were also moving in different directions: one toward a prudent life, the other toward a careless death. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde quite literally could not abide each other; and, because they couldn’t live together, they had to die together. The apparent friendship of Scarlett O’Hara and Melanie Hamilton was instead a secret betrayal: it masked Scarlett’s secret desire for Melanie’s husband and her long-term scheme to win him for herself. And Felix Unger and Oscar Madison evoked the same exasperated feelings in each other that they had previously evoked in their respective wives. But, you may be thinking, what about the counter-examples, the cases in which the opposites do attract each other? Harold and Maude might be not be the perfect counter-example because its ‘‘plausibility quotient’’ is low, but can’t we find somewhat more


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plausible examples of odd couples attracting each other in the vast accumulation of popular culture? Yes–we can. When we do, however, we find that the attraction between the two ‘‘opposites’’ is usually not immediate but instead develops in a grudgingly slow manner and with much ambivalence. Here are a few of the better-known examples:

The African Queen Rose Sayer is a prim but imperious Christian missionary. Charlie Allnut is the coarse, gin-soaked captain of a steamboat that plies the rivers of German East Africa in 1914. In one of their first encounters, Charlie makes a poor impression on Rose when she offers him tea and he responds with audible stomach growls and a soggy, spitsoaked cigar. Not exactly love at first sight.

My Fair Lady Englishman Henry Higgins, a snobby, sexist professor of phonetics, meets Eliza Doolittle, a lower-class Londoner who speaks with a Cockney accent and sells flowers in the street. He finds her accent so deplorable that he disparages her to his colleague, Colonel Pickering, as ‘‘a prisoner of the gutter, condemned by every syllable she utters. By right she should be taken out and hung for the coldblooded murder of the English tongue.’’ This kind of abuse continues right up to the final scene.

Pretty Woman Edward Lewis is a wealthy and sophisticated corporate raider–a man who buys struggling companies at bargain prices and sells off the pieces for a handsome profit. Driving his black Ferrari in the Hollywood Hills one night, he gets lost and stops to ask directions of Vivian Ward–a 20-year-old prostitute who thinks he is stopping to ask her for a date. When she replies to his request for directions with ‘‘What, do I look like a tour guide?,’’ he responds by saying ‘‘No, you look like a hooker.’’ When he tells her that he is staying at the Regent Beverly Wilshire and says ‘‘I bet you know it,’’ she gets annoyed at his tone and says ‘‘Yeah, I peed in the fountain there once. Give me a break.’’

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Watching these extremely mismatched couples overcome their initial wariness of each other and eventually fall in love (or something approximating it) is definitely entertaining, but is it something that typically happens in everyday life? Don’t bet on it. No, the reason that ‘‘opposites attracting each other’’ has become such a dependable movie cliche´ is not that it mirrors reality, but that it is such an improbable occurrence that it can keep the audience glued to the film while delivering a powerful dramatic punch. In real life, unlike reel life, spinster missionaries rarely marry dissolute drunks, misogynist professors seldom fall for uneducated street vendors, and socially prominent businessmen rarely live happily ever after with hookers they pick up during late-night drives. We might as well acknowledge it. Fictional works–whether they take the form of stories, books, plays, or films–probably aren’t the most valid and reliable sources of information about how people’s personalities affect their relationships. They often take a substantial degree of dramatic license, and they often place a higher premium on entertainment value than on accurately representing what typically happens in everyday life. But what about ‘‘reality’’ television programs, such as Wife Swap? Don’t we get closer to the truth about how personality affects relationships in programs like these? The answer to this question is a qualified yes. It’s not difficult, for example, to imagine a reality television program called Odd Couples. In each episode, the producers would begin by identifying two people with distinctively different personalities. They would then recruit these two people to live together for an extended period of time in a ‘‘neutral’’ environment–a house or apartment that belongs to neither of them and that bears the imprint of neither individual’s personality. The daily interactions of each odd couple would be filmed and then edited to create a representative portrait of what their relationship during this time period was like. But would the result of this project be reality television or ‘‘reality’’ television? For a number of reasons, the reality and representativeness of the behavior that would appear in each Odd Couples episode is likely to be compromised. First, the members of each odd couple would know that their behavior is going to be filmed, edited for its interest value, and


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then seen by an audience of millions of people. Is it realistic to expect that behavior enacted in the presence of a camera crew with set lighting and tons of equipment is going to be the same as behavior enacted privately? Isn’t it more realistic to expect that the members of each odd couple would alter their behavior in ways that reflect their knowledge that their actions will be seen–and potentially evaluated by–a staggeringly large mass audience? Second, the people who would agree to appear on Odd Couples would probably differ in at least one key respect from the average viewer: they would, as a group, be much more narcissistic. Participants in reality television shows have been found to be unusually narcissistic in a study conducted by Los Angeles—based media psychologist Drew Pinsky and his academic colleague Mark Young.1 Given this finding, there is reason to expect that the participants on Odd Couples would behave more like ‘‘legends in their own minds’’ who are playing to the TV cameras than like everyday people who are just being themselves. Third, the interactions between the members of each odd couple would be edited not just for their interest value but for their dramatic content as well. Commercial television is just what it sounds like: it’s about attracting and retaining the largest possible audience of viewers for the purpose of maximizing revenue from advertisers and residual media outlets. The producers of Odd Couples would have an exceptionally strong motive to televise only the most dramatic, extreme, and entertaining moments of each of their odd couples’ interactions. All, or nearly all, of their more mundane and uneventful exchanges would wind up on the cutting room floor. How representative of everyday reality is that? In short, although many programs promise to deliver reality television, they typically deliver ‘‘reality’’ television instead. In ‘‘reality’’ television, the participants tend to be much more narcissistic than the average viewer; they are conscious of the fact that their actions will be seen and evaluated by an audience numbering in the millions; and only the most dramatic and entertaining moments

1 Young, S. M., and Pinsky, D. (2006). Narcissism and celebrity. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 463—471.

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of their interactions are likely to be shown. Although these programs may seem truer to real life than purely fictional (or fictionalized) works do, they are also not the best source of information about how people’s personalities affect their relationships.

PSYCHOLOGICAL RESEARCH In my opinion, the best source of this information comes from psychological research–and not just any kind of psychological research. For example, it doesn’t come from hypothetical scenario studies, in which participants are asked to imagine themselves interacting with someone who has a different (or a similar) personality and then tell us how they would think, feel, or act in this hypothetical situation. What people say they would do in a hypothetical situation is often very different from what they actually do when put into a real-life embodiment of that situation, as the results of many studies (beginning with a classic 1934 study by Richard LaPiere) have shown.2 Instead, the best source of information about the effect of different or similar personalities on people’s relationships comes from observational studies that contain some of the features of my fictional reality television program, Odd Couples, but correct for the kinds of problems that would compromise the validity and representativeness of the ‘‘data’’ that each of the Odd Couples episodes would report. By way of illustration, suppose that we studied the initial interaction of two people with either dissimilar personalities (odd couples) or similar personalities (not-so-odd couples) in a controlled laboratory setting instead of in a ‘‘reality’’ television program. Suppose that we kept our two participants unaware that they had dissimilar or similar personalities. Suppose that we also kept them unaware that we were studying their initial interaction, and that we used a concealed video camera and microphone setup to ensure that we could record their spontaneous, unstructured interaction behavior without their knowledge that it was being recorded. If we could conduct an observational study in which all of these features were present, we might be able to collect more valid and representative

2

LaPiere, R. T. (1934). Attitudes vs. actions. Social Forces, 13, 230—237.


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data about how two people’s personalities affect their earliest encounter with each other. This, in fact, is the kind of observational research that my colleagues and I have been doing since the fall semester of 1975, long before the ideas for ‘‘reality’’ television programs such as Wife Swap or Odd Couples came into the minds of actual or would-be series creators. In our own ‘‘series’’–a series of research studies that extends from the late 1970s to the present–we have put people with dissimilar or similar personalities together in the lab, have unobtrusively audio- and videotaped their interaction when the experimenter has left them alone together, and have subsequently asked them to report their thoughts, feelings, and perceptions about each other and about the interaction in which they just participated.

In this book, I am going to tell you about the results of these investigations–what my colleagues and I have learned during the past three decades about how people’s personalities shape their first encounters with others. Because nearly all of the studies I will report concern the initial interactions of people who were strangers when we first brought them together, the participants in these studies can indeed be described as ‘‘strangers in a strange lab.’’ The focus on strangers’ interactions will clearly dominate this book, but not to the complete exclusion of other types of interactions. In Chapter 11, for example, we will see how personality traits influence the relationships of married and cohabiting couples. Before I tell you any more about this research, let me start with a warning. This book is different from the typical ‘‘pop psychology’’ book in which clinicians or other long-term observers of human behavior offer their personal opinions, experience-based insights, and informed speculations about ‘‘why some people get along, whereas other people don’t.’’ Books of that type often include colorful anecdotes and pungent case-history examples. They provide lots of stories and opinions but relatively few facts. This isn’t one of those books. Although I will offer my own occasional opinions, experience-based insights, and informed speculation along the way, my primary goal in writing this book is to tell

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you about how personality actually does shape people’s encounters with each other, as opposed to how your humble narrator (or any self-proclaimed expert) thinks that it does. In short, I am writing for people who are more interested in scientific data than in personal opinions, colorful anecdotes, or pungent case-history examples.3 If that’s not you, you have come to the wrong place. Because this book focuses on the findings of scientific research, the journey we will take in the following chapters won’t always be an easy one. I am going to ask, encourage, and sometimes push you to think the way a research psychologist thinks. Although that mind-set isn’t quite as alien as the mind-set of Valentine Michael Smith, the Earthling who was raised by Martians in Robert Heinlein’s science fiction novel, Stranger in a Strange Land,4 it is probably not the one that you typically use to think about things. If it isn’t, you are likely to find this new mindset somewhat strange and challenging in the early chapters of this book, just as readers find Valentine Michael Smith’s mind-set strange and challenging in the early chapters of Heinlein’s classic novel. In the course of our journey through the rest of this book, we will see what the results of observational studies tell us about how our individual characteristics and personality traits affect our initial encounters with others. We will see how different aspects of these interactions are affected by such socio-demographic variables as the participants’ gender, their race/ethnicity, and their birth order. We will also examine the effects of the participants’ physical attractiveness and gender role orientation. We will then see how people’s initial interactions are shaped by their standing on the Big Five personality dimensions; by their standing on the personality dimensions of shyness, self-consciousness, and self-monitoring; and by the degree to which their personalities are dissimilar (our ‘‘odd couples’’) or similar (our ‘‘not-so-odd’’ ones). These are, of course, not the only individual difference factors that can, and do, affect our relationships with others. Our relationships are

3

The way I see it, personal opinions, anecdotes, and case-history examples are points of departure, not final destinations. That is, they are useful in getting us to think about some aspect of human behavior, but they seldom provide an adequate and comprehensive understanding of it. Properly used, they are an invitation to look at what the relevant research evidence shows. 4 Heinlein, R. A. (1987). Stranger in a strange land. New York: Berkley Publishing Group.


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obviously shaped by many other individual difference variables as well–far too many to consider in a short book like this. The reason I have chosen the present set is not because they are the only important ones, but because they are the ones for which I have the most interesting and reasonably complete stories to tell. Like most guides who have been around for awhile, I have learned the wisdom of showing people the terrain that I’m most familiar with and letting other guides take them to the places that they know well. The focus of this book is, for that reason, limited to the initial interactions of people who were brought together as strangers. This limited focus obviously reflects my own history of doing research on how personality influences initial interactions. However, it also reflects the impossibility of trying to convey– within a single short book–a coherent view of how personality affects relationships of all kinds, in all stages, and in all relevant classes of situations. People who are prepared to say ‘‘Yes, but . . .’’ whenever I report findings that might not apply outside the limited domain of the initial interactions between young adult strangers will have plenty of opportunities to do that in the pages to follow. Let ’em do it. That kind of thinking is often useful, and it might motivate someone to write a better book than this one. The bottom line, however, is that every book requires its author to decide what to put in and what to leave out, and I’m comfortable with the choices I have made. As your guide on the particular journey that this book will take, I’ll begin by giving you the background and conceptual tools that you will need to make the trip. Then, like most guides who show people new places, I will keep up a running commentary as we go along, will stop and help you to find your footing at certain points, and will shrug and admonish you to ‘‘Keep up!’’ at others. The trip itself will involve the usual elements: boring and tedious stretches punctuated by sudden revelations, unexpected occurrences, setbacks, false trails, pitfalls, and the occasional broad and compelling new vista. I will leave it up to you to decide if, at the end, the trip has been worth it. I intend to enjoy this trip, and I hope you will too. If you’re ready to continue, turn the page. When we get to Chapter 11, we’ll review all the ground we have covered so far and re-visit the theme of odd and not-so-odd couples.

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RECOMMENDED READINGS Heinlein, R. A. (1987). Stranger in a strange land. New York: Berkley Publishing Group. LaPiere, R. T. (1934). Attitudes vs. actions. Social Forces, 13, 230—237. Young, S. M., and Pinsky, D. (2006). Narcissism and celebrity. Journal of Research in Personality, 40, 463—471.


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2 Strangers in a Strange Lab

As I said in the last chapter, much of our research involves putting strangers in a strange lab and then recording what they say and do during a brief observation period when the experimenter has left them alone together. That description conveys a very general idea of the type of study we do, but it will be helpful if you have a more detailed understanding. What follows, therefore, is a kind of generic description of how a typical study proceeds.1

DESIGNING THE STUDY The first step is to design the study: to decide what personality trait(s) or other individual difference variable(s) we want to study, and then create a research design in which to test for their effects. Suppose, for example, that we wanted to study the personality trait of agreeableness–the extent to which people are predisposed to be friendly, warm, and accommodating as opposed to unfriendly, cold, and uncooperative in their interactions with others. A basic research design that we could use to study the role of agreeableness in the initial interactions between pairs of strangers is one that would,

1 If you aren’t interested in this kind of information, feel free to skip ahead to Chapter 3. I’ll catch up with you there.

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minimally, contain three different dyad types:2 agreeable-agreeable (A-A), agreeable-disagreeable (A-D), and disagreeable-disagreeable (D-D). Because a concrete thinker like me often needs to make a little diagram to remind himself of what he’s doing, I can represent this design very simply as follows:

A-A

A-D

D-D

This little drawing is intended to serve as a shorthand reminder that there will be three different types of dyads in the study: one in which the dyad members are both agreeable (A-A), a second in which one member is agreeable and the other is disagreeable (A-D), and a third in which both members are disagreeable (D-D). To ensure an adequate level of statistical power, we will plan to collect data from several A-A dyads, several A-D dyads, and several D-D dyads. Looking at this research design, it’s obvious that it will allow us to compare the initial interactions of A-A dyads, A-D dyads, and D-D dyads, and to determine what differences in behavior and perceptions might be evident across the three dyad tapes. These are certainly useful comparisons to make, but is that all there is? If so, perhaps the design is a little too basic. Before we change it, however, let’s look at it again with a less critical eye, and see if there is anything else there that we might have missed. After several moments of contemplation, here it comes–our moment of Zen. While looking once more at the drawing, we see that the design leads us to ask a new and very intriguing question: How might the behavior of the As (the agreeable individuals) in the A-A dyad type differ from the behavior of the As in the A-D dyad type? Ah! We are then led to ask ourselves the complementary question: How might the behavior of the Ds (the disagreeable individuals) in the D-D dyad type differ from the behavior of the Ds in the A-D dyad type?

2 A dyad is simply a pair of individuals. Because it’s easier and more convenient to use the word dyad than to refer repeatedly to ‘‘the pair of individuals,’’ ‘‘the two interaction partners,’’ or ‘‘the two participants in each experimental session,’’ I will typically use the word dyad instead. In addition to this word, there will be some other terms drawn from social science jargon that I will introduce and use in this book. As in the present case, however, I’ll attempt to use only the most convenient and helpful ones.


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We can re-phrase and personalize the first of these questions to ask, If I’m an agreeable person (A), will I change my behavior depending upon whether the stranger I’m interacting with is also agreeable like me (A-A), or is disagreeable instead (A-D)? Similarly, we can re-phrase and personalize the second question to ask, If I’m a disagreeable person (D), will I change my behavior depending upon whether the stranger I’m interacting with is also disagreeable like me (D-D), or is agreeable instead (A-D)? Suddenly, our deceptively simple little research design is a lot more interesting. We now see it as a way of asking–and potentially answering–some very intriguing questions about how people with similar or ‘‘opposite’’ personalities might affect each other. Finding these questions of more than passing interest, we then apply our own life experience and commonsense intuitions to the task of trying to predict what the answers to these questions will be, and our thinking might be something like this: In general, I think that two agreeable people (A-A) should get along the best. That’s the easiest and most straightforward prediction I can make. It’s not so clear what will happen in the other two dyad types. My first impulse is to guess that two disagreeable people (D-D) would have the worst interactions, but perhaps the fact that they’re similar in this respect might enable them to get along in a weird sort of way, so making a prediction about them isn’t quite as easy or straightforward. Perhaps the interactions in the remaining (A-D) dyad type will be somewhere ‘‘in between’’ those of the other two dyad types: not as good as the interactions in the A-A dyad type but not as bad as the ones in the D-D dyad type. That’s not the only possibility, of course, because it’s also possible that the A-D dyad members could get along as well as–or even better than–the A-A dyad members, or that they could get along as poorly as–or even worse than– the D-D dyad members. But, if I assume that the A-D interactions really will fall ‘‘in between’’ those of the A-A and D-D dyads, that could mean either that (1) the A dyad member in the A-D dyad type is influencing the D member to act a little more agreeable; (2) the D member in the A-D dyad type is influencing the A member to act a little less agreeable; or (3) both members are influencing each other, so that they both wind up ‘‘somewhere in the middle,’’ with each being affected by the other’s personality to some degree. At this point, our apparently simple little research design doesn’t look nearly as simple as it did before. Instead, it presents us with a range of different hypotheses that might be posed, and a range of possible outcomes that might occur. It also invites us to

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think more generally about the types of influence that can occur when two people interact with each other. Thinking about this issue is a bit of a digression from the topic of research design, but let’s pause and consider this issue before proceeding. The three prototypic (most easily distinguished) forms of influence in dyadic interactions are these: Actor influence: I (the actor) influence you (the partner) in a way that determines the quality and quantity of our relationship–but not vice versa. We can represent this form of influence as A fi P. Partner influence: You (the partner) influence me (the actor) in a way that determines the quality and quantity of our relationship–but not vice versa. We can represent this form of influence as P fiA. Joint influence: I (the actor) and you (the partner) influence each other to determine the quality and quantity of our relationship. We can represent this form of influence as A « P. In the following table, I use famous movie quotes to provide some examples of actor influence, partner influence, and joint influence. For the examples in the first column, the actor determines the quantity and/or the quality of the relationship. For the examples in the second column, the partner determines these outcomes. For the examples in the third column, it is the joint influence of the actor and the partner that determines these outcomes. These three prototypic forms of influence play a major role in the interdependence theory that was originally proposed by the social psychologists John Thibaut and Harold Kelley3 and later elaborated by a second generation of interdependence theorists such as John Holmes4 and Caryl Rusbult.5 We won’t stop to consider these forms

3

Thibault, J. W., and Kelley, H. H. (1986). The social psychology of groups. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers. [Originally published in 1959 by John Wiley, Oxford, England.] 4 Holmes, J. (2002). Interpersonal expectations as the building blocks of social cognition: An interdependence theory perspective. Personal Relationships, 9, 1—26. 5 Rusbult, C. E., and Van Lange, P. A. M. (2003). Interdependence, interaction, and relationships. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 351—375.


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Table 2.1. Famous movie line examples of actor influence, partner influence, and joint influence. These quotes were taken from the website http://www.filmsite.org/afi400quotes.html. Actor influence

Partner influence

Joint influence

VITO CORLEONE (Marlon Brando): ‘‘I’m going to make him an offer he can’t refuse.’’ THE GODFATHER, Paramount, 1972

DIXON STEELE (Humphrey Bogart): ‘‘I was born when she kissed me. I died when she left me. I lived a few weeks while she loved me.’’ IN A LONELY PLACE, Columbia, 1950

FRANK CHAMBERS (John Garfield): ‘‘With my brains and your looks, we could go places.’’ THE POSTMAN ALWAYS RINGS TWICE, MGM, 1946

ALEX FORREST (Glenn Close): ‘‘I won’t be ignored, Dan!’’ FATAL ATTRACTION, Paramount, 1987

JIM STARK (James Dean): ‘‘You’re tearing me apart!’’ REBEL WITHOUT A CAUSE, Warner Bros., 1955

KATHIE MOFFAT (Jane Greer): ‘‘I think we deserve a break.’’ JEFF BAILEY (Robert Mitchum): ‘‘We deserve each other.’’ OUT OF THE PAST, RKO, 1947

H. I. McDUNNOUGH (Nicolas Cage): ‘‘I’ll be taking these Huggies and whatever cash you got.’’ RAISING ARIZONA, Twentieth Century Fox, 1987

LUNA SCHLOSSER (Diane Keaton): ‘‘It’s hard to believe that you haven’t had sex for two hundred years.’’ MILES MONROE (Woody Allen): ‘‘Two hundred and four, if you count my marriage.’’ SLEEPER, United Artists, 1973

CAPTAIN (Strother Martin): ‘‘What we’ve got here is failure to communicate.’’ COOL HAND LUKE, Warner Bros., 1967

DR. HANNIBAL LECTER (Anthony Hopkins): ‘‘A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice chianti.’’ THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS, Orion, 1991

CUSTOMER (Estelle Reiner): ‘‘I’ll have what she’s having.’’ WHEN HARRY MET SALLY . . ., Columbia, 1989

LLOYD DOBLER (John Cusack): ‘‘I gave her my heart, and she gave me a pen.’’ SAY ANYTHING . . ., Twentieth Century Fox, 1989

of influence any further at this point, but you should keep them in mind for future reference. Getting back to our research design, it should occur to us that the gender of the people in the various dyad types might also make a difference. With regard to the dyads’ gender composition, there are three obvious possibilities: male-male dyads (M-M), female-female dyads (F-F), and male-female dyads (M-F). If we designed the study so that we could examine the gender composition of the dyads in

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addition to their ‘‘agreeableness composition,’’ the resulting design would look like this:

Gender composition

Agreeableness composition

Male-male

A-A

A-D

D-D

Female-female

A-A

A-D

D-D

Male-female

A-A

A-D

D-D

This is a big, ambitious design that would require us to collect data from nine different dyad types (3 types of gender composition X 3 types of agreeableness composition). If we were to collect enough data to have 10 dyads of each type, we would have to collect data from 90 dyads. And then there’s the problem with the male-female dyads in which an agreeable person (A) is paired with a disagreeable one (D). Ideally, we would like have 10 dyads in which the male is agreeable and the female is disagreeable, and another 10 dyads in which the male is disagreeable and the female is agreeable. To do that, however, we would have to collect the data from 10 additional dyads, bringing the total number of dyads needed to 100. Now the design looks like it might be getting a little too big and ambitious. Although the revised, 100-dyad research design promises to be a really interesting study, it would also be a very labor- and timeintensive one. Based on my experience, I estimate that it would take several months to collect all of the personality, videotape, and additional self-report data; several more months to code the behavioral data from the dyad members’ videotaped interactions; and several more months to analyze the data and write up the results for publication. The important point to grasp here is that this type of research is very difficult, demanding, and time-consuming to do. Of the thousands of psychologists who, like me, were trained to do research in personality and social psychology, only a very small number of us do this kind of behaviorally-focused social interaction research. (I like to think of us as being like Marines: the few, the proud, the brave!) On the one hand, the pay-offs for doing such labor-intensive observational research are often quite impressive, as the research findings reported in the following


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chapters will reveal. On the other hand, the people who do these kinds of studies can easily get overwhelmed by them, particularly when their research designs are so ambitious that they ‘‘multiply’’ the various costs that are incurred in collecting and analyzing the data. Because these considerations are clearly relevant to the present example, we might want to make our hypothetical study less complicated and therefore more manageable. One way to do that would be to include only same-sex (that is, male-male and female-female) dyads in the study design. This decision would enable us to reduce the total number of dyads from 100 to 60. Perhaps even more important, it would keep the dyad members’ gender the same within the A-D dyads. If, for example, the A (agreeable) members of these dyads differed in their behavior from the D (disagreeable) members, we wouldn’t have to worry that these behavioral differences might be attributable to differences in the dyad members’ gender instead of to differences in their level of agreeableness. Assuming that we decide to include same-sex dyads only, the final design of our study would look like this: Gender composition

Agreeableness composition

Male-male

A-A

A-D

D-D

Female-female

A-A

A-D

D-D

This design isn’t big enough or complex enough to answer all of the possible questions we might want to ask, but then no single study design ever is. All things considered, this design represents a reasonable compromise. It permits us to ask–and potentially answer–the most important questions we have without creating an undue burden on our time and resources.

SETTING THE STAGE In my imaginary television series, Odd Couples, I proposed that the members of each odd couple would be brought together in a neutral environment–a place that belongs to neither of them and that bears

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the imprint of neither individual’s personality. The goal of establishing a relatively neutral environment is an important one, because it is only in such an environment that we can obtain the clearest and least contaminated view of how the members’ contrasting personalities affect their interaction together. For example, if the environment provided a more familiar and comfortable ‘‘niche’’ for one member of the couple than for the other, more erratic or stress-based behavior on the part of the ‘‘disadvantaged’’ member could be attributable to this environment-based difference rather than to the difference in the members’ personalities. To avoid creating a similar type of interpretive problem in the dyadic interaction studies that my colleagues and I conduct, we put our dyad members into a neutral ‘‘waiting room’’ situation in which they are left to sit on a long couch together while the experimenter leaves the room on an errand that requires several minutes to complete. Because a waiting-room situation is a reasonably familiar and generic one that is unlikely to systematically advantage one participant more than the other, it provides a relatively neutral background against which the dyad members’ own personalities can emerge as the more figural elements. This tendency is strengthened by the fact that the experimenter never introduces the participants to each other or instructs them to interact and ‘‘get to know each other.’’ Collectively, these features of the setting and the procedure help to ensure that any interaction the participants have during the experimenter ’s absence tends to be voluntary, spontaneous, and more likely to reflect the participants’ own dispositions than any experimental constraints. In contrast to the setting for the hypothetical TV series, Odd Couples, our ‘‘waiting room’’ setting contains no visible cables, cameras, microphones, or film crew personnel. Instead, the room contains a couch, a coffee table, a larger table near the door, and some floor-to-ceiling bookcases filled with old journal issues. The only features of the room that serve as strong reminders that the participants are waiting for a psychology experiment to begin are a portable projection screen that is set up parallel to the wall that is opposite the couch, and a slide projector that is oriented to face this screen. These materials are, in effect, ‘‘red herrings’’; they have been placed in the room to lead the participants to believe that we will be studying their reactions to a


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series of slides, and to lead them away from discovering that we are actually studying their reactions to each other.

DECIDING WHO THE PARTICIPANTS WILL BE Who will our participants be? The answer to that question depends on the particular study we have decided to do. In most of the studies described in this book, the participants were previously-unacquainted college students–our ‘‘strangers in a strange lab’’ who were meeting and interacting for the very first time. In some studies, however, they were close friends, dating partners, or even married couples who had been recruited from the local community through newspaper ads. (In research designed to study dating or marital interactions, you obviously have to use actual dating or married couples as your research participants.) There are well-established reasons for preferring to use college students as the participants in most our studies: they are easy to recruit, old enough to participate without parental permission, bright enough to understand written and verbal instructions, and reasonably diverse with respect to variables such as gender, race/ ethnicity, religious background, and political orientation. If they aren’t as diverse with respect to other variables such as age, intelligence, and socioeconomic status, that seems to me to be an acceptable limitation when one considers how much more difficult, expensive, and time-consuming the research would become in order to remove this limitation. And if the results of the early studies with college students are sufficiently promising, more expensive follow-up studies using broader and more representative community samples can (and should) be conducted later.

COLLECTING THE PERSONALITY DATA The best way to begin the data collection is to administer a ‘‘research survey’’ containing the self-report measures that are needed to assess the specific personality trait(s) or other personal characteristic(s) that are the focus of the study we plan to do. In the case of the study we designed above, we would need to measure one trait (agreeableness), and one other personal characteristic (gender). We are free to measure

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other traits and personal characteristics too, if we choose,6 but these are the ones that we must measure in order to do the study at all. If the study uses college students as participants, the research survey might be administered in a general ‘‘pre-testing’’ of students in introductory psychology classes at the beginning of the semester. Or it might take the form of an on-line survey that students can access from a personal computer and complete on their own time. More important than where or how the survey is completed, however, is when it is completed. The rule is simple: always administer the survey before (and, ideally, not immediately before) the participants’ laboratory interactions. Why is this rule important? Because it enables us to make a strong and convincing causal inference. More precisely, if you find significant correlations between the participants’ scores on the trait measure and their scores on a measure of their subsequent interaction behaviors, there is only one causal ordering that is plausible: the personality disposition that you measured at Time 1 is a plausible cause of the interaction behavior that you measured at Time 2. The reverse causal ordering, the one in which the interaction behavior you measured at Time 2 was somehow the ‘‘cause’’ of the participant’s responses to the personality measure at Time 1, simply isn’t plausible. Although conventional wisdom states that the causal ordering of the variables is ambiguous in correlational research, this ambiguity can be avoided (or at least minimized) in our dyadic interaction studies if you always measure the participants’ personality trait(s) before you measure their interaction behavior.7 With regard to the question of what specific measures to include in the research survey, the answer is ‘‘It depends on what personal characteristic or trait is being measured.’’ If we are measuring the

6

Why would we choose to measure more traits and characteristics than our basic research design requires? Because we typically try to anticipate alternative interpretations of the results we might obtain, and to measure any additional traits and characteristics on which such alternative interpretations depend. By doing that, we can use the results of relevant data analyses–rather than mere rhetoric–to help resolve the important question of which interpretation of our findings is most likely to be the most correct. 7 I have to admit that I allowed this rule to be violated in two of my studies (Ickes, Reidhead, & Patterson, 1986; Garcia, Stinson, Ickes, Bissonnette, & Briggs, 1991). Although the error didn’t prove to be fatal in either case (both studies were published in very good journals), it’s an error that I have done my best to avoid ever since.


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participants’ gender, it’s easy. We can just include a survey item that asks the participants to indicate their gender by manually or electronically marking either Male or Female (or M or F, if you prefer that).8 If we are measuring the participants’ agreeableness (or some other trait), we usually have a wider range of options. One option is to create the personality measure ourselves, and if no acceptable measures of the trait already exist, we should go ahead and do that. In the case of agreeableness, however, there are many valid and reliable measures of this trait that have already been developed by other people, so we should read enough about them to make an informed choice and then select the one that seems most promising with respect to the goals of our study.

SELECTING THE PARTICIPANTS TO BRING TO THE LAB In my imaginary television series, Odd Couples, the producers create the pairs of odd couples by selecting them from a large pool of candidates who have volunteered to appear in one of the episodes. The candidates apply through an interactive website, where they also complete an on-line survey of their personality traits, values, and lifestyle preferences. From the resulting database, the producers (or their ‘‘executive assistants’’) identify and recruit pairs of individuals who have extremely different personalities, and then put each pair under house arrest for the filming of an Odd Couples episode. In our dyadic interaction research, the procedure we use to select and recruit our dyad members is, in most respects, similar. First, we administer our research survey to a large pool of participants. Next, we use the resulting data to compute total scores on each personality measure for each of the participants in the pool. Finally, we use the resulting database to identify and recruit pairs of individuals to participate in our laboratory sessions. There are a couple of important differences, however. First, unlike the producers of Odd Couples (who are concerned with show business and not science), we must do our best to randomly assign our

8

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Or Other (e.g., transgendered) if you prefer that.


A (agreeable) or D (disagreeable) participants to the different dyad types (A-A or A-D for A individuals; D-D or A-D for D individuals) in which they can potentially participate as dyad members.9 Making these assignments as randomly as possible is important because it helps to ensure that–before the dyadic interactions take place– the As who are assigned to the A-A condition are comparable to the As who are assigned to the A-D condition, and the Ds who are assigned to the D-D condition are comparable to the Ds who are assigned to the A-D condition. Second, unlike the producers of Odd Couples, we do not give prior notice to each participant that another person will be participating with them, and that their interaction together will be audioand videotaped. If we were to do this, any interaction that we subsequently recorded would not be spontaneous, unstructured, and unselfconscious. Instead, it would be affected–in ways both subtle and obvious–by the participants’ knowledge that their interaction was being recorded and subjected to scientific scrutiny. Although this aspect of the procedure introduces a deceptive element into the study, it is essential if we are going to have any realistic chance of ‘‘capturing’’ the participants’ spontaneous and naturally-occurring interaction behavior.10

RECORDING THE DYAD MEMBERS’ INITIAL INTERACTIONS Individuals who are eligible to participate in one of our laboratory sessions are contacted by phone and scheduled to report to the lab at a convenient time. The scheduler usually has more than one potential partner to pair each participant with, so availability inevitably plays a role in the process of pairing one individual with another.

9

Although this assignment cannot be strictly random, it should be as random as possible within the constraints of the research design. For example, although the odds are twice as great that an A individual will be assigned to an A-A dyad as to an A-D dyad, we must try to avoid any systematic bias in the assignment of the A individuals to these two dyad types. 10 This deceptive element is controversial enough that it would not be approved by all Institutional Review Boards (IRBs). The safeguards we provide to satisfy the typical objections that IRBs raise will be described below.


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The two stranger-participants in each session are asked to report to separate locations on either side of our lab, so that they will not meet and interact before we are ready to bring them together for the first time. The experimenter greets each participant separately and then brings them both together in a hallway that leads to the lab, but without introducing them to each other.11 Next, the experimenter escorts them into the large lab room that I have described above, and asks them to take a seat on the long couch that is set against the back wall.12 Although this room contains a couple of elements (a slide projector and projector screen) that remind the participants that they are there for a psychology experiment, its overall appearance is closer to that of a typical waiting room. And, indeed, within a minute after the participants have taken seats on the couch, the experimenter notices a small problem that must be addressed before they can continue–a problem that requires the experimenter to leave the room on an errand while the two participants are left to wait alone together for a short period of time (in a typical study, exactly six minutes).13 What the participants don’t realize while they are waiting for the experimenter to return and begin the experiment is that they have been audio- and videotaped from the very first moment they entered the room. The audio-taping occurs by means of a wireless transmitting microphone that is concealed very close to the couch, and the videotaping occurs by means of a video camera that is so wellconcealed that no hardware or connecting cables are visible. This recording equipment was activated before the participants were brought into the room, and it is automatically recording their behavior during the entire time they are there.

11

If the participants appear to know each other when they are brought together, the experimenter questions them to verify that and then releases them from the study with full credit. Obviously, if the participants aren’t strangers, we can’t include them in a study of the initial interactions between pairs of strangers. 12 Before they are seated, they must first turn off their cell phones and leave them– along with any books, backpacks, purses, iPods, and so forth–on a table just inside the door. 13 In some studies, the ‘‘problem’’ is that the experimenter doesn’t have a supply of consent forms on hand and has to leave for a few minutes to get some. In other studies, the slide projector bulb appears to burn out with a bright flash of light and a loud popping sound as soon as the experimenter turns the slide projector on, thereby requiring the experimenter to leave for a few minutes to get a new bulb.

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Remember that the participants haven’t been introduced to each other, and that they didn’t discover until just before they entered the room that they would be participating together in this session of the study. Because the only instruction the experimenter has given them is to ‘‘wait a few minutes until I get back, and then we’ll begin,’’ it is now up to them to decide whether they will interact (and, if so, how much) during the experimenter’s absence. As you might expect in this relatively unstructured situation, there are large differences between dyads in the amount of interaction that occurs. There are dyads in which the members talk a lot, filling most of the available time with conversation until the experimenter returns. There are other dyads in which the members talk somewhat less, and still other dyads in which the members talk very little. Finally, in any given study there are always one or two dyads whose members don’t talk at all, instead sitting in a rather strained silence for the entire six-minute observation period. As we will see, there is evidence that these differences derive from the dyad members’ traits and characteristics, which quickly emerge as figural against the background of a ‘‘waiting room’’ situation that allows the participants to interact as much or as little as they choose.

DEBRIEFING THE DYAD MEMBERS At the end of the six-minute observation period, the experimenter returns to the room where the two participants have been left to wait. The experimenter apologizes for the delay and then says, ‘‘This might be a good time for me to ask what impressions, if any, you have about the experiment at this point. For example, do you have any specific ideas about what the experiment might be about?’’ This question is a probe for suspicion; it is designed to help the experimenter determine if one or both of the participants had any idea that their behavior was recorded during the time they just spent waiting together. In the vast majority of cases, they don’t.14

14 Suspicion, either about the experimenter’s reason for leaving the participants alone together, or about the possibility that they were videotaped during the experimenter’s absence, is pretty rare. In a typical study of 40 to 60 dyads, it results in our having to replace only 2 to 4 of the dyads whose data we have collected.


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The experimenter then conducts a partial debriefing–one that explains all aspects of the study except for its focus on the participants’ personalities. The experimenter begins by explaining that the study isn’t really about viewing slides at all. That was just a cover story for the real purpose of the experiment, which is to study the spontaneous, naturally occurring interaction of two strangers who are left alone together while they are presumably waiting for an experiment to begin. In fact, the first stage of the experiment is now complete. It involved covertly videotaping the dyad members’ interaction during the six-minute period when the experimenter was out of the room. The experimenter then asks explicitly if the participants were aware of being covertly videotaped. If they weren’t, as is typically the case, the experimenter then goes on to explain the reason for waiting until now to tell them about the videotaping. To put it simply, if the researchers were to succeed in capturing the participants’ spontaneous, naturally occurring interaction behavior, it was important that the participants not know in advance that their interaction would be videotaped. Such knowledge could easily have biased their behavior in ways that would make it studied and self-conscious rather than spontaneous and unselfconscious. On the other hand, the experimenter explains, it is also important to safeguard the participants’ right to privacy. For that reason, the equipment was set up to record automatically, before the two of them even entered the ‘‘waiting room.’’ If one or both of the participants would prefer not to give their signed permission for the videotape to be used as data in the study, they can watch while the tape is rewound to its original counter setting and then erased up to its current setting.15 By erasing the interaction from the videotape before anyone has had the chance to view it, we can ensure that the participants’ right to privacy is protected.

15

In over 30 years of research, very few research participants have asked for the tape of their interaction to be erased. Not surprisingly, perhaps, Hutchison and Ickes (1999) found that people who are socially wary and suspicious are the ones who are most likely to make this request (see Ickes, Hutchison, & Mashek, 2004). In one memorable case, the person who asked that the tape be erased told us that he never allowed his image to be recorded in any form because he was wanted by the police!

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COLLECTING THE POST-INTERACTION QUESTIONNAIRE DATA When both participants have signed the consent form, the experimenter asks if they will also consent to participate in a second part of this study in which they will be asked to provide their individual perceptions regarding the interaction they just had. If the participants give this consent, they are seated in separate cubicles and instructed to complete a series of questionnaire items that concern their interaction experience and their reactions to the partner with whom they were paired. These items measure aspects of the interaction experience such as the perceived quality of the interaction and the extent to which each partner felt self-conscious during the interaction, felt the need to communicate, took the lead in the conversation, and liked the other person. After both participants have completed the post-interaction questionnaire, the experimenter provides the final part of their debriefing, usually by explaining which of their personality traits and characteristics are of interest in the study, and what we hope to learn about them.

CODING THE BEHAVIORAL DATA FROM THE VIDEOTAPES When all of the study data have been collected, trained raters view the entire set of videotaped interactions and use an event-recording device to code the dyad members’ interaction behaviors. Although the specific behaviors that are coded may vary somewhat from one study to the next, the following behaviors are ones that we routinely code in our dyadic interaction research: Interpersonal distance: how far the dyad members sit from each other on the couch Body orientation: the degree to which the dyad members orient their bodies toward or away from each other Initiating conversation: how many of the conversation sequences each person initiates


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Talking: how often and how long each person talks to his or her partner Asking questions: how many questions each person asks his or her partner Acknowledging: how often the person responds to what the partner is saying with verbal acknowledgments such as ‘‘I see,’’ ‘‘Uh-huh,’’ ‘‘Right,’’ and ‘‘Really?’’ Gazing: how often and how long each person looks at his or her partner Mutual gazing: how often and how long the partners look at each other at the same time Smiling/laughing: how often and how long each person smiles/ laughs during the interaction with his or her partner.

Is that everything? No, and in my opinion, it’s not even the most important part. For me, the most important part of the study is when you and your colleagues finally analyze the data and become the first persons on Planet Earth to learn the results. All of the weeks, months, or years that you have already devoted to the study lead ultimately to this–your own empirical ‘‘moment of truth.’’16 So what would we learn from our hypothetical study of the role of agreeableness in the initial interactions between pairs of strangers? Do I know the answer to this question? Or am I just going to leave you hanging here? Yes, I do know what the data have to tell us about the role of agreeableness in initial, unstructured interactions. And, no, I’m not going to just leave you hanging. As it turns out, one of my more recent graduate students, Ronen Cuperman, actually collected the data for this study. In fact, Ronen was so ambitious that he collected the data for the more complete design that appears on page 21 of this chapter–the design that includes mixed-sex (F-M) dyads in

16 This ‘‘moment’’ can actually extend over weeks, or even months, depending upon how extensive your data analyses are.

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addition to same-sex (F-F and M-M) dyads. And because of the patient efforts of Ronen and the many other people who worked on the study, I can now tell you exactly what role the dyad members’ agreeableness played in their initial interactions. There is a problem, however. I don’t have enough space left in this chapter to do it here. For that reason, and because those results logically belong in the chapter that concerns the Big Five personality dimensions, I will report these findings in Chapter 8 instead.

How’re you doing? Did you get through this chapter okay? And what about now–are you ready to continue? Although the present chapter probably wasn’t the most entertaining reading experience you’ve ever had, I think you might find the next chapter more stimulating because it is all about . . . RECOMMENDED READINGS Hutchison, J., and Ickes, W. (1999). Personality correlates of social absorption and social individuation. Unpublished data, University of Texas at Arlington. Ickes, W., Bissonnette, V., Garcia, S., and Stinson, L. (1990). Implementing and using the dyadic interaction paradigm. In C. Hendrick and M. Clark (Eds.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology: Volume 11, Research Methods in Personality and Social Psychology (pp. 16—44). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Ickes, W., and Tooke, W. (1988). The observational method: Studying the interactions of minds and bodies. In S. Duck, D. F. Hay, S. E. Hobfoll, W. Ickes, and B. Montgomery (Eds.), Handbook of personal relationships: Theory, research, and interventions (pp. 79—97). Chichester, UK: Wiley. Rusbult, C. E., and Van Lange, P. A. M. (2003). Interdependence, interaction, and relationships. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 351—375.


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3 Sex

I remember reading somewhere that you will sell more copies of your book if sex plays a major role in one of the early chapters. So this chapter is all about sex! Okay, I know–you’re not fooled. You realize that I’m using the word sex in a different way than the writer of that advice intended. I might as well admit it. Using the word Sex as the title of this chapter is just a shameless tease, because the chapter is really about how differences in gender and gender composition affect our initial interactions with others. So let me apologize. If you were expecting a sexy chapter, this won’t be it. We’ll all just have to save our lustful feelings for another time, because the topic of this chapter is whether–and how–the gender of two strangers who are meeting for the first time will affect their initial interaction. In other words, we will be dealing with two interrelated questions. First, does the gender of the participants make a difference?1 And, second, if it does make a difference, how is this difference expressed in the participants’ thoughts, feelings, and interaction behavior? When the chapter that you have just started writing has gone from potentially titillating to potentially boring by the third

1 Can I tell you now that the answer to this question is yes? Or, if you’re still feeling lustful, that the answer is Yes! Yes! Oh—Oh—Oh don’t stop . . . YES!!!

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paragraph, what do you do next? What I like to do is to cite some people who are a lot more famous than I am, and then explain why we should think twice before believing them. So I will do that now, using a table that separates the female authors from the male authors: Table 3.1. Men and women, women and men. Female authors

Male authors

Given the cultural barriers to intersex conversation, the amazing thing is that we would even expect women and men to have anything to say to each other for more than ten minutes at a stretch. —Barbara Ehrenreich, ‘‘The Worst Years of Our Lives (1990)

Between men and women there is no friendship possible. There is passion, enmity, worship, love, but no friendship. —Oscar Wilde

Because of our social circumstances, male and female are really two cultures and their life experiences are utterly different. —Kate Millet, Sexual Politics (1970)

Men and women belong to different species and communications between them is still in its infancy. —Bill Cosby

The clearest explanation for the failure of any marriage is that the two people are incompatible—that is, that one is male and the other female. —Anna Quindlen, Living Out Loud (1988)

I’ve had three wives, six children and six grandchildren and I still don’t understand women. —John Wayne

Men and women, women and men. It will never work. —Erica Jong, Fear of Flying (1973)

I love Mickey Mouse more than any woman I have ever known. —Walt Disney

These quotes, like most of the ones I found in my search, concern the relationships between women and men–what Barbara Ehrenreich refers to as intersex relationships. And, like most of the other such quotes I found, these are pretty pessimistic. It’s obvious that a lot of famous people think that men and women just can’t get along; and that one of them feels that a cartoon mouse is more worthy of his love than any woman he has ever known.2 Although they are less common, I also found a few quotes on the Internet that concern the relationships between people of the

2 Never having been enamored of a cartoon mouse, I can’t really speak to this issue except to wonder if Walt had equally strong feelings for Minnie.

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same sex–what Barbara Ehrenreich would probably describe as intrasex relationships. As aphorisms, these few quotes were all pretty lame, but for reasons other than its aphoristic potential, I liked this one the best: Men greet each other with a sock on the arm, women with a hug, and the hug wears better in the long run. –Edward Hoagland One reason I like this quote is because Edward Hoagland is, like me, someone you probably never heard of before. Another reason I like it is because Edward Hoagland isn’t trying to be supremely witty, outrageous, or even intellectual here. Instead of aspiring to be a Goddess or God of Aphorisms, he is just making a prosaic comment about an everyday occurrence that he has probably observed hundreds, or even thousands, of times. But the most important reason why I like this quote is because it is truer–or at least, truer in general–than any of the other quotes that appear above. If we examine the available research evidence, we find that female-female relationships generally are characterized by greater warmth and involvement than male-male relationships are. But we don’t find evidence that male-female relationships are as bad as Ehrenreich, Millet, Quindlen, Jong, Wilde, Cosby, Wayne, and Disney seem to think they are. Having said that, I must immediately state an important qualification: the data I will describe come from studies of the initial interactions between same-sex or ‘‘opposite-sex’’ strangers, and not from longer-term relationships.3 Perhaps if we studied the longer-term relationships of acquaintances, friends, roommates, cohabiters, or marriage partners, then we might find that male-female relationships really are the worst. But that isn’t true in the initial interactions of strangers, as we will see. Let’s start by considering the simple, basic research design that is applicable in this case:

3 The ‘‘Generalization Police’’ will insist that I add, as further qualifications, that these studies were all conducted using college-student samples at four-year universities in the United States, and that I shouldn’t presume to generalize the findings to any other age groups, socio-economic levels, and so forth, in this culture–or, indeed, to anyone at all in any culture outside the United States. These people have a point, but they also tend to poke you with it whenever they get the chance.

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F-F

F-M

M-M

In this design, we can compare the initial interactions of three different dyad types: female-female dyads, female-male dyads, and male-male dyads. Notice that there are two same-sex dyad types (F-F and M-M) and one mixed-sex dyad type (F-M). Ideally, the study should include several dyads of each type so that we will have enough statistical power to test for differences among the three dyad types with respect to the dyad members’ interaction behavior. Notice also how we immediately ask ourselves the two questions that were inspired by the analogous design in Chapter 2. How might the behavior of the Fs (the female participants) in the F-F dyad type differ from the behavior of the Fs in the F-M dyad type? And how might the behavior of the Ms (the male participants) in the M-M dyad type differ from the behavior of the Ms in the F-M dyad type? The answers to these questions can be found in the same study by Ronen Cuperman that I referred to in the last chapter. To help keep things organized, we will review the findings question by question. We will start with the question, ‘‘How does the participants’ behavior differ when comparisons are made across the three dyad types (F-F, F-M, and M-M)?’’ We will then consider the questions, ‘‘How does the behavior of the women in the F-F dyad type differ from the behavior of the women in the F-M dyad type?’’ and ‘‘How does the behavior of the men in the M-M dyad type differ from the behavior of the men in the F-M dyad type?’’ Finally, we will consider the question, ‘‘How does the behavior of the women in the F-M dyad type differ from the behavior of the men in the F-M dyad type?

HOW DOES THE PARTICIPANTS’ BEHAVIOR DIFFER ACROSS THE THREE DYAD TYPES? How does the participants’ behavior differ across the three dyad types? Here are the differences that we found in Ronen Cuperman’s study:

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Table 3.2. Average (mean) scores on various interaction behaviors in the F-F, F-M, and M-M dyads in the study by Cuperman and Ickes (2009). In this and other tables in this book, measures of duration are always reported in seconds. Behavioral outcome measure

F-F dyads

F-M dyads

M-M dyads

Percentage of second-person pronouns used Number of verbal acknowledgements Number of smiles/laughs Duration of gazes Number of mutual gazes Duration of mutual gazes

16%

22%

18%

13.2

10.8

7.5

14.0 132.3 29.7 60.8

10.7 97.1 19.8 34.0

9.6 78.4 18.9 25.1

As you can see, the warmest and most involving of these initial interactions were indeed the ones between two women. On average, the members of these F-F dyads smiled, laughed, looked at each other more, and acknowledged each other’s comments more, than did the members of the M-M dyads. But notice that the interactions in the F-M dyads weren’t, on average, the worst. They were clearly less warm and involving than those of the F-F dyads, but they were slightly more warm and involving than those of the M-M dyads.4 These data suggest that if the interactions between men and women seem bad to many would-be aphorists, we should ask them ‘‘Bad in relation to what?’’ In relation to female-female interactions they don’t look so good, but in relation to male-male interactions they don’t look so bad.

HOW DOES THE BEHAVIOR OF WOMEN DIFFER IN THE F-F AND F-M DYAD TYPES? If the interactions in F-M dyads are less warm and involving than the interactions in F-F dyads, who is primarily responsible for that: the male members of the F-M dyads or their female partners?

4

In this table, and in all other tables in this book in which means (i.e., average values) are reported, the largest mean in each row is significantly different from the smallest one. Because this book was written for a general audience rather than an exclusively professional one, I’m not going to be obsessive about reporting all of the possible mean comparisons.

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At first glance, the data in Ronen’s study seemed to pin the responsibility on the male partners. When we compared the behavior of the women in the F-F dyads with the women in the F-M dyads, we found that the women in the F-F dyads looked at their female partners much longer (an average of 132.3 seconds) than the women in the F-M dyads looked at their male partners (an average of only 86.3 seconds).5 In addition, the women in the F-F dyads reported liking their female partners significantly more (an average rating of 7.6 on a 10-point scale) than the women in the F-M dyads reported liking their male partners (an average rating of 6.4).6 What’s going on here? As interaction partners, were the men simply less likable and less deserving of attention than the women?

HOW DOES THE BEHAVIOR OF MEN DIFFER IN THE M-M AND F-M DYAD TYPES? That’s one possibility. However, other data suggest that it’s not that simple. When we compared the behavior of the men in the M-M dyads with the men in the F-M dyads, we found that the second group of men seemed to be the more interested and responsive interaction partners. Specifically, the men in the F-M dyads asked their female partners more questions (an average of 8.0) than the men in the M-M dyads asked their male partners (an average of 5.1). The men in the F-M dyads also acknowledged their female partners’ comments more often (an average of 11.6 times) than the men in the M-M dyads acknowledged their male partners’ comments (an average of 7.5 times). Finally, the men in the F-M dyads used a smaller percentage of third-person pronouns in their conversation (18%) than the men in the M-M dyads did (23%). This behavior often signals a desire to ‘‘personalize’’ the interaction by using third-person pronouns (he, she, they, them, etc.) significantly less and first- and second-person pronouns (me, you, etc.) significantly more.

5

Whenever explicit comparisons between means are noted in a narrative format, it can safely be assumed that these particular means are significantly different. 6 The men were not similarly biased. The men in the F-M dyads liked their female partners nearly as much (an average rating of 6.8) as the men in the M-M dyads liked their male partners (an average rating of 7.2).

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All of these additional findings suggest that the men in the F-M dyads were not behaving in a way that made them unlikable and undeserving of their partner’s attention. Instead, they appeared to be making a genuine effort to acknowledge and get to know their female partners.

HOW DOES THE BEHAVIOR OF THE WOMEN AND THE MEN DIFFER IN THE F-M DYAD TYPE? This same conclusion is suggested by differences in how the women and the men in the F-M dyads responded to certain items on the postinteraction questionnaire. The male dyad members felt that the interaction was involving (an average rating of 7.0); thought that their female partners also felt that the interaction was involving (an average rating of 6.8); and believed that their female partners had a relatively strong need to communicate with them (an average rating of 6.7). However, the female partners rated the interaction as significantly less involving (an average rating of 6.0); believed that their male partners also found it less involving (an average rating of 5.7); and believed that their male partners had a relatively weak need to communicate with them (an average rating of 5.4). These data suggest that the men–who were ‘‘elevating their game’’ in terms of being interested and responsive–were not getting much credit for that from their female partners.

INTERPRETING THESE RESULTS But why weren’t they? One might try to argue that the women in the F-M dyads thought that their male partners were ‘‘coming on too strong’’ or were ‘‘trying too hard,’’ and that they might have had an ulterior (that is, sexual) motive for doing so. However, that interpretation simply isn’t supported by the women’s perceptions that the interactions with their male partners were relatively uninvolving and that their male partners did not appear to feel a particularly strong need to communicate with them. These findings lead me to propose a different interpretation that better accounts for the entire

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pattern of data: the women in the F-M dyads noticed that their interactions were relatively uninvolving (i.e., less involving than those of F-F dyads), but failed to recognize and appreciate the genuine effort that their male partners were making. Is this some kind of sexist, misogynist interpretation I’m proposing? Only if all of the responsibility rests with the women–and I doubt that it does. Instead, I find it more plausible to believe that both the women and the men in the F-M dyads failed to understand each other sufficiently. What did the women in the F-M dyads fail to understand? I think they failed to consider that their male partners were accustomed to having relatively cool and uninvolving interactions with partners of the same sex (other men). In consequence, the women also failed to realize that their new male acquaintances were making a genuine effort to try to have warmer and more involving interactions with them. Not thinking about how low the ‘‘baseline’’ level of involvement is in men’s same-sex interactions, the women didn’t recognize or appreciate the fact that the men were making a real effort to ‘‘meet them halfway.’’ For the women, it probably seemed much less than halfway–and certainly not enough to cause them to like, or even take much interest in, their male partners. What did the men in the F-M dyads fail to understand? I think they failed to understand that their attempts to relate differently to a female stranger than to a male stranger (by asking more questions, providing more verbal acknowledgements, and reducing their references to third parties) wouldn’t be noticed by their female partners as long as the overall level of interactional involvement remained low. Although the men felt that the interactions were relatively involving and believed that their female partners felt the same way, this second belief was incorrect. The women didn’t find these interactions to be very involving, and they also didn’t seem to find much reason to regard their male partners as likable or even to look at them much. Does this mean that men are from one planet and women are from another? I don’t see any reason to go that far. It’s enough to say that the different expectations that men and women develop in their same-sex interactions can lead them to interpret what happens in ‘‘opposite sex’’ interactions in distinctly different ways. Given the misunderstanding that seems to develop on both sides, the surprising finding is not that the F-M dyads don’t have the best initial interactions, but that they don’t have the worst.

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The dubious honor of having the worst initial interactions belongs, of course, to the M-M dyads. But why? Why should their overall level of interactional involvement be so low? Are male strangers just poorly socialized oafs who are unable to get in sync with each other? Are they oblivious to the norms that govern socially appropriate behavior? Far from it. As surprising and counterintuitive as it may sound, there is evidence that male strangers are actually more in sync with each other than female strangers are. And, by implication, there is evidence that male strangers are at least as sensitive to the norms governing socially appropriate behavior as female strangers are. This evidence comes from a study of the ‘‘intersubjective themes’’ that are evident in the initial interactions of M-M and F-F dyads. In this study, I and my colleagues William Tooke, Linda Stinson, Vickie Lau Baker, and Victor Bissonnette examined not only the dyad members’ overt behavior but their covert thoughts and feelings as well.7 Capturing the content of dyad members’ thoughts and feelings is something we do fairly often in our research. After each interaction has been videotaped, the dyad members are seated in separate cubicles where they each view a copy of the videotaped interaction in which they have just participated. Their task is to stop the tape at the points where they distinctly remember having had a particular thought or feeling, and to write down the content of each thought or feeling on forms provided for that purpose. When both dyad members have recorded all of the thoughts and feelings they remembered having had during their interaction together, the thought-feeling data are subsequently coded by trained raters. These raters decide whether each recorded entry is a thought or a feeling; whether it is positive, neutral, or negative in its emotional tone; and whether it is about oneself (self-focused) or one’s interaction partner (partner-focused). The numbers of thoughts or

7

Ickes, W., Tooke, W., Stinson, L., Baker, V. L., and Bissonnette, V. (1988). Naturalistic social cognition: Intersubjectivity in same-sex dyads. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 12, 58—84.

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feelings in each of these categories are then tallied, and the similarity between the two partners’ scores on each of the resulting measures is then assessed using a statistic called the intraclass correlation. These intraclass correlations reveal the extent to which various aspects of the partners’ subjective experiences during the interaction were similar (positive correlations) or dissimilar (negative correlations). For that reason, they are often referred to as ‘‘inter-partner correlations,’’ because they tell us how one partner’s score tends to vary in relation to the other partner’s score. When we computed the average intraclass (i.e., inter-partner) correlations in thought-feeling content for the M-M and F-F dyads that are compared in Table 3.3, we discovered that the subjective experience of the male strangers was more similar than that of the female strangers. The difference between the men and the women was strongly evident in the total number of feelings and the total number of positive thoughts and feelings they reported, with the men being significantly more ‘‘in sync’’ with each other than the women were. The men’s greater subjective synchrony was also evident in the number of self- and partner-focused thoughts and feelings they reported, and in the total number of thoughts they reported. To put it simply, the male strangers seemed to be more cognitively and emotionally attuned to each other than the female strangers were. Our initial impulse might be to resist this conclusion, and to argue that it simply doesn’t make sense. After all, women are supposed to be more attuned to each other than men are–aren’t they? My answer to this question is: Not in initial interactions, they aren’t. Table 3.3. Average intraclass correlations of different categories of thought-feeling content for the M-M and F-F dyads in two samples. Thought-feeling measure Number of thoughts Number of feelings Number of positive thoughts or feelings Number of neutral thoughts or feelings Number of negative thoughts or feelings Number of self-focused thoughts or feelings Number of partner-focused thoughts or feelings

M-M dyads

F-F dyads

.26 .32 .36 .25 .35 .16 .36

.02 .27 .04 .11 .20 .18 .14

Adapted from data reported by Ickes, Tooke, Stinson, Baker, and Bissonnette (1988). Published with the kind permission of Springer Science þ Business Media.

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In initial interactions, there are two plausible reasons why the men’s thoughts and feelings should be more in sync than the women’s. Both of these reasons reflect the men’s greater concern about keeping their initial interaction from becoming too warm and involving. For female strangers, this issue isn’t much of a concern; their stereotyped gender role deems it acceptable, and even desirable, for them to have emotionally warm and involving interactions with each other. For male strangers, however, the expression of too much warmth and involvement in an initial interaction can result in two negative consequences, both of which are strongly discouraged by the expectations associated with the men’s stereotyped gender role. The first negative consequence is that a man who expresses ‘‘too much’’ warmth and involvement in an initial interaction with a male stranger may be perceived as the weaker, more vulnerable, and lower-status member of the pair. As the comparative psychologist D.W. Rajecki has noted, human males–like primate males more generally–are motivated from their very earliest encounter to determine their relative status and dominance vis-a`-vis each other,8 and being ‘‘too’’ warm and accommodating early on can often work to the kinder and gentler male’s disadvantage. The second negative consequence is, for many heterosexual men, even more undesirable: being perceived as ‘‘too’’ warm and accepting, and then having that behavior interpreted as evidence of homosexual interest.9 Because these heterosexual men are highly motivated to avoid any appearance of being homosexual,10, 11 they have a second reason to try to keep their initial interaction with a strange man from becoming too emotionally warm and involving. Given this motivation, and the two concerns that drive it, men probably adhere to the prescriptions of their gender-role stereotype

8 Rajecki, D. W. (1985). Predictability and control in relationships: A perspective from animal behavior. In W. Ickes (Ed.), Compatible and incompatible relationships (pp. 11—31). New York: Springer-Verlag. 9 Monroe, M., Baker, R. C., and Roll, S. (1997). The relationship of homophobia to intimacy in heterosexual men. Journal of Homosexuality, 33, 23—37. 10 Bosson, J. K., Taylor, J. N., and Prewitt-Freilino, J. L. (2006). Gender role violations and identity misclassification: The roles of audience and actor variables. Sex Roles, 55, 13—24. 11 Davies, M. (2004). Correlates of negative attitudes toward gay men: Sexism, male role norms, and male sexuality. Journal of Sex Research, 41, 259—266.

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at least as strongly as women adhere to the prescriptions of theirs. In the men’s case, however, this sensitivity to the norms of ‘‘social appropriateness’’ results in the low level of interactional involvement that we previously saw in the right-hand column of Table 3.1. This low level of interactional involvement was clearly evident in the data reported by Ickes, Tooke, Stinson, Baker, and Bissonnette. Their data showed that the members of the M-M dyads smiled and looked at each other significantly less, and acknowledged each other’s comments significantly less, than the members of the F-F dyads did. In addition, the members of the M-M dyads talked somewhat less and used significantly fewer hand gestures than the members of the F-F dyads did. The men’s motives for keeping their level of interactional involvement low also help to explain why the male strangers were more attuned to the content of each other’s thoughts and feelings than the female strangers were (Table 3.2). By monitoring each other closely and being more attuned to each other’s feelings, the male strangers could more effectively regulate and constrain their levels of emotional and interactional involvement. If this interpretation is correct, male strangers intentionally limit their involvement in ways that female strangers do not. Male strangers are, therefore, neither insensitive to the relevant social norms nor incapable of getting ‘‘in sync’’ with each other. In fact, just the opposite is true.

We have just taken a closer look at the initial interactions of M-M dyads in order to help us solve the puzzle of why their average level of interactional involvement is so low. Let’s now take a closer look at the initial interactions of F-M dyads, where a different puzzle presents itself. If you were paying attention to the findings that emerged in Ronen Cuperman’s study of F-F, F-M, and M-M dyads, you might have noticed that I described the women and the men in the F-M dyads as differing only in their responses to questions about how involving their interaction was and how much they believed their partners needed to communicate with them. I didn’t go on to talk about significant differences in the men’s and women’s interaction behavior–and you might have wondered why I didn’t. The reason is simple: there weren’t any such differences.

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What? How can that be true? Aren’t men and women supposed to come from ‘‘different planets’’ and act in very different ways when they first encounter each other? That’s one person’s wellpublicized opinion, of course,12 but it’s not what the actual research findings show. In general, the research findings show that men and women are far more similar than different in their interaction behavior. For example, in our studies of initial F-M interactions, we have found that the only consistent behavioral difference between the male and female partners is that the men display more ‘‘open’’ and relaxed body postures than the women do. And that’s it. With regard to the behaviors that are most indicative of interactional involvement, the male and female strangers in F-M dyads are remarkably similar. They talk, look, and gesture to about the same extent, and they also ask each other a similar number of questions and provide each other with a similar number of verbal acknowledgements. The women in F-M dyads do tend to smile and laugh a bit more than the men, but this difference is significant in some studies but not others.13 Does this mean that men and women aren’t from ‘‘different planets’’ after all? As you can probably tell, I think the ‘‘different planets’’ idea is an exaggeration at best and a gross distortion at worst. According to the relevant research findings, the social behavior of men and women is much more similar than different. This point is underscored in the following quote from communication researchers Daniel Canary and Tara Emmers-Sommer, whose 1997 book reviewed much of the currently available research on gender differences in social interaction: In 1990, Deborah Tannen published her widely accepted quasi-academic book, You Just Don’t Understand, wherein men

12 Gray, J. (1992). Men are from Mars, women are from Venus: A practical guide for improving communication and getting what you want in your relationships. New York: HarperCollins. 13 Gender differences in self-disclosure also tend to be slight and non-significant in F-M strangers’ interactions (Dindia and Allen, 1992). Moreover, because instances of touching or interrupting one’s partner are relatively rare in initial F-M interactions, gender differences in these behaviors are typically non-significant as well (see Aries, 1996; Hall & Veccia, 1990; James & Clarke, 1993). Politeness norms for initial interactions are likely to be responsible for the low incidence of both interrupting and touching behavior.

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and women were cast as though they come from different cultures . . . . Then John Gray (1992) exaggerated sex differences even further with the analogy that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, a thought that was inspired by the film E.T. (Gleick, 1997). The ‘‘nonfiction’’ portrayals by Tannen and Gray of men’s and women’s communication remained best sellers for years. [However], most of the research does not support the view that men and women come from separate cultures, let alone separate worlds. Long-presumed differences in men’s and women’s interpersonal behaviors simply do not reflect in the empirical research literature. . . . According to these objective summaries, men and women are much more similar than different. If men and women do originate from different cultures or worlds, they at least speak the same language about 99% of the time. (Canary & Emmers-Sommer, 1997, pp. vi—vii, brackets mine) The reference to language in the final sentence of this quote is certainly appropriate, but it raises an important issue that we haven’t considered yet. It reminds us that interactions aren’t just about how much two people talk, look, smile, gesture, and ask each other questions; they are also about how people use language during their conversations together. This brings us back to Deborah Tannen’s book, You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. In this book, Tannen argued, as had others before her,14, 15 that men regard conversations as ‘‘negotiations [for power] in which people try to achieve and maintain the upper hand . . . and protect themselves from others’ attempts to put them down and push them around,’’ whereas women regard conversations as ‘‘negotiations for closeness in which people try to seek and give confirmation and support, and to reach consensus.’’16 Tannen’s argument suggests that gender

14

Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and woman’s place. New York: Harper & Row. Maltz, D. N., and Borker, R. A. (1982). A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication. In J. J. Gumperz (Ed.), Language and social identity (pp. 196—216). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. 16 Tannen, D. (1990). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: William Morrow (pp. 24—25). 15

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differences in F-M dyads really do exist, but might take the form of differences in language use rather than in less-nuanced behaviors such as the total amount of talking, looking, and gesturing. Instead of offering any hard research evidence to support her claims, Tannen peppered her book with stories and anecdotes that were carefully chosen to illustrate her points and to advance her general argument. Some of these stories and anecdotes were taken from linguistic case studies; others were taken from novels, short stories, and movie scripts; and still others were invented by Tannen herself. Given the ease with which entertaining examples can be selected or created to ‘‘support’’ any position one might want to adopt, it is reasonable to ask whether Tannen’s general thesis (that men’s talk emphasizes status whereas women’s talk emphasizes connection) survives a more rigorous test. One of the first attempts to provide such a test was organized by William Stiles, a research psychologist at Miami University of Ohio whose career has been dedicated to the study of how people use language in everyday conversation. In contrast to the linguistic case studies that Tannen cited throughout her book, Stiles’s studies involve the transcription, coding, and statistical analysis of larger numbers of conversations (typically, 20 to 40 of them in each data set). His standard method requires a set of trained raters to code the verbal expressions of each partner into categories that capture the conversational functions that these expressions serve. Of particular relevance to Deborah Tannen’s thesis are Stiles’s categories of presumptuousness and attentiveness. Presumptuousness . . . measures the degree to which the speaker presumes to know what the other’s experience is, was, will be, or ought to be (Stiles, 1992). Thus, presumptuousness has to do with being one up, with knowing the other, with assuming that one is important to the other. In naturalistic studies of encounters between people whose roles differ in status, the person higher in status role has consistently tended to be more presumptuous. For example, relatively greater presumptuousness was shown by parents with children . . . by psychotherapists with clients . . . by physicians with patients . . . by attorneys with witnesses . . . by management representatives with labor representatives . . . by professors with students . . . and by college seniors with first-year students. . . .

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Attentiveness . . . measures the degree to which a speaker’s utterances concern the other person’s experience (Stiles, 1992). Thus, attentiveness has to do with manifest interest in the other and attempts to ensure that the other’s thoughts are expressed and considered in the conversation. In naturalistic studies of interviews, one would expect interviewers to be attentive, whereas interviewees would be informative. . . . For example, relatively greater attentiveness was shown by psychotherapists with clients . . . by attorneys with witnesses . . . and by radio callin program hosts with callers. (Stiles et al., 1997, p. 761)17 A few years after Tannen’s book appeared, Bill Stiles contacted me and asked if he could include the conversations from some of our dyadic interaction studies in a large-scale project that would test two major hypotheses derived from Tannen’s argument. The first hypothesis was that men, because of their greater concern with status and hierarchy, should be more verbally presumptive than women. The second hypothesis was that women, because of their greater desire for connection with others, should be more verbally attentive than men. These hypotheses were both plausible, given Tannen’s argument. However, neither hypothesis was supported in the two studies of initial F-M interactions that I contributed to Stiles’s larger investigation. In neither study did the male and female strangers differ significantly in their average levels of verbal presumptuousness or verbal attentiveness. Instead of appearing to be from different cultures or different worlds, the men and women who met and conversed in these studies appeared to be equal-status residents of the North American sector of Planet Earth.

I began this chapter by stating that we would be dealing with two interrelated questions. First, does the partners’ gender make a difference? And, second, if it does make a difference, how is this difference expressed in the partners’ thoughts, feelings, and

17

Stiles, W. B., Lyall, L. M., Knight, D. P., Ickes, W., Waung, M., Lowry Hall, C., and Primeau, B. E. (1977). Gender differences in verbal presumptuousness and attentiveness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 759—772.

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interaction behavior? I immediately went on to note that the partners’ gender really does make a difference in initial dyadic interactions,18 and then talked at some length about where these differences are evident (in comparisons made across the F-F, F-M, and M-M dyad types) and where these differences aren’t evident (in comparisons of the male and female partners within the F-M dyads). It is now time to review the entire pattern of results.

WHERE GENDER DIFFERENCES ARE EVIDENT The partners’ gender clearly does make a difference when we examine the effects of the dyads’ gender composition. In general, the initial interactions of F-F dyads are warmer and more involving than those of M-M dyads, with the female strangers smiling, laughing, looking at each other more, and acknowledging each other’s comments more, than the male strangers do. The substantially lower level of interactional involvement in the M-M dyads appears to be intentional, and may reflect the men’s desire to avoid being perceived by their partner in undesirable ways (i.e., as being the weaker, more vulnerable, and lower-status member of the pair and/or as having homosexual intent). Gender differences are also evident when the female members of the F-M dyads are compared to their female counterparts in the F-F dyads. These comparisons reveal that women who are paired with female partners not only look at them more but also like them more than women who are paired with male partners. Are the male partners in these F-M dyads behaving in objectionable ways? They don’t seem to be. In fact, when the male members of the F-M dyads are compared to their male counterparts in the M-M dyads, they appear to be making a genuine effort to be better, more responsive interaction partners. They ask their female partners more questions, acknowledge more of their comments, and use a higher ratio of first- and second-person to thirdperson pronouns than the men with male partners do. Despite this effort, however, the men and women in the F-M dyads perceive their interactions differently. The men, who are presumably aware that they are trying to be warmer and more responsive partners

18

50

See footnote 1.


than they would in M-M interactions, regard these F-M interactions as relatively involving and believe that their female partners must feel the same way. But they are wrong in that belief. On the other hand, the women, who seem to be aware that the F-M interactions are less involving than F-F interactions, rate them as uninvolving and believe that their male partners must feel the same way. But they are wrong in that belief, and they also don’t appear to recognize–let alone appreciate–their male partners’ efforts to ‘‘try to meet them halfway.’’

WHERE GENDER DIFFERENCES AREN’T EVIDENT Surprisingly, perhaps, the partners’ gender makes relatively little difference in initial F-M interactions. When male and female strangers interact for the first time, they differ in their body postures (the men’s body postures are more relaxed and expansive), but are remarkably similar in their interaction behavior. They talk, look, and gesture to about the same extent; they ask each other a similar number of questions; they provide each other with a similar number of verbal acknowledgements; and they self-disclose to about the same degree. They do not differ in how much they interrupt each other, or in their levels of verbal presumptuousness or verbal attentiveness. The women in F-M dyads do tend to smile and laugh a bit more than the men, but this difference is significant in some studies and not in others.

WHAT DO WE SEE IN THIS PATTERN? The general outline of this pattern of gender differences and nondifferences in initial interactions has been evident for many years. For example, I noted in 1982 that most of the gender differences in initial interactions are found when comparing F-F dyads with M-M dyads, whereas hardly any are found when comparing the male and female members of F-M dyads.19 Similarly, Elizabeth Aries wrote in

19

Ickes, W. (1982). A basic paradigm for the study of personality, roles, and social behavior. In W. Ickes and E. S. Knowles (Eds.), Personality, roles, and social behavior (pp. 305—341). New York: Springer-Verlag. See page 322.

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1987 that ‘‘Gender differences are most pronounced in single-sex interactions and are reduced in cross-sex encounters.’’20 She immediately followed up that insightful quote with an even more telling one: ‘‘If these gender differences were simply expressions of power and status, one would expect them to be maximized in male-female encounters (Hall, 1984).’’ I agree with this statement. Indeed, based on the data from Ronen Cuperman’s study, I would go even further. I believe that Ronen’s data portray male dyad members in a more sympathetic way than many previous reviews of men’s interaction behavior21 would suggest. In my opinion, his data do not portray men as trying to dominate or ‘‘pull rank’’ on women. Instead, they reveal men as people who are struggling to meet the expectations that apply to them in interactions with same-sex versus opposite-sex strangers. More specifically, they are people who are trying to establish the ‘‘right’’ level of warmth and involvement with their new interaction partner, while at the same time trying to protect themselves from being evaluated negatively. RECOMMENDED READINGS Aries, E. (1996). Men and women in interaction: Reconsidering the differences. New York: Oxford University Press. Canary, D. J., and Emmers-Sommer, T. M., with Faulkner, S. (1997). Sex and gender differences in personal relationships. New York: The Guilford Press. Cuperman, R., and Ickes, W. (2009). Gender composition differences in initial, unstructured dyadic interactions. Manuscript under editorial review. Ehrenreich, B. (1990). Talking in couples. The worst years of our lives: Irreverant notes from a decade of greed. New York: Pantheon. Ickes, W., Tooke, W., Stinson, L.,Baker, V. L., and Bissonnette, V. (1988). Naturalistic social cognition: Intersubjectivity in same-sex dyads. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, 12, 58—84. Stiles, W. B., Lyall, L. M., Knight, D. P., Ickes, W., Waung, M., Lowry Hall, C., and Primeau, B. E. (1997). Gender differences in verbal presumptuousness and attentiveness. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 23, 759—772.

20 Aries, E. (1987). Gender and communication. In P. Shaver and C. Hendrick (Eds.), Review of Personality and Social Psychology: Vol. 7, Sex and Gender (pp. 149—176). Newbury Park, CA: Sage. See page 161. 21 In particular, those written by authors with an avowedly feminist perspective.

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4 Race/Ethnicity

Gender is easy. Most of the time, two basic categories–male and female–are all that you need. By comparison, race is tough. Some scientists don’t even think that race is a meaningful concept,1 although the vast majority of the people on this planet think that it’s both meaningful and important. But if we assume that race is important, how many different racial categories are there–8, 12, 24? And how do you draw the lines between them? No one knows. And the people who think they know don’t agree. In the United States of America, the people who collect the 21st-century Census data divide us up like this. Those of us who think of ourselves as representing a single race can choose from the following categories: American Indian and Alaska Native, Asian, Black or African American, Hispanic or Latino, Native Hawaiian and other Pacific Islander, White, and Some Other Race. Those of us who think of ourselves as representing two or more races can choose more than once from the same seven categories. Nobody comes by the house and gives you a blood test. They just take your word that you are what you say you are. If those seven racial categories are at all meaningful (and that last one is a real Rorschach category–you can see it almost any way

1 See, for example, Montagu (1942), Lewontin (1972), and Long and Kittles (2003). For an opposing view, see Sarich and Miele (2004) and Leroi (2005).

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you like), are there likely to be other racial categories that are no less meaningful? There are no absolute answers here, but there are a lot of countries on this planet, and the United States of America is just one of them. If other countries want to say that there are additional racial categories to be found within their borders, who am I to say they’re wrong? Because of its close association with the words racist and racism, the word race has become so emotionally charged and politically incorrect that people often use the word ethnicity instead. According to the Wikipedia, ‘‘An ethnic group or ethnicity is a group of human beings whose members identify with each other, usually on the basis of a presumed common genealogy or ancestry. Ethnic identity is also marked by the recognition from others of a group’s distinctiveness and by common cultural, linguistic, religious, behavioral or biological traits.’’ That definition is so broad that some sociologists and anthropologists think the term ethnicity fails to be useful.2 However, it is useful in giving people an option when they don’t want to push other people’s hot buttons by using the term race. To study differences in race/ethnicity in the United States, we must begin by acknowledging that there is a large majority group whose members identify themselves as White, two sizable minority groups whose members identify themselves as either Black or Hispanic/Latino, and then a sprinkling of other minority groups who add different spices to the stew or different colors to the salad bowl (choose your preferred metaphor). The differences in group size are considerable. There are currently about five times as many Whites in the population as either Blacks or Hispanics,3 and that is a basic fact that researchers have to deal with whenever they ask questions about the differences that race and ethnicity make. For sociologists and anthropologists, that basic fact isn’t much of a problem. Sociologists can conduct survey studies involving hundreds or thousands of respondents, and thereby collect sufficient samples of data from Blacks and Hispanics as well as from Whites. Anthropologists can do targeted studies in Black neighborhoods or

2

See, for example, Weber (1978, p. 389) and Cohen (1978, p. 383). See the United States Census projection for 2008 at http://www.census.gov/ population/www/projections/2008projections.html. 3

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Hispanic barrios, and–by going where the people live–obtain sufficient samples of data from these minority populations. What isn’t a problem for these researchers is a sizable problem for laboratory researchers like me and my colleagues, however. Because Blacks and Hispanics are not just minorities, but underrepresented minorities, on most college campuses, it is difficult to recruit them in sufficient numbers for the kinds of observational studies that my colleagues and I routinely do. In the early years of my career, when I was at the University of Wisconsin, I didn’t even try to study race/ethnicity in my dyadic interaction research, because although Milwaukee was ethnically diverse, Madison was not. Things changed, however, when I took a job in 1979 at the University of Missouri—St. Louis. I suddenly found myself in a city with a substantially larger Black population and a noticeable undercurrent of racial prejudice. The prejudice I discovered in St. Louis took a curious form. People rarely made a disparaging comment about Blacks or were disrespectful to Blacks in public settings. However, when I asked my White neighbors for advice about where to shop or what routes to take to get from one part of the city to another, they would sometimes point out that if I shopped at Store A I could avoid the mostly-Blackpatronized Store B, and that if I drove Route X I could avoid the mostly-Black neighborhoods along Route Y. I wasn’t looking to avoid anybody, so I found this kind of advice both gratuitous and odd. I received it often enough, however, that I eventually realized that this was the form that racial prejudice took for many White residents of St. Louis–structuring their daily travel plans so that they could live, work, and shop in a bigot’s version of St. Louis in which their encounters with Black residents would be minimized. I found this kind of behavior strange, astonishing, and ultimately offensive, so I decided to conduct a study to see what would happen if I paired prejudiced White individuals with Black interaction partners in my waiting room situation and observed the results.4 I was interested in whether a prejudiced White person would be able to figure out a way to ‘‘avoid’’ a Black interaction

4 Ickes, W. (1984). Compositions in black and white: Determinants of interaction in interracial dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 330—341.

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partner while they were sitting side-by-side on a couch together waiting for an experiment to begin. I started the project by recruiting a couple of undergraduate psychology majors to serve as the experimenters. Because the study would examine Black-White interactions, I decided to ‘‘counterbalance’’ the race of the experimenters, such that one experimenter was Black and the other was White. My African American experimenter had the memorable name of Walter Lobster. His White counterpart was a guy named Rich McCuan. As experimenters, Walter and Rich were both conscientiousness and reliable, and they both related effectively to the research participants in our study. Because of the difficulty of recruiting a large number of Black participants, I didn’t attempt to include Black-Black or WhiteWhite dyads in the study, choosing to focus exclusively on Black-White dyads instead. In half of the dyads, the White partners were ‘‘avoiders’’–people who had described themselves weeks before the experiment as being predisposed to avoid contact with Blacks. In the other half of the dyads, the White partners were ‘‘approachers’’–people who had described themselves weeks before the experiment as being predisposed to seek contact with Blacks.5 Half of the dyads of each type were ‘‘run’’ by the Black experimenter, Walter Lobster; the other half were run by the White experimenter, Rich McCuan. Finally, to keep the participants’ gender from being confounded with their race,6 I decided to include only same-sex (male-male and female-female) dyads in the study.

5 This information was obtained in a departmental pre-testing at the beginning of the semester. All of the students who were enrolled in introductory psychology completed the pre-test, embedded in which were the two key items: ‘‘Because of my feelings about the relationship between blacks and whites, I actively initiate social contacts with individuals who are not of my race,’’ and ‘‘Because of my feelings about the relationship between blacks and whites, I tend to avoid social contacts with individuals who are not of my race.’’ People who were classified as ‘‘approachers’’ agreed with the first statement and disagreed with the second; people who were classified as ‘‘avoiders’’ did the reverse. Almost no Blacks reported that they avoided contact with Whites, most likely because it simply wasn’t practical to do so. 6 A confound exists when one variable, such as gender, co-occurs with another variable, such as race, to a degree that makes it difficult (and, in extreme cases, impossible) to determine which of these co-occurring variables was responsible for the observed effect on an outcome variable, such as the amount of conversation that takes place.

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The resulting research design, which is more complicated than the ones we have seen so far, looked like this: Table 4.1. Design of the study by Ickes (1984). Approach/avoidance tendency of the White dyad member Race of experimenter

Approach

Avoidance

Black experimenter

M-M Approach dyads F-F Approach dyads

M-M Avoidance dyads F-F Avoidance dyads

White experimenter

M-M Approach dyads F-F Approach dyads

M-M Avoidance dyads F-F Avoidance dyads

All of the dyads included in the study were Black-White dyads. Systematically varied were the dyads’ gender composition (M-M or F-F) and the previously reported disposition of the White dyad members to either approach or avoid interaction with Blacks. Half of the dyads were ‘‘run’’ by a Black experimenter, the other half by a White experimenter.

Collecting the data for this design wasn’t easy, not only because the White participants had to meet the criteria for ‘‘approachers’’ or ‘‘avoiders’’ but also because the minority Black participants were relatively scarce within the university population at that time. I was relieved when Walter and Rich eventually reported that we had five dyads in each of the eight dyad types depicted in the shaded portion of Table 4.1.7 We could then turn our attention to the data coding and data analysis, and eventually learn how White ‘‘avoiders’’ had responded to the challenge of keeping company with a Black, same-sex interaction partner during the few minutes when the experimenter had left them alone together. One part of me (the idealistic humanist) hoped that the White ‘‘avoiders’’ would pass this test, and that the interactions in the Avoidance dyads would not differ substantially from those in the Approach dyads. Another part of me was both more cynical and more pragmatic, however, and it wished for a different outcome. The cynical pragmatist in me suspected that the White ‘‘avoiders’’ would

7 Five dyads in each of the eight dyad types might not sound like a lot. However, because we didn’t expect the gender composition (M-M versus F-F) of the dyads to matter much in this study (as indeed it didn’t), we had 10 dyads in each of the four shaded conditions that appear in Table 4.1.

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find a way to limit their involvement with their Black partners, just as the male strangers in the previous chapter had found a way to limit their involvement with each other. This part of me couldn’t afford to be too idealistic, because I hoped to publish the results of this study, and significant differences between the Approach and Avoidance dyads would probably help to ensure that outcome. I was anxious to see the results. As it turned out, there were indeed significant differences between the Approach and Avoidance dyads, and they are summarized in Table 4.2. As the behavioral data in the upper portion of this table reveal, the dyad members looked at each other less in the Avoidance dyads than in the Approach dyads. And, with regard to their display of positive emotion, the White members of the Avoidance dyads smiled and laughed significantly less than the White members of the Approach dyads did. In general, then, the behavioral data suggest that the White ‘‘avoiders’’ did indeed find a way to limit their involvement with the Black same-sex strangers with whom they were paired. The post-interaction self-report data in the lower portion of Table 4.2 tell a complementary story. They portray the interactions in the Avoidance dyads as relatively tense and anxious ones in which Table 4.2. Average (mean) scores on various behavioral and self-report measures in the Approach and Avoidance dyads of the study by Ickes (1984). Behavioral measures Number of gazes Number of mutual gazes Duration of mutual gazes Duration of smiles/laughs Black dyad members White dyad members Self-report measures Tried to avoid offending other Felt nervous or self-conscious Was influenced by other’s behavior Directed interaction Black dyad members White dyad members Compensated for other’s lack of responsiveness Black dyad members White dyad members

Approach dyads

Avoidance dyads

22.2 17.2 31.5

15.2 11.7 20.8

15.4 24.7

13.0 10.9

Approach dyads 7.1 2.7 7.1

Avoidance dyads 9.8 4.3 8.6

6.3 8.4

7.1 7.0

5.4 7.7

7.5 6.6

As before, the largest and smallest means within each ‘‘row’’ are significantly different. Reprinted under the copyrights and permissions policy of the American Psychological Association (http:// www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

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the dyad members felt nervous or self-conscious and tried to avoid making the situation worse by offending each other. Given this concern, it is not surprising that they reported being influenced by each other’s behavior. Nevertheless, it was the White dyad members who took the lead and compensated for the Black dyad members’ lack of responsiveness in the Approach dyads, whereas it was the Black dyad members who took the lead and compensated for the White dyad members’ lack of responsiveness in the Avoidance dyads. These results were interesting, but not too surprising. After all, the White ‘‘avoiders’’ had told us long before the interactions took place that they tended to avoid contact with Blacks, whereas the White ‘‘approachers’’ had told us that they tended to seek such contact. The interactions that these individuals later had with Black partners simply confirmed what they had told us earlier. Much more surprising was another set of findings which revealed that the differences between the Approach and the Avoidance dyads were clearly evident only when the experimenter was Black. These findings are summarized in Table 4.3. As you can see, when the experimenter was Black, the members of the Avoidance dyads looked at each other less than half of much as the members of the Approach dyads did. However, when the experimenter was White, there was no difference in how much the members of the Approach and Avoidance dyads looked at each other. These differences in looking are paralleled by a similar difference in the amount of conversation contributed by the White dyad members in the Table 4.3. Average (mean) scores on various behavioral measures in the Approach and Avoidance dyads of the study by Ickes (1984). Black experimenter Behavioral measures Number of gazes Number of mutual gazes Duration of mutual gazes Duration of talking Black dyad members White dyad members

White experimenter

Approach dyads

Avoidance dyads

Approach dyads

Avoidance dyads

26.5 19.3

12.6 8.3

17.9 15.2

17.9 15.1

37.7

16.5

25.4

25.1

85.7 112.6

81.7 59.3

83.9 79.4

76.9 104.2

These data are further broken down by the race of the experimenter (Black versus White). Reprinted under the copyrights and permissions policy of the American Psychological Association (http:// www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

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Avoidance dyads, who talked less than half as much as the White dyad members in the Approach dyads did when the experimenter was Black, but showed no such inhibition when the experimenter was White. These effects of the experimenters’ race were unexpected, and I don’t think they can be attributed to Walter and Rich somehow treating the dyads they ‘‘ran’’ differently. Walter and Rich used the same experimental script, provided the same instructions to the participants, and were trained to treat all of the dyads they ran in a similarly cordial and professional manner. So why did these effects occur? I think it was because the White ‘‘avoiders’’ were pushed outside their comfort zone when the experimenter was Black. As long as the experimenter was White, the White ‘‘avoiders’’ could still feel that they were part of a majority group that included the White experimenter as an authority figure. Feeling comfortable as a part of the dominant majority, the White ‘‘avoiders’’ were able to interact with their Black partners in the waiting room situation without any obvious behavioral evidence of prejudice. However, when the experimenter was Black, the White ‘‘avoiders’’ suddenly found themselves in the minority–as the solo White individual in their experimental session–and I believe they found it threatening to be in this role. Given their predisposition to avoid interaction with Blacks, they reverted to their characteristic avoidance mode, and like the turtle withdrawing into its shell, they dramatically inhibited the amount they talked to and looked at their Black partners during the time they were left alone together. If this interpretation is correct, the White ‘‘avoiders’’ in this study look less like scary bigots than like people with an acquired social phobia. Having learned to avoid Blacks as a way of reducing their anxiety about interacting with them, they can tolerate brief and superficially ‘‘normal’’ contact with a Black individual as long as they feel relatively comfortable and in control. If, however, you threaten this sense of comfort and control by putting them in a situation where they feel outnumbered by Blacks (even a situation as benign as a psychology experiment), their feelings of anxiety take over and they revert to their characteristic avoidance mode instead. By this account, White ‘‘avoiders’’ are more to be pitied than censured. They live within a classic vicious circle of phobic behavior in which their fear of interacting with Blacks motivates them to avoid contact with Blacks, which in turn reinforces the fear-driven

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avoidance response and keeps them from learning that, in reality, they have little or nothing to fear. Ironically, Blacks in America seldom have the luxury of developing the reciprocal type of social phobia. When the White members of your community outnumber you by a very wide margin, you are forced to have a lot of day-to-day contacts with Whites. Through these contacts, over time, you eventually learn that you have little or nothing to fear–or to avoid.8 In short, when it comes to racial prejudice, avoidance is not the solution; in most cases, it’s part of the problem.

It was probably predictable that when I moved back to Texas in 1981 after living in Wisconsin and Missouri for several years, I would eventually want to examine the initial interactions of Mexican Americans (i.e., Latinos) in addition to those of Whites and Blacks. ‘‘Eventually’’ in this case meant two decades, however, because I was involved in many other research and writing projects during this time. Finally, in 2001, Amy Waldrip–one of my graduate students at the time–took on this large and ambitious study, which later morphed into an even larger and more extensive investigation that involved another of my graduate students, Renee Holloway.9 Amy had her work cut out for her. The design of the study required her to recruit a sizable number of participants from each of two minority groups (Latinos and Blacks) as well as from the majority group (Whites), and then pair these individuals up so that we could study the initial interactions of dyads representing each of six different ethnicity compositions: Black-Black, Latino-Latino, White-White, Black-Latino, Black-White, and Latino-White. Amy planned to run an approximately equal number of male-male and female-female dyads, so the design of the study looked like this:

8 There are ugly–and even horrific–exceptions, of course, and sometimes entire communities (Jasper, Texas, for example) are forced to take a very hard look at themselves when they occur. 9 Holloway, R., Waldrip, A., and Ickes, W. (2009). Evidence that a simpa´tico selfschema accounts for differences in the self-concepts and social behavior of Latinos versus Whites (and Blacks). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1012—1028.

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Gender composition

Ethnicity composition

Male-male

B-B

L-L

W-W

B-L

B-W

L-W

Female-female

B-B

L-L

W-W

B-L

B-W

L-W

Because Amy had to recruit participants from not just one, but two minority groups, the data collection took an exceptionally long time, extending first through one semester, then a second, and well into a third. The frustration of such slow progress eventually began to take its toll on Amy (who served as the sole experimenter in this study), but she hung in there and kept working. Finally, the data collection was complete, and we spent the better part of another year coding and analyzing the data. The original purpose of the study was to see how well the members of the various dyad types could infer each other’s thoughts and feelings–a research topic that my colleagues and I have labeled empathic accuracy.10 We predicted that dyad members who had the same ethnic background (B-B, L-L, and W-W) would be able to infer each other’s thoughts and feelings better than dyad members who had different ethnic backgrounds (B-L, B-W, and L-W). This prediction was based on the idea that each ethnicity has its own culture (or at least its own subculture), and that people whose cultural backgrounds are similar should find it easier to understand each other and to accurately infer each other’s thoughts and feelings. 11,12

10

For an introduction to the research on empathic accuracy, see Ickes (2003). All participants who were recruited to the study had previously reported that English was their primary and preferred language. This selection criterion was necessary to avoid confounding ethnicity differences with differences in the primary language used. 12 To test this hypothesis, we had separated the dyad members immediately after their laboratory interaction and put them into different cubicles. There, we showed each of them a copy of the videotaped interaction in which they had just participated. While viewing the videotape, each dyad member stopped the tape at every point where he or she remembered having had a particular thought and feeling. At each of these ‘‘tape stops,’’ the dyad member wrote out the content of the thought or feeling, also noting the exact time when it had occurred. We then asked the dyad members to view the videotape again, but this time we stopped the tape for them at each of the points where their partner had reported a specific thought or feeling. Now the task of each dyad member was to infer what the other dyad member had been thinking or feeling at each of these points, and to write out the content of these inferred thoughts and feelings. From the resulting data, we were able to obtain a reliable measure of the dyad members’ empathic accuracy. 11

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It was a reasonable hypothesis, but it wasn’t supported. When we analyzed the empathic accuracy data for the participants in this study, we found that their ability to understand each other did not differ significantly across the various dyad types. The average level of empathic accuracy was remarkably consistent across all six ethnic pairings (B-B, L-L, W-W, B-L, B-W, and L-W), and it was just as high in the male-male dyads as it was in the female-female dyads. From a publication standpoint, this outcome was a crushing disappointment. Because journals are averse to publishing research articles in which no significant differences are reported, the odds were very high that no journal would be interested in publishing our failure to find any ethnicity-composition differences in empathic accuracy. If Amy had been feeling frustrated before, think about how she must have been feeling then! On the other hand, there was a bright side to this outcome if you could somehow manage not to take it personally. And the bright side was that ethnic differences might not result in as much misunderstanding as we had previously thought they would. College-educated people from all three ethnic groups seemed to understand each other equally well, and that outcome might provide some reason for optimism. Still, because this ‘‘null result’’ probably wasn’t publishable, where could we go from here? Given my previous history as a dyadic interaction researcher, the answer was obvious: we would analyze the dyad members’ interaction behavior and their responses on the postinteraction questionnaire and see what else the data had to tell us. So we did that, and– ¡hurra! – the results were remarkable. It was immediately obvious that there was something special about the dyads that contained Latino (Mexican American) dyad members. The data showed that these dyads had friendlier and more involving initial interactions. In fact, when we analyzed the data in terms of the number of Latino members that were present in each dyad type, we found that the presence of only one Latino dyad member was sufficient to produce this result (see Table 4.4). As you can see, the dyads with no Latino members had the least involving initial interactions. The members of these dyads talked, looked, and smiled at each other less than the members of dyads that included either one or two Latino members. Ratings of perceived interaction quality were also relatively low. On the other hand, when either one or both dyad members were Latino, there was significantly more talking, looking, and smiling, and the participants’

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Table 4.4. Average (mean) scores on various outcome measures in same-sex dyads with 0, 1, or 2 Latino members (Holloway, Waldrip, & Ickes, 2009). Outcome measures Number of speaking turns (talking) Duration of talking Number of mutual gazes Number of smiles/laughter Duration of smiles/laughter Perceived interaction quality

0 Latinos

1 Latino

2 Latinos

22.1

39.5

39.8

68.1 12.3 6.3 19.0 5.7

116.1 26.4 10.5 40.2 7.2

115.5 21.3 10.1 33.7 7.3

Reprinted under the copyrights and permissions policy of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

ratings of perceived interaction quality were significantly higher. Even more interesting, the presence of only one Latino dyad member was sufficient to produce these effects. Adding a second Latino dyad member did not increase them further. But how do these effects operate? One possibility is that the effects in Table 4.4 take the form of actor effects, such that Latino actors generally talk, look, and smile more than either Black or White actors do. For example, if Latino actors are typically more friendly and gregarious than Black or White actors, then dyads with Latino members would reveal more talking, gazing, and smiling than dyads without Latino members, simply because the Latino dyad members were more active in their display of these behaviors. A second possibility is that the effects in Table 4.4 take the form of partner effects, such that having a Latino interaction partner stimulates any actor (regardless of his or her own ethnicity) to talk, look, and smile more than the actor would if he or she had a Black or White interaction partner instead. For example, if Latino partners are perceived as more accepting and encouraging than either Black or White partners, then dyads with Latino members would also reveal more talking, gazing, and smiling than dyads without Latino members. However, in this case, these effects would occur because the Latino dyad members–in their role as interaction partners– elicit more sociable behavior from the other dyad member, by making that person feel more encouraged to talk, look, and smile. A third possibility is that both actor and partner effects might occur. For example, the ethnic background of Latino actors might directly affect their own behavior, leading them to talk, look, and smile more.

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But note again that Latino actors are not just actors; they are also the partners of the other member of their respective dyads. For that reason, their ethnic background not only can directly affect their own behavior (as an actor effect) but also can indirectly affect the other dyad member’s behavior (as a partner effect). This type of outcome might happen, for example, if the social behavior of Latino individuals were guided by a set of cultural values that not only required them to talk, look, and smile more (an actor effect), but also required them to elicit and encourage more talking, gazing, and smiling from the other dyad member (a partner effect). To determine which of these possibilities applied in our study of Blacks, Latinos, and Whites, we used a special type of statistical analysis called the Actor/Partner Interdependence Model–usually referred to by its shorthand acronym, APIM.13 The results of the APIM analyses revealed a large number of both actor ethnicity effects and partner ethnicity effects. With regard to the first set of effects, Latino dyad members–as actors–talked, looked, and smiled more than Black or White actorsdid. In addition, on the post-interaction questionnaire items, Latino actors were more likely than Black or White actors to report that their interaction was highly involving; that they enjoyed it; that they took the lead in the conversation; that they needed to communicate; that they liked their interaction partner; and that they felt accepted and respected. With regard to the second set of effects, Latino dyad members– as partners–elicited more talking and gazing from the other dyad member than Black or White partners did. In addition, dyad members who had Latinos as their partners were more likely to report that their interaction was highly involving; that they enjoyed it; that it was ‘‘smooth, natural, and relaxed’’; and that they felt accepted and respected. In other words, the Latinos in our study made their interactions better in two ways: first, by being effective actors who displayed warmer and friendlier behavior themselves, and second, by being encouraging partners who motivated the other dyad member to display warmer and friendlier behavior in return. But how did they work this social magic?

13

For a relatively accessible introduction to APIM, see Campbell and Kashy (2002).

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The answer, suggested by the results of previous studies, is that there actually is a set of interrelated values in Latino culture that could be expected to produce both actor and partner effects of the type just described: There is considerable evidence that many Latin American cultures emphasize harmony, social acceptance, and social support as cultural ideals. Indeed, cross-cultural psychologists have argued that these ideals are central to the concept of simpatıá or simpa´tico. According to Sanchez-Burks, Lee, Nisbett, and Ybarra (2000, p. 175), simpa´tico is ‘‘a highly valued relational style’’ that is based on ‘‘the search for social harmony.’’ It emphasizes ‘‘expressive displays of personal charm, graciousness, and hospitality. . ..’’ Individuals who are simpa´tico proactively attempt to create a highly personable atmosphere as an end in itself. . . . Other associated constructs found in Latino culture include personalismo and familismo (Fuentes, Baroń, and Va´squez, 2003). . . We assume, as previous writers have, that the interrelated cultural values of simpa´tico, personalismo, and familismo are acquired through a socialization process that begins in the family and is further elaborated and reinforced by teachers, peers, and other socializing agents, including the media.14 By enacting the cultural scripts that are associated with these values, Latino individuals should be more likely to enjoy pleasant, mutually rewarding interactions and to have positive perceptions of their interaction partners (Gloria, 1999; Triandis et al., 1984). By the time they are young adults, these effects should be evident even in their initial interactions with strangers. (Holloway, Waldrip, and Ickes, 2009, p. 1012)

14 Because all of these cultural values are highly interrelated (i.e., confounded) and are typically learned together, it makes little sense to impose an arbitrary distinction and argue that simpa´tico alone is the crucial cultural value. On the other hand, simpa´tico is of sufficient centrality to justify the focus on this construct in previous studies (e.g., Gabrielidis et al., 1997; Levine et al, 2001; Triandis et al., 1984) as well as the present one.

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Consistent with this reasoning, Renee Holloway and I speculated that the cultural value of simpatıá becomes incorporated into the self-concepts of Latino individuals in the form of a simpa´tico selfschema. This means that when Latino individuals think about themselves, the concept of themselves as simpa´tico comes readily to mind, along with the more specific characteristics that define a simpa´tico interaction style. For people who speak English, these more specific characteristics can be expressed in the form of adjectives such as likable, sympathetic, polite, pleasant, amiable, congenial, agreeable, easygoing, understanding, gracious, tolerant, respectful, considerate, friendly, and courteous. New research was about to follow. To see if a simpa´tico selfschema was more evident in the self-concepts of Latino individuals than in those of White individuals, Renee collected the data for two new studies using a measure of ‘‘spontaneous self-concept’’ called the Who Am I? Test.15 Administering this test is quite simple. The research participants are given a sheet of paper with the words ‘‘Who Am I?’’ at the top of the page. The participant’s task is to write down 15 spontaneous answers to this question, each in the form of a sentence beginning with the words ‘‘I am.’’ Each Latino participant in Renee’s study was matched with a White participant of the same gender who had obtained exactly the same score on a personality measure of social desirability–the tendency to respond to psychological tests in a socially desirable way. This matching helped Renee to eliminate any confounding of the participants’ ethnicity with either their gender or the strength of their tendency to give socially desirable responses. After collecting the ‘‘Who Am I?’’ responses from all of her participants, Renee asked her undergraduate research assistants to count the number of simpa´ticorelevant adjectives that each participant had used. She was then able to test her prediction that the Latino participant in each pair would use significantly more of these simpa´tico-relevant adjectives than his or her White counterpart would. This prediction was confirmed. Even better, it was re-confirmed (replicated) in a second, follow-up study that Renee conducted. In both studies, the spontaneous self-descriptions reported by Latino

15 Gordon, C. (1968). Self-conceptions: Configurations of content. In C. Gordon and K. Gergen (Eds.), The self in social interaction (Vol. 1 , pp. 115—136). New York: Wiley.

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(Mexican American) individuals were found to include significantly more simpa´tico-relevant adjectives than the self-descriptions provided by their White counterparts. This was clearly an important finding–but was it enough? It would be better if we could we link this finding more directly to the results of our earlier dyadic interaction study. But how could we do that? After a moment’s reflection, the answer was obvious. Although we didn’t have ‘‘Who Am I?’’ responses for the dyad members in the previous study, we did have records of all the specific thoughts and feelings they remembered having had during the time they were together.16 We could therefore ask our research assistants to compute the percentage of each participant’s thoughts and feelings that contained simpa´tico-relevant adjectives (likeable, sympathetic, pleasant, agreeable, friendly, etc.). We could then test to see if this percentage was, on average, higher for the Latino participants in the study than for the Black or White participants. And–sı´, verdaderamente–we found that it was. During their initial, same-sex interactions, the Latino participants had a significantly higher percentage of simpa´tico-relevant thoughts and feelings (about 10%) than the Black and White participants did (about 6.5% and 5.0%, respectively). Even more remarkable, when we statistically controlled for individual differences in the percentage of simpa´ticorelevant thoughts and feelings using a technique called partial correlation, we found that these differences largely explained the actor and partner ethnicity effects that we had previously observed. In other words, the reason why Latinos had such a pronounced effect on their dyadic interactions was that they had more simpa´ticorelevant thoughts and feelings, which in turn influenced their interaction behavior so that they talked, looked, and smiled more, and thereby encouraged their interaction partners to do the same. Interestingly, the Latino social advantage that we observed is complemented by a Latino health advantage that medical researchers have documented: [There is] evidence that Latino individuals have a health advantage over Blacks and Whites, despite many socioeconomic disadvantages. For example, although Latinos are more

16

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See footnote 10, above.


likely to be uninsured, obese, and less educated, their health appears to be better in many respects then that of other ethnic groups. Latinos are less likely to have breast and lung cancer (Maganã and Clark, 1995). They also suffer less from heart disease and diabetes, even though there is a higher rate of obesity for their group (Marini, 2002). Moreover, in apparent defiance of the finding that lower socioeconomic status is generally linked with higher rates of mortality (Adler, Boyce, and Chesney, 1994), Latinos exhibit significantly lower death rates on six of the top ten causes of death in the United States–and they live longer too. Complementing these results are other findings indicating that Latinos can cope more effectively with high-stress prison environments (McCain, Garbin McCain, & Huang, 1983; Paulus, 1988). (Holloway, Waldrip, & Ickes, 2009, p. 1027) Following their review of such data, Ana Abraı´do-Lanza and her colleagues17 suggested that the Latino health advantage might be attributable–at least in part–to Latino cultural values that promote social acceptance, solidarity, and support. Among the many protective health benefits that might develop from this factor are lower levels of life stress, more harmonious social relations, and more instances of people taking responsibility for each other’s physical and emotional well-being. Obviously, this explanation of the Latino health advantage coincides perfectly with our interpretation of the Latino social advantage. ¡Viva simpatıá!

As we have seen, race/ethnicity differences can have an important influence on our initial interactions with others. Because contemporary racism is generally more subtle than the racism of previous eras, Whites who are prejudiced toward Blacks may avoid them rather than attack them, and maintain a psychological distance in

17

Abraı´do-Lanza, A. F., Dohrenwend, B. P., and Ng-Mak, D. S. (1999). The Latino Mortality Paradox: A test of the ‘‘Salmon Bias’’ and Healthy Migrant Hypothesis. American Journal of Public Health, 89(10), 1543—1548.

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situations where they can’t maintain a physical one.18 I suppose you could see these changes as a sign of progress, but you could also see them as a sign of how much further we still have to go. I think we might be getting there, however. For example, I’m encouraged by the results of a 2005 study by psychologist Gloria Cowan.19 She sent research assistants out to the campuses of six racially diverse universities in the California State University system. Their job was to observe the small groups of people whom they saw having casual public interactions on campus and to record the groups’ ethnic/racial composition. Interestingly, there was no overall difference between the percentages of interracial and intraracial groups. Moreover, on the campuses with the greatest diversity (those with the smallest differences in the percentages of Black, Asian, Latino, and White students), the research assistants actually observed more interracial groups than intraracial ones. Sure, you’re thinking, but there’s an obvious self-selection bias operating here: people who want to avoid interracial interactions are simply less likely to enroll at racially diverse universities, so that the ones who do attend are more likely to be ‘‘approachers’’ than ‘‘avoiders.’’ Although this is almost certainly true, it doesn’t negate the very real possibility that many racially diverse settings–from elementary school classrooms to blue- and white-collar workplaces to university campuses–can provide ‘‘opportunity areas’’ in which racial prejudices can fade in response to positive, informal, equalstatus contacts between people from different racial and ethnic backgrounds.20 With regard to Gloria Cowan’s data, perhaps a closer examination would reveal that Latinos, with their friendly and accommodating interaction style, are particularly effective agents in promoting this kind of social change. On the other hand, I wouldn’t want Latinos to feel that this responsibility is primarily theirs. It’s asking way too much to expect them to ‘‘bring everyone together’’

18 Pettigrew, T. F. (1989). The nature of modern racism in the United States. Revue Internationale de Psychologie Sociale, 2, 291—303. 19 Cowan, G. (2005). Interracial interactions at racially diverse university campuses. Journal of Social Psychology, 145, 49—63. 20 See Dixon, Durrheim, and Tredoux (2005) and Tausch, Kenworthy, and Hewstone (2006).

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and dissolve all racial tensions. It’s enough that many Latinos already model the qualities of graciousness, hospitality, tolerance, and acceptance that can potentially inspire the rest of us to learn from their example. RECOMMENDED READINGS Abraı´do-Lanza, A. F., Dohrenwend, B. P., and Ng-Mak, D. S. (1999). The Latino Mortality Paradox: A test of the ‘‘Salmon Bias’’ and Healthy Migrant Hypothesis. American Journal of Public Health, 89(10), 1543—1548. Cowan, G. (2005). Interracial interactions at racially diverse university campuses. Journal of Social Psychology, 145, 49—63. Holloway, R., Waldrip, A., and Ickes, W. (2009). Evidence that a simpa´tico self-schema accounts for differences in the self-concepts and social behavior of Latinos versus Whites (and Blacks). Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 96, 1012—1028. Ickes, W. (1984). Compositions in black and white: Determinants of interaction in interracial dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 330—341. Sanchez-Burks, J., Lee, F., Nisbett, R. E., and Ybarra, O. (2000). Cultural styles, relationship schemas, and prejudice against out-groups. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 79, 174—189. Tausch, N., Kenworthy, J., and Hewstone, M. (2006). Intergroup contact and the improvement of intergroup relations. In M. Fitzduff and C. Stout (Eds.), The psychology of resolving global conflicts: From war to peace (Vol. 2, pp. 67—107). Westport, CT: Praeger Security International. Triandis, H. C., Marıń, G., Lisansky, J., and Betancourt, H. (1984). Simpatıá as a cultural script of Hispanics. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 47, 1363—1375.

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5 Birth Order

If you’re a guy who grew up with an older sister, you should give her a call and thank her. Why? Because the odds are good that if you have had some success with the women in your life, your older sister should get some of the credit. Similarly, if you’re a woman who grew up with an older brother, you should give him a call and thank him. He deserves at least a little credit for whatever success you have had with men. Think I’m kidding you? Read on.

With the divorce rate in the United States hovering just below 40% during the past three decades,1 parents come and go. Siblings, however, tend to be a more permanent fixture of our childhood and adolescence. We live with our siblings in the same house (and, often, in the same room) for a period of time that is measured in years but can feel like an eternity. We are noticeably aware of, and quick to comment on, our siblings’ major faults–a favor that they don’t hesitate to return. We are secretly aware of, and loath to comment on, their major virtues–another favor that they don’t hesitate to return. We share everything with them . . . except the things that we stubbornly

1

Norton, A. J., and Miller, L. F. (2002). Marriage, divorce, and remarriage in the 1990’s. Washington, DC: U.S. Department of Commerce, Economics and Statistics Administration, Bureau of the Census. Current population report P23-180, p. 9.

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refuse to share. We hate them, we love them, we hit them, and we hug them. For nearly two decades we’re stuck with them. And vice versa. It would be surprising, therefore, if our siblings didn’t have some long-term impact on the young adults that we eventually become. Perhaps they even leave their mark on the initial interactions we have with opposite-sex peers. That was my thinking, anyway, when I first decided that it might be interesting to study this phenomenon.2 I was, at that point, in my second academic job at the University of Missouri—St. Louis, and one of the clinical graduate students, Marilyn Turner, had just been assigned to work with me, a personality/social psychologist. I don’t remember exactly how or why that happened–perhaps the clinical faculty had already taken on all the students that they could handle. Anyway, Marilyn had been given an appointment as a graduate research assistant. I was a recently-arrived faculty member with no graduate students in my lab, and I was happy to receive the unexpected help. But help doing what? When Marilyn showed up at my office one day, I didn’t have a particular project in mind for her to work on. However, I had been thinking about the possibility of designing a dyadic interaction study to see what role sibling influences might have on the initial interactions of young adults, and I asked her if she might be interested in working on that. She gave me a kind of ‘‘why not?’’ shrug, so I picked up a piece of chalk, and after a couple of false starts, drew the following research design on the small blackboard in my office: Table 5.1. Design of the study by Ickes and Turner (1983). The male partner has only: The female partner has only:

Younger sister(s)

Older sister(s)

Younger brother(s)

Older brother of younger sister(s) / Older sister of younger brother(s)

Younger brother of older sister(s) / Older sister of younger brother(s)

Older brother(s)

Older brother of younger sister(s) / Younger sister of older brother(s)

Younger brother of older sister(s) / Younger sister of older brother(s)

2

‘‘Phenomenon’’ sounds like a hype word that one would use in reference to something that is nothing less than phenomenal! In science, however, it simply refers to some process, event, or outcome that a researcher finds interesting enough to want to study.

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Looking at the shaded portion of this design, you can see that it called for four different types of mixed-sex (male-female) dyads. In all four dyad types, a man who had grown up with one or more sisters would be paired with a woman who had grown up with one or more brothers. What would vary, however, was the man’s and the woman’s birth order in relation to their opposite-sex sibling(s).3 In the first dyad type (upper left), an older brother of younger sister(s) would be paired with an older sister of younger brother(s). In the second dyad type (lower left), an older brother of younger sister(s) would be paired with a younger sister of older brother(s). In the third dyad type (upper right), a younger brother of older sister(s) would be paired with an older sister of younger brother(s). In the fourth dyad type (lower right), a younger brother of older sister(s) would be paired with a younger sister of older brother(s). This design was an efficient one, in comparison to the other designs that we considered, but did it make any theoretical sense to choose this one? It did. One of my goals for the study was to test predictions derived from the ‘‘family constellation theory’’4 proposed by Walter Toman, an Austrian psychologist and psychoanalyst. Toman’s theory proposes that the role a person has had in early intrafamilial relationships will carry over into adult relationships’’ (Levinger & Sonnheim, 1965, p. 137) such that people will prefer to affiliate with, date, and marry partners ‘‘who enable them to replicate an earlier relationship with a sibling of the opposite sex’’ (Birtchnell & Mayhew, 1977, p. 19). According to Toman, heterosexual dyadic relationships should be most successful and satisfactory when both rank and sex complementarity occur, that is, when (a) the older brother of a younger sister is paired with the younger sister of an older brother or (b) the younger

3 Figuring that it would be difficult to find enough participants who had only one opposite-sex sibling, we also planned to recruit potential participants who had two opposite-sex (but no same-sex) siblings. 4 See, for example, Toman (1969) and Toman (1976).

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brother of an older sister is paired with the older sister of a younger brother (Mendelsohn, Linden, Gruen, & Curran, 1974). (Ickes and Turner, 1983, p. 211). Some people think that Toman’s theory makes sense, but others find it implausible. To the people in the first category, it seems reasonable to predict that we should prefer opposite-sex partners with whom we can ‘‘replicate’’ the kind of relationship that we previously had with our opposite-sex sibling. To the people in the second category, it seems strange to predict that a kid sister who was regarded as a major nuisance by her older brother would want to find, date, and settle down with some other older brother of a kid sister (who probably thought that his kid sister was a major nuisance as well). It seems equally strange to predict that a kid brother who was bossed around for years by his older sister can’t wait to get hitched to some other kid brother’s older sister so that he can start getting bossed around by her. (In Toman’s world, apparently, we are gluttons for some of our earliest forms of intrafamilial punishment.) But what’s the alternative to Toman’s predictions? The alternative is an account that goes something like this. First-born children find themselves in a family that includes two adults as their role models. Having had no previous children, the parents of firstborn children expect a great deal from them; and first-borns, in turn, are sensitive to these parental expectations. From a very early age, first-born children feel that it’s their job to think and act as much like a ‘‘little adult’’ as they possibly can.5 So, lacking any other role models in their family, they use their parents as their primary role models; they strive very hard to match adult standards as quickly as possible; and they wind up being responsible and achievement-oriented.6 In contrast, last-born children find themselves in a family that includes one or more older siblings. Having already had at least one child, their parents have learned to relax and let the new baby

5 Ernst, C., and Angst, J. (1983). Birth order: Its influences on personality. Berlin and New York: Springer-Verlag, p. 240. 6 Sulloway, F. J. (1996). Born to rebel: Birth order, family dynamics, and creative lives. New York: Pantheon Books, p. 69.

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be a baby, without the pressure of the expectations that they had for their first-born son or daughter.7 Accordingly, last-borns grow up in a more relaxed atmosphere. They don’t have to match adult standards–it’s enough for them to model the behavior of their older sibling(s) instead–and they tend to be doted on by their parents and siblings alike. Their role is to be the ‘‘baby of the family,’’ the child that everyone else in the family finds charming and adorable. On the other hand, last-borns soon realize that they are smaller, weaker, and less cognitively developed than the other members of their family. Unlike their older siblings, who can dominate and outsmart them to get what they want,8 last-borns must develop their ‘‘people skills’’ (their charm, their persuasiveness, and their powers of negotiation) in order to get what they want.9 And so, last-borns play to their strength: they capitalize on their charm and natural ease with people, and they further develop the social skills that they have acquired by observing both the adults and the older children in their family. In short, they become popular, socially adept, and socially successful.10 The evidence for this general characterization of the differences between first-borns and last-borns is not found in any one place.11 It is scattered over a large and extensive research literature that I will not attempt to review in detail here. Instead, I will simply note the results of studies which indicate that: . . . relative to firstborns, later borns are rated by themselves (McArthur, 1956) and by their teachers (Miller & Maruyama, 1976) as more socially skilled, . . . are rated by their peers as more popular (a finding that generalizes across the variables of age, race, sex, and socioeconomic status; Miller &

7

Baskett, L. M. (1984). Ordinal position differences in children’s family interactions. Developmental Psychology, 20, 1026—1031. 8 Sutton-Smith, B., and Rosenberg, B. G. (1970). The sibling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. 9 Sutton-Smith and Rosenberg (1970), pp. 118—119. 10 Sulloway (1996), pp. 72—74. 11 This characterization does not, of course, apply to all first-borns and all last-borns. It applies to enough of them, however, to be valid as a statistical generalization.

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Maruyama, 1975; Schachter, 1964), and . . . are more accepting of their peers in return (Sells & Roff, 1963). (Ickes and Turner, 1983, p. 211) Complementary evidence comes from a 1970 study by Mark Oberlander, Kenneth Frauenfelder, and Helen Heath.12 They administered the Kuder Preference Record to a large sample of male and female 18-year-olds–a group that is close in age to the college students that Marilyn Turner and I planned to study. Oberlander and his colleagues found that, compared to the first-borns in their study, the later-borns were significantly less interested in working with ideas but were significantly more interested in being active in groups. When Marilyn and I viewed our planned study from the perspective of this pattern of findings, it led to a simple and straightforward prediction. Because the last-born men and women (those with older, opposite-sex siblings) should be more socially adept, they should have better, more involving interactions with opposite-sex strangers than the first-born men and women (those with younger, opposite-sex siblings) should have. Notice that this prediction differs from Toman’s. His theory predicts that the best interactions should occur when men with older sisters are paired with women with younger brothers, and when men with younger sisters are paired with women with older brothers. How do you think the results came out? Did the best interactions occur in the dyads in which one or both partners were last-born? Or did the best interactions occur in the dyads in which the partners ‘‘replicated’’ the type of relationship they had previously had with their opposite-sex siblings? Or is the answer ‘‘none of the above’’? That’s a possibility too. Go ahead–make your best guess.

The findings were a bit complicated, but the largest and most informative pattern of results looked like this:

12

Oberlander, M. I., Frauenfelder, K. J., and Heath, H. (1970). Ordinal position, sex of sibling, sex, and personal preferences in a group of eighteen-year-olds. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 35, 122—125.

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Table 5.2. Average (mean) scores on various behavioral and self-report measures of the men and women in dyads with first-born versus last-born male partners in the study by Ickes and Turner (1983). First-born male dyads (men with younger sisters)

Last-born male dyads (men with older sisters)

Outcome measures

Men

Women

Men

Women

Duration of talking Duration of gazing Number of smiles/laughter Duration of smiles/laughter Number of verbal acknowledgments Number of questions asked Liking for partner

56.0 65.0 5.4 6.9 5.6 4.2 42.4

79.3 54.5 6.4 7.3 4.3 4.3 29.4

102.0 81.0 5.4 4.2 5.0 6.9 41.6

87.1 102.9 9.6 9.7 9.0 5.8 47.3

Reprinted under the copyrights and permissions policy of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

As you can see, the men who grew up with older sisters hit it off better with their female partners than the men who grew up with younger sisters. The men with older sisters talked nearly twice as much as the men with younger sisters did. They also asked their female partners over 64% more questions. Even better, they got a very favorable reception from their female partners, who looked at them twice as long and acknowledged twice as many of their comments as the female partners of men with younger sisters did. In addition, the female partners of the men with older sisters liked them substantially more, and rated them as being significantly more self-assertive, exciting, and friendly. So far, these data appear to be consistent with the view that the best interactions would occur in the dyads in which one or both partners were last-born. But if the men with older sisters had a social advantage over the men with younger sisters, did the women with older brothers also have a social advantage over the women with younger brothers? They did. The women with older brothers were twice as likely to start up the conversation as the women with younger brothers were. They were also rated as being highly likable, and they smiled at their male partners twice as much as their male partners smiled at them. These data tell a story that is fairly simple and straightforward. In initial, opposite-sex interactions, men with older sisters and women with older brothers have a social advantage over men with younger sisters and women with younger brothers. This advantage

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is particularly evident for men with older sisters. If you are one of these men, call your older sister today–and thank her!

So far, I have emphasized the social advantage that last-born children, in general, have over first-born children. Things are a bit more complicated than that, however. Specifically, there is reason to believe that the advantage gained by being the last-born child in a family with an older opposite-sex sibling is different from the advantage gained by being the last-born child in a family with an older same-sex sibling. Remember that I mentioned earlier how first-borns use their parents as their primary role-models, whereas last-borns have their older sibling(s), as well as their parents, to use as role models? According to Orville Brim, an expert on children’s development, growing up with an older, opposite-sex sibling helps you understand how people of the opposite sex think, feel, and act.13 In contrast, growing up with an older, same-sex sibling tends to limit you to an understanding of how people of your own sex think, feel, and act. Of course, interacting with one’s opposite- and same-sex parents should help to facilitate both kinds of understanding (you learn something about how women think, feel, and act from your mom, and you learn something about how men think, feel, and act from your dad). Still, a boy who grows up in a family with an older sister should–everything else being equal–have a better chance of learning how to understand and relate well to opposite-sex peers than a boy who grows up in a family with an older brother. By the same token, a girl who grows up in a family with an older brother should–everything else being equal–have a better chance of learning how to understand and relate well to opposite-sex peers than a girl who grows up in a family with an older sister. For laterborn children, these influences of older siblings are assumed to be fairly powerful, and to occur ‘‘on top of’’ the parents’ influence.

13 Brim, Orville G., Jr. (1958). Family structure and sex role learning by children: A further analysis of Helen Koch’s data. Sociometry, 21, 1—16.

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As you might have gathered, Brim’s analysis further assumes that younger siblings, whose social skills and social role repertoires are still developing, will be influenced more by their older siblings than vice versa. This differential influence reflects the fact that older siblings typically have acquired more knowledge and experience that their younger siblings have, leading their younger siblings to look to them for guidance. In addition, the personality of an older sibling has, to some extent, already been formed by the time the younger sibling comes along, which means that the personality of the younger sibling is likely to be more influenceable and open to change. Given this asymmetrical influence, Brim predicted that boys with older sisters would develop their own feminine-expressive traits and capabilities to a greater degree than boys with older brothers (reflecting the ‘‘feminizing’’ influence of the older sisters on their younger brothers’ personality). Similarly, he predicted that girls with older brothers would develop their own masculineinstrumental traits and capabilities to a greater degree than girls with older sisters (reflecting the ‘‘masculinizing’’ influence of the older brothers on their younger sisters’ personality). In other words, learning to understand how an older opposite-sex sibling thinks, feels, and acts not only enables us to relate more effectively to members of the opposite-sex; it also results in attributes of the opposite sex becoming more pronounced in our own personalities. Brim did not attempt to test the first of these propositions–the idea that last-born children with an older opposite-sex sibling can get along better with members of the opposite-sex than last-born children with an older same-sex sibling can. He did, however, attempt to test the second of these propositions–the idea that boys with older sisters develop more feminine-expressive personalities than boys with older brothers do, and that girls with older brothers develop more masculine-instrumental personalities than girls with older sisters do. To test his proposition regarding personality development, Brim conducted a secondary analysis of an impressive set of data that had previously been collected by Helen Koch, a psychologist at the University of Chicago. According to Frank Sulloway, one of the foremost authorities on birth order research, the design of Koch’s study was virtually flawless: Beginning in 1954 Helen Koch, a psychologist at the University of Chicago, published ten articles on birth order, testing its

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influence on dozens of psychological traits. Koch’s study is noteworthy for its sophisticated design. Even today, no study has approached its efforts to control for so many confounding variables. Koch selected 384 children for her research, all fiveand six-year-olds from schools near Chicago. Each child was from a white, intact, two-child family. Her subjects were carefully divided into matched subgroups . . . for every combination of birth order, sex, and sex of sibling. In addition, Koch matched each subgroup for three categories of age gaps between siblings. Finally, Koch matched each subgroup by social class. (Sulloway, 1996, p. 75). Koch’s sample included 48 boys with an older sister; 48 boys with an older brother; 48 boys with a younger sister; 48 boys with a younger brother; 48 girls with an older brother; 48 girls with an older sister; 48 girls with a younger brother; and 48 girls with an a younger sister. Within each group of 48, the age gap between the older and the younger sibling was varied systematically. After identifying the specific children to be included in her sample, Koch asked the children’s teachers to rate them on 58 behavioral dimensions. The result was an impressive and rigorously constructed data set, but one that could be overwhelming in its size and complexity. For this reason, Orville Brim re-analyzed Koch’s data with the intent of simplifying her findings and distilling their essence. Brim divided Koch’s behavioral measures into ‘‘instrumental’’ and ‘‘expressive’’ traits based on their congruence with masculine and feminine roles. Brim’s list of ‘‘masculine’’ tendencies encompasses traits such as leadership, self-confidence, assertiveness, competitiveness, and aggression. His list of ‘‘feminine’’ tendencies includes traits such as affection, cooperation, and flexibility (Sulloway, 1996, p. 77). Brim’s findings were consistent with his predictions about the effect of the older sibling’s gender on the younger sibling’s personality. First, he found evidence of more feminine-expressive personality traits in the personalities of boys who had an older sister than in the personalities of boys who had an older brother. Second, he found evidence of more masculine-instrumental personality traits in the personalities of girls who had an older brother than in the personalities of girls who had an older sister. He was careful to note, however, that in families with more than two children, the patterns of cross-sibling influence were likely to be more complicated and harder to predict.

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In summary, Helen Koch’s data provided some intriguing evidence in support of Brim’s second proposition (which concerns the influence of older siblings on younger siblings’ personality development). But what about Brim’s first proposition (which concerns the influence of older siblings on younger siblings’ ability to relate effectively to members of the opposite sex)? Let’s shift our focus back to this idea. Brim believed that by learning how an older opposite-sex sibling thinks, feels, and acts, we learn something useful about the thoughts, feelings, and actions of opposite-sex people in general. As we come to understand their social roles and the expectations that apply to them, we gradually learn how to adopt their perspective and to anticipate how they are likely to think, feel, and act in various situations. This means that we don’t just incorporate aspects of their feminine-expressive or masculine-instrumental role into our own personalities; we also learn how to interact with them more effectively. Given this analysis, I think that Orville Brim would have been pleased to see the results of the dyadic interaction study that Marilyn Turner and I conducted. Just as his analysis would predict, we found that men with older sisters and women with older brothers had particularly good initial interactions with a stranger of the opposite-sex.

On the other hand, Brim would be quick to note that a more complete test of his predictions would require comparisons with additional dyad types that were not included in the Ickes and Turner design. Recall that the Ickes and Turner study included only participants who grew up with opposite-sex siblings, not same-sex ones. If we expanded the design of the Ickes and Turner study to include all possible combinations of male-female dyads, the resulting research design would contain 16 different dyad types, all of which are represented in Table 5.3. For a dyadic interaction researcher, this is an intimidating u¨berdesign, and from the standpoint of data collection it would be a real monster. I would certainly think more than twice before taking on a dyadic interaction study that promises to be this big, this difficult, and this time-consuming.

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Table 5.3. Design of a hypothetical study of male-female dyads that I hope someone else decides to conduct. The female partner has only:

The male partner has only: Younger sister(s)

Older sister(s)

Younger brother(s)

Older brother(s)

Younger brother(s)

Older brother of younger sister(s) / Older sister of younger brother(s)

Younger brother of older sister(s) / Older sister of younger brother(s)

Older brother of younger brother(s) / Older sister of younger brother(s)

Younger brother of older brother(s) / Older sister of younger brother(s)

Older brother(s)

Older brother of younger sister(s) / Younger sister of older brother(s)

Younger brother of older sister(s) / Younger sister of older brother(s)

Older brother of younger brother(s) / Younger sister of older brother(s)

Younger brother of older brother(s) / Younger sister of older brother(s)

Younger sister(s)

Older brother of younger sister(s) / Older sister of younger sister(s)

Younger brother of older sister(s) / Older sister of younger sister(s)

Older brother of younger brother(s) / Older sister of younger sister(s)

Younger brother of older brother(s) / Older sister of younger sister(s)

Older sister(s)

Older brother of younger sister(s) / Younger sister of older sister(s)

Younger brother of older sister(s) / Younger sister of older sister(s)

Older brother of younger brother(s) / Younger sister of older sister(s)

Younger brother of older brother(s) / Younger sister of older sister(s)

However, if there’s somebody else out there who’s brave enough to take it on, you could use Brim’s arguments to predict which of these 16 dyad types would be likely to have particularly good initial interactions. According to Brim, the best interactions should be found in the dyad type in which a male who grew up with one or more older sisters is paired with a female who grew up with one or more older brothers. I have darkly shaded this dyad type in Table 5.3.

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Remember, however, that Walter Toman would make a somewhat different prediction. Toman’s theory predicts that the best interactions should occur in dyads where the male and female partners ‘‘replicate’’ with each other the type of relationship they previously had with their respective opposite-sex siblings. So if we showed Table 5.3 to Walter Toman and asked him which of those 16 dyad types are likely to have the best interactions, what would he say? Yup, he’d say that the best interactions should occur in the two lightly shaded dyad types that appear in Table 5.3.14 Obviously, these don’t include the dyad type that Orville Brim would point us to, so our hypothetical study would involve competing predictions. Who do you think would win the battle of these competing predictions–Brim or Toman? We won’t know for sure until some brave soul actually conducts the study and then tells us the answer, but I’d place my bet with Orville Brim. Why? For three reasons. First, Walter Toman’s predictions about the optimal male-female dyad types simply haven’t held up in the tests of his theory that have been reported to date.15 Second, the findings based on the data from Helen Koch’s study and from Ickes and Turner’s study offer converging support for Orville Brim’s predictions, even though neither study was originally designed to test his predictions. Third, Brim’s predictions are also consistent with some relevant findings regarding psychological androgyny–a topic that I will address in Chapter 7.

In the final analysis, how important are birth order and sex-of-sibling differences as influences on people’s personalities and social

14

Unfortunately, this conversation with Walter Toman is strictly hypothetical. According to the Wikipedia, Professor Toman died on September 28, 2003, at the age of 83. 15 As Ickes and Turner (1983, pp. 211—212) put it, ‘‘The research findings relevant to Toman’s theory have been mixed and, in general, not supportive. Toman’s own research (e.g., Toman, 1959, 1962, 1964; Toman & Gray, 1961) has been criticized by Birtchnell and Mayhew (1977) as methodologically inadequate to test the theory. Also, of the independent tests conducted by other researchers, all but one (Mendelsohn et al., 1974) have failed to support Toman’s predictions (Birtchnell & Mayhew, 1977; Kemper, 1966; Levinger & Sonnheim, 1965; Touhey, 1971; Ward, Castro, & Wilcox, 1974). Birtchnell and Mayhew’s (1977) studies–designed as definitive tests of Toman’s hypotheses–found virtually no support for them in two large-sample investigations of friendship formation and mate selection/success in marriage.’’

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behavior? According to skeptics such as Cećile Ernst and Jules Angst, the answer is: not very. After reviewing over a thousand publications on birth order in their 1983 book, Birth Order: Its Influences on Personality, Ernst and Angst16 offered the opinion that ‘‘Birth order influences on personality and IQ have been widely overrated.’’17 They speculated that most of the birth-order effects they examined could be attributed to potentially confounding variables such as family size and social class. I agree with first part of this opinion. With regard to their influence on our initial interactions with others, birth order and sex-ofsibling differences are responsible for small, rather than moderate or large, effects. That doesn’t mean that these effects aren’t of interest, however, or that they can be entirely accounted for by potentially confounding variables such as family size and social class. I, for one, believe that these effects are real. However, if you want to study and document these small but real effects, you have to know where to look. I suggest that Orville Brim, with a huge assist by Helen Koch and a more modest assist by Marilyn Turner and me, has pointed us in the right direction. Walter Toman’s contribution is also important, however, in giving us a competing hypothesis to test. Because I don’t plan to do the crucial follow-up research myself, it will be up to some other researcher to determine whose predictions (Brim’s or Toman’s) will prove to be right or wrong. Whatever the outcome might be, I encourage that ambitious but as-yet-unknown researcher to proceed. Speaking of proceeding, it’s time for us to move on to the next chapter. There, we will see how individual differences in physical attractiveness affect our initial interactions with opposite-sex partners. We are going to put a very pretty face on what comes next. RECOMMENDED READINGS Birtchnell, J., and Mayhew, J. (1977). Toman’s theory: Tested for mate selection and friendship formation. Journal of Individual Psychology, 33, 18—36. Brim, Orville G., Jr. (1958). Family structure and sex role learning by children: A further analysis of Helen Koch’s data. Sociometry, 21, 1—16.

16 17

Isn’t there something wonderfully poetic about that name-pairing? Ernst and Angst (1983), p. 242, italics theirs.

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Ernst, C., and Angst, J. (1983). Birth order: Its influences on personality. Berlin and New York: Springer-Verlag. Ickes, W., and Turner, M. (1983). On the social advantages of having an older, opposite-sex sibling: Birth order influences in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 210—222. Koch, H. (1955). Some personality correlates of sex, sibling position, and sex of sibling among five- and six-year-old children. Genetic Psychology Monographs, 52, 3—50. Miller, N., and Maruyama, G. (1976). Ordinal position and peer popularity. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 33, 123—131. Sulloway, F. J. (1996). Born to rebel: Birth order, family dynamics, and creative lives. New York: Pantheon Books. Sutton-Smith, B., and Rosenberg, B. G. (1970). The sibling. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston. Toman, W. (1976). Family constellation: Its effect on personality and social behavior (3rd ed.). New York: Springer.

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6 Physical Attractiveness

If you’re vain enough, you probably think this chapter’s about you. Don’t you? Well, it isn’t–not in any personal sense anyway. However, if you are lucky enough to be one of the world’s ‘‘beautiful people,’’ some of the research findings I will describe might sound as if they come from your own life experience. If they do, it’s possible that you have learned to take your good looks for granted, and that you might not realize just how lucky you are.

As we will see, beauty appears to reside more in the person who possesses it than in the eye of the beholder. Nevertheless, beholders in different cultures and in different historical periods have had different ideas about what is physically attractive. What is seen as attractive in one culture isn’t always seen as attractive in another. And within any particular culture, some looks may be regarded as au courant (the way one should aspire to look right here and right now), whereas other looks are regarded as passe´ (we haven’t seen that haircut here since 1969). In response to these shifting standards of beauty, people have attempted to enhance their physical attractiveness by various–and even opposite–means. For example, they have either gained or lost weight; increased or decreased their muscle tone; darkened or

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lightened their skin tone; darkened or lightened their hair; curled, crimped, or straightened their hair; acquired or removed facial hair; added or removed tattoos; cut or extended their fingernails; and stained or bleached their teeth. To continue this list, people have also capped, decorated, filed, straightened, and replaced their teeth; worn wigs and hair extensions; shaved their heads; grown out their hair; cut and styled their hair; plucked and re-configured their eyebrows; painted their nails; mortified (i.e., abraded, pierced, scarred, and even branded) their flesh; had flesh surgically removed; had fat surgically removed; and had unwanted wrinkles and indentations Botoxed or lasered out of existence. They have also implanted things in their flesh; attached things to their flesh; and applied to their flesh various colorful and colorless creams, unguents, ointments, and emoluments. People have done all of these things–and many more besides1–in their unending quest to be perceived as physically attractive. Of course, some people don’t have to work this hard. Some people are naturally beautiful. For example, when I was a college undergraduate, I and my roommate, Robert Williams, drew a strong distinction between women who are ‘‘fixer-uppers’’ and women who are naturally beautiful.2 Women in the fixer-upper category can spend an unknowable amount of time in their bedrooms and/or bathrooms doing whatever mysterious things they do, and eventually emerge looking really good. Women in the naturally beautiful category can roll out of bed, put on yesterday’s jeans and sweatshirt, pull their hair back from their face, and look absolutely ravishing. Although different body types have been preferred by people in different cultures and at different times (ranging, in the case of women’s bodies, from the Rubenesque to the Barbiesque to the Twiggiesque, along with everything in between), the standards for judging facial beauty are, by comparison, relatively consistent across

1

If we start talking about clothes, curves, and cleavage, we could be here all day. Bob and I used a couple of other categories too, but because they were reserved for women of lesser beauty, it would be ungallant of me to recount them here. Please note, however, that the expression ‘‘extreme makeover’’ came along later; we had nothing to do with it. 2

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time and culture. Here is what psychologist Michael Cunningham has to say on the subject: Darwin (1871) was struck by cultural differences in preference for different skin colors and amounts of body hair, as well as such practices as teeth filing and lip ornamentation. Ford and Beach (1951) documented the cross-cultural variability in admired body weight, breast size, and other aspects of the female physique, suggesting little consensus in aesthetic preferences . . . . Yet variability in some aspects of preferred physique or ornamentation does not preclude the possibility . . . . that certain facial configurations could be intrinsically attractive . . . . [Indeed, in relevant] cross-cultural investigations . . . rough agreements in facial aesthetic preferences were shown by Asian-American and Caucasian females (Wagatsuma & Kleinke, 1979), Chinese, Indian, and English females judging Greek males (Thakerar & Iwawaki, 1979), South African and American males and females (Morse, Reis, Gruzen, & Wolff, 1976), and blacks and whites judging males and females from both races (Cross & Cross, 1971).3 Other studies have supported this view,4 including a widelycited series of studies by Michael Cunningham and his colleagues Alan Roberts, Anita Barbee, Perri Druen, and Cheng-Huan Wu.5 These researchers found that although Black and White American men varied in their ratings of the attractiveness of different female body types, they were generally quite consistent in their ratings of the attractiveness of different female faces. The same researchers found that recently arrived Asian and Hispanic men also rated female faces in much the same way that White men did, and that their degree of exposure to Western media did not significantly influence these attractiveness ratings.

3

Cunningham, M. R. (1986). Measuring the physical in physical attractiveness: Quasiexperiments on the sociobiology of female facial beauty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 925—935. See pages 925—926. 4 See for example, the studies by Maret and Harling (1985) and Bernstein, Tsai-Ding, and McClellan (1982). 5 Cunningham, M. R., Roberts, A. R., Barbee, A. P., Druen, P. B., and Wu, C-H. (1995). ‘‘Their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours’’: Consistency and variability in the cross-cultural perception of female physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 261—279.

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What are the specific facial characteristics that contribute to men’s judgments that certain female faces are attractive? According to the findings of Michael Cunningham’s research, they are the ‘‘babylike’’ features of large eyes, a small nose, and a small chin; the ‘‘adultlike’’ features of prominent cheekbones and narrow cheeks; and the expressive features of high eyebrows, large pupils, and a large smile.6 Now let’s reverse the question: What are the specific facial characteristics that contribute to women’s judgments that certain male faces are attractive? According to the related findings of Michael Cunningham, Anita Barbee, and Carolyn Pike, they are the ‘‘babylike’’ feature of large eyes, the ‘‘adultlike’’ features of prominent cheekbones and a large chin, and the expressive feature of a big smile.7 Some people, using the famous ‘‘proportion studies’’ by Leonardo da Vinci as their point of departure, have argued that the proportion of the width of the face to the height of the face is also important in determining its perceived attractiveness, with the ‘‘golden ratio’’ of 1 (width) to 1.618 (height) supposedly being the ideal. When I looked for examples of such a face on the Internet, I found the example which appears in Figure 6.1,8 which I promptly e-mailed to Michael Cunningham for a reaction. Michael is a friend, and I got a quick reply. He expressed the belief that the idealized feature sizes that he and his colleagues identified are more important than facial proportions in determining

Figure 6.1. A face with an ‘‘ideal’’ width-to-height ratio. 6

Cunningham, M. R. (1986), pp. 927—929. Cunningham, M. R. Barbee, A. P., and Pike, C. L. (1990). What do women want? Facialmetric assessment of multiple motives in the perception of male facial physical attractivess. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 61—72. 8 This image was posted at http://www.facialbeauty.org/divineproportion.html and credited to Mademoiselle magazine. 7

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perceptions of facial attractiveness. However, because he didn’t have any relevant data on hand to convince me of that, he decided to make an impromptu ‘‘visual argument’’ for the greater importance of feature sizes than facial proportions. Specifically, he used Photoshop to modify the photo example I sent him to create the series of four faces that appear in Figure 6.2. In his e-mail to me, Michael described these four faces as follows: 1. The first face is the original face with 1:1.816 proportions and the original features. 2. The second face retains the original face shape proportions but contains ‘‘de-idealized’’ features, with reduced size eyes, lowered eyebrows, expanded nose, and reduced and raised lips, giving the appearance of a longer chin. Despite retaining the proportions of the ‘‘ideal’’ face, I believe that image 2 is significantly less attractive than image 1. 3. The third face shows a shorter face, with a width to height ratio of 1:1.50. The shorter face also contains idealized features, including larger eyes, higher eyebrows and a smaller nose. I think that image 3 is more attractive than image 1. 4. Finally, image 4 contains the idealized features on the original 1.618 facial proportions. I do not think that image 4 is more attractive than image 3, and may be half a point less attractive. 5. So, I would say that the 1:1.618 ratio is more attractive than, say, 1:1, but it is not uniquely attractive. What do you think?

Figure 6.2. Four faces representing different facial proportions and different feature sizes. Photo modifications provided by Dr. Michael Cunningham, University of Louisville. Published with permission.


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I think he’s right.

Another line of research is based on the notion that averaged faces are particularly attractive. Averaged faces are created by using a computer to superimpose on each other the digitized images of many actual faces. During this computer-morphing process, facial features that are unusual, extreme, or highly idiosyncratic tend to get ‘‘averaged out,’’ along with facial blemishes, sharp angles, and the vast majority of lines and wrinkles. What gets retained are the lineaments of an ‘‘average,’’ and presumably prototypical, face. Figure 6.3 provides some examples. It depicts two averaged faces–one female, one male–that I found on the Internet. As you can see, both faces are remarkably smooth-skinned, with virtually no blemishes, lines, or wrinkles. Both faces are also highly symmetrical when their right and left sides are compared, another common outcome of the averaging process. Finally, both faces are relatively attractive–indeed, more attractive than most of the composite faces that were used to create them.9, 10 This is another common outcome of the averaging process, and it is the most controversial one in terms of the different explanations that have been proposed to account for it. One explanation is that people may have an evolved preference for facial features that seem to be reliable indicators of ‘‘good genes. ’’11, 12 Because clear, unblemished skin and good facial symmetry are associated with good health and with a prenatal development that progressed without disease or complications, human ancestors who chose mating partners with these features might have produced healthier and more reproductively viable offspring

9

Langlois, J., and Roggman, L. (1990). Attractive faces are only average. Psychological Science, 1, 115—121. 10 Rubenstein, A., Langlois, J., and Roggman, L. (2002). What makes a face attractive and why: The role of averageness in defining facial beauty. In G. Rhodes and L. Zebrowitz (Eds.), Facial attractiveness: Evolutionary, cognitive, and social perspectives (pp. 1—33). Westport, CT: Ablex Publishing. 11 Jones, B., Little, A., and Penton-Voak, I. (2001). Facial symmetry and judgments of apparent health: Support for a ‘‘good genes’’ explanation of the attractiveness-symmetry relationship. Evolution and Human Behavior, 22, 417—429. 12 Rhodes, G., Zebrowitz, L., and Clark, A. (2001). Do facial averageness and symmetry signal health? Evolution and Human Behavior, 22, 31—46.

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Figure 6.3. Left: averaged female face, made of 64 female faces; right: averaged male face, made of 32 male faces. From the website Beautycheck (www.beautycheck.de). Reprinted with the permission of Dr. Martin Gr} undl.

than those who chose mating partners with unhealthy-looking skin and asymmetrical faces. Over countless thousands of human generations, the genes that contributed to this preference might now be so widespread that virtually all contemporary humans have inherited it. A second explanation is that computer-averaged faces are, almost by definition, highly prototypical ones. According to this interpretation, prototypical faces are seen as more attractive because they are more frequently encountered and are therefore more ‘‘familiar looking’’ than less prototypical faces. The plausibility of this interpretation is supported by the results of studies showing that people rate strangers’ faces more positively the more often they have seen them before.13 A third explanation, recently proposed by psychologist Piotr Winkielman and his colleagues, is that prototypical faces are easier

13

See, for example, the studies by Rhodes, Halberstadt, and Brajkovich, G. (2001) and Harmon-Jones and Allen (2001). But see also the study by Rhodes, Halberstadt, and Jeffrey (2005).


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for us to recognize and mentally process than less prototypical faces are.14 Because prototypical faces are ‘‘easy on the mind,’’ they are also experienced as ‘‘easy on the eye’’–that is, as more pleasurable to look at. Evidence for this interpretation comes from studies showing that prototypic stimuli of many different kinds are preferred, even ones based on geometric and randomdot patterns. These explanations aren’t mutually exclusive, and future research may well establish that each of them contributes to our understanding of why computer-averaged faces are generally more attractive than most of the composite faces that were used to create them. It seems likely, however, that the ‘‘beautyin-averageness effect’’ provides only a partial and incomplete account of why some faces are perceived as more attractive than others. Obviously, Michael Cunningham would argue that idealized feature sizes should be important as well–perhaps so important that if computer-averaged faces were given more ideal feature sizes, they would become even more physically attractive. This possibility was too interesting not to examine, so I e-mailed Michael again, sent him copies of the average female face and the average male face that appear in Figure 6.3, and asked him to use his Photoshop skills to ‘‘idealize’’ the feature sizes in each of these photos. For the computer-averaged female face, that meant enlarging the eyes, narrowing the cheeks, and reducing the size of the nose and chin. For the computer-averaged male face, that meant increasing the size of the eyes and chin and making the cheekbones more prominent.15 Fortunately, Michael agreed to this request, ‘‘idealizing’’ the feature sizes in the averaged female and averaged male faces to create the images in Figure 6.4. Although Michael didn’t have access to the tools of a professional photo refinisher, I think this part of his ‘‘visual argument’’ is persuasive as well. If you compare the averaged faces on the left with

14

Winkielman, P., Halberstadt, J., Fazendeiro, T., and Catty, S. (2006). Prototypes are attractive because they are easy on the mind. Psychological Science, 17, 799—806. 15 There are a few other changes suggested by Cunningham’s research that could further idealize the female and male faces, but these are the ones that could be done without modifying expressive features such as smiling.

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Figure 6.4. Averaged (left) and averaged-idealized (right) female and male faces. Photo modifications provided by Dr. Michael Cunningham, University of Louisville. Published with permission.

their counterparts on the right, I think you’ll agree that making the feature sizes more ideal noticeably enhances the physical attractiveness of both the female and the male faces. Averaged faces may be attractive, but averaged faces with idealized feature sizes are even more attractive.

With the possible exception of people who grew up in complete isolation from others, all of us have learned that the social rewards of being physically attractive are considerable. Beautiful people (or, at least, those who are perceived to be beautiful) get treated differently–and usually much better–than everyone else. This special treatment can start early in life. Parents often dote on a child whom they regard as physically attractive–sometimes to an extreme, and even pathological, degree.16 And parents aren’t the only people who show this bias. Attractive individuals get special treatment from nearly everyone they encounter, as the following examples reveal:

• When the participants in one study were asked to rate the ‘‘adoptability’’ of the infants whose faces they saw in

16 For an extreme example, see http://digg.com/comedy/The_Most_Spoiled_Girl_ In_The_World.


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photographs, they rated the most attractive infants–and those with the largest eyes (score another point for Michael Cunningham)–as being the most ‘‘adoptable’’ ones.17

• When students in grade school, middle school, and high score were asked to rate the popularity of their classmates, they rated their more attractive classmates as being more popular than their less attractive classmates.18

• When fifth-grade teachers were asked to provide their ‘‘first impressions’’ of students based on each child’s school record and an accompanying photograph, they rated the more attractive students as being more intelligent, more popular, and likely to receive more years of education than the less attractive students.19

• When researchers investigated the differences between the most and least active members of a commercial video-dating service, they found that the most active (i.e., the most frequently chosen) members were more attractive than the least active ones.20 Are you surprised? I didn’t think so.

• When researchers study hiring preferences in the workplace, they typically find that more attractive applicants are preferred over less attractive ones.21 Is this a form of job discrimination? You bet it is. Some people call it lookism.

17

Chin, S. F., Wade, T. J., and French, K. (2006). Race and facial attractiveness: Individual differences in the perceived adoptability of children. Journal of Cultural and Evolutionary Psychology, 4, 215—229. Interestingly, babies themselves prefer to look at attractive faces more than unattractive ones (see Samuels, Butterworth, Roberts, & Graupner, 1994), suggesting that the ‘‘attractiveness bias’’ is, to some extent, innate. 18 See, for example, Aboud and Mendelson (1998); Boyatzis, Baloff, and Durieux (1998); Nikitaras and Ntoumanis (2003); Smith and Krantz (2001); and Zakin (2001). 19 Clifford, M. M., and Walster, E. (1973). The effect of physical attractiveness on teacher expectations. Sociology of Education, 46, 248—258. See also Ross and Salvia (1975). 20 Green, S. K., Buchanan, D. R., & Heuer, S. K. (1984). Winners, losers, and chosers: A field investigation of dating initiation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 502—511. See also Riggio and Woll (1984). 21 See, for example, Cash, Gillen, and Burns (1977); Desrumaux-Zagrodnicki, Leoni, and Masclet (2003); and Shannon and Stark (2003). For a possible corrective, see Marlowe, Schneider, and Nelson (1996).

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• When researchers study differences in the salaries people get, they find additional–and similarly egregious– evidence of lookism. Attractive people take home an estimated 12—15% more in their paychecks than less attractive people do.22

• Finally, although the American courtroom is supposed to be the one place where everyone is equal under the law, it appears that some people are more equal than others. When researchers study the sentences that juries recommend for actual or hypothetical crimes and misdemeanors, they find that attractive defendants are generally treated more leniently than unattractive defendants are.23

But you knew–or at least suspected–all of this, right? Most of us have lived long enough to see this kind of stuff go on all the time. So we’re not surprised to learn that research has confirmed what we already know: that, with relatively few exceptions, beautiful people get treated unconscionably better than nonbeautiful people do. Given the pervasiveness of this phenomenon, it was inevitable that my colleagues and I would eventually want to study the effects of physical attractiveness in the initial interactions between male and female strangers. So, a few years after I had moved to back to Texas24 and set up my social interaction lab at the University of Texas at Arlington, we did just that. Along with me, the original research team included my graduate student colleagues Stella Garcia, Linda Stinson, and Victor Bissonnette. As the project moved toward

22

See, for example, Frieze, Olson, and Russell (1991) and Lorenz (2005). But not always. The attractiveness-leniency effect appears to be weaker, or even non-significant, when the judge’s criteria for guilt are made explicit and when the (simulated) jurors are asked to think rationally (Lieberman, 2002), to discuss the case at some length (Izzett & Leginski, 1974), and to assess the defendant’s probable guilt rather than recommend an appropriate sentence (Weiten, 1980). These qualifications should offer some hope to attractiveness-challenged defendants. 24 A homecoming for me. My parents live in Lubbock, the Hub City of the Texas panhandle, and I did my graduate work at the University of Texas at Austin. FYI: Texas itself is a great natural laboratory for students of personality and social behavior, with plenty of colorful variations of both to observe and to ponder. 23


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completion, we later recruited the help of Stephen Briggs, a personality psychologist who was then at the University of Tulsa.25 We recruited 38 pairs of male and female undergraduates to come to our lab, where we unobtrusively videotaped (okay, spied on) their initial interactions. We then separated the male and female dyad members, seated them in different cubicles, and asked them to view and pause their copy of the videotape to record each of the specific thoughts and feelings they remembered having had during the interaction. When all of the data had been collected from these 38 dyads, our undergraduate research assistants jumped in and did the behavioral and thought/feeling coding. Because the male and female dyad members had been paired up randomly, rather than systematically, we needed to measure how physically attractive they were after their interactions had already been recorded. To do this as efficiently as possible, all of the lab members (about a dozen of us) viewed the first 20 seconds of each tape with the sound off, and then rated the physical attractiveness of both dyad members on a 10-point scale that ranged from extremely unattractive (1) to extremely attractive (10). By averaging our ratings, we got very reliable measures of the male partners’ and the female partners’ attractiveness. We then correlated these attractiveness scores with our measures of the dyad members’ interaction behaviors and their thought/ feeling content. As you might expect, having a pretty woman in the dyad perked things up considerably. The data in Table 6.1 tell the largest part of this story. They show the correlations between the men’s and the women’s attractiveness scores and how much both partners talked, smiled, and looked at each other during the time they spent waiting for the experimenter to return (these are outcome measures that combine both the male and the female partners’ talking, smiling, and looking). In the bottom of Table 6.1 you can also see how the men’s attractiveness and the women’s attractiveness were correlated with the combined measure of how much the dyad members liked each other and how good they thought their interaction was.

25

Garcia, S., Stinson, L., Ickes, W., Bissonnette, V., and Briggs, S. R. (1991). Shyness and physical attractiveness in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 35—49.

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Table 6.1. Correlations of the men’s and women’s physical attractiveness with various dyad-level outcome measures in the study by Garcia, Stinson, Ickes, Bissonnette, and Briggs (1984). The correlations that are statistically significant are boldfaced. The effects of other predictors have been statistically controlled. Correlations of the outcome measure with: Dyad-level outcome measures Verbal behaviors Number of speaking turns (talking) Duration of speaking turns (talking) Number of questions asked Number of conversation sequences initiated % of third-person singular pronouns

Men’s attractiveness

Women’s attractiveness

.28 .30 .10 .12

.53 .48 .48 .50

.54

.06

Nonverbal behaviors Duration of smiles/laughter Number of gazes Duration of gazes Number of mutual gazes

.38 .32 .11 .32

.25 .42 .36 .35

Ratings of the interaction Perceived quality of interaction Liking for the interaction partner

.28 .09

.35 .41

Reprinted under the copyrights and permissions policy of American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

It’s obvious from looking at the boldfaced correlations that the women’s attractiveness had a powerful and pervasive effect on the initial interactions of these opposite-sex strangers. The more attractive the female partner was, the more the partners talked to each other, looked at each other, asked each other questions, and started the conversation back up at the times when it stalled. Consistent with these findings, the women’s attractiveness also predicted the degree to which the dyad members reported that their interactions were good and that they liked each other. No doubt about it: the women’s attractiveness had a large and immediate impact. The women’s attractiveness was also significantly correlated with the degree to which their male partner took the woman’s perspective during the conversation (.41) (as indicated in the men’s thought/feeling data), and felt that they understood her (.34) (as indicated in the men’s post-interaction questionnaire


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data). Given the evidence that the men tried harder to take the perspective of attractive female partners, perhaps they did indeed understand them better. Or perhaps the men were just indulging in some wishful thinking in believing that was true. What is unmistakably clear, however, is that pretty women motivated their male partners to try harder to get to know them during their initial interaction together. But what about the men’s attractiveness? Wasn’t it important too? The data suggest that it was. However, the men’s attractiveness affected how positive and intimate these interactions were, rather than how much the partners talked to and looked at each other. If we look at Table 6.1, we can see that the more attractive the male partners were, the more both partners smiled and laughed (.38), but the less they used third-person singular pronouns such as he, she, him, and her (-.54). Smiling and laughing a lot, and limiting pronominal references to people other than you and me, is a good recipe for making an initial interaction with an oppositesex stranger both positive and intimate, and the men’s attractiveness appeared to play an important role in creating interactions of this type.

Sometimes when you do a study like the one just described, the data go on to have an extended life of their own. That happened in this case. First, William Stiles, whom I mentioned in Chapter 3, analyzed transcripts of the conversations that occurred in these dyads to see how the dyad members’ attractiveness was related to the degree of self-disclosure that occurred during their conversations. He and his colleagues Nicolay Walz, Michelle Schroeder, and Laura Williams found that the more attractive the dyad members were, the more personal information they disclosed to each other.26 This finding wasn’t just a consequence of attractive dyad members talking more. Although more talking did occur in dyads with attractive

26

Stiles, W. B., Walz, N. C., Schroeder, M., and Williams, L. L. (1996). Attractiveness and disclosure in initial encounters of mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 13, 303—312.

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women, as Table 6.1 reveals, Stiles and his colleagues found that the percentage of self-disclosing statements (and not just the total number of statements) was significantly correlated with the partners’ attractiveness. Second, because the data from our study were part of a larger data set in which we had also measured how accurately the dyad members could infer each other’s thoughts and feelings, we tested to see whether they really did ‘‘understand’’ attractive interaction partners better than less attractive ones.27 Interestingly, we found that they did: the more attractive their opposite-sex partners were, the greater were the participants’ empathic accuracy scores. Overall, then, the data from these studies reflect a common underlying theme. When pairs of college-age men and women meet and interact for the first time in an unstructured situation, their partner’s physical attractiveness serves as a powerful motivator for them to try to get to know (and get close to) their attractive partner as quickly as possible. For the men, this effort is expressed in the form of taking an attractive female partner’s perspective during the conversation and re-starting the conversation whenever it appears to stall. For both the men and the women, it is expressed in the form of disclosing more to an attractive partner than to an unattractive one, and doing a better job of inferring an attractive partner’s thoughts and feelings. Data aren’t always democratic, as Table 6.1 illustrates. It shows with particular emphasis that physically attractive women give a special kind of kick to the interactions they have with strange men. But you knew that already, didn’t you? RECOMMENDED READINGS Cunningham, M. R. (1986). Measuring the physical in physical attractiveness: Quasi-experiments on the sociobiology of female facial beauty. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 50, 925—935. Cunningham, M. R., Barbee, A. P., and Pike, C. L. (1990). What do women want? Facialmetric assessment of multiple motives in the perception of male facial physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 61—72.

27

Ickes, W., Stinson, L., Bissonnette, V., and Garcia, S. (1990). Naturalistic social cognition: Empathic accuracy in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 730—742.


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Cunningham, M. R., Roberts, A. R., Barbee, A. P., Druen, P. B., and Wu, C-H. (1995). ‘‘Their ideas of beauty are, on the whole, the same as ours’’: Consistency and variability in the cross-cultural perception of female physical attractiveness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 261—279. Garcia, S., Stinson, L., Ickes, W., Bissonnette, V., and Briggs, S. R. (1991). Shyness and physical attractiveness in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 35—49. Green, S. K., Buchanan, D. R., and Heuer, S. K. (1984). Winners, losers, and choosers: A field investigation of dating initiation. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 10, 502—511. Ickes, W., Stinson, L., Bissonnette, V., and Garcia, S. (1990). Naturalistic social cognition: Empathic accuracy in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 730—742. Langlois, J., and Roggman, L. (1990). Attractive faces are only average. Psychological Science, 1,115—121. Stiles, W. B., Walz, N. C., Schroeder, M., and Williams, L. L. (1996). Attractiveness and disclosure in initial encounters of mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 13, 303—312.

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7 The Taijitu of Androgyny

The familiar-looking symbol that appears above (the one that looks like interracial tadpoles embracing) is called the taijitu. This symbol is used to represent the dynamic balance of two complementary qualities–the yin and the yang. In Chinese culture, yin-yang is always written as a hyphenated term that is meant to convey that ‘‘the yin and yang aspect of any one phenomenon will, when put together, form the entire phenomenon.’’1 The black portion of the symbol, the yin, is typically used to represent the traditional feminine qualities of gentleness, tranquility, and receptivity. In contrast, the white portion of the symbol, the yang, is typically used to represent the traditional masculine qualities of forcefulness, energy, and initiative. In the taijitu, masculinity and femininity are complementary qualities which, when appropriately integrated with each other, create a dynamically balanced whole. Interestingly, the same idea is found in two Western academic theories of the 20th century. The first of these theories was proposed by two sociologists, Talcott Parsons and Robert Freed Bales; the second

1 The source of this quote is the Wikipedia entry for yin and yang (http://en.wikipedia. org/wiki/Yin_yang).

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was proposed by a philosopher named David Bakan.2 Parsons and Bales contrasted a ‘‘masculine’’ orientation, which they characterized as instrumental, with a ‘‘feminine’’ orientation, which they characterized as expressive. Similarly, Bakan contrasted a ‘‘masculine’’ modality, which he called agency, with a ‘‘feminine’’ modality, which he called communion. In both of these theories, as in the Chinese taijitu, masculinity is seen as being active, directive, assertive, and forceful, whereas femininity is seen as being more reactive, responsive, expressive, and gentle. Bakan’s view was particularly taijitu-like. He argued that social systems, of which the dyad is the simplest form, tend to work the best when an optimal ‘‘balance’’ of agentic (i.e., masculine) and communal (i.e., feminine) capabilities are integratively applied.3 For Bakan, imbalance was the source of problems; and the greater the imbalance, the more serious the resulting problems became. Although Bakan was particularly concerned with the problems resulting from ‘‘unmitigated agency’’ (unrestrained self-assertion at the expense of others), more contemporary writers have also noted the problems resulting from ‘‘unmitigated communion.’’ They have argued that it is possible to be too self-sacrificing, too nurturing, and too willing to foster dependency, and that the various forms of unmitigated communion can create serious problems for both self and others, just as the various forms of unmitigated agency can.4 What first brought these ideas to my attention was the work of psychologist Sandra Bem. In 1974, Bem published a hugely influential article on psychological androgyny that combined original research findings with novel theoretical insights.5 In this article, she reported data showing that, in North American culture at least, the masculine ideal is indeed characterized by trait adjectives such as forceful, assertive, ambitious, individualistic, and competitive, whereas the feminine ideal is characterized by trait adjectives such as gentle, understanding, affectionate, loyal, and compassionate. Even more interesting, when Bem used 20 adjectives of the first type to create a masculinity scale and 20 adjectives of the second type

2

See Parsons and Bales (1955) and Bakan (1966). For a similar perspective, see Blake and Mouton (1978, 1982). 4 See, for example, Fritz and Helgeson (1998); Helgeson and Fritz (2000); Fritz, Nagurney, and Helgeson (2003); Hirokawa (2007); Nagurney (2007); and Aube´ (2008). 5 Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155—162. 3

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Table 7.1. Sandra Bem’s (1974) four prototypical sex-role orientations. Femininity Low

High

Low

Undifferentiated

Feminine

High

Masculine

Androgynous

Masculinity

to create a separate femininity scale, she found that people’s scores on the two scales were so weakly correlated (about .05 overall) that it was reasonable to conclude that masculinity and femininity are two logically and empirically independent personality dimensions.6 Why is this finding so interesting? Because when masculinity and femininity are represented as independent (i.e., orthogonal) dimensions in a two-dimensional space (see Table 7.1), it becomes evident that that there are four (and not just two) types of sex-role orientations: undifferentiated, masculine, feminine, and androgynous.7 Bem argued that the androgynous orientation was of particular interest because people who were psychologically androgynous: . . . might be both masculine and feminine, both assertive and yielding, both instrumental and expressive–depending on the situational appropriateness of these various behaviors; and conversely, that strongly sex-typed individuals might be seriously limited in the range of behaviors available to them as they move from situation to situation . . . . Thus, whereas a

6

It is important to note that Bem uses the words masculinity and femininity to refer to people’s psychological sex-role orientation (i.e., to the degree to which their personalities include agentic and/or communal traits). These terms are not intended to refer to people’s biological gender or sexual orientation. Similarly, the four prototype labels in Table 7.1 refer to people’s psychological sex-role orientation and not to their biological gender or sexual orientation. Being androgynous means being ‘‘balanced’’ in the sense intended by Bakan (1966); it does not mean being hermaphroditic or bisexual. 7 The label ‘‘undifferentiated’’ was originally proposed not by Sandra Bem, but by Janet Spence and Robert Helmreich (see Spence, Helmreich, & Stapp, 1975; Spence & Helmreich, 1978). It denotes people who lack both agentic (i.e., ‘‘masculine’’) and communal (i.e., ‘‘feminine’’) capabilities.

THE TAIJITU OF ANDROGYNY

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narrowly masculine self-concept might inhibit behaviors that are stereotyped as feminine, and a narrowly feminine self-concept might inhibit behaviors that are stereotyped as masculine, a mixed, or androgynous, self-concept might allow an individual to freely engage in both ‘‘masculine’’ and ‘‘feminine’’ behaviors.8 If we take Bem’s perspective seriously (and, unlike many of her critics,9 I do), it is interesting to relate her ideas to Bakan’s ideas and ask what we would expect to see if we compared the interactions of dyads composed of two stereotypically sex-typed people (i.e., ST-ST dyads) with the interactions of dyads composed two androgynous people (A-A dyads). For if it is true, as Bakan has argued, that a social system such as a dyad works best only when an optimal ‘‘balance’’ of agentic (i.e., masculine) and communal (i.e., feminine) capabilities are integratively applied, we might expect to see, for example, that two androgynous women have interactions that are qualitatively and quantitatively better than those of two feminine women. Because the feminine women would bring few, if any, agentic-instrumental capabilities to their interactions, whereas the androgynous women would bring high levels of both agentic-instrumental and communal-expressive capabilities to their interactions, Bakan’s argument would lead us to predict that the androgynous women would have better interactions than the feminine women would. This was an exciting idea, and–as a newly-minted dyadic interaction researcher–I jumped right on it. In an initial collaboration with Richard Barnes (my first graduate student) and a later collaboration with Brian Schermer and Jeff Steeno (two outstanding undergraduate students), we designed and conducted two studies of sex-role

8

Bem (1974), p. 155. Bem’s critics have argued, among other things, (a) that her scales measure agency and communion rather than psychological masculinity and femininity, and (b) that androgyny is an unnecessary and artificial construct because one could speak of high agency combined with high communion instead. In essence, Bem’s response was that agency and communion represent the core or essence of psychological masculinity and femininity, respectively; and that androgyny will be shown to be a necessary and non-artificial construct if research findings reveal that androgynous individuals think and act differently from masculine and feminine ones (and there is evidence suggesting that they do; see, for example, Bem, 1975, and Bem & Lenney, 1976). 9

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influences in initial interactions. The first study focused on the interactions of opposite-sex (male-female) strangers; the second focused on the interactions of same-sex (male-male and female-female) strangers. Before I can tell you about their findings, however, I first need to give you a theoretical context in which to view them. If this sounds like a detour, it is. However, I believe it to be a necessary one.

As the findings from our two studies came in, I began to struggle with the task of attempting to integrate them into a single theoretical model that would be sufficient to account for them. This was my first attempt to develop a theory, and it taught me just how challenging this task can be. When most people think of theory development, the theorist they usually have in mind is the famous 20th-century physicist, Albert Einstein. And well they should. Einstein was arguably the world’s most brilliant theorist, an intellectual giant who seemed to commune with the cosmos, extract its most profound and far-reaching laws, and then capture them in the form of elegant equations. Einstein, it seemed, had managed to sock himself so tightly into the space-time continuum that revolutionary theoretical insights streamed directly into his brain without the need for him to hang around the research lab and collect a lot of tedious and labor-intensive data. That’s the popular myth, of course. The reality is that Einstein was keenly aware of other people’s data and that he conducted his own intensive ‘‘thought experiments’’ as another source of inspiration for his remarkable insights. Still, the further reality is that most theorists aren’t like Albert Einstein. Instead, they are more like Charles Darwin, who spent over two decades conducting painstaking field studies of literally hundreds of plant and animal species all over the globe before finally distilling the insights he gained into his theoretical masterpiece, The Origin of Species. I spent a couple of years, rather than decades, on my gender role studies before turning their results into a theory, but the experience gave me a sense of how much careful thought and extended reflection are required. Having made that effort, I’d like to introduce you to the theory first, and then use the theory as an organizing framework in which to talk about the results of the studies on which it was based. Please keep in mind that if the data are consistent with the


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theory in most respects, it is because the theory was developed to fit the data. In other words, the data came first and the theory second, even though I will present them in the opposite order here.

In 1981, I published the first version of my theory of sex-role influences in dyadic interaction. Then, in response to some new data that had become available, I tinkered with the theory and published a revised version in 1985. Because it was the first theory I worked on, I took a rather formal approach to it. I started with a set of theoretical postulates and then used these postulates to derive a set of formallystated hypotheses.10 We will begin by considering each of the postulates in turn (see Box 7.1).

Box 7.1. Theoretical postulates for a theory of sex-role influences in dyadic interactions I. Dyads, as simple social systems, are optimally functional to the degree that both agentic and communal capabilities are integratively applied. These agentic and communal capabilities are located in the individual dyad members and are applied in their relationship through their overt interaction behavior. II. The sex-role orientations of the dyad members determine the degree to which agentic and communal capabilities can be applied and integrated within their interaction. Specifically: (a) traditionally masculine people can apply a high level of agentic capabilities, but only a low level of communal capabilities; (b) traditionally feminine people can apply a high level of communal capabilities, but only a low level of agentic capabilities; (c) androgynous people can variably apply their agentic or communal capabilities, depending on the perceived situational appropriateness of displaying or not displaying either or both sets; and (d) undifferentiated people can apply only low levels of both agentic and communal capabilities. III. By setting limits on the application and potential integration of agentic and communal capabilities, the sex-role orientations of the dyad members influence both the level of interactional

10

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For an evaluation of the logical coherence of the theory, see Westmeyer (1992).


involvement (an interpersonal outcome) and the degree to which each of the dyad members are satisfied with that level of interactional involvement (a personal outcome). IV. In intimate relationships (i.e., those defined in terms of strong mutual expectations that one’s partner will provide a consistently high level of nurturance and emotional support), the degree of satisfaction the dyad members experience will vary directly with the degree to which they perceive their partner to be nurturant and emotionally responsive (i.e., high in communality). In non-intimate relationships (where the above-noted expectations do not apply), the degree of satisfaction the dyad members experience will depend on the degree to which the level of interactional involvement is consistent with their own disposition to be communal. Thus, (a) masculine and undifferentiated people should be satisfied with relatively low levels of interactional involvement, whereas (b) feminine and androgynous people should be satisfied only with relatively high levels of interactional involvement. V. The integration within an interaction of agentic and communal capabilities need not take the form of an interdependent integration. Each dyad member can apply neither, one, or (in the case of androgynous people) both sets of capabilities. Because the conditions for an interdependent integration of agentic and communal capabilities have not yet been specified, the status of this type of integration must remain an open question. Adapted from Ickes (1985). Published with the kind permission of Springer Science þ Business Media.

Postulate I, borrowed from Bakan, states that dyads are optimally functional to the degree that both agentic and communal capabilities are integratively applied. Postulate II, borrowed from Bem, specifies the degree to which masculine, feminine, androgynous, and undifferentiated people can apply agentic and communal capabilities to the interactions in which they participate. Postulate III, borrowed from my previous dyadic interaction research, specifies that interactional involvement and the participants’ levels of satisfaction with their interaction are the primary outcome variables of interest. Postulate IV makes an important distinction between intimate and non-intimate relationships. It proposes that because different


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expectations apply to these two types of relationships, the implicit ‘‘rules’’ by which dyad members determine their level of satisfaction with intimate versus non-intimate relationships also differ. Specifically, In intimate relationships, the operative rule seems to be: ‘‘The more my partner cares about me, is nurturant, emotionally supportive, and responsive, etc. (i.e., displays stereotypically feminine patterns of behavior), the more satisfied I am with the relationship.’’ On the other hand, the operative rule in non-intimate relationships appears to be: ‘‘The better the match between the level of interactional involvement in the relationship and my own disposition to be expressive (e.g., to share my feelings and be responsive to my partner’s feelings), the more satisfied I am with the relationship. The distinction between these two rules may help explain why, for example, a masculine sex-typed man could be satisfied with the relatively unemotional, lowinvolvement relationship he has with his ‘‘macho’’ fishing buddy, and yet be dissatisfied if he has the same type of relationship with his wife.11 Postulate V states that the integration within an interaction of agentic and communal capabilities need not take the form of an interdependent integration. This means that one dyad member doesn’t have to depend on the other dyad member to supply a particular type of capability (agentic or communal) if the first dyad member is able to supply it instead. Because Bem’s data suggest that androgynous people can display whatever type of capability seems to be called for by the situation (agentic, communal, or both),12 the presence of at least one androgynous person within the dyad should ensure that both agentic and communal capabilities can be applied. Postulate V leaves open the important question of whether, for example, a masculine person (who lacks communal capabilities) and

11 Ickes (1985, p. 202). As you might have guessed, Postulate IV reflects the tinkering I did in the 1985 version of the theory so that it could accommodate some findings that became available after the original version of the theory was published in 1981. 12 See Bem (1975) and Bem and Lenney (1976).

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a feminine person (who lacks agentic capabilities) can integrate their respective capabilities interdependently, such that each person provides what the other person cannot. When I wrote the original version of the theory, I suspected that this kind of interdependent integration could eventually occur, but that it would probably require a lot of time, ‘‘practice,’’ co-ordination, and mutual goodwill from the partners in the relationship.

Still with me? Good, because this is one of those ‘‘Keep up!’’ moments. Now that we have reviewed the set of theoretical postulates, let’s use the theory to generate some predictions. Although I’ll try to keep things fairly simple here, certain complexities will gradually reveal themselves.

HYPOTHESES RELEVANT TO INITIAL SAME-SEX INTERACTIONS We’ll begin by examining some of the theory’s more straightforward predictions about how people’s gender-role orientations should affect their levels of interactional involvement and satisfaction in initial, same-sex interactions. Hypothesis 1a. In the initial interactions of two stereotypically masculine males or two stereotypically feminine females (the ST-ST dyad type), the level of interactional involvement should be relatively low. This outcome should occur because only one of the necessary capabilities–either agentic or communal–is strongly represented in dyads of this type, whereas both capabilities are required for a high level of interactional involvement. Hypothesis 1b. In the initial interactions of two masculine males, the dyad members should be relatively satisfied with the low level of interaction in their dyads, because they are not strongly predisposed to be communicative and expressive. However, in the initial interactions of two feminine females, the dyad members should be relatively dissatisfied with the low level of


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interaction in their dyads, because it frustrates their strong communal-expressive needs. Hypothesis 2a. In the initial interactions of two androgynous males or two androgynous females (the A-A dyad type), the level of interactional involvement should be relatively high. Because both agentic and communal capabilities can be applied by both dyad members, they should have little difficulty maintaining a high level of interactional involvement. Hypothesis 2b. In the initial interactions of two androgynous males or two androgynous females, the dyad members should be relatively satisfied with the high level of involvement in their interactions, because it enables them to fulfill their strong communal-expressive needs. Now let’s look at some data relevant to these hypotheses (keeping in mind that the data came first and the theory came later). Table 7.2 reports the means for various measures of interactional involvement in our study of the initial interactions of same-sex dyads, comparing the stereotypically sex-typed (ST-ST) dyads with the androgynous (A-A) dyads that are the focus of Hypotheses 1a and 2a above. As you can see, interactional involvement was indeed lower in the ST-ST dyads, in which the two sex-role-stereotyped members Table 7.2. Differences in interactional involvement between the sex-rolestereotyped (ST-ST) dyads and the androgynous (A-A) dyads in the study of same-sex dyads by Ickes, Shermer, and Steeno (1979). Reprinted by permission of the American Sociological Association. Sex-role composition of the dyads

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Interactional involvement measures

ST-ST

A-A

Number of speaking turns (talking) Duration of speaking turns (talking) Number of gazes Duration of gazes Number of mutual gazes Duration of mutual gazes Number of expressive gestures Duration of expressive gestures

33.2 68.4 17.9 60.2 7.4 13.2 4.2 5.2

48.1 105.7 26.9 92.1 11.8 19.8 8.5 9.9


(masculine males or feminine females)13 could apply either agentic or communal capabilities, but not both, than it was in the A-A dyads, in which the two androgynous members (androgynous males or androgynous females) should have found it easy to apply both agentic and communal capabilities. These data are consistent with the logic of Hypotheses 1a and 2a. Now let’s examine the findings relevant to Hypothesis 1b. These data are reported in Table 7.3. As you can see, despite the low level of interactional involvement that occurred in the ST-ST dyads, satisfaction with the interaction was relatively high for the dyads composed of two masculine men, but was relatively low for the dyads composed of two feminine women. These findings reflect the pattern specified in Hypothesis 1b, which predicts that masculine males ‘‘should be relatively satisfied with the low level of interaction in their dyads, because they are not strongly predisposed to be communicative and expressive,’’ whereas feminine females ‘‘should be relatively dissatisfied with the low level of interaction in their dyads, because it frustrates their strong communal-expressive needs.’’ Finally, note that the data in Tables 7.2 and 7.3 are also consistent with Hypotheses 2a and 2b. The average level of interactional involvement was significantly greater in the A-A dyads than in the ST-ST dyads, as Hypothesis 2a predicts. And with the exception of the predicted reversal in the male-male dyads (see Hypothesis 1b), the average level of satisfaction with the interaction was higher for the Table 7.3. Differences in satisfaction with the interaction between the sex-role-stereotyped (ST-ST) and the androgynous (A-A) dyads in the study of same-sex dyads by Ickes, Shermer, and Steeno (1979). Reprinted by permission of the American Sociological Association. Satisfaction with interaction measures

Male-male dyads

Perceived rapport with partner Overall satisfaction with interaction

ST-ST 7.8 15.4

A-A 7.6 11.0

Female-female dyads ST-ST 5.6 7.3

A-A 8.3 12.4

13

Because the average level of interaction involvement did not differ for the ST-ST dyads composed of masculine males and those composed of feminine-females on any of the outcome measures, only the combined means for this dyad type are reported in Table 7.3.


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dyads composed of two androgynous females than for the dyads composed of two feminine females, consistent with Hypothesis 2b.

MORE HYPOTHESES RELEVANT TO INITIAL SAME-SEX INTERACTIONS A year after the original version of my theory was published in 1981, Leanne Lamke and Nancy Bell, two family relations researchers, published another study of sex-role influences on initial same-sex interactions.14 This study focused exclusively on female-female interactions. Specifically, it compared dyads composed of two feminine females (STST dyads) with those composed of two undifferentiated females (U-U dyads) and those composed of two androgynous females (A-A dyads). Given the inclusion of the U-U dyads in the Lamke and Bell study, the theory must make the following two additional predictions to complement Hypotheses 1a, 1b, 2a, and 2b: Hypothesis 3a. In the initial interactions of dyads composed of two undifferentiated females (the U-U dyad type), the level of interactional involvement should be relatively low. This outcome should occur because neither of the necessary capabilities–agentic or communal–is strongly represented in this dyad type, whereas both capabilities are required for a high level of interactional involvement. Hypothesis 3b. The pairs of undifferentiated females should be relatively satisfied with the low level of interaction in their dyads, because they are not strongly predisposed to be communicative and expressive. In contrast, the pairs of feminine-sex-typed females should be relatively dissatisfied with the low level of interaction in their dyads, because it frustrates their strong communal-expressive needs. Let’s see what the interactional involvement data from the Lamke and Bell study revealed with respect to Hypotheses 1a, 2a,

14

Lamke, L., and Bell, N. (1982). Sex-role orientation and relationship development in same-sex dyads. Journal of Research in Personality, 16, 343—354.

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Table 7.4. Differences in interactional involvement between the feminine sex-typed (ST-ST), undifferentiated (U-U), and androgynous (A-A) female-female dyads in the study by Lamke and Bell (1982). Reprinted by permission of Elsevier Limited, UK. Female-female dyad types Interactional involvement measures

ST-ST

U-U

A-A

Duration of speaking turns (talking) Duration of gazes Duration of gestures Frequency of gestures

89.4 113.1 6.7 5.6

93.6 100.2 6.9 6.7

109.7 134.9 11.2 11.0

and 3a. These data are reported in Table 7.4. As you can see, they provide consistent support for Hypotheses 1a, 2a, and 3a. Interactional involvement was relatively low in the ST-ST and the U-U dyads but was relatively high in the A-A dyads. With regard to Hypotheses 1b, 2b, and 3b, the means for the interaction satisfaction measure were ordered in the way the theory predicted, with the lowest mean level of satisfaction reported in the ST-ST dyads (9.6), a higher level reported in the U-U dyads (10.2), and the highest level reported in the A-A dyads (15.2). The difference between the first two means was smaller than the theory would lead one to expect, however.

HYPOTHESES RELEVANT TO INITIAL OPPOSITE-SEX INTERACTIONS The theory can also be used to predict how dyad members’ sex-role orientations will affect their interactional involvement and satisfaction in the initial interactions of opposite-sex (male-female) dyads. In 1978, Richard Barnes and I reported data from a study of this type. To make the results of this study comparable to the results of the same-sex dyads studies reported above, we will again consider only hypotheses that apply to sex-role-stereotyped (ST-ST) dyads and to androgynous (A-A) dyads.15 Note that, in the

15 More specifically, in the interest of space we will consider only the hypotheses that are relevant to the interactional involvement (i.e., the behavioral) measures.


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ST-ST dyads, a masculine male was paired with a feminine female; in the A-A dyads, an androgynous male was paired with an androgynous female. Hypothesis 4. In the initial interactions of dyads composed of a stereotypically masculine male and a stereotypically feminine female (the ST-ST dyad type), the level of interactional involvement should depend upon whether or not the male’s agentic capabilities and the female’s communal capabilities can be interdependently integrated (see Postulate V). If such an interdependent integration can occur between opposite-sex strangers, the level of interactional involvement should be relatively high; if not, the level of involvement should be relatively low. Hypothesis 5. In the initial interactions of dyads composed of an androgynous male and an androgynous female (the A-A dyad type), the level of interactional involvement should be relatively high. Because both agentic and communal capabilities can be applied by both dyad members, the participants should have little difficulty maintaining a high level of interactional involvement. As the data in Table 7.5 reveal, interactional involvement was, once again, relatively low in the ST-ST dyads when compared to the A-A dyads. Although this difference replicates the one found in the previous studies of same-sex dyads, the outcome is particularly noteworthy in this case because of the possibility that a highly agentic male and a highly communal female might be able to interdependently integrate their agentic and communal capabilities to create a more involving interaction. Apparently, in the initial interactions of two opposite-sex strangers, that’s not such an easy thing to do. But does it get easier over time, as I speculated earlier? Specifically, when masculine men are paired with feminine women in long-term marriage or cohabitation relationships, are they able to interdependently integrate their respect agentic and communal capabilities in a way that makes these relationships as good as those of couples that are composed of two androgynous partners? Perhaps. But you might not want to bet your love life on it. There is accumulating evidence that this type of integration is not

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Table 7.5. Differences in interactional involvement between the ST-ST (Masc ?—Fem /) dyad type and the A-A (Andr ?—Andr /) dyad type in the study by Ickes and Barnes (1978). Opposite-sex dyad types Interactional involvement measures

ST-ST dyads (Masc ?—Fem /)

A-A dyads (Andr ?—Andr /)

Number of speaking turns (talking) Duration of speaking turns (talking) Number of gazes Duration of gazes Number of smiles/laughs Duration of smiles/laughs Number of expressive gestures Duration of expressive gestures

21.0 46.7 12.9 34.9 4.0 11.4 1.6 1.3

28.3 67.0 20.8 61.1 8.4 23.0 4.0 4.0

Reprinted under the copyright and permissions policy of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

easily achieved–even in long-term marriage or cohabitation relationships. First, the results of various survey studies reveal that traditionally sex-typed married couples (ST-ST), in which the husband is masculine sex-typed and the wife is feminine sex-typed, report significantly less satisfaction with their relationships than androgynous (A-A) married couples do.16,17 This finding may reflect the long-term difficulty that masculine men and feminine women have when they attempt to achieve an interdependent integration of their respective agentic and communal capabilities. Second, the results of survey studies by Janet Spence and Robert Helmreich18 reveal that married couples in which both partners are

16

See, for example, Shaver, Pullis, and Olds (1980) and Antill (1983). Antill’s data led me to revise my theory in 1985 to take into account his general finding that, in intimate relationships, it is primarily the psychological femininity of one’s partner (i.e., the level of his or her communal/expressive capabilities) that predicts one’s own level of satisfaction with the relationship. 17 Rick Barnes and I found a similar difference in the opposite-sex dyads study described above. Immediately after their initial interactions, the members of the STST dyads reported liking each other less than half as much (average rating of 19.2) as the members of the A-A dyads did (average rating of 40.8). 18 Spence, J. T., and Helmreich, R. (1978). Masculinity and femininity: Their psychological dimensions, correlates, and antecedents. Austin: University of Texas Press.


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androgynous create family environments that are given the highest ratings by their adolescent children on the dimensions of warmth, democracy, and family harmony. The corresponding ratings are intermediate in families with a masculine father and a feminine mother (ST-ST couples), and are lowest in families with a father and mother who are both undifferentiated (U-U couples). This ordering suggests that although some integration of agentic and communal capabilities does occur in the families of sex-role-stereotyped (ST-ST) couples, it is not enough to close the gap between them and the androgynous (A-A) couples. Third, the results of a survey study by Rose Maxwell and her colleagues suggest that feminine-sex-typed women are more likely to be divorced than androgynous women are.19 Because the number of divorced women in their sample was relatively small, this finding needs to be replicated before it can be regarded as well-established. However, it may provide additional evidence of the greater difficulty that stereotypically sex-typed people have in making their marriages ‘‘work’’ successfully, when compared to more androgynous people.

All things considered, I believe that the sociologist Edward Sampson was in error when he argued, in a critique of Sandra Bem’s ideas, that androgyny threatens interdependence and discourages social interaction to the extent that agentic and communal capabilities are integrated within individual persons.20 Writing in 1977, Sampson said that: The self-contained [i.e., androgynous] person is one who does not require or desire others for his or her completion or life; selfcontained persons either are or hope to be entire unto themselves. Self-containment is the extreme of independence: needing or wanting no one. It is fundamentally antithetical to the concept of interdependence. (p. 770, brackets mine)

19

Maxwell, R. A., Lundgren, D. C., and Lansky, L. M. (1996). Maternal role behavior and androgyny: A comparison of divorced and married mothers. Journal of Divorce and Remarriage, 25, 61—68. 20 Sampson, E. E. (1977). Psychology and the American ideal. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 767—782.

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So androgyny equates to self-containment, which is ‘‘antithetical to the concept of interdependence?’’ I don’t think so. Not when the data show that pairs of androgynous strangers have more involving initial interactions than pairs of sex-typed strangers do. Not when the data show that androgynous couples are more satisfied with their marriages than traditionally sex-typed couples are. Not when the data show that androgynous parents create warmer and more harmonious family environments than stereotypically sex-typed parents do. Being androgynous doesn’t interfere with interdependence; it facilitates it. And vice versa. Just as the partners’ androgyny may facilitate greater interdependence within the relationship, greater interdependence within the relationship may facilitate the development of the partners’ androgyny. In fact, David Bakan spoke directly to this causal reciprocity when he wrote that ‘‘The ideal marriage . . . is . . . one in which, through the integration of agency and communion which takes place between the marriage partners, a corresponding integration takes place within each of the partners’’ (p. 153). Expressed in the form of a recursive taijitu, the concept looks like this:

In the end, my nominees for the most brilliant and insightful theorists in this area of research are David Bakan and Sandra Bem. It is from their ideas that the central postulates of my own theory were drawn. And their theories, like Einstein’s, were proposed in advance of much of the data that supported them, whereas my theory, like Darwin’s, was proposed after much of the relevant data were already obtained. On the other hand, I can take some credit for seeing the value of borrowing ideas from each of them and then integrating these ideas in a way that allowed me to derive a set of hypotheses which–to the best of my knowledge–had never been proposed before.


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RECOMMENDED READINGS Antill, J. K. (1983). Sex role complementarity versus similarity in married couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 145—155. Bakan, D. (1966). The duality of human existence. Chicago: Rand McNally. Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 196—205. Ickes, W. (1981). Sex-role influences in dyadic interaction: A theoretical model. In C. Mayo and N. Henley (Eds.), Gender and nonverbal behavior (pp. 95—128). New York: Springer-Verlag. Ickes, W. (1985). Sex-role influences on compatibility in relationships. In W. Ickes (Ed.), Compatible and incompatible relationships (pp. 187—207). New York: Springer-Verlag. Ickes, W., & Barnes, R. D. (1978). Boys and girls together–and alienated: On enacting stereotyped sex roles in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 36, 669—683. Ickes, W., Schermer, B., & Steeno, J. (1979). Sex and sex role influences in same-sex dyads. Social Psychology Quarterly, 42, 373—385. Lamke, L., and Bell, N. (1982). Sex-role orientation and relationship development in same-sex dyads. Journal of Research in Personality, 16, 343—354. Parsons, T., Bales, R. F. (1955). Family, socialization, and interaction processes. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Spence, J. T., and Helmreich, R. (1978). Masculinity and femininity: Their psychological dimensions, correlates, and antecedents. Austin: University of Texas Press.

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8 The Big Five

What, some of you might be asking, is The Big Five? (Hint: It’s not the fingers of your right hand, Sausage Boy.) The expression ‘‘The Big Five’’ is used to refer to five fundamental personality dimensions. However, The Big Five are not–as I once suggested in a satirical moment–the dimensions of Expansiveness, Greatness, Largess, Bloat, and Humongousness.1 Instead, they are the dimensions of Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience.2

Where did these dimensions come from and why are they called The Big Five? It’s a long story, and it begins in the 1930s.3 Gordon Allport, a Harvard psychologist, has embarked on a most ambitious project. His goal is to lay the foundations for what will become the new and vibrant field of personality psychology. Allport is literally inventing the field–making things up as he goes along–until he gets stuck on two really formidable problems.

1 Ickes, W., Wegner, D. M., and Vallacher, R. R. (2007). The Psych•Illogical Dictionary. Manuscript in search of a publisher. 2 The simple trick to remembering them is to use an English word formed from the first letter of each of the Big Five dimensions as a mnemonic device. There are two such words, both related to water. That’s right: ocean and canoe. 3 For a more detailed account, see John (1990).

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The first problem is to map out the entire domain of human personality traits: to ‘‘capture’’ all–or virtually all–of them and not miss anything important. The second problem, which follows immediately if the first can be solved, is to decide which of these many personality traits are the most important and fundamental ones. To solve the first problem, Allport, in collaboration with his colleague from Dartmouth College, Henry Odbert, proposes to use ‘‘a psycho-lexical approach.’’4 To put it simply, they (or, more likely, a group of undergraduate minions) will scrupulously examine all of the more than half-million words in the 1925 edition of Webster’s New International Dictionary. From this colossal compendium of lexical lore, they will cull and categorize all of the words that appear to refer to human traits. After an extravagant, extended, and exhausting effort, approximately 18,000 candidate words are identified through this process, but only a fourth of them (4,500) satisfy Allport and Odbert’s definition of a trait. Okay, but what do you do with 4,500 trait words? There is little doubt that Allport and Odbert have identified all–or virtually all–of the trait terms in the English language, but where do you go from here? Because it’s 1936, there are no computers or electronic databases with sort options, so it’s a daunting task to try to impose additional structure onto this very long list of potential traits. As it turns out, Allport and Odbert decide that they have already done enough. They simply publish their alphabetized list of 4,500 trait words and leave it to others to do something more with them. Flash forward to 1943. Raymond Cattell, a British-born personality psychologist who is now one of Gordon Allport’s colleagues at Harvard, decides to tackle the formidable problem of determining which human traits are the most important and fundamental ones.5 His first step is to group the 4,500 trait terms identified by Allport and Odbert (plus 100-odd terms of his own) into roughly 150 ‘‘bipolar clusters’’ based on their semantic meaning. For example,

4

Allport, G. W., and Odbert, H. S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. Psychological Monographs, 47, (No. 211). 5 Cattell, R. B. (1943). The description of personality: Basic traits resolved into clusters. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38, 476—506.

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words like careful, conscientious, reliable, and responsible are grouped together to form one ‘‘pole’’ (the positive pole) of a broader and more abstract personality dimension that has as its other (negative) ‘‘pole’’ a group of words such as careless, undependable, unreliable, and irresponsible. This is progress. Going from 4,500 trait words to about 150 broader and more abstract personality dimensions6 is a good first step. But Cattell isn’t finished. He now applies the new statistical procedure of factor analysis to a further-reduced set of 35 variables that seem to represent the broadest and most abstract personality dimensions. Yes, you have a question? What is factor analysis? It’s a statistical procedure that is used to find the underlying structure in people’s scores on a relatively large set of variables. By applying statistical formulas to the ‘‘raw score’’ data, the factor analysis procedure groups the set of variables into bipolar clusters and then identifies their underlying dimensions mathematically (rather than subjectively).7 Computers and electronic databases still aren’t available in 1943, but Raymond Cattell is an expert in factor analysis and he manages to get his data analyzed anyway. Unfortunately, however, he doesn’t document the various analyses he conducts as carefully as he might have, making it difficult for other researchers to check the accuracy of the findings he reports. Adding to that problem, Cattell has difficulty deciding how many of the resulting ‘‘factors’’ (i.e., personality dimensions) are the most fundamental and important ones. Just five of them? Twelve? Sixteen? Cattell can’t seem to make up his mind. Flash forward again–this time to 1963. After twenty years of arguments in psychology journals about which personality dimensions are really the most important ones, a new hero emerges in the pages of the Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology. His name is Warren Norman, and he has just blazed his own well-marked trail across the immense and arduous terrains that his predecessors have

6

This number is an approximation. The exact count is something of a moving target given Cattell’s (1943, 1945a, 1945b, 1947) many conceptual and mathematical manipulations. 7 Still confused? Then take a course in psychometrics (psyche ¼ mind, metric ¼ measurement).

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traversed.8 First, to make sure that Allport and Odbert didn’t miss anything important, Norman has extracted all potential trait terms (18,125) from the unabridged 1961 edition of Webster’s Third International Dictionary, this time using even more stringent criteria to limit the final set of trait terms to 1,600. Second, following Cattell’s lead, Norman has sorted nearly all of these 1,600 ‘‘stable trait’’ terms into 571 synonym sets. Flash forward to the 1980s. Building on Warren Norman’s work, psychologist Lewis Goldberg reports a series of meticulously conducted factor-analytic studies.9 The results of these studies point to the fundamental importance of five broad dimensions of human personality. Goldberg and his colleagues (along with many other researchers working at the same time) note that it is hard to make a strong case for more than those five highly-replicable dimensions.10 Although different researchers have assigned their own preferred labels to each of the ‘‘Big Five’’ factors, they eventually agree to use the same standard labels: Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Neuroticism, and Openness to Experience. These labels are convenient shorthand for the five personality dimensions they represent: extraverted-introverted, agreeabledisagreeable, conscientious-careless, emotionally stable-neurotic, and being open-vs.-closed to new experiences. Brief characterizations of each of these dimensions are provided in Table 8.1. Flash forward to the present. The Big Five has become the biggest bandwagon in the history of personality psychology. Over 2,000 publications (books, book chapters, and journal articles) make reference to the Big Five personality dimensions, and several questionnaires–each designed to measure the Big Five dimensions–are being aggressively promoted (and, in some cases, aggressively

8

Norman, W. T. (1963). Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes: Replicated factor structure in peer nomination personality ratings. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 574—583. 9 See Goldberg (1981, 1990) and Peabody and Goldberg (1989). 10 Does this mean that all other personality traits are unimportant? No, it doesn’t. It simply means that the vast majority of other personality dimensions can be located within the 5-dimensional factor analytic ‘‘space’’ that is defined by the Big Five. Many of these other personality dimensions (shyness, self-monitoring, and so on) are, in fact, extremely important, in part because they capture unique individual differences that are not defined precisely by any single Big Five dimension.

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Table 8.1. The Big Five personality dimensions Extraverted Assertive Outgoing Energetic

Introverted Quiet Withdrawn Reserved

Agreeable Friendly Warm Sympathetic

Disagreeable Unfriendly Cold Critical

Conscientious Reliable Organized Trustworthy

Careless Unreliable Disorganized Irresponsible

Emotionally stable Calm Relaxed Content

Neurotic Tense Nervous Worried

Open to experience Curious Imaginative Original

Closed to experience Uninterested Unimaginative Conventional

marketed) by their developers. (For a version that you can take on-line, go to the Facebook link http://www.facebook.com/apps/ application.php?id¼2490151219, and follow the instructions.)

A couple of decades ago, the focus of Big Five research started to change. After 40 years of factor-analytic studies that led to essentially the same conclusion, it began to seem pointlessly repetitive to continue doing studies of this type.11 So a new wave of researchers got involved, this time with the goal of seeing how well people’s behavior can be predicted by their scores on the Big Five personality dimensions. One sign of this change came in the 1990s, when industrialorganizational psychologists reported that employees’ scores on the conscientiousness dimension could be used to predict their

11

Of course, some people kept on doing them anyway . . . .

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future performance across a wide range of occupational settings.12 Agreeableness and emotional stability (the ‘‘positive’’ pole of neuroticism) proved to be important too, but not as important as conscientiousness.13 A second and more conclusive sign of this change came in 2006, when psychologists Daniel Ozer and Verońica Benet-Martıńez published a review of studies relating people’s scores on the Big Five to ‘‘consequential outcomes.’’ Although the number of articles they cited (104) was not large, their review was important in linking people’s scores on the Big Five dimensions to consequential outcomes such as happiness and subjective well-being, physical health and longevity, occupational choice and performance, and volunteerism and community involvement.14

In that same year of 2006, Ronen Cuperman15 and I were trying to link people’s scores on the Big Five dimensions to their behavior in initial, unstructured dyadic interactions. Ronen had the participants in each session report to separate waiting areas, where he collected Big Five data from each of them before bringing them together as strangers in our ‘‘waiting room’’ situation. He then unobtrusively videotaped their initial interactions, using the procedures I described in Chapter 2. After doing this non-stop for nearly three semesters, Ronen eventually acquired the data for a relatively large sample of both same-sex (male-male, female-female) and oppositesex (male-female) dyads. What predictions would you make if you were conducting this study? Our first prediction was actually quite easy to make: we expected to find more significant effects for the predictors of extraversion and agreeableness than for the remaining Big Five predictors of conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience. This prediction was justified by the strong consensus among Big Five researchers, supported by commonsense intuition, that the

12

See, for example, Barrick and Mount (1991, 1993) and Hogan and Ones (1997). See Hogan and Ones (1997), pp. 861—863. 14 And to scarier outcomes such as criminality and psychopathology. Not everyone is agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable. 15 Remember Ronen? See Chapters 2 and 3. 13

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dimensions of extraversion and agreeableness are particularly relevant to people’s social behavior, whereas the other three dimensions are more relevant to other aspects of their lives. Dean Peabody and Lewis Goldberg made this point explicit when they argued in a 1989 article that extraversion is primarily about interpersonal power; agreeableness is primarily about love; conscientiousness is about how people work; neuroticism is about the kind of affect they experience; and openness to experience is about the kind of intellect they display.16 It was more difficult, however, to predict which behaviors would be linked to extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, and so on. Fortunately, however, we could base our predictions on the findings of a previous dyadic interaction study by psychologists David Funder and Carl Sneed.17 Like us, Funder and Sneed had collected Big Five data from the members of a relatively large number of dyads whose initial interactions had been captured on videotape. Unlike us, Funder and Sneed were interested only in how the dyad members’ personalities influenced their own behavior (and not in how it influenced their partner’s behavior). Their study also differed from ours in using groups of trained observers to provide subjective ratings of each dyad member’s tendency to do such things as initiate humor, express warmth, offer advice, dominate the interaction, and so on. In contrast, the trained observers in our study used recording equipment to measure objectively the frequency and duration of specific interaction behaviors such as talking, gazing, and smiling. As a resource for helping us make specific behavioral predictions, Funder and Sneed’s findings were a treasure trove. To give you some idea of the richness of the findings they reported, I have summarized some of the more relevant ones (relevant for present purposes, that is) in Table 8.2. According to these findings, as people’s extraversion scores increase, they tend to talk more, speak louder, enjoy their initial interaction more, and disclose more, rather than less, information

16 Peabody, D., and Goldberg, L. R. (1989). Some determinants of factor structures from personality-trait descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 552—567. 17 Funder, D. C., and Sneed, C. D. (1993). Behavioral manifestations of personality: An ecological approach to judgmental accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 479—490.

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128 Table 8.2. Correlations of selected observer-rated behaviors with scores on the Big Five measures of extraversion, agreeableness, neuroticism, and openness to experience in the study by Funder and Sneed (1993). Correlations of rated behavior with the Big Five variable of: Observed-rated behavior Is talkative Speaks in a loud voice Seems to enjoy interaction Is reserved and unexpressive Volunteers little information re self Has awkward interpersonal style Expresses warmth Behaves in a cheerful manner Laughs frequently Seems interested in what partner says Engages in constant eye contact Shows signs of tension or anxiety Has awkward interpersonal style Appears relaxed and comfortable Discusses philosophical issues Expresses interest in fantasy, daydreams

Extraversion .40 .31 .20 .55 .26 .52

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Neuroticism

Openness

.27

.33 .36 .31

Copyright Ó 2009 by the American Phychological Association. Reproduced or adapted by permission.

.27 .29 .36 .34 .37 .24 .30

about themselves. Extraverted people are also rated as being less reserved and unexpressive and as having a less awkward interpersonal style than introverted people. A different pattern of behavioral correlates applies to the Big Five dimension of agreeableness. As people’s agreeableness scores increase, they appear to enjoy the initial interaction more, to behave in a more cheerful manner, to express more warmth, and to laugh more frequently. As people’s conscientiousness increases, their degree of attentiveness and responsiveness to their interaction partner are perceived to increase. Specifically, conscientious people seem be more interested in what their interaction partner has to say. One way they appear to express this greater interest and attentiveness is by making more eye contact with their partner. In contrast to the previous findings, interacting with a stranger seems to be something of an ordeal for neurotic individuals. As the participants’ neuroticism scores increase, they are seen as having a more awkward interpersonal style, showing more signs of tension or anxiety, and appearing less relaxed and comfortable. Finally, people who score high in openness to experience seek to share new information and experience in their initial interactions with others. They are perceived as engaging in more discussion of philosophical issues, and they appear to have a greater interest in fantasy and daydreams.

Using these findings from the Funder and Sneed study as our ‘‘empirical precedents,’’ Ronen and I made the following set of predictions for the behavioral and self-report measures that we had assessed in our study: Extraversion. The dyad members’ extraversion scores should be positively correlated with the amount of talking that occurs, with the amount of personal self-disclosure, and with the degree to which the dyad members rate the interaction as ‘‘smooth, natural, and relaxed’’ as opposed to ‘‘forced, awkward, and strained.’’ Agreeableness. The dyad members’ agreeableness scores should be positively correlated with social behaviors that express interpersonal warmth and positive affect. These

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behaviors should include smiling, laughing, and eye contact. Agreeableness scores should also be positively correlated with the degree to which the interaction is rated as enjoyable. Conscientiousness. The dyad members’ conscientiousness scores should be positively correlated with behaviors indicating greater attentiveness and responsiveness to the interaction partner. These behaviors should include eye contact, verbal acknowledgments (‘‘Uh-huh,’’ ‘‘Right,’’ ‘‘I see’’), and nonverbal acknowledgements (head nods). Neuroticism. The dyad members’ neuroticism scores should be positively correlated with their perceptions of the interactions as being ‘‘forced, awkward, and strained,’’ and negatively correlated with their perceptions of the interactions as being ‘‘smooth, natural, and relaxed.’’ Openness to experience. In the Funder and Sneed study, higher scores on the openness dimension were associated with interest in discussing intellectual and philosophical topics, including fantasies and daydreams. We were unable to test those associations with the data that we had collected. However, we could (and did) test the prediction that people who scored higher on openness to experience would self-disclose more and initiate more conversation sequences as a way of encouraging their interaction partners to ‘‘open up’’ and share more of their unique experiences in return. Our tests of these predictions were complicated by the fact that, unlike Funder and Sneed, who were only interested in how the dyad members’ behavior was influenced by their own personalities, we were interested in how the dyad members’ behavior was influenced by their partner’s personalities as well. This interest dictated that we use the special statistical analysis called the Actor-Partner Interdependence Model (or APIM, for short) that I first mentioned in Chapter 4.18

18

In an APIM analysis, the researcher can test for the presence of significant actor effects, partner effects, and actor X partner interaction effects (see Kenny, Kashy, & Cook, 2006). After reviewing the significant actor and partner effects that Ronen and I found in our study, I will introduce the concept of actor X partner interaction effects and then cite examples of these kinds of effects in our data.

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The first set of APIM results were actor effects, like those reported by Funder and Sneed. These findings reveal how aspects of the dyad members’ own personalities (their level of extraversion, agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and openness to experience) were related to their behavior during the initial interaction in which they participated. The significant actor effects that Ronen and I found are reported in Table 8.3, which uses essentially the same format as Table 8.2. In most respects, our results were consistent with those reported by Funder and Sneed, but there is an obvious exception that is worth noting. Funder and Sneed’s findings emphasize talking as the key behavioral marker of extraverts (see Table 8.2). In their study, extraverts were perceived by outside raters as talking a lot, in a loud voice, in an expressive and unreserved way, and volunteering more than a little information about themselves in the process. In contrast, our data show that extraverts are involved in more episodes of mutual gaze (i.e., eye contact); and that talking a lot with a stranger is a behavior that is associated with the Big Five trait of agreeableness rather than with extraversion. Can we reconcile this apparent discrepancy? I think we can. I believe that when Funder and Sneed’s raters reported that extraverts were talkative, they were picking up on a style of talking that is characteristic of extraverts and that makes them appear to be ‘‘big talkers.’’ According to our data (see Table 8.3), extraverts have a direct and unself-conscious interaction style. They make a lot of eye contact when they interact with a stranger; they report feeling unselfconscious and comfortable during these initial interactions; and their attention (as indicated by their reduced use of first-person singular pronouns) seems to be directed outward rather than toward themselves. Rounding out this picture, the extraverts in our study were self-confident to the point of being brash: they reported that their partners liked them and wanted to interact more with them in the future. Still, it is important to note that, in terms of their actual measured behavior, extraverts are not more ‘‘talkative’’ than introverts in the sense that they talk more often or longer. If there is a key behavioral marker of extraversion, it is mutual gaze rather than the frequency or duration of talking. But extraverts probably do give the impression of being more talkative, as Funder and Sneed’s data suggest, because they have a more direct (high mutual gaze), more unself-conscious,

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132 Table 8.3. Associations (standardized betas) of the actor’s interaction behavior with the actor’s scores on the Big Five personality dimensions in the study by Cuperman and Ickes (in press). Actor effects: Associations of the actor’s behavior with the actor’s score on the Big Five variable of: Outcome measure Number of speaking turns (talking) Duration of talking Number of conversation sequences initiated Number of mutual gazes Duration of mutual gazes Number of smiles/laughs Duration of smiles/laughs Number of verbal acknowledgements Number of head nods Percentage of first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my, etc.) Attempted to take the lead in the conversation Perceived the interaction as ‘‘smooth, natural, and relaxed’’ Perceived the interaction as enjoyable Tried to get ‘‘in sync’’ with partner Felt self-conscious during interaction Felt comfortable interacting with partner Believed that partner liked him/her Believed that partner wanted to interact more with him/her

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Neuroticism

Openness

.26 .21 .19 .23 .29

.25 .34 .23 .24 .23 .22

.18 .25 .21

.26 .18 .18 .19

.21 .27 .25 .20 .19


and more confident style of talking than introverts do. In my opinion, the take-home message for Big Five theorists is that they should de-emphasize the amount of talking and give greater emphasis to these newly-documented aspects of the extraverted interaction style: its directness, its lack of self-consciousness, and its confident assumption of being liked and accepted by the interaction partner. With regard to the remaining Big Five dimensions, there are striking similarities between our findings and those reported by Funder and Sneed. In both studies, agreeable people appear as friendly, warm, and easy to interact with; conscientious people are ones who make a lot of eye contact; and neurotic people feel (and look) self-conscious, and–according to our data–work harder at trying to ‘‘get in sync’’ with a new acquaintance. Finally, people who are open to experience are interested in other people’s experiences and insights. In Funder and Sneed’s study, they seemed eager to explore intellectual and philosophical topics; in our study, they were more likely to introduce new topics for discussion when the previous ones had stalled out. The predictions we made weren’t always on target, however. For example, we found that agreeableness, rather than conscientiousness, was associated with providing more partner acknowledgments in the form of verbal acknowledgments (uh-huh, right, I see, etc.) and nonverbal acknowledgments (head nods). And although openness to experience was associated with initiating more conversation sequences, as we had predicted, it was not associated with more personal self-disclosures.

Because the Funder and Sneed study examined actor effects, its findings helped us make predictions about how the participants’ own scores on the Big Five dimensions should be related to their behavior in the initial interactions that Ronen and I studied. However, unlike Funder and Sneed, we didn’t limit ourselves to the study of actor effects; we studied partner effects and actor X partner interaction effects as well. And because ours was the first Big Five study to test for these effects, we had no empirical precedents to guide us. So, as data miners, we found ourselves on new and uncharted ground.

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If there were significant partner effects in our data, it meant that the actor’s behavior was influenced by the partner’s personality. Here’s a simple example. If my partner’s high level of agreeableness leads her to smile a lot (an actor effect), her agreeableness-instigated smiling might lead me to smile at her in return (a partner effect). Before long, the little man behind the curtain has recorded that I am smiling at her a lot, and because the cause of my behavior can ultimately be traced back to my partner’s personality, we refer to this type of influence as a partner effect. As it turned out, Ronen and I found several significant partner effects in our data, and the majority of them are reported in Table 8.4. These findings can be interpreted as follows. The more extraverted their partners were, the more the participants looked at their partners and acknowledged their comments with verbal acknowledgements such as ‘‘Uh-huh,’’ ‘‘Right,’’ and ‘‘Yeah.’’ But they also tended to smile less, suggesting that having a highly extraverted partner might have required them to adopt the somewhat uncomfortable role of being a good and patient listener. In contrast, the more agreeable their partners were, the better the participants seemed to like it. As their partners’ level of agreeableness increased, the participants talked, looked, and smiled more; gave their partners more verbal and nonverbal acknowledgments; rated the interaction as more enjoyable; said they felt greater comfort and rapport with their partners; and rated their partners as more likable. Clearly, highly agreeable partners make a very good first impression, eliciting both a high level of involvement and positive emotional reactions from the new acquaintances with whom they are paired. According to the data, as their partner’s level of conscientiousness increased, the participants made more eye contact with them but were also more likely to rate them as being self-conscious. Because highly conscientious people are usually concerned about trying to do everything right, they may have created a lot of opportunities for mutual gaze by being visually attentive to their new acquaintance and continually trying to do the right thing. Not surprisingly, perhaps, they may also have communicated their feelings of self-consciousness while doing so. The partner’s level of neuroticism was also correlated with how much their new acquaintances looked at them. But these were

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Table 8.4. Associations (standardized betas) of the actor’s interaction behavior with the partner ’s scores on the Big Five personality dimensions in the study by Cuperman and Ickes (in press). Partner effects: Associations of the actor’s behavior with the partner ’s score on the Big Five variable of: Outcome measure Open and relaxed body posture Number of speaking turns (talking) Number of gazes Duration of gazes Number of mutual gazes Duration of mutual gazes Number of smiles/laughs Duration of smiles/laughs Number of verbal acknowledgements Number of head nods Perceived rapport with partner Rated the partner as self-conscious Rated the interaction as enjoyable Felt comfortable interacting with the partner Rated the partner as likable

Extraversion

Agreeableness

Conscientiousness

Neuroticism

Openness .14

.19 .22 .17 .23 .29 .17 .18

.20 .25 .34

.26 .25 .18 .19 .20 .19 .25 .21 .19


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unreciprocated glances, not instances of eye contact–a finding which suggests that highly neurotic partners called more attention to themselves while showing no discernable tendency to either make or avoid eye contact while they were being looked at. Finally, as their partner’s level of openness to experience increased, the participants displayed a more open and relaxed body posture. Apparently, having a partner who appears to be open to you–and sincerely interested in learning about your experience–has the effect of making you feel accepted enough to adopt a more open and relaxed body posture.

In addition to the actor and partner effects that we have just considered, the data from our study revealed several actor X partner interaction effects. When effects of this type are found, it typically means that certain actor-partner combinations get along significantly better (or significantly worse) than the results for the actor and partner effects would lead us to expect. As in the case of the actor and partner effects that we have just considered, most of the significant actor X partner interaction effects were found for the Big Five predictors of extraversion and agreeableness. With regard to extraversion, there were several actor X partner interactions, and they all appeared to be telling us the same thing: dyads whose members were similar on the dimension of extraversion (i.e., those composed of two extraverts and those composed of two introverts) had better interactions than dyads whose members were dissimilar on the dimension of extraversion (i.e., those composed of an extravert paired with an introvert. These differences are illustrated in the set of bar graphs that appear in Figure 8.1. (It is important to note that all of these graphs show how the actor’s behavior or perception is affected by a particular combination of the actor’s personality and the partner’s personality.) As the data in these graphs reveal, the participants talked more, felt more rapport, and wanted to interact with each other more in the dyads where they were both introverted or both extraverted than in the dyads where one person was introverted and the other person was extraverted.

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Number of speaking turns

36 34 32 30

Partner introverted

28

Partner extraverted

26 24 22 Actor introverted

Actor extraverted

Perceived rapport with partner

60 50 40 30 Partner introverted

20

Partner extraverted

10 0

Wants to interact more with partner

Actor introverted

Actor extraverted

7.5 7.0 6.5 6.0

Partner introverted Partner extraverted

5.5 5.0 4.5

Actor introverted

Actor extraverted

Figure 8.1. Actor X partner interactions for extraversion in the study by Cuperman and Ickes (in press).

With regard to agreeableness, the actor X partner interactions took a characteristically different form. They revealed that the initial interactions of two ‘‘disagreeable’’ people were distinctively poor compared to the initial interactions of the other dyad types. These differences are illustrated in the set of graphs that appear in Figure 8.2. (As before, these graphs show how the actor’s behavior or perception is affected by a particular combination of the actor’s personality and the partner’s personality.) These data reveal the problems that result when two ‘‘disagreeable’’ people get together: the participants acknowledged each other’s comments less often, felt less rapport, and wanted to interact with each other less in the dyads where both people were ‘‘disagreeable’’ than in the dyads where both people were agreeable or in those where an agreeable person was paired with a disagreeable one. Note that the actor X partner interactions for agreeableness answer the specific question that was first posed in Chapter 2. Which dyad types get along the best in initial interactions–those composed of two agreeable people, those composed of two disagreeable people, or those in which an agreeable person is paired with a disagreeable one? According to Figure 8.2, the answer to this question is: dyads in which one or both partners are agreeable. The members of these dyad types get along reasonably well. In contrast, the members of dyads in which both partners are disagreeable don’t get along well at all. Note also that the actor X partner interactions for both extraversion and agreeableness answer the general question posed in Chapter 1. Which pairs of people get along the best in initial interactions–those with similar personalities or those with dissimilar personalities? According to Figures 8.1 and 8.2, the answer to this question is: it depends on the trait. When the trait is extraversion, dyads whose members have similar personalities (two extraverts or two introverts) have better initial interactions than dyads whose members have dissimilar personalities (an extravert paired with an introvert). However, when the trait is agreeableness, things are more complicated. Personality similarity is associated with uniquely poor interactions for two disagreeable people, but it seems to be irrelevant for agreeable people, who can get along reasonably well with both

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Number of verbal acknowledgments

12 10 8 6 Partner disagreeable

4

Partner agreeable

2 0 Actor disagreeable

Actor agreeable

Perceived rapport with partner

55 53 51 49 47 45 43

Partner disagreeable

41

Partner agreeable

39 37 35

Wants to interact more with partner

Actor disagreeable

Actor agreeable

7.5 7.0 6.5 6.0 5.5

Partner disagreeable

5.0

Parter agreeable

4.5 4.0 3.5 Actor disagreeable

Actor agreeable

Figure 8.2. Actor X partner interactions for agreeableness in the study by Cuperman and Ickes (in press).

agreeable and disagreeable partners, at least in the context of a brief, initial interaction.19 In other words, the overall pattern of data suggests that sometimes personality similarity helps the partners’ interaction; sometimes it hurts their interaction; and sometimes it is more or less irrelevant to their interaction. All possible outcomes can occur, as we will see more clearly in Chapter 11. Before we get to that chapter, however, we have a couple of other places to visit first. We’ll be passing through the badlands of shyness and self-consciousness (Chapter 9) and the variegated landscapes of self-monitoring (Chapter 10). As we traverse these challenging terrains, my advice to you is to hunker down (shyness), keep an eye on yourself (self-consciousness), and be prepared to respond appropriately as the situation changes (self-monitoring). RECOMMENDED READINGS Allport, G. W., and Odbert, H. S. (1936). Trait-names: A psycho-lexical study. Psychological Monographs, 47, (No. 211). Cattell, R. B. (1943). The description of personality: Basic traits resolved into clusters. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 38, 476—506. Cuperman, R., and Ickes, W. (in press). Big Five predictors of behavior and perceptions in initial dyadic interactions: Personality similarity helps extraverts and introverts, but hurts ‘‘disagreeables.’’ Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Funder, D. C., and Sneed, C. D. (1993). Behavioral manifestations of personality: An ecological approach to judgmental accuracy. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 64, 479—490. Goldberg, L. R. (1990). An alternative ‘‘description of personality’’: The BigFive factor structure. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 1216—1229. John, O. P. (1990). The ‘‘Big Five’’ factor taxonomy: Dimensions of personality in the natural language and in questionnaires. In L. A. Pervin (Ed.), Handbook of personality: Theory and research (pp. 66—100). New York: The Guilford Press.

19

How do agreeable people manage to do this? The answer is found in the actor effect data in Table 8.3. These data show that agreeable people talk, smile, and laugh more, and provide their new interaction partners with more verbal and nonverbal acknowledgements. Apparently, their charm offensive works as well on ‘‘disagreeable’’ strangers as it does on more agreeable ones–at least in the short term.

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Norman, W. T. (1963). Toward an adequate taxonomy of personality attributes: Replicated factor structure in peer nomination personality ratings. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 66, 574—583. Ozer, D. J., and Benet-Martıńez, V. (2006). Personality and the prediction of consequential outcomes. Annual Review of Psychology, 57, 401—421. Peabody, D., and Goldberg, L. R. (1989). Some determinants of factor structures from personality-trait descriptors. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 57, 552—567.

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9 Shyness and Self-Consciousness

For about five years, between the ages of 7 and 12, I was extremely shy and self-conscious. I won’t bore you with the events that led up to that phase, but looking back on it decades later I can still remember what a painful and paralyzing experience it was to be out in public. I was convinced that everyone’s eyes were on me, that everyone’s ears were tuned to my slightest verbal mistake, and that the judgment of the entire world hung on my smallest and leastconfident movements. I even felt obliged to try to suppress my thoughts and feelings while in public situations, for fear that traces of them would flicker across my face and reveal them to everyone in my proximity. For that five-year period that seemed to last forever, Franz Kafka had nothing on me. And then one day, with no augur, sign, or omen–a sudden epiphany. For a long moment I felt safe enough to look outside myself, and I was amazed at what I saw: a roomful of people who appeared to be as self-conscious and as preoccupied with their own private concerns as I had just been with mine. Was I imagining this? No, it was true: none of them were looking at me, none of them were listening to me, none of them were paying me the slightest attention. They were all lost in themselves, just as I had been. Without sound or motion, the door of an invisible prison had opened. And after a brief period of self-debate in which I convinced myself that it was okay to leave, I walked through that door . . . But that’s not the end of the story. Once you have done a significant amount of time in the prison of shyness and self-consciousness,

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shades of the experience continue to haunt you, even decades later. So it may have been inevitable that, sometime during the course of my research career, I would want to study the effects of shyness on people’s initial, unstructured interactions. Having experienced this painful reality myself, I could anticipate most of what the results would reveal. On the other hand, there was one aspect of the results that I did not anticipate: evidence that the effects of shyness were not limited to the dyad member who had this trait. Shyness, it appears, is contagious.

Shyness and self-consciousness aren’t the same phenomenon; but they often occur together, as they did in my case. Shyness, also called social anxiety, is a form of anxiety that occurs primarily in social situations.1 It is typically accompanied by beliefs that aspects of one’s performance and self-presentation in social situations are–or will be–inadequate, unworthy, and unacceptable. When this type of anxiety is so extreme that it motivates people to avoid social situations, the term social phobia is used to describe it.2 Self-consciousness, according to psychologists Allan Fenigstein, Michael Scheier, and Arnold Buss,3 is a heightened consciousness of oneself that can take either, or both, of two forms: private selfconsciousness and public self-consciousness. Private self-consciousness is introspectiveness, a marked tendency for your attention to focus on your own inner world of subjective experience. Public self-consciousness is what I experienced so painfully in my youth, the sharp sense that everyone around me could see, hear, and

1

Some theorists and researchers argue that shyness and social anxiety are not the same thing. My reading of the research literature tells me that they are. For example, the thought-feeling content associated with shyness and social anxiety appears to be the same (see Garcia et al., 1991, p. 43, and Ickes, Robertson, et al., 1986, p. 72). 2 According to Heckleman and Schneier (1995, pp. 10—11), ‘‘it is unclear where shyness ends and social phobia begins.’’ The prevalence rate for self-reported shyness averages about 30% in college-student samples, whereas the estimated prevalence rate for social phobia averages about 10% in the general population. 3 Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., and Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private self-consciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522—527.

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evaluate everything I did and said, and perhaps even know much of what I thought and felt.

What makes shyness such a debilitating condition is that the social anxiety one experiences before a social encounter triggers negative, automatic thoughts that undermine one’s ability to perform adequately during the social encounter, which in turn strengthens the original negative beliefs after the social encounter has ended. This ‘‘vicious circle’’ of social anxiety has been depicted as follows:

Figure 9.1. The vicious circle of social anxiety. Adapted from Shyness and Social Anxiety: A Self Help Guide (http://www.nnt.nhs.uk/ mh/leaflets/shy%20A5.pdf). Reprinted with the permission of Lorna Cameron and Lesley Maunder.

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This view of social anxiety provides us with a useful point of departure. Let’s begin by using it to make three general predictions about the effects of shyness in the initial interactions of pairs of strangers: First, compared to their non-shy counterparts, shy people should experience more negative, self-focused thoughts and feelings before the interaction even begins. They should also have more negative expectations about how good the impending interaction will be (see the upper right-hand portion of Figure 9.1). Second, shy people should continue to experience more negative, self-focused thoughts and feelings during the interaction, while also displaying certain self-protective ‘‘safety behaviors’’ during this time (see the lower portion of Figure 9.1). Specifically, shy people should attempt to minimize their eye contact with their new interaction partners, to speak as little as possible (in order to avoid saying something awkward or dumb), and to adopt a more ‘‘closed,’’ selfprotective body posture. Third, shy people should also evaluate themselves and their interaction experience more negatively after the interaction has occurred (see the upper left-hand portion of Figure 9.1). As useful as Figure 9.1 is, it is also somewhat limited. Because it provides an intrapersonal, rather than an interpersonal, perspective on shyness, it says nothing about how the shy person’s behavior will affect the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of his or her interaction partner. I will have a lot to say about this issue later on. For the present, however, let’s see how well the predictions implied by Figure 9.1 have fared in the relevant studies that researchers have conducted to date. I have grouped these studies into three categories: those documenting the effects of shyness before the interaction, those documenting its effects during the interaction, and those documenting its effects immediately after the interaction.

EFFECTS OF SHYNESS (SOCIAL ANXIETY) BEFORE THE INTERACTION In a study conducted by psychologists John Cacioppo, Carol Glass, and Thomas Merluzzi, men who scored either high or low in social anxiety were told that they were going to interact with a female


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stranger to discuss undergraduate life on college campuses.4 Immediately before the expected interaction, the men were asked to list all of the thoughts and feelings they had just experienced while waiting for the interaction to begin. When the researchers analyzed the content of these thoughts and feelings, they found that the socially anxious men reported more negative, self-focused thoughts such as ‘‘Will I choke when trying to discuss?’’ In addition, the more socially anxious men rated the impending interaction significantly more negatively than the non-anxious men did. These findings are clearly consistent with our first prediction based on Figure 9.1–the prediction that shy people should experience more negative, self-focused thoughts and feelings before an interaction even begins, along with more negative expectations about how good the interaction will be (see the top right-hand portion of Figure 9.1).

EFFECTS OF SHYNESS DURING THE INTERACTION Several studies provide data about the effects of shyness during an initial interaction with a stranger. (To review our predictions regarding these effects, see the lower portion of Figure 9.1.)

Pilkonis (1977) In one of the first studies of this type, psychologist Paul Pilkonis created dyads in which a shy or a non-shy college student interacted for five minutes with an experimental confederate of the opposite sex.5 Each confederate had been trained to respond in as similar a manner as possible to each of the participants with whom they were paired.6

4 Cacioppo, J. T., Glass, C. R., and Merluzzi, T. V. (1979). Self-statements and selfevaluations: A cognitive-response analysis of heterosexual anxiety. Cognitive Therapy and Research, 3, 249—262. 5 Pilkonis, P. A. (1977). The behavioral consequences of shyness. Journal of Personality, 45, 596—611. 6 An experimental confederate is a member of the research team, a person who has been trained by the researcher to play a fixed role in the experiment with as little variation as possible from one experimental session to the next. This is not an easy thing to do, given how variable the actual research participants (i.e., the subjects) can be in their own behavior.

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Pilkonis found that the shy participants in his study took longer to speak and spoke less often than the non-shy participants did. The shy participants were also less likely to start new conversation sequences after periods of silence, and they tended to sit farther away from the confederate than the non-shy participants did. Finally, shy men (but not shy women) looked at the confederate less and made less eye contact during the interaction.

Natale et al. (1979) What happens in dyads where both of the participants are actual subjects (no confederates allowed)? In one of the first studies of this type, psychologists Michael Natale, Elliot Entin, and Joseph Jaffe examined interruption behavior in both same-sex and opposite-sex dyads. They found that the most socially anxious dyad members were the least likely to interrupt their partners during their initial interactions. Not interrupting a new acquaintance can be viewed as a ‘‘safety behavior’’; it helps to minimize the chances of offending the partner by appearing to be rude.

Cheek and Buss (1981) Psychologists Jonathan Cheek and Arnold Buss compared the initial interactions of dyads composed of two shy women with those of dyads composed of two non-shy women.7 They reported that the shy women talked less but ‘‘fidgeted’’ (by touching themselves) more than the non-shy women did. The shy women were also rated by observers as being noticeably more tense, inhibited, and unfriendly than their non-shy counterparts.

Leary et al. (1987) What would count as ‘‘safety behaviors’’ for socially anxious people when they carry on a conversation with a stranger? According to psychologists Mark Leary, Paul Knight, and Kelly Johnson, their safest strategy should be to ask their partner questions, provide

7 Cheek, J. M., and Buss, A. H. (1981). Shyness and sociability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 330—339.


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verbal acknowledgements and confirmations, but refrain from making assertions about facts that their partner might challenge, argue with, or even refute. In a study of same-sex (male-male and female-female) dyads, the researchers found that the more socially anxious dyad members displayed these conversational safety behaviors to a greater degree than the less socially anxious dyad members did.8

Asendorpf (1989) In contrast to Cheek and Buss, who studied only female-female dyads, psychologist Jens Asendorpf conducted a study that focused exclusively on male-male dyads.9 He found that the participants with the highest shyness scores adopted more ‘‘closed’’ and defensive body postures than the remaining participants did.

Garcia et al. (1991) In our study of opposite-sex (male-female) dyads, Stella Garcia, Linda Stinson, Victor Bissonnette, Stephen Briggs, and I examined how the men’s and women’s shyness scores were related to their thoughts, feelings, and behavior during their initial interactions.10 As the data in Table 9.1 reveal, the men’s shyness scores were stronger predictors than the women’s shyness scores of how inhibited the dyad members were. The greater the men’s shyness, the less both partners talked, smiled, and looked at each other (these are outcome measures that combine the male and the female partners’ talking, smiling, and looking). In addition to this pattern of results, we found an even more interesting one. It revealed that the men’s shyness not only had a

8

Leary, M. R., Knight, P. D., and Johnson, K. A. (1987). Social anxiety and dyadic conversation: A verbal response analysis. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 5, 34—50. 9 Asendorpf, J. B. (1989). Shyness as a final common pathway for two different types of inhibition. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 3, 481—492. 10 Garcia, S., Stinson, L., Ickes, W., Bissonnette, V., & Briggs, S. R. (1991). Shyness and physical attractiveness in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 35—49. The participants’ shyness scores were allowed to vary freely in this study. In other words, we didn’t preselect participants who had only low or high scores on the shyness measure.

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Table 9.1. Correlations of the men’s and women’s shyness scores with various dyad-level outcome measures in the study by Garcia, Stinson, Ickes, Bissonnette, and Briggs (1991). Correlations of the outcome measure with: Dyad-level outcome measures

Men’s shyness

Verbal behaviors Number of speaking turns (talking) Duration of speaking turns (talking) Number of questions asked Number of conversation sequences initiated Nonverbal behaviors Number of smiles/laughter Duration of smiles/laughter Number of gazes Duration of gazes Number of mutual gazes Duration of mutual gazes

Women’s shyness

.42 .45 .38 .39

.30 .27 .14 .30

.34 .36 .41 .45 .44 .39

.26 .22 .36 .31 .38 .25

The correlations that are statistically significant are boldfaced. The effects of other predictors have been statistically controlled. Reprinted under the copyrights and permissions policy of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

strong and pervasive effect on the men’s own thoughts, feelings, and behavior during the interaction, but also had a similar effect on the thoughts, feelings, and behavior of their female interaction partners. This pattern of results is reported in Table 9.2. These data are exceptionally revealing. To interpret them appropriately, however, you need to know that this was one of the dyadic interaction studies in which we separated the partners immediately after their interaction, seated them in identical cubicles, and asked each of them to view a copy of the videotape of the interaction in which they had just participated. Their task was to pause the tape at each point where they distinctly remembered having had a specific thought or feeling and then write down the content of that thought or feeling, along with the time (overlaid on the videotape image) at which it occurred. Our research assistants later coded the content of these reported thoughts and feelings and computed the percentages of them that had been coded as thoughts, feelings, self-focused thoughts, partner-focused thoughts, negative self-focused feelings, and so on. Keeping this procedure in mind, let’s see what the data in Table 9.2 reveal. When we look at the top left-hand portion of the figure, we can see that the men’s shyness scores were positively correlated with the


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Table 9.2. Correlations of the men’s shyness scores with various aspects of the men’s and women’s thoughts, feelings, and nonverbal behavior in the study by Garcia, Stinson, Ickes, Bissonnette, and Briggs (1991). Correlation of men’s shyness with: Outcome measure Thought-feeling content % feelings % self-focused thoughts and feelings % negative thoughts and feelings % negative self thoughts and feelings % negative self feelings % partner-focused thoughts and feelings Nonverbal behaviors Number of mutual gazes initiated Number of mutual gazes terminated Number of expressive gestures Duration of expressive gestures Degree of body orientation Openness (vs. closedness) of body posture

Men’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior

Women’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior

.47 .20

.23 .37

.49

.26

.50

.34

.51 .37

.29 .33

.01

.63

.12

.54

.40 .06 .04 .36

.49 .38 .35 .04

The correlations that are statistically significant are boldfaced. The effects of other predictors have been statistically controlled. Reprinted under the copyrights and permissions policy of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

percentage of negative, self-focused thoughts and feelings they reported, but were negatively correlated with the percentage of partner-focused thoughts and feelings they reported. In other words, during their initial interaction with a strange woman, shy men were so preoccupied with negative thoughts and feelings about themselves that they didn’t give much thought to their female interaction partner. What is really interesting, however, is that the men’s shyness was related to the women’s thoughts and feelings in essentially the same way. The more shy their male partners were, the more the women also reported having negative self-focused thoughts and feelings that occurred at the expense of partner-focused ones. It is as if the male partner’s shyness were somehow contagious, infecting

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the female partner with the same self-critical and self-preoccupied state of mind that the male partner was experiencing. How could this happen? The answer, I believe, can be found in the data reported in the lower portion of Table 9.2, as well as in the data reported in Table 9.1. From these data, we can see that the shy men sat in ‘‘closed’’ body postures, with their arms held close to their sides, and did not use their arms and hands to gesture much during the conversations. Even more striking, the more shy the men were, the fewer opportunities their female partners had to either initiate a mutual gaze (to ‘‘meet’’ the man’s gaze and make eye contact) or to terminate a mutual gaze (to ‘‘break off’’ eye contact by looking away first.) The only way to interpret these data is that the shy men were controlling the visual interaction, and that they were doing so in two ways. First, they looked away whenever it appeared that their female partners might be on the verge of looking at them (thereby keeping their female partners from initiating mutual gazes). Second, on the relatively rare occasions when eye contact was established, they broke it off quickly, before their female partners had the chance to look away first. Let’s look at these odd behaviors from the standpoint of the female partners. If you are one of these women, you find yourself trying to engage in conversation with a male stranger who says very little, rarely smiles and laughs, and doesn’t look at you much. He seldom gestures when he talks, and he adopts a ‘‘closed,’’ self-protective body posture. And on the relatively few occasions when he does turn his head to look in your direction, he quickly turns it away again as soon as you attempt to make eye contact with him. How does that make you feel? I think you probably feel the way the data in the right-hand column of Table 9.2 suggest. You start asking yourself, ‘‘Doesn’t he like me?’’ ‘‘Am I doing something wrong?’’ ‘‘Did I say something that upset him?’’ And as you become self-focused in a negative way, you reciprocate his lower level of talking, looking and smiling; you reciprocate his inhibited gesturing; and you turn your body away slightly away from him in response to your newly-felt discomfort. Without quite realizing how it has happened, you have become ‘‘infected’’ by his contagious shyness. Of all the things that the shy men are doing in this situation to induce a similar state of social anxiety in their female interaction partners, I suspect that their control of the visual interaction is by far the most damaging. As the strong negative correlations of .63 and .54 in Table 9.2 indicate, shy men can shut a new female


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acquaintance out of their visual field in a way that must, from the woman’s perspective, feel like having a door shut in her face. There is a term that captures this aspect of the shy men’s behavior. In his novel Honolulu Hotel, Paul Theroux calls people who avoid making eye contact with others ‘‘oblique people’’–a nice way of describing how difficult it is to engage them directly.11

Heerey and Kring (2007) Psychologists Erin Heerey and Ann Kring have documented another way in which social anxiety is ‘‘contagious’’ in initial, dyadic interactions.12 They found that, in same-sex dyads that paired a high social anxiety person with a low social anxiety person, both partners fidgeted more than in dyads where both partners scored low in social anxiety. Even more interesting, however, was their finding that, in the first of these dyad types, the more socially anxious dyad member ‘‘initiated bouts of joint fidgeting more frequently than their [less socially anxious] partners. . . . Thus, fidgeting appeared to be transmitted across interaction partners and was more frequently initiated by [the more socially anxious] participants.’’13 In addition, Heerey and Kring reported that the low socially anxious members of these dyads found it burdensome to interact with their high socially anxious interaction partners, who were not only awkward but in need of continuing reassurance. The more often the high-anxious partners sought such reassurance, the more negatively the low-anxious partners rated both the interaction experience and their own feelings immediately following it. In summary, studies of the effects of shyness (social anxiety) during initial interactions offer considerable support for our second prediction based on Figure 9.1. They show that, compared to their non-shy counterparts, shy people experience more negative, self-focused thoughts and feelings during the interaction, while also displaying certain self-protective ‘‘safety behaviors’’ during this time (see the lower portion of Figure 9.1). These behaviors include adopting a

11

Theroux, P. (2001). Hotel Honolulu. New York: Houghton Mifflin, p. 120. Heerey, E. A., and Kring, A. M. (2007). Interpersonal consequences of social anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 125—134. 13 Heerey and Kring (2007), p. 129. 12

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more ‘‘closed,’’ self-protective body posture; minimizing eye contact with their new interaction partners; and limiting their part of the conversation to asking questions and providing acknowledgments and confirmations rather than making factual claims that might be challenged and possibly refuted. Note also, however, that the data from the studies by Garcia and her colleagues and by Heerey and Kring take us far beyond the predictions we derived from Figure 9.1. These data show that shyness is contagious in the sense that the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the more socially anxious partners tend to be reproduced in the thoughts, feelings, and actions of the less socially anxious partners. The less-shy partners not only ‘‘share’’ the more-shy partners’ negative, self-focused thoughts and feelings; they also reciprocate the shy partners’ reduced levels of talking and looking, as well as their enhanced level of fidgeting.

EFFECTS OF SHYNESS AFTER THE INTERACTION A number of the studies just considered also provide data relevant to the third prediction that we derived from Figure 9.1–the prediction that shy people should continue to evaluate themselves and their interaction experience more negatively after the interaction has occurred (see the upper left-hand portion of Figure 9.1). The findings pertaining to this prediction are summarized in Table 9.3. Table 9.3. Significant effects of the dyad members’ shyness on post-interaction measures of perceived interaction quality, self-rated shyness, fear of the partner’s evaluation, and negative affect. Study

Post-interaction measure(s)

Effect

Cheek and Buss (1981) Asendorpf (1989)

Self-rating as having acted awkward, inhibited, and quiet Self-rating of shyness and fear of being evaluated Self-reported anxious thoughts

Shy > non-shy

Perception of lower interaction quality

Shy men > non-shy men Shy > non-shy

Melchior and Cheek (1990) Garcia et al. (1991) Bruch et al. (1995) Heerey and Kring (2007)

Self-rating of shyness and concern about the partner’s evaluation Negative post-interaction affect

Shy > non-shy Shy > non-shy

Shy > non-shy


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Clearly, there is good support for our third prediction as well. Shy people continue to evaluate both themselves and their interaction experience negatively after the interaction has occurred. By doing so, they complete the vicious circle of social anxiety, setting themselves up for another expected failure in the next social interaction that life has in store for them.

What is the relationship between shyness and self-consciousness? The answer depends on which aspect of self-consciousness–private or public–you are talking about. According to psychologist Arnold Buss, shyness scores correlate ‘‘near zero with private self-consciousness and .26 with public self-consciousness.’’14 In other words, how introspective (privately self-conscious) people are tells us nothing about how shy they are. Introspective people are just as likely to be non-shy as to be shy. On the other hand, there is a tendency for people who are publicly self-conscious to be shy as well. However, because this association is rather weak (.26), we can interpret it to mean that although some publicly self-conscious people are shy, other publicly self-conscious people are not. So, we may ask, which ones are and which ones aren’t? Buss’s answer is that there are two ‘‘ingredients’’ of shyness: having a high level of public self-consciousness but having a low level of self-esteem. If people feel bad about themselves (have low self-esteem), being highly aware that other people are evaluating them should result in shyness, and it should motivate them to try to protect themselves as much as possible from making an unfavorable impression on others. On the other hand, if people feel good about themselves (have high self-esteem), being highly aware that other people are evaluating them should not result in shyness; instead, it should result in viewing the situation as providing them with an opportunity to make a favorable impression on others.15 This reasoning led Buss to predict that shyness scores should be negatively correlated with self-esteem scores. And, sure enough, when he and his colleague Jonathan Cheek correlated people’s shyness

14

Buss, A. H. (1980). Self-consciousness and social anxiety. San Francisco: W.H. Freeman and Company, p. 196. 15 For research evidence consistent with this view, see Bruch, Hamer, and Heimberg (1995).

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scores with their self-esteem scores, they found a sizable negative correlation of .51, with higher shyness being associated with low self-esteem.16 Although this correlation doesn’t tell us whether shyness is a consequence of low self-esteem or whether low self-esteem is a consequence of shyness, it is certainly consistent with the idea that low self-esteem is an ‘‘ingredient’’ of shyness. Is there any evidence that high public self-consciousness might also be an ingredient of shyness? Interestingly, there is. In a study published in 1988, psychologists Debra Hope and Richard Heimberg studied the reactions of men and women who had sought treatment for social anxiety.17 All of these men and women completed measures of public self-consciousness, private self-consciousness, and social anxiety before participating in a behavioral simulation of an ‘‘anxiety-provoking situation.’’ Following the simulation, the participants listed all the thoughts they had experienced and rated the maximum level of anxiety they had felt. The results showed that the participants’ public self-consciousness scores uniquely predicted the percentage of negative thoughts they reported and their ratings of the maximum level of anxiety they had felt (these correlations were .38 and .36, respectively). In contrast, the participants’ private self-consciousness scores did not uniquely predict either of these outcome measures (these correlations were .11 and .14, respectively). As in the case of low self-esteem, these data suggest (without being conclusive) that public self-consciousness is an essential ingredient of social anxiety.

Looking back on my childhood experience of shyness, it is possible that a genetic predisposition played some role in that experience. There is evidence that blue-eyed males are perceived by their parents and teachers to be shyer than brown-eyed males (although this difference isn’t evident for females, for reasons that aren’t yet clear).18

16

Buss (1980), p. 197. Hope, D. A., and Heimberg, R. G. (1988). Public and private self-consciousness and social phobia. Journal of Personality Assessment, 52, 626—639. 18 Coplan, R. J., Coleman, B., and Rubin, K. H. (1998). Shyness and little boy blue: Iris pigmentation, gender, and social wariness in preschoolers. Developmental Psychobiology, 32, 37—44. 17


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There is also evidence that people with allergies are more likely to be shy than people without them.19 Because both of these ‘‘markers’’ of shyness are biologically based, and because genetic factors have been shown to account for about a fourth of the variation in people’s shyness scores,20 it seems likely that I (a blue-eyed guy with allergies) was born with a stronger-than-average disposition to be shy. Fortunately, I have either overcome my early shyness or have learned to compensate for it to a large degree. On the other hand, having experienced it so intensely when I was young, I have a great deal of sympathy for other people who find themselves locked within the vicious circle of social anxiety. Anticipating failure in a social situation, shy people engineer their own failure in the situation by clinging to ‘‘safety behaviors’’ that their interaction partners find odd and off-putting, and then leave the situation with the same selfdefeating beliefs that they entered it with. Escape from this painful condition is certainly possible–and, with the aid of various therapies, quite realistic–but it usually isn’t as easy as it was in my case. And I can’t say that I have removed myself entirely from that shy boy I once was; deep down, he is still very much a part of me.

RECOMMENDED READINGS Cheek, J. M., and Buss, A. H. (1981). Shyness and sociability. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 330—339. Fenigstein, A., Scheier, M. F., and Buss, A. H. (1975). Public and private selfconsciousness: Assessment and theory. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 43, 522—527. Garcia, S., Stinson, L., Ickes, W., Bissonnette, V., and Briggs, S. R. (1991). Shyness and physical attractiveness in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 61, 35—49. Heerey, E. A., and Kring, A. M. (2007). Interpersonal consequences of social anxiety. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 116, 125—134.

19

Bell, I. R., Jasnoski, M. L., Kagan, J., & King, D. S. (1990). Is allergic rhinitis more frequent in young adults with shyness? A preliminary survey. Psychosomatic Medicine, 52, 517—525. 20 For a brief summary of the relevant data, see Crozier (2001, pp. 109—115).

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Leary, M. R., Knight, P. D., and Johnson, K. A. (1987). Social anxiety and dyadic conversation: A verbal response analysis. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology, 5, 34—50. Pilkonis, P. A. (1977). The behavioral consequences of shyness. Journal of Personality, 45, 596—611.


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10 Self-Monitoring

It was during the second semester of my sophomore year at college when I first heard about a new guy on campus–I’ll call him Zeke– whom many of my friends had already met. Everyone agreed that Zeke was a friendly and personable guy who seemed to fit right in wherever he went. The problem was that everyone seemed to know a different version of Zeke. To a female friend who loved rock music, Zeke had described his younger days in a rock and roll band that toured briefly in southern California. To a male friend who was into cars, Zeke recounted his experiences working in the pit crew of a NASCAR racing team. To another male friend who was into politics, Zeke explained his role as a mid-level campaign organizer in the last presidential election. And to another female friend who was into photography, Zeke described the exhibitions of his art photographs that had been held in New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles. When I finally met Zeke and told him about my major in English literature (which later became a double major that included psychology), he told me that he had supported himself for a few years as a freelance writer; but his answers were vague and elusive when I asked him about what he had published–and where. Having heard about the alternative Zekes that several of my friends had encountered, I was frankly suspicious. This guy, superficially charming as he was, gave every indication of being ‘‘all things to all people.’’ As soon as he got a good fix on your interests, it quickly

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became apparent that they were his interests too, and that he had already taken them much further than you had. I got back together with my friends and we arranged a lunch meeting that we would all attend. One of the more attractive women was given the responsibility of inviting Zeke to meet her for lunch at the same place and time. When he showed up and saw us all sitting at the same table together, he looked uncomfortable. He sat down at the place we had saved for him, but he was uncharacteristically silent and he refused to order any food. After just a few minutes, he got up, excused himself, and left the room. None of us ever saw ‘‘Zeke’’ again. He was a sad case. On the one hand, he was an amazing improvisational actor, a person who could use the few cues you provided him to create–on the spot–a life history that was custom-made to present him as being the person he thought would impress you the most. On the other hand, by trying to be ‘‘all things to all people,’’ he revealed himself in the end to be nothing to anyone: he was no one you could trust, or count on, or feel that you ever really knew at all.

A few years later, when I read about the personality dimension of self-monitoring proposed by psychologist Mark Snyder,1 I understood that the guy I have called Zeke was an extreme (and probably pathological) high self-monitor. According to Snyder, high self-monitors are people who can quickly size up a social situation; ask themselves ‘‘Who can I be in order to make the strongest and most favorable impression in this situation?’’; and then be that person in a reasonably compelling and convincing way. High self-monitors are, like ‘‘Zeke,’’ people who combine strong improvisational acting skills with a playwright’s sense of what script they must follow in order to flesh out the character they are playing and to make their performance of that character a convincing one. Snyder has characterized them as ‘‘social chameleons,’’ a metaphor that emphasizes their ability to closely monitor the changing social environment and then change the image they present accordingly.

1 Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526—537.

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In contrast, Snyder has characterized low self-monitors as people who stay pretty much the same from one situation to the next. Instead of trying to be ‘‘all things to all people,’’ they are simply themselves. What you see is what you get–yesterday, today, and tomorrow. Although low self-monitors might occasionally try to make a better-than-average impression (for example, during a first date or a job interview), they are likely to feel awkward and insincere while doing so, and they are relieved when they can ‘‘drop the act’’ and go back to just being themselves.2 To measure individual differences on the personality dimension of self-monitoring, Snyder constructed the Self-Monitoring Scale.3 The original version of the scale included 25 items such as the following: I can make impromptu speeches even on topics about which I have almost no information. When I am uncertain how to act in a social situation, I look to the behavior of others for cues. In different situations and with different people, I often act like very different persons. I would not change my opinions (or the way I do things) in order to please someone else or win their favor. (reverse-scored item) I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people and different situations (reverse-scored item) Copyright Ó 1974 by the American Psychological Association. Adapted with Permission.

Snyder validated his Self-Monitoring Scale by testing a number of relevant predictions. First, he found that a group of professional actors (people who should excel in the skills attributed to high self-monitors) scored higher on the Self-Monitoring Scale than a comparison group of university students who were selected without regard to their majors. Second, he found that, compared to low self-monitors, high self-monitors more accurately communicated specific assigned emotions through their own nonverbal behavior. Third, he found that high self-monitors more accurately decoded the emotions that were expressed in other people’s nonverbal behavior. Fourth, he found that high self-monitors were more likely to use other 2

Snyder, M. (1979). Self-monitoring processes. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 12). New York: Academic Press. 3 See Snyder (1974).

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people’s behavior to guide their own planned actions in an upcoming group discussion. Having read Snyder’s article that summarized the work described above, I decided to examine the effects of self-monitoring in the very first dyadic interaction study that I conducted as a new Ph.D., in collaboration with my first graduate student Richard Barnes.4 We videotaped the initial, unstructured interactions of a moderately large sample of same-sex (male-male and femalefemale) dyads, and then tested for the effects of self-monitoring in the behaviors we coded from the videotapes and in the participants’ post-interaction questionnaire responses. Imagine that you were us. What would you expect to find? Remember that the overriding goal of the high self-monitor is to try to be the person that the situation seems to call for, whereas the overriding goal of the low self-monitor is to just be him- or herself. In this case, the situation is one in which you suddenly find yourself sitting with a stranger in a strange lab while waiting for an experiment to begin. The kind of person this situation seems to call for is a person who can effectively transform what might otherwise be an awkward period of mutual silence into a relatively successful and smoothly coordinated initial conversation. So we might expect that, within each dyad, the member with the higher self-monitoring (SM) score might have been more motivated to try to be that kind of person. And that, in fact, is pretty much the story that our data had to tell. The results, as summarized in a more recent article, revealed that: . . . most of the significant findings concerned the within-dyad rank of the dyad members as being the higher SM versus the lower SM member. With regard to their observed interaction behavior, the higher SM partners were more likely to speak first and to initiate subsequent conversation sequences following periods of silence. With regard to their perceptions of the interaction, the higher SM partners were rated by both themselves and their partners as having had a greater need to

4

Ickes, W., and Barnes, R. D. (1977). The role of sex and self-monitoring in unstructured dyadic interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 315—330. See also Ickes (2003, ch. 2).

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talk. In addition, the higher SM partners thought that they had been guided more by their partners’ behavior than vice versa, and they reported experiencing a significantly higher level of self-consciousness as well. Finally, the degree of self-consciousness reported by the higher SM partners was significantly correlated with the number of periods of silence during the interaction (r ¼ .38, p < .01), whereas the degree of self-consciousness reported by the lower SM partners was not (r ¼ .20, p > .10).5 In other words, the person with the higher self-monitoring score within each pair was indeed more likely to try to be the kind of person who could effectively transform what might otherwise be an awkward period of mutual silence into a relatively successful and smoothly coordinated initial conversation. The higher-SM dyad member was more likely to ‘‘break the ice’’ by speaking first. The higher-SM dyad member was also more likely to get the conversation going again when it lapsed into silence; to report having had a greater need to talk; and to report being guided more by the partner’s behavior than vice versa. Last but not least, the higher-SM dyad member reported more self-consciousness as the number of periods of silence increased, suggesting that he or she felt a greater responsibility to respond to these silences, as was indeed the case.

Although the Ickes and Barnes study was the first to examine the effects of self-monitoring in initial interactions, it was not the last study to do so. Let’s look at what the results of some subsequent investigations have revealed.

DABBS ET AL. (1980) The conversational behavior of high versus low self-monitors was also examined in a study by psychologists James Dabbs, Mark Evans,

5

Ickes, W., Holloway, R., Stinson, L., and Hoodenpyle, T. (2006). Self-monitoring in social interaction: The centrality of self-affect. Journal of Personality, 74, 659—684 (see pp. 661—662).

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Charles Hopper, and James Purvis.6 In many respects, their procedure was quite different from ours. The dyad members sat on opposite sides of a table that had a large wooden box set on top. They were instructed to look at each other through a hole in the center of the box, which contained ‘‘two lightly silvered beam-splitter mirrors, which looked like clear glass to the subjects but nevertheless diverted images of their faces into a television camera inside the box.’’7 Lapel microphones were attached to each dyad member, and the output from the microphones was fed to a microcomputer that was programmed to automatically record each dyad member’s vocalizations and pauses. Although this set-up was vastly different from our own attempt to study initial interactions in as naturalistic a manner as possible, Jim Dabbs and his colleagues also found evidence that high selfmonitoring was associated with attempts to create a more fluent conversation with fewer and shorter pauses. The high self-monitors in their study used the available conversational cues to begin their own speaking turns significantly faster than the low self-monitors did, thereby leaving fewer and shorter pauses in the conversation. The high self-monitors also kept the conversation moving at a faster pace by keeping their speaking turns short. The overall impression of the experimenters who collected the data for this study was that ‘‘high self-monitors conversed with other highs in a facile (and sometimes glib) manner, that lows conversed with other lows in a manner that was often painfully halting (but sometimes appealingly sincere), and that lows conversed more smoothly with highs than with other lows.’’8

ICKES, REIDHEAD, ET AL. (1986) The previous studies tell us a lot about the amount and timing of the conversation that occurs in the initial interactions of people who vary in their level of self-monitoring. On the other hand, the previous

6

Dabbs, J. M., Evans, M. S., Hopper, C. H., and Purvis, J. A. (1980). Self-monitors in conversation: What do they monitor? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 278—284. 7 Dabbs et al. (1980), p. 279. 8 Dabbs et al. (1980), p. 282.

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studies tell us nothing about the linguistic content of these conversations. What kinds of words do the dyad members use most often in their conversations, and what implications can we draw from their choice of these words? Most researchers don’t attempt to analyze the linguistic content of people’s conversations because it can be a very daunting task.9 However, Susan Reidhead, Miles Patterson and I took a modest step in this direction by analyzing the personal pronoun usage that occurred in dyads whose members varied in their scores on the personality traits of self-monitoring and Machiavellianism.10 Why did we study personal pronoun usage, and (while we’re asking) what is the personality trait of Machiavellianism? To answer the second question first, Machiavellianism is a dimension of personality that was proposed by psychologist Richard Christie and his colleagues. It gets its name from Niccolo` Machiavelli–a 16th-century scholar, diplomat, and political strategist who advised the rulers of Italian city-states on the best ways to outmaneuver, control, and manipulate others. To see if contemporary people who believe in Machiavelli’s philosophy are themselves highly manipulative and controlling, Christie and his colleagues developed a scale that assesses people’s agreement with various Machiavellian maxims. For example, the scale includes items such as ‘‘The best way to handle people is to tell them what they want to hear’’ and ‘‘Never tell anyone the real reason you did something unless it is useful to do so.’’ In their subsequent research using the Machivellianism scale, Christie and his colleagues found that high-Mach individuals are indeed more manipulative and controlling than low-Mach individuals are. For example, They are more likely than low Machs to take over leadership functions and to . . . persuade others to form coalitions with them

9

What makes this task easier now, as compared to the past, is the recent availability of software designed to analyze and summarize the categorized linguistic content of samples of speech and writing. See, for example, the Linguistic Inquiry Word Count software developed by psychologist James Pennebaker and his colleagues (http:// www.liwc.net/index.php). 10 Ickes, W., Reidhead, S., and Patterson, M. (1986). Machiavellianism and self-monitoring: As different as ‘‘me’’ and ‘‘you.’’ Social Cognition, 4, 58—74.

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(Geis, 1964, 1970) . . . . High Machs also appear to differ from low Machs in their capacity for improvisational behavior. They can generate more innovative ways to disrupt another person’s performance (Geis, Christie, and Nelson, 1970), can bluff or lie more successfully in ambiguous situations (e.g., Exline et al., 1970; Geis and Moon, 1981; Nachamie, 1969), and appear to have a better sense of timing when they make exploitive moves in a competitive game situation (Geis, 1964, 1970).11 Okay, but to re-state the first of the two questions posed above, what does Machiavellianism have to do with self-monitoring and with personal pronoun usage in initial interactions? Our chain of reasoning started like this. At first glance, the traits of Machiavellianism and selfmonitoring present a striking similarity: high scorers on both traits are good at creating desired impressions through their improvisational skills and their ability to control their own expressive behavior. At second glance, however, the two traits are clearly different: people’s self-monitoring scores are generally uncorrelated with their Machiavellianism scores. How do we account for the fact that two traits that appear to be so similar are empirically unrelated? The answer my colleagues and I proposed was that the motives and the attentional foci of high self-monitors and high Machiavellians are distinctly different. High self-monitors are constantly looking toward others for cues about how to favorably impress them. Accordingly, the attentional focus of high self-monitors should primarily be on their interaction partners–the people who provide these cues. In contrast, high Machiavellians have a remarkable ability to keep their focus on their own self-interest, while at the same time resisting any influence exerted by other people.12 Accordingly, the attentional focus of high Machs should primarily be on themselves, rather than on their interaction partners. This difference in attentional focus should be reflected in personal pronoun usage, such that self-monitoring scores should be positively

11

Snyder, M., & Ickes, W. (1985). Personality and social behavior. In G. Lindzey and E. Aronson (Eds.), Handbook of social psychology: Third edition. (Vol. 2, pp. 883—947). New York: Random House. See pages 889—890. 12 As evidence for these assertions, see Christie and Geis (1970), Feldman and Scheibe (1972), Plax and Rosenfeld (1980), and Wilkinson (1974).

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correlated with the use of second-person singular (partnerreferential) pronouns, whereas Machiavellianism scores should be positively correlated with the use of first-person singular (selfreferential) pronouns. To test this hypothesis, my colleagues and I covertly videotaped the initial, unstructured interactions of both same-sex and oppositesex dyads. Afterwards, we explained to the dyad members the necessity of not informing them about the videotaping in advance, gave them a post-interaction questionnaire, and then asked them to complete the measures of self-monitoring and Machiavellianism.13 We then had our undergraduate research assistants transcribe the participants’ conversations and code the percentages of first-, second-, and third-person pronouns that were used by each dyad member. We expected that the dyad members’ self-monitoring scores would be correlated with their use of second-person singular pronouns (indicating a greater focus on the interaction partner as one’s level of self-monitoring increases). In contrast, we expected that the dyad members’ Machiavellianism scores would be correlated with their use of first-person singular pronouns (indicating a greater focus on oneself as one’s level of Machiavellianism increases). And this difference in personal pronoun usage is exactly what we found. Across all of the dyads in the study, the participants’ self-monitoring and Machiavellian scores were correlated as expected with their percentage use of first-person and second-person pronouns (see Table 10.1) As you can see, the participants’ self-monitoring scores were positively correlated with their use of second-person singular pronouns (you, your, yours, yourself), but were negatively correlated with their use of first-person singular pronouns (I, me, my, mine, myself). In contrast, the participants’ Machiavellianism scores were positively correlated with their use of first-person pronouns (both singular and plural), but were negatively correlated with their use of second- and third-person singular pronouns. Given our predictions, it’s not surprising that higher-Mach participants used a greater percentage of first-person singular pronouns, but why did they use a greater percentage of first-person

13

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Mea culpa again. See Chapter 2, footnote 8.


Table 10.1. Correlations of the dyad members’ self-monitoring and Machiavellianism scores with their percentage use of first-, second-, and third-person pronoun categories in the study by Ickes, Reidhead, and Patterson (1986). Pronoun usage measure % first-person singular pronouns % first-person plural pronouns % second-person singular pronouns % third-person singular pronouns % third-person plural pronouns

Self-monitoring .30 .13 .20 .07 .12

Machiavellianism .28 .19 .28 .22 .03

All boldfaced correlations are statistically significant. The influence of the other predictor is statistically controlled in each case. Reprinted by permission of Guilford Press.

plural pronouns (we, us, our, ours, ourselves) as well? Our tentative interpretation was as follows: A plausible interpretation of this finding is that high-Mach individuals exaggerate the use of first-person plural pronouns in their conversation in order to manipulate others more effectively. For example, the high-Mach person may use the pronouns ‘‘we,’’ ‘‘us,’’ ‘‘our,’’ and so on in such a way as to suggest (1) the implicit agreement of the interaction partner (‘‘He’s not the kind of person we want as our congressman’’); (2) the right to speak for the interaction partner (‘‘It looks like we’ll just have to sit here and be bored until the experimenter gets back’’); or (3) an implicit consensus of people in addition to the high-Mach person that his or her opinions, proposed action, and the like are correct (‘‘We athletes don’t have much use for the computer freaks on campus’’).14 In summary, despite the superficial similarity between self-monitoring and Machiavellianism, there is evidence that they are distinctively different personality traits, each associated with its own predominant motive and attentional focus. And that is why Susan Reidhead, Miles Patterson and I titled our study Machiavellianism and self-monitoring: As different as ‘‘me’’ and ‘‘you.’’

14

Ickes, Reidhead, et al. (1986), pp. 71—72.

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ICKES ET AL. (1990) If the focus of high self-monitors is primarily on their interaction partners, we would expect them to be more attentive to the cues that indicate what their partners are thinking and feeling. As a consequence, high self-monitors should be better than low self-monitors at inferring the specific content of their interaction partners’ thoughts and feelings. Or, to state it differently, people’s self-monitoring scores should be positively correlated with their empathic accuracy scores in initial, unstructured interactions. The results of at least one study suggest that they are. This was a study of 38 opposite-sex dyads that I conducted in collaboration with my colleagues Linda Stinson, Victor Bissonnette, and Stella Garcia.15 After capturing the dyad members’ interaction on videotape, we seated the dyad members in different cubicles where they each viewed a separate copy of the videotape. Their task was to pause the tape at each of the points where they distinctly remembered having a thought or feeling, and to write down the content of each thought or feeling along with the time when it had occurred. When both dyad members had completed this task, we showed them the videotape again. This time, we (the experimenters) paused the tape for them at the points where their partner’s thoughts and feelings had been reported, and we asked them to write down the inferred content of their partner’s thoughts and feelings at all of these points. Later, trained raters not only coded various behavioral measures from the videotaped interaction but also judged the similarity between the actual and the inferred thought-feeling entries to determine each dyad member’s empathic accuracy score. The most relevant findings from this study are reported in Table 10.2. These data show that the participants’ self-monitoring scores were indeed predictive of their empathic accuracy scores (r ¼ .24). Note, however, that the other significant predictors of empathic accuracy in Table 10.2 also reflect the degree of attention that the participants gave to their interaction partners. These predictors were measures of the participant’s partner-focused thoughts

15

Ickes, W., Stinson, L., Bissonnette, V., and Garcia, S. (1990). Naturalistic social cognition: Empathic accuracy in mixed-sex dyads. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 730—742.

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Table 10.2. Some correlates of the participants’ empathic accuracy scores in the study by Ickes, Stinson, Bissonnette, and Garcia (1990). Measures used as predictor variables

Correlation of the predictor with empathic accuracy

% of partner-focused thoughts and feelings % of partner-focused attributions Participant’s self-monitoring score Partner’s physical attractiveness

.24 .31 .24 .24

All correlations are statistically significant. Reprinted under the copyrights and permissions policy of the American Psychological Association (http://www.apa.org/about/copyright.html).

and feelings, the participant’s partner-focused attributions, and the degree to which the opposite-sex partner was rated as physically attractive by a large group of independent raters. Taken together, the data suggest that attentiveness to one’s partner is a necessary precondition for empathic accuracy, and that self-monitoring provides one–but not the only–motive for such attentiveness. Do people’s self-monitoring scores predict their empathic accuracy in same-sex dyads as well as in opposite-sex dyads? It remains to be seen. Based on the data in Table 10.2, I would expect that if the motivation to closely attend to one’s partner is weaker in same-sex dyads than in opposite-sex dyads, then the link between self-monitoring and empathic accuracy should be weaker as well. However, if the motivation to closely attend to one’s partner is just as strong–or even stronger–in same-sex dyads as in opposite-sex dyads, then the link between self-monitoring and empathic accuracy should be comparably strong.

STUDIES OF SELF-MONITORING IN STRUCTURED INTERACTIONS WITH CONFEDERATES Some studies have examined the effects of self-monitoring in people’s structured interactions with experimental confederates. Although the procedures of these studies are quite different from the ones we use, the results of these studies offer further insights about the differences between high and low self-monitors in initial interactions.

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Shaffer et al. (1982) Psychologist David Shaffer and his colleagues Jonathan Smith and Michele Tomarelli conducted a study that explored the link between self-monitoring and self-disclosure reciprocity in initial interactions.16 The impetus for this study was the well-established finding that strangers get to know each other by following an implicit ‘‘reciprocity rule’’ in their mutual self-disclosures. According to this reciprocity rule, the more you are willing to tell me about yourself, the more willing I should be to reciprocate and tell you about myself, following your lead with regard to the intimacy level and content of your self-disclosure to me. Because high self-monitors are presumably more sensitive to norms of social appropriateness than low self-monitors are, Shaffer and his colleagues predicted that high self-monitors would reciprocate the intimacy level, emotionality, and descriptive content of a new acquaintance’s self-disclosure more than low self-monitors would. In contrast to high-monitors, low selfmonitors should be focused less on the reciprocity norm than on ‘‘just being themselves.’’ They should therefore reciprocate the new acquaintance’s self- disclosure only in those instances when they feel comfortable doing so. Accordingly, their overall reciprocation of the intimacy level, emotionality, and descriptive content of the other person’s self-disclosure should be less than that of high self-monitors. In this study, the participants, whose self-monitoring scores had previously been measured, followed the lead of a confederate in disclosing personal information in four topic areas. Because the confederate always spoke first, ‘‘presenting either highly intimate or non-intimate information in response to all topics,’’ the researchers were able to measure the extent to which the research participants responded in kind. The results revealed that the high self-monitors were indeed more likely to use the cues provided by the confederate’s self-disclosures as guides to their own. Specifically, they were more likely than the low self-monitors to reciprocate three

16

Shaffer, D. R., Smith, J. E., and Tomarelli, M. (1982). Self-monitoring as a determinant of self-disclosure reciprocity during the acquaintance process. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 43, 163—175.

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aspects of the confederate’s self-disclosures: their intimacy level, their emotionality, and their descriptive content.17 In summary, the study by Shaffer and his colleagues provides another example of how much high self-monitors depend on cues from their partner’s behavior to guide their own self-presentation during an initial social interaction. It appears that the average high self-monitor will try to match the intimacy level, emotionality, and content of a new acquaintance’s self-disclosures even in instances that fall outside the ‘‘comfort zone’’ of the average low self-monitor.

Simpson et al. (1993) Psychologists Jeffry Simpson, Steven Gangestad, and Michael Biek explored how people’s self-monitoring scores were related to their behavior when they were interviewed by an attractive, opposite-sex confederate.18 The results of this study revealed that high self-monitors (both men and women) smiled and displayed flirtatious glances at the attractive interviewer more often than low self-monitors did. On the other hand, the high self-monitors were also rated as appearing more ‘‘phony’’ during the interview than their low selfmonitoring counterparts. These effects were particularly evident for the subgroup of high self-monitors who were interested in having sexual relationships with multiple partners. The results of this study suggest that the charming image displayed by high self-monitors is not always taken at face value. If high self-monitors try too hard to impress an attractive, opposite-sex stranger, they run the risk of overplaying their role and discrediting their own performance.

And that’s not the only risk they run. One of the most accomplished role-players in film history, the late British actor Peter Sellers, showed all of the signs of being a high self-monitor. But although Peter Sellers had an amazing ability to adopt and convincingly

17

Ickes, Holloway, et al. (2006), pp. 668—669. Simpson, J. A., Gangestad, S. W., and Biek, M. (1993). Personality and nonverbal social behavior: An ecological perspective on relationship initiation. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 29, 434—461.

18

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‘‘inhabit’’ a wide range of roles, this ability apparently came at a rather high price, as indicated in the following quote from one of his media interviews: I have no personality of my own, you see. I could never be a star because of this. I’m a character actor. I couldn’t play Peter Sellers the way Cary Grant plays Cary Grant, say–because I have no concrete image of myself . . . . You know, it’s a funny thing, but when I’m doing a role I feel it’s the role doing the role, if you know what I men. When someone tells me ‘‘You were great as so-and-so,’’ I feel they should be telling this to so-and-so, and when I finish a picture I feel a horrible sudden loss of identity.19

Did ‘‘Zeke,’’ my acquaintance of so many years ago, have an identity apart from the roles that he played? I like to think so. I also like to think that if he had just allowed himself to be himself, he and I could have been friends. Wherever (and whoever) ‘‘Zeke’’ is today, I wish him well. RECOMMENDED READINGS Dabbs, J. M., Evans, M. S., Hopper, C. H., and Purvis, J. A. (1980). Self-monitors in conversation: What do they monitor? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 278—284. Ickes, W., and Barnes, R. D. (1977). The role of sex and self-monitoring in unstructured dyadic interactions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 35, 315—330. Ickes, W., Holloway, R., Stinson, L., & Hoodenpyle, T. (2006). Selfmonitoring in social interaction: The centrality of self-affect. Journal of Personality, 74, 659—684. Ickes, W., Reidhead, S., and Patterson, M. (1986). Machiavellianism and selfmonitoring: As different as ‘‘me’’ and ‘‘you.’’ Social Cognition, 4, 58—74. Snyder, M. (1974). Self-monitoring of expressive behavior. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 30, 526—537. Snyder, M. (1979). Self-monitoring processes. In L. Berkowitz (Ed.), Advances in experimental social psychology (Vol. 12, pp. 85—128). New York: Academic Press.

19 Cited in Lewis, R. (1997). The life and death of Peter Sellers (p. xiii). New York: Applause Books.

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11 How It All Adds Up: An Integration

We have made a long circuit through the landscape of this book and are now on a high plateau near the place where we started. From this vantage point, we are in a position to do three things. First, we can re-consider the question, initially raised in Chapter 1, of whether pairs of people with similar traits and characteristics have better interactions than pairs of people with dissimilar traits and characteristics. Second, we can review the ground that we covered in Chapters 3—10 and see what larger pattern, if any, emerges from the findings reported in those chapters. Third, we can attempt to integrate the research on personality similarity/dissimilarity with the other research described in this book, to see how it all adds up.

Our travels so far have enabled us to see how various traits and characteristics affect the initial interactions of strangers in a strange lab. What remains to be seen, however, is whether the partners’ similarity/dissimilarity is also important in this regard. No matter how much we might believe that personality similarity is important (‘‘birds of a feather flock together’’) or that personality dissimilarity is important (‘‘opposites attract’’), there is always the chance that we are wrong (‘‘none of the above’’). That’s why doing psychological research is so exciting; the data always give us an

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answer, but the answer is often one that we wouldn’t have predicted beforehand.1 Because the focus of this book is on the role of personality in initial interactions, let’s start by considering the partners’ similarity/dissimilarity on the traits and characteristics that were the topics of Chapters 3 though 10. We’ll use a kind of ‘‘scorecard’’ data table to organize and summarize the results. Each row in the table will represent a different trait or personal characteristic. Each of the last three columns (columns two, three, and four) will represent a different kind of outcome with regard to the issue of the partners’ similarity/dissimilarity. Column two will be used to tally the cases in which similar partners had better initial interactions than dissimilar ones. Column three will be used to tally the cases in which the partners’ similarity/dissimilarity didn’t seem to matter much. Column four will be used to tally the cases in which dissimilar partners had better initial interactions than similar ones. Is this clear? Probably not. This is one of those situations in which you have to see it to understand it, so let’s go directly to the table itself (see Table 11.1).

A FIRST ATTEMPT TO TRY TO ORGANIZE AND INTEGRATE THE DATA In Table 11.1, I have categorized the findings from the studies cited in Chapters 3—10 according to the effect of the partners’ similarity/ dissimilarity on the overall quality of their initial interactions. The task proved to be more difficult than I had expected. Let me take you through the table row by row so you can see what I mean. (Feel free to skip to the second paragraph of page 179 if you don’t want to plow through all of this.)

Sex (gender) In the study by Cuperman and Ickes (2009), the female-female (F-F) dyads had better initial interactions than the female-male (F-M) dyads did, so I categorized that finding in the second column of Table 11.1, as representing a case in which same-sex partners (F-F)

1 And, in some cases, it’s an answer that we can’t interpret clearly. Not all answers come back loud and clear. Some of them are faint and fuzzy.

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Table 11.1. An attempt to classify findings from the studies cited in Chapters 3—10 according to the effect of the partners’ similarity/dissimilarity on the overall quality of their initial interactions. Trait or characteristic

Similar partners > dissimilar partners

Similar partners ¼ dissimilar partners

Sex (gender)

Cuperman and Ickes (2009)


Race/ethnicity

Holloway, Waldrip, and Ickes (2009)

Birth order

Ickes and Turner (1983)

Physical attractiveness

Garcia et al. (1991)?

Androgyny

Ickes, Schermer and Steeno (1979)

The Big Five Extraversion Agreeableness

Cuperman and Ickes (in press)

Shyness

Garcia et al. (1991)

Self-monitoring

Dissimilar partners > similar partners


Ickes and Barnes (1978)?



Garcia et al. (1991) Dabbs et al. (1980)?

Ickes and Barnes (1977)

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had better interactions than opposite-sex partners (F-M). On the other hand, because the interactions of the F-M dyads in this study were not significantly different from those of the M-M dyads, I categorized that finding in the third column of Table 11.1.

Race/ethnicity In the study by Holloway, Waldrip, and Ickes (2009), there were instances in which similar partners (e.g., Black-Black and WhiteWhite) had interactions of equal quality to those of dissimilar partners (e.g., Black-White), so I assigned these findings to the third column. In the same study, there were also instances in which dissimilar partners (one Latino, the other Black or White) had better interactions than two similar partners (both Black or both White), so I assigned these findings to the fourth column. Finally, there was an instance in which two similar partners (two Latinos) had better interactions than two dissimilar partners (one Black, one White). However, because this was an ‘‘apples and oranges’’ comparison, I did not include it in the table.

Birth Order In the study by Ickes and Turner (1983), both the best interactions (between two last-borns) and the worst interactions (between two first-borns) occurred when the partners were similar. If we ‘‘average’’ the quality of the interactions in these two dyad types, that average is about the same as that of the two dyad types in which the partners were dissimilar (a first-born paired with a last-born). Accordingly, I assigned this finding to the third column.

Physical Attractiveness This was an analogous case. Again, both the best and the worst interactions occurred in the dyad types in which both partners were similar (both attractive or both unattractive, respectively). Although I didn’t test to verify that the average interaction quality for the similar dyads did not differ significantly from the average interaction quality for the dissimilar dyads, I think it’s a pretty safe bet that that was true. So I assigned this ‘‘finding’’ (along with a cautionary question mark) to the third column of Table 11.1.

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Androgyny In the Ickes, Schermer, and Steeno (1979) study of same-sex dyads, the dyads composed of two sex-typed males reported significantly better interactions than those composed of a sex-typed male paired with an androgynous male, so I assigned this finding to the second column of the table. The general trend of the data in the Ickes and Barnes (1978) study of opposite-sex dyads was for the dyads with dissimilar partners to report better interactions than the dyads with similar partners. Accordingly, I assigned that study to the fourth column of the table, adding the question mark to indicate that I didn’t test the significance of the difference in this case.2

Extraversion In the Cuperman and Ickes (in press) study, the similar partners at both ends of the extraversion dimension (two extraverts and two introverts) had better interactions than the ones reported by dissimilar partners (an extravert paired with an introvert), so I assigned this finding to column two.

Agreeableness In contrast, the data for agreeableness presented a case in which two similar people (two ‘‘disagreeables’’) had significantly worse interactions than two dissimilar people (an ‘‘agreeable’’ paired with a ‘‘disagreeable’’) did. I assigned this case to column four. The data also presented a case in which two similar people (two agreeables) had interactions that were not significantly different from those of two dissimilar people (an agreeable paired with a ‘‘disagreeable’’). I assigned this case to column three.

Shyness Because shyness proved to be ‘‘contagious’’ in the study by Garcia et al. (1991), the data from this study provided a case in which similar

2

The study by Lamke and Bell (1982) was not included in Table 11.1 because it included only dyads in which the partners were similar. It therefore permitted no comparisons between dyad types composed of similar versus dissimilar members.

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partners (both shy) had interactions that did not differ significantly from those of dissimilar partners (one shy, the other not-shy but ‘‘infected’’ by the partner’s shyness). I assigned this case to column two. The data from this study also provided a case in which similar partners (both not-shy) had significantly better interactions than those of dissimilar partners (one shy and the other not). I assigned this case to column one.

Self-Monitoring In the Ickes and Barnes (1977) study, there were significantly fewer periods of silence in the dyads in which the partners differed in their level of self-monitoring than in the dyads in which the partners had the same level of self-monitoring. Accordingly, I assigned this case to column four of Table 11.1. The study by Dabbs et al. (1980) was more difficult to classify, but I eventually decided to assign it (with a question mark) to column three. Can you accept that I made a good-faith effort to classify these findings as accurately as possible? Granted, I made ‘‘guesstimates’’ in a few cases where a journal editor would have demanded a more precise determination. Nevertheless, I believe that the categorization is as accurate as I could make it, considering that I relied on a few such ‘‘guesstimates.’’ If you agree with that assessment, the next questions we should ask are these. Does the overall pattern of findings in Table 11.1 clearly support the importance of personality similarity in initial interactions (‘‘birds of a feather flock together’’)? Or does it clearly support the importance of personality dissimilarity in initial interactions (‘‘opposites attract’’)? Or does it clearly support the conclusion that personality similarity/dissimilarity isn’t important in initial interactions? According to my reading of Table 11.1, the answer is ‘‘none of the above.’’ Moreover, the word ‘‘clearly’’ simply doesn’t apply. We have four cases in column two in which similar partners had better interactions than dissimilar partners; seven cases in column three in which similarity/dissimilarity didn’t seem to matter much; and four cases in column four in which dissimilar partners had better interactions than similar partners. If we delete the questionable cases (the ones with question marks appended), the tally becomes four cases in column two, five cases in column three, and three cases in column four. That’s not much of a difference, so there’s no clear winner here.

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To put it simply, no single category of results predominates. That outcome, plus the difficulty of making some of these classifications, leads me to think that the issue of similarity/dissimilarity might not be as important in initial interactions as we might originally have supposed. Indeed, perhaps what’s most relevant is not the issue of similarity/dissimilarity but something else instead. The challenge, of course, is to figure out what that ‘‘something else’’ might be. After thinking about it awhile, I realized that there is different way to categorize the findings from Chapters 3—10–one that might result in a more well ordered and interpretively compelling pattern. Suppose that these findings were categorized not according to the effect of the partners’ similarity/dissimilarity but instead according to the degree to which a particular prosocial trait or characteristic is represented within the dyad? In other words, suppose the more important issue is not whether the new acquaintances are similar or dissimilar to each other, but rather the number of members in the dyad who bring a particular prosocial trait or characteristic to the interaction?3 Is this clear? Once again, probably not. This is another of those situations in which you have to see it to understand it, so let’s go directly to the table itself (see Table 11.2).

A SECOND ATTEMPT TO TRY TO ORGANIZE AND INTEGRATE THE DATA In Table 11.2, I have categorized the findings from the studies cited in Chapters 3—10 according to the number of dyad members (2, 1, or 0) who bring a particular prosocial trait or characteristic to the

3

What’s a prosocial trait or characteristic? It’s a personal trait or characteristic that contributes either directly or indirectly to the quality and involvement of one’s interactions with others. When the prosocial characteristic contributes directly (Latino simpatıá, for example), it takes the form of an actor effect–leading you, the actor, to behave in a way that promotes greater interactional involvement and perceived interaction quality. When the prosocial characteristic contributes indirectly (physical attractiveness, for example) it takes the form of a partner effect–leading you, the actor, to respond to some characteristic or behavior of your interaction partner in a way that promotes greater interactional involvement and perceived interaction quality. Of course, some prosocial traits and characteristics can contribute both directly and indirectly, resulting in both actor and partner effects.


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180 Table 11.2. An attempt to classify findings from the studies cited in Chapters 3—10 according to the number of dyad members who bring a particular prosocial trait or characteristic to the interaction. Prosocial trait or characteristic

The best interactions occurred in the dyad type in which: Both members have the trait or characteristic

Female gender


Latino simpatıá


Last-born status/ opposite-sex sib

Ickes and Turner (1983)

Physical attractiveness

Garcia, Stinson, Ickes, Bissonnette, and Briggs (1991)

Androgyny

Ickes and Barnes (1978)a Ickes, Schermer, and Steeno (1979)b Lamke and Bell (1982)b

The Big Five Extraverted Agreeable

Cuperman and Ickes (in press) Cuperman and Ickes (in press)

Non-shyness

Garcia, Stinson, Ickes, Bissonnette, and Briggs (1991)

Moderate or high self-monitoring

Ickes & Barnes (1977) Dabbs, Evans, Hopper, and Purvis (1980)?

a

opposite-sex dyads, bfemale-female dyads, cmale-male dyads.

One member has the trait or characteristic

Neither member has the trait or characteristic


Ickes and Barnes (1978)a Ickes, Schermer, and Steeno (1979)c

Cuperman and Ickes (in press) Cuperman and Ickes (in press)

Ickes & Barnes (1977) Dabbs, Evans, Hopper, and Purvis (1980)

interaction.4 Column two includes cases in which the best interactions occurred when both dyad members had the prosocial trait or characteristic. Column three includes cases in which the best interactions occurred when one dyad member had the prosocial trait or characteristic. Column four includes cases in which the best interactions occurred when neither member had the prosocial trait or characteristic. To convince you that I have tried to make the classifications in Table 11.2 as accurately as possible, let me take you through the table row by row so you can see how these decisions were made. (Once again, feel free to skip to the top of page 184 if you don’t want to follow me through all of this.)

Female Gender Cuperman and Ickes (2009) found that the interactions of femalefemale (F-F) dyads were significantly better than those of malefemale (M-F) or male-male (M-M) dyads, and that the last two dyad types didn’t differ. So this finding goes in column two of Figure 11.2.

Latino Simpatıá Holloway, Waldrip, and Ickes (2009) found that dyads containing one or two Latino members had interactions that were equally good, and better than the interactions in dyads that contained no Latino members. This outcome was tied specifically to the prosocial characteristic of Latino simpatıá. The best interactions, then, should be credited to both column two and column three.

Last-Born Status, with an Older Opposite-Sex Sib Ickes and Turner (1983) found that the best interactions occurred in opposite-sex dyads in which both the male and female partners were

4 As a practical matter, a trait or characteristic can be regarded as prosocial if, empirically, it meets the definitional criterion of contributing directly or indirectly to the quality and involvement of one’s interactions with others. As we have seen, the traits and characteristics reviewed in Chapters 3—10 all qualify in this regard.


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last-borns with older, opposite-sex siblings. Accordingly, I assigned this finding to column two.

Physical Attractiveness Analogous to the results of the Ickes and Turner (1983) study, the results of the study by Garcia et al. (1991) revealed that the best interactions occurred in opposite-sex dyads in which both the male and female partners were physically attractive. So I assigned this finding to column two as well.

Androgyny In their study of the initial interactions of opposite-sex dyads, Ickes and Barnes (1978) found that the best interactions occurred in the dyads in which one or both members were androgynous, compared to those in which both partners were stereotypically sextyped. Accordingly, I assigned the best interactions to columns two and three. In their studies of the initial interactions of female-female dyads, Ickes, Schermer, and Steeno (1979) and Lamke and Bell (1982) found that the best interactions occurred in the dyads in which both female partners were androgynous. These cases are therefore assigned to column two. However, with respect to the male-male dyads in the Ickes, Schermer, and Steeno study, perceived interaction quality was greatest for the dyads composed of two masculine sex-typed men (neither of whom was androgynous).5 This case is therefore assigned to column four.

Extraversion Cuperman and Ickes (in press) found that the initial interactions in dyads composed of two extraverts or two introverts were better than those of dyads in which an extravert was paired with an introvert. Accordingly, the assignments here are to

5

Why? Because, as previously noted on pages 113—114 of Chapter 7, masculine sextyped men have such low communal-expressive needs that they are highly satisfied with interactions that other people would consider too uninvolving.

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column two (two extraverts) and to column four (no extraverts). The surprising outcome in this study is that the initial interactions of two introverts (ones in which neither partner had the ‘‘prosocial trait’’) were nearly as good as those of two extraverts.

Agreeableness Cuperman and Ickes (in press) also found that the initial interactions of dyads that included either one or two agreeable members were about equally good, and better than those of dyads that included two ‘‘disagreeable’’ members. For that reason, I have assigned the best interactions to columns two and three.

Non-Shyness Because shyness was found to be ‘‘contagious’’ in the study by Garcia et al. (1991), the dyads containing two non-shy members had uniquely good interactions in that study. Accordingly, I assigned this case to column two.

Moderate or High Self-Monitoring Dabbs et al. (1980) noted that ‘‘high self-monitors conversed with other highs in a facile (and sometimes glib) manner, that lows conversed with other lows in a manner that was often painfully halting (but sometimes appealingly sincere), and that lows conversed more smoothly with highs than with other lows.’’6 Although it’s difficult to tell from this characterization which were the ‘‘best’’ interactions, the general tenor of these and other comments in the Dabbs et al. (1980) article suggest that the interactions proceeded more smoothly when the dyads included either one or two high self-monitors (columns two and three) than when they included only low self-monitors. Ickes and Barnes (1977) found that dyads that included either one or two moderate self-monitors had interactions that proceeded more smoothly (i.e., with fewer silences) than those that included only low or high self-monitors (columns two and three). The difference

6

Dabbs et al. (1980), p. 282.


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between this study and the Dabbs et al. (1980) study centers on the question of whether it is a moderate or a high level of self-monitoring that should be regarded as a prosocial characteristic. Having just examined the individual ‘‘trees’’ in Table 11.2, let’s take a giant step back and look at the ‘‘forest.’’ Overall, the data in Table 11.2 present us with a strong and clear-cut pattern. For all nine of the prosocial traits and characteristics listed in this table, the best interactions occurred in the dyads in which both partners had the characteristic (see column two). The interactions were comparably good for four of these traits when only one partner had the characteristic (see column three). Finally, there were two cases–each an anomaly in its own way–in which the interactions were the best when neither partner had the characteristic (see column four). The first of the two anomalous cases can be reconciled to the overall pattern in Table 11.2 because it is indeed a special case: masculine men who have low communal-expressive needs are most comfortable interacting with other masculine men, not with men who are androgynous.7 However, the second of these anomalous cases fails to fit the overall pattern: if we assume that extraversion is indeed a prosocial trait, then why do dyads composed of two introverts have better interactions than those composed of an introvert who is paired with an extravert? My tentative answer–based on various hints in the data–is that introverts perceive highly extraverted partners as ‘‘coming on too strong.’’ I think they feel intimidated by the high level of eye contact and social assertiveness displayed by highly extraverted partners, and feel more comfortable in the company of other introverts like themselves.8 Although the two cases in column four are somewhat anomalous with respect to the overall pattern that is evident in Table 11.2, I think we can agree that this overall pattern is of major interest. It suggests that dyad members can bring any of several different prosocial traits and characteristics to their initial interactions and that these traits and characteristics tend to have their most pronounced impact

7 Still, it is surprising that the interactions of two masculine sex-typed men were also better than those of two androgynous men in the Ickes, Schermer, and Steeno (1979) study. If this finding can be replicated, it deserves to be examined more closely and explained. 8 Perhaps, as in the case of self-monitoring, it is a moderate rather than a high level of extraversion that should be regarded as the optimally prosocial characteristic.

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when both dyad members possess them. An important qualification, however, is that there are some cases in which the prosocial trait or characteristic (Latino simpatıá and agreeableness,9 for example) has a large enough impact that only one dyad member needs to possess it in order for it to be optimally effective. When we view the data from this perspective, the issue of whether ‘‘opposites’’ attract or whether ‘‘similars’’ do appears to be the wrong issue–or, at least, not the most relevant or important one. Instead, the data pattern in Table 11.2 suggests that the more useful question to ask about the interactions between two strangers is how many of these people (neither, one, or both) bring specific prosocial traits and characteristics to their initial interaction. This perspective is promising because it suggests a way of integrating most, if not all, of the findings summarized in Table 11.2. First, it acknowledges that several traits and characteristics have a prosocial quality. Second, it invites us to consider whether the effective prosocial quality is the same in each case or different in each case (i.e., perhaps some additional integration is possible at the level of the traits or characteristics being considered.) Third, it suggests a law-like transitivity with regard to the number of dyad members who possess the trait or characteristic: in general, when it comes to the quality of initial interactions, ‘‘two dyad members are better than one and one is better than none.’’ Fourth, it invites us to ask why some traits and characteristics (Latino simpatıá, agreeableness) are sufficiently potent that ‘‘one dyad member is as good as two,’’ whereas other traits and characteristics lack such a high degree of potency. Fifth, it invites us study other, as-yet-unidentified prosocial traits and characteristics, to see if the findings for these traits also conform to the same overall pattern. In summary, I submit that Table 11.2 offers us a better way to organize and interpret the data than Table 11.1 does.10 It directs us

9 I suspect that these two characteristics will prove to have a lot in common. There may also be reason to extend the similarity of these two characteristics to the communal-expressive component of androgyny (but not to its agentic-instrumental component). 10 Some readers will have noticed that I have just compared the integrative potential of two alternative ‘‘intuitive meta-analyses’’ (Table 11.1 and Table 11.2). I call them ‘‘intuitive’’ because they are not formal meta-analyses, let alone statistical or quantitative ones. This isn’t a chapter on meta-analysis, and there is no danger of my turning it into one. However, if you’d like a useful introduction to the topic, see Lipsey and Wilson (2001).


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away from the confusion that results when we think in terms of personality similarity/dissimilarity, and it directs us toward what I hope will be a clearer and more useful view that emphasizes prosocial traits and the number of dyad members (2, 1, or 0) who possess them. Even better, this new view provides a clear direction for future researchers who want to see whether the ‘‘transitivity rule’’ that is evident in Table 11.2 will also apply to other prosocial traits and characteristics.

Despite all the advantages of this new perspective, it has shifted our attention away from the first of the three things that we planned to do in this chapter: to take a much broader look at the question, first raised in Chapter 1, of whether pairs of people with similar traits and characteristics have better interactions than pairs of people with dissimilar traits and characteristics. Let’s return to that issue now. In preferring the Table 11.2 integration to the Table 11.1 integration, am I making the claim that personality similarity/ dissimilarity isn’t important in initial interactions? No, I’m not. The dissimilarity between two strangers can be extremely important. In fact, when their dissimilarity is immediately obvious and assigns them to opposing camps, it can result in instant distrust, antagonism, and animosity. Here’s a personal example. I was in the Newark airport, waiting to board a flight to Dallas/Fort Worth after a four-day trip to New Jersey and New York. It was the fall of 2004 and I was wearing a Kerry-Edwards button on the lapel of my jacket that I had been given by some campaign workers in Greenwich Village. One of my soon-tobe fellow passengers, a guy who was more expensively dressed than I was, saw the campaign button and shot me a couple of irritated looks from across the room. The next time I looked up, he was in my face. ‘‘If you’re wearing that button, you’re going to the wrong state,’’ he said. He seemed to be on the verge of challenging my right to board the plane. ‘‘I don’t think so,’’ I said, smiling. ‘‘There aren’t any Kerry supporters in Texas,’’ he said, clearly annoyed and wanting to make his point clear. ‘‘That’s not true,’’ I said. ‘‘According to the latest poll figures, one-third of the eligible voters in Texas are Kerry supporters.’’

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He gave me a hard look. ‘‘It would be just my luck to have to sit next to you on the plane,’’ he said, turning away. ‘‘I wouldn’t worry about that,’’ I said. I was already picturing him in first class with a dry martini while I sat in coach with a diet Coke. To him, my Kerry-Edwards button instantly defined the two of us as different and put us in opposing camps. He was immediately disposed to dislike me, and I found it difficult not to reciprocate the feeling. Fortunately, we did not wind up sitting together. And, as it turned out, he got what he wanted: four more years of the Bush-Cheney administration. As for me, I got a nice anecdote to use in this chapter. There are far too many other examples like this in everyday life– cases in which people size each other up as adversaries and then immediately begin to ramp up the unpleasantness. My experience in the airport was only mildly unpleasant in comparison with the gang fights, hate crimes, and incidents of ethnic, racial, and religious violence that erupt each day all over the globe. There is no doubt about it: perceived dissimilarity can have an immediate negative effect on initial interactions when it leads the participants to define themselves as opponents, adversaries, or enemies. Fortunately, however, most initial interactions aren’t like this. When two people first meet, they can usually size each other up on dimensions such as age, gender, race/ethnicity, physical attractiveness, and socio-economic status. But unless they wear explicit emblems of self-definition such as a yarmulke, a turban, a Gay Pride T-shirt, or Aryan Brotherhood tattoos, they have no way of knowing if they are ‘‘natural’’ (that is, socially constructed) adversaries. Because figuring out the ways they are similar and different is going to take some time, the quality of their initial interaction is more likely to be determined by the prosocial traits and characteristics they bring to it than by similarities/dissimilarities they aren’t even aware of yet. In short, I accept what the data in Chapters 3 through 10 seem to be telling us: that what counts in most of our initial interactions is the influence of various prosocial characteristics and the number of dyad members (2, 1, or 0) who possess these characteristics. According to these data, it would be more fun for me to meet an agreeable and physically attractive Latina who grew up with an older brother than to meet a disagreeable and less attractive AngloAmerican woman who grew up with a younger brother. However, the reason it would be more fun is not just that my new acquaintance is an attractive woman, but that she would bring to the encounter at least


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five prosocial traits and characteristics that would help to ensure that our initial interaction will be an enjoyable one.11 So when is personality similarity/dissimilarity important? If it’s usually not so important in our initial, unplanned interactions with strangers (apart from the special case of presumed adversaries that I have just described), does it become more important in relationships with people we know better? The answer to this question is yes, but it’s not a simple yes–it’s a complicated one. So that you can see why it’s a complicated yes, let me give you a highly condensed summary of what the relevant research findings show.

‘‘COMPUTER DATING’’ STUDIES A number of studies have explored the effects of attitude and personality similarity on interpersonal attraction in the context of a ‘‘computer dating’’ situation. In these studies, college-age men and women are paired up according to the degree to which either their attitudes or their personality traits are similar/dissimilar. They are then sent off on a brief getting-acquainted ‘‘date’’ that typically lasts less than an hour. When they return to the research lab at the end of the date, they are asked to rate how much they like each other. In one of these studies, psychologists Donn Byrne, Charles Ervin, and John Lamberth paired up male and female undergraduates according to their degree of attitude similarity/dissimilarity.12 Half of the couples were highly similar (they had answered about 70% of 50 attitude items in the same way), whereas the other half were highly dissimilar (they had answered about 30% of the attitude items the same way). When the couples returned to the lab at the end of their 30-minute arranged ‘‘date,’’ the members of the similar couples reported liking each other significantly more than the

11

On the other hand, because I wouldn’t bring as many of those prosocial characteristics myself, I wouldn’t be the best interaction partner for her. It’s too late for me to grow up with older sisters, or to re-gain my former attractiveness, but is it too late for me to learn how to be more agreeable, androgynous, and non-shy? Yeah, way too late. 12 Byrne, D., Ervin, C. R., and Lamberth, J. (1970). Continuity between the experimental study of attraction and real-life computer dating. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 157—165.

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members of the dissimilar couples did.13 The members of the similar couples also stood significantly closer to each other when they returned from the date, with the male partner having the larger influence on this measure of interpersonal distance. Attempts to show comparable effects for personality similarity/ dissimilarity have been mixed, and generally less successful.14 A possible explanation for these diverging results is that it is easier for new acquaintances to recognize their attitude similarity during a 30 to 60-minute getting-acquainted conversation than it is for them to recognize their personality similarity. Attitude similarities and differences may emerge early on; personality similarities and differences may emerge more slowly, over a longer period of time.

ASSORTATIVE MATING STUDIES This conclusion is supported by the results of assortative mating studies, which also suggest that attitude similarity has a greater impact at the start of relationships than personality similarity does. The term assortative mating refers to the tendency of heterosexual couples to pair up according to the partners’ similarity on one or more traits or characteristics. When psychologists David Watson and his colleagues reviewed the results of previous studies of this phenomenon, they found that: To date, researchers have examined similarity versus complementarity on a vast array of variables, including age, race, education, height, weight, physical attractiveness, alcohol consumption, smoking, antisocial behavior, mood and anxiety disorders, intelligence and other cognitive abilities, religiousness, political attitudes, values, and a wide range of personality traits. Although the results are complex and correlations often differ widely across studies

13

For other studies showing significant effects of attitude (or value) similarity on attraction/satisfaction in dating couples, see Coombs (1966) and Touhey (1972). But see also Curran and Lippold (1975). 14 See, for example, Walster, Aronson, Abrahams, and Rottman (1966) and Curran (1973). But see also Lum and Curran (1975).


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(Nicholson, 1992), the accumulating data overwhelmingly support the existence of positive assortment [choosing a similar partner], with very little evidence of complementarity [choosing a dissimilar, but potentially complementary, partner] (e.g., Bouchard & Loehlin, 2001; Buss, 1984; Eysenck, 1990; Mathews & Reus, 2001; Vandenberg, 1972).15 In other words, when we examine the similarity of marriage partners, we find a great deal of evidence which appears to suggest that birds of a feather really do flock together. With regard to personality similarity, however, we must consider the possibility that the partners in long-term marriages might not have been similar when they first got married but instead became similar over time. Consider the data in Table 11.3, which concern the personality similarity of 400 married and cohabiting couples. These data, obtained in a recent study by Mahnaz

Table 11.3. Inter-partner personality similarity correlations for a sample of 400 married or cohabiting couples in the study by Charania and Ickes (2009). Personality trait Sociosexuality Social absorption Social individuation Avoidant attachment Anxious attachment Sensation seeking Psychological masculinity Psychological femininity Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness to experience

Inter-partner correlation .45 .42 .38 .08 .39 .23 .05 .15 .01 .02 .01 .03 .21

Boldfaced correlations are statistically significant with a probability less than .01.

15

Watson, D., Klohnen, E. C., Casillas, A., et al. (2004). Match makers and deal breakers: Analyses of assortative mating in newlywed couples. Journal of Personality, 72, 1029—1068 [brackets mine].

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Charania and me,16 reveal a substantial level of inter-partner personality similarity for seven of the thirteen personality traits studied, with four of the similarity correlations exceeding .38. However, because the average couple in this study had been married in the range of 10—14 years, it is possible that these similarity correlations would have been smaller if we had assessed the partners’ personalities closer to the time when they first met. This possibility led David Watson and his colleagues to conduct a study of 291 newlywed couples.17 They argued that if we want to know which aspects of similarity are most important in partner selection, we will get a better idea by studying newlywed couples than by studying couples who have already been married for several years. When Watson and his colleagues analyzed the data from this study, they again found support for positive assortative mating (assortative mating based on similarity). However, they also found that newlywed husbands and wives were considerably more similar in their ages, their religious and political attitudes, and their intelligence and education levels than they were in their personal values and their personality traits (see Table 11.4). These data are consistent with those of the ‘‘computer dating’’ studies described earlier. They suggest that attitude similarity plays a greater role in partner selection than personality similarity does.18 But which type of similarity–attitude similarity or personality similarity–plays a greater role in marital satisfaction (i.e., in the perceived quality of the newlywed couples’ relationships)? To answer this question, psychologists Shanhong Luo and Eva Klohnen re-analyzed the data from the study by David Watson and his colleagues.19 This time, however, they correlated the spouses’ responses across each set of items that were used to measure their attitudes, values, and personality traits. The resulting profile correlations for each couple in the sample were

16

Charania, M. R., and Ickes, W. (2009). Personality influences on marital satisfaction: Integrating the empirical evidence using the APIM model. Manuscript under editorial review. See also Charania and Ickes (2007). 17 See Tables 3, 4, and 5 in Watson et al. (2004, pp. 1044—1046). 18 For additional data and argument in support of this view, see Keller and Young (1996). 19 Luo, S., and Klohnen, E. C. (2005). Assortative mating and marital quality in newlyweds: A couple-centered approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 304—326.


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Table 11.4. Inter-partner similarity correlations for a sample of newlywed couples on measures of age, religious and political attitudes, intelligence and education levels, personal values, and personality traits. Measure Age Attitude measures Religiousness Political conservatism Intelligence and education level Full-scale IQ Education level Personal values Family life Equality A varied life/new experiences Ambition Respect for tradition Wealth Personality traits Disinhibition Ego resiliency Avoidant attachment Anxious attachment Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness to experience

Inter-partner correlation .77 .75 .63 .42 .45 .19 .10 .21 .21 .23 .21 .12 .19 .26 .02 .17 .07 .02 .02 .04

Table data adapted from Watson et al. (2004). Reprinted by permission of Wiley—Blackwell.

then used to predict the husband’s and wife’s reported marital satisfaction.20 Luo and Klohnen’s findings, depicted in Table 11.5, reveal an interesting reversal. Whereas attitude and value similarity was more important than personality similarity in partner selection, personality similarity proved to be more important than attitude and value similarity in marital satisfaction. Keep in mind, however, that this

20

Profile correlations provide another way to measure the degree to which the partners are similar. However, because they measure the degree to which the partners are similar in the pattern of answers they give to a set of individual items, profile correlations measure similarity in a different and more detailed way than inter-partner correlations of total scale scores do.

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Table 11.5. Correlations of the profile-correlation measures of attitude and personality similarity with the husband’s and wife’s marital satisfaction scores in a sample of newlywed couples. Individual difference domain Attitude and value measures Religiousness Political attitudes Personal values Personality traits Disinhibition Ego resiliency Avoidant attachment Anxious attachment Extraversion Agreeableness Conscientiousness Neuroticism Openness to experience All of the attachment items All of the Big Five items

Husband satisfaction

Wife satisfaction

.01 .02 .15

.02 .03 .09

.29 .27 .30 .18 .06 .29 .24 .11 .18 .36 .29

.22 .29 .21 .42 .07 .33 .03 .16 .17 .48 .31

Table data adapted from Luo and Klohnen (2005). Reprinted by permission of the American Psychological Association. Boldfaced correlations are statistically significant with a probability less than .01.

pattern of results occurred when profile correlations were used to measure the degree of similarity between the marriage partners. Similar findings were later reported by psychologists Gian Gonzaga, Belinda Campos, and Thomas Bradbury. They also used profile correlations to measure the global personality similarity of the husbands and wives in 172 married couples. Specifically, they correlated the husbands’ scores on the 60 items of a Big Five personality measure with the wives’ scores on the same 60 items and found an average correlation of .43. They then used the personality profile correlation for each of the 172 couples to predict the couple’s average (dyadlevel) relationship satisfaction score and found a significant positive correlation (average b ¼ .48)21 indicating that greater overall personality similarity was associated with greater relationship satisfaction. When Gonzaga, Campos, and Bradbury’s findings are viewed in conjunction with those reported by Luo and Klohnen, the evidence

21 This is an average across the two time periods at which the partners’ relationship satisfaction was assessed.


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clearly suggests that global personality similarity, when assessed as a profile correlation computed across a number of personality traits, is indeed predictive of the degree to which couples are satisfied with their marriage relationships. And these data, in turn, complement the data reported by Watson and his colleagues, which show that married couples are more likely than chance would predict to have similar personality characteristics (e.g., similar ages, attitudes, values, and IQ scores) at the time they get married. In summary, ‘‘birds of a feather’’ (couples with similar characteristics) are not only more likely to ‘‘flock together’’ (that is, to select each other as marriage partners), but are also more satisfied with their relationships to the extent that their personality profiles are globally similar.

So what’s the bottom line here? The bottom line is that personality similarity has less impact on the initial interactions of two strangers than on the established relationships of committed couples. When two strangers first meet, the amount and quality of their initial interaction seems to be determined by the prosocial resources that they bring to it (that is, by the kinds of prosocial traits and characteristics listed in column one of Table 11.2 and by the number of dyad members–2, 1, or 0–in whom these traits and characteristics are found). Over time, however, relationship partners get to know each other increasingly well, first assessing the degree to which their backgrounds and attitudes are similar and later assessing the degree to which their personality profiles are similar. The first kind of similarity influences their choice of each other as partners in a long-term committed relationship, and the second is important in predicting the extent to which they find satisfaction in their relationship. Although ‘‘odd couples’’ (those with globally mismatched personalities) may occasionally find each other and form committed relationships as well, the statistical odds of these ‘‘odd couples’’ being satisfied with each other tend to work against them. In contrast, the statistical odds for the success of committed relationships involving ‘‘not-so-odd couples’’ (those with globally similar personalities) are substantially better.

Well, that’s about it. We have come to the end of the trail. Hasta la vista, compadre. Thanks for taking this trip with me.

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¡Viva simpatıá! And viva also the female gender, androgyny, agreeableness, attractiveness, extraversion, moderate or high selfmonitoring, not being shy, having an older, opposite-sex sibling, and all of the other prosocial traits and characteristics that people bring with them to their initial interactions. Each of these traits and characteristics adds something to our initial interactions that helps to make them more involving and enjoyable. Over the long haul, of course, personality similarity is important too, and the not-so-odd, highly similar couples will probably always have an advantage over the odder, highly dissimilar ones. That doesn’t mean that you can’t win against long odds, but it does mean that it’s a real gamble trying to make things work with a person you’re just too different from. RECOMMENDED READINGS Byrne, D., Ervin, C. R., and Lamberth, J. (1970). Continuity between the experimental study of attraction and real-life computer dating. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 16, 157—165. Charania, M. R., and Ickes, W. (2009). Personality influences on marital satisfaction: Integrating the empirical evidence using the APIM model. Manuscript under editorial review. Gonzaga, G. C., Campos, B., and Bradbury, T. (2007). Similarity, convergence, and relationship satisfaction in dating and married couples. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 93, 34—48. Luo, S., and Klohnen, E. C. (2005). Assortative mating and marital quality in newlyweds: A couple-centered approach. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 88, 304—326. Watson, D., Klohnen, E. C., Casillas, A., Nus Simms, E. N., Haig, J., and Berry, D. S. (2004). Match makers and deal breakers: Analyses of assortative mating in newlywed couples. Journal of Personality, 72, 1029—1068.


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Acknowledgments

Although the idea for this book was in the back of my mind for at least a couple of decades, the catalyst for actually writing it was an e-mail I received from Lori Handelman, the psychology editor at Oxford University Press. Lori dropped me a line in the fall of 2007 and asked if I had a book project I would like to do with them. The effect of her invitation was to re-route the idea for Strangers from the back of my mind to the more responsible and hard-working frontal region, where it stayed frenetically active during the year I spent researching, writing, backspacing, re-writing, and table-making. Consistent with my conception of an ideal editor, once Lori had contracted the book, she left me alone to get on with the work. In fact, I didn’t hear from her again until I had sent her the first draft. Since that time, she has continued to prove herself the ideal editor, not only in her enthusiastic support of the book but also in her bluntly accurate criticism of one of its more whimsical departures. She is, as I have told her and she hasn’t denied, ‘‘a tough-but-totally-sweet broad.’’ The current version of Strangers has benefited not only from Lori’s feedback but also from the constructive comments provided by three of the original manuscript’s ‘‘first readers’’: Judith Flury, Debra Mashek, and Niveditha Parthasarathy. As trained research psychologists (a description that fits Lori as well), Judy, Deb, and Nivi offered many useful suggestions that helped me to improve the clarity of the writing and the accessibility of the ideas I have presented here. My sincere thanks to each of them. Thanks also to the production staff at Oxford University Press, who took charge of my little brainchild, wiped the smudges off its

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face, and dressed it up to look presentable. In particular, I would like to thank Karen Harmon (the production editor), Sylvia Cannizzaro (the copyeditor), Preethy Micheal, (the compositor), and Geronna Lewis-Lyte, who designed the cover art. Special thanks to my wife Mary Jo, who fed me, humored me, and handled me with care during the turbulent year of 2008 in which this book was written. I’m glad that year’s behind us. Working on Strangers was my stabilizing rudder during that time. My friend and colleague Michael Cunningham also deserves special thanks for his impromptu and unexpectedly generous contribution to Chapter 6. I hadn’t expected Chapter 6 to take the turn it did when Michael got involved, but it’s a better chapter than it would have been without his involvement. Ultimately, my greatest debt is to the many colleagues with whom I have collaborated over the past three decades in the study of how personality shapes our initial interactions with others. Although space and my limited memory preclude me from identifying all of them here, the ones I must not fail to acknowledge include Vickie Lau Baker, Richard Barnes, Victor Bissonnette, Stephen Briggs, Mahnaz Charania, Ronen Cuperman, Stella Garcia, Renee Holloway, Tiffany Hoodenpyle, Miles Patterson, Susan Reidhead, Eric Robertson, Brian Schermer, Jeff Steeno, William Stiles, Linda Stinson, Gary Teng, William Tooke, Marilyn Turner, and Amy Waldrip. Because they made our collaborative research endeavors possible, this book is dedicated to them. William Ickes Arlington, Texas January 2009

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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211

INDEX

Abraı´do-Lanza, Ana, 69 Actor effects, 64—65, 127—134, 179 of the Big Five personality dimensions, 127—133 Actor influence, 19—20, 64—65 Actor/Partner Interdependence Model (APIM), 65, 130—131 Actor X partner interaction effects, 133, 136—140 for agreeableness, 138—139 for extraversion, 136—137 Adler, Nancy, 69 Aesop, 4 The African Queen, 8—9 Age, 24, 187, 189, 191—192, 194 Agency and communion, 104—118, 184 see also Instrumental and expressive capabilities Agreeable and disagreeable people, 17—18 Agreeableness, 16—18, 26, 32—33, 121, 124—130, 175, 177, 180, 183, 185, 190, 192—193, 195 as a prosocial trait, 180, 183, 185, 195 Allport, Gordon, 121—122, 124 Androgynous people, 106—119 Androgyny, 84, 103—120, 175, 177, 180, 182, 184, 185 as a prosocial characteristic, 180, 182, 184, 185 Angst, Jules, 85 Antagonism, 186—187 personality dissimilarity and, 186—187 Antisocial behavior, 186—187, 189 Anxious attachment, 190, 192—193 Aphorisms, 2—3, 7 Aries, Elizabeth, 51—52 Asendorpf, Jens, 148, 153 Assortative mating studies, 189—194

212

Attentiveness, 48—49, 51, 168—169 Attitude similarity versus personality similarity, 188—194 Attunement, 43—45 Averaged faces, see Computeraveraged faces Avoidance, 55—61 Avoidant attachment, 190, 192—193 ‘‘Avoiders’’ and ‘‘approachers’’ (prejudiced and non-prejudiced people), 56—61, 70 Bakan, David, 103—104, 107, 109, 119—120 Baker, Vickie Lau, 42—45 Balance/imbalance in instrumental and expressive capabilities, 103—104, 106 Bales, Robert Freed, 103 Barbee, Anita, 89—90 Barnes, Richard D., 107, 116—117, 161—162, 175, 177—178, 180, 182—183 Baron, Augustıńe, 66 Beach, Frank, 89 ‘‘Beauty-in-averageness effect,’’, 94 Bell, Nancy, 114—115, 180, 182 Bem, Sandra, 104—106, 109, 111, 118—120 Bem’s four prototypical sex-role orientations, 105 Benet-Martıńez, Verońica, 126 Berry, Diane, 191—192, 194 Betancourt, Hector, 66 Biek, Michael, 171 Big Five personality dimensions, 13, 33, 121—140, 190, 192—193 related to behavior and perceptions in initial interactions, 127—140

related to ‘‘consequential outcomes, ’’, 126 ‘‘Birds of a feather’’ aphorism, 3, 173, 178, 190, 194 Birtchnell, John, 74 Birth order, 13, 72—86, 175—176, 195 Last-born status, opposite-sex sibling, as a prosocial characteristic, 180—182, 195 Birth Order: Its Influences on Personality, 85 Bissonnette, Victor, 42—45, 97—98, 100—101, 148—150, 168—169, 175, 177—178, 180, 182 Blacks (African-Americans), 54—71, 176 Black-White interactions, 55—61 Bouchard, Thomas, 190 Boyce, Thomas, 69 Bradbury, Thomas, 193—194 Briggs, Stephen, 98, 100—101, 148—150, 175, 177—178, 180, 182 Brim, Orville, 79—85 Bruch, Monroe, 153 Bush, George W., 187 Buss, Arnold, 143, 147—148, 153—155 Buss, David, 190 Byrne, Donn, 188—189 Cacioppo, John, 145—146 Campos, Belinda, 193—194 Canary, Daniel, 46—47 Case-history examples, 12—13 Casillas, Alex, 191—192, 194 Cattell, Raymond, 122—123 Catty, Steve, 94 Causal ordering of trait and behavior measures, 25 Charania, Mahnaz, 190—191 Cheek, Jonathan, 147—148, 153—155 Cheney, Richard, 187 Chesney, Margaret, 69 Christie, Richard, 164—165 Clark, Noreen, 69 Closeness, 47 Coding behavioral data from videotapes, 31—32

Collection of personality data, 24—26 Compatible and incompatible personalities, 1—2 Compensatory behavior, 59 Computer-averaged faces, 92—95 Computer dating studies, 188—189, 191 Confederates, see Experimental confederates Confirmations, 148, 153 Confounding variables, 56, 67, 85 Conscientiousness, 121, 124—130, 190, 192—193 Cosby, Bill, 35—36 Cowan, Gloria, 70—71 Cross, Jane, 89 Cross, John, 89 Cultural ideals/values, 66 Cultural scripts, 66 Cunningham, Michael, 89—92, 94—95 Cuperman, Ronen, 32—33, 37—38, 45, 52, 126, 129—138, 174—176, 180—183 Curran, James, 75 Dabbs, James, 162—163, 175, 178, 180, 183—184 Darwin, Charles, 89, 107—108, 120 da Vinci, Leonardo, ‘‘proportion studies’’ of, 90 Debriefing, 7, 29—30 Deception, 27—28 ‘‘Different planets’’ idea, 46—47 Disinhibition, 192—193 Disney, Walt, 35—36 Dominance, see Status and dominance Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, 4, 7 Druen, Perri, 89 Drug and alcohol use, 189 Dyadic influence, 18—20 types of, 19—20 Dyads, 17—18 Dyad types, 17—18, 21—22, 27, 37, 61—63, 74, 82—83

INDEX

213

Education level, 189, 191—192 Edwards, John, 186—187 Effect sizes, 85 Ego resiliency, 192—193 Ehrenreich, Barbara, 35—36 Einstein, Albert, 107, 120 Emmers-Sommers, Tara, 46—47 Emotional involvement, 44—45 Empathic accuracy, 62—63, 100—101, 168—169 Entin, Elliot, 147 Ernst, Cećile, 85 Ervin, Charles, 188—189 Ethnicity, see Race/ethnicity Evans, Mark, 162—163, 175, 178, 180, 183—184 Evolved preferences for certain facial features, 92—93 Exline, Ralph, 165 Expectations parental, 75—76 role- and script-based, 41—42, 52, 82, 170—171 of shy/socially anxious people, 144—154 Experimental confederates, 146, 169—171 Experimenter’s race, see Race of experimenter Extraversion, 121, 124—131, 175, 177, 180, 182—184, 190, 192—193, 195 as a prosocial trait, 182—184, 195 Extraverted interaction style, 131, 133 Eye contact, see Interaction behaviors, mutual gazing Eysenck, Hans, 190 Facial symmetry/asymmetry, 92—93 Factor analysis, 123—125 Familismo, 66 Family constellation theory, 74—75 Family environments, 118 Fazendeiro, Tedra, 94 Fear of evaluation, 153 Female-female interactions, 37—52, 174—176

214

INDEX

Female-female relationships, 36 Fenigstein, Allan, 143 Fidgeting, 147, 152—153 First-borns and last-borns, 75—77 Flirtatious behavior, 171 Ford, Clellan, 89 Frauenfelder, Kenneth, 77 Fuentes, Cynthia de las, 66 Funder, David, 127—131, 133 Gangestad, Steven, 171 Gang fights, 187 Garbin, Calvin, 69 Garcia, Stella, 97—98, 100—101, 148—153, 168—169, 175, 177—178, 180, 182 Geiss, Florence, 165 Gender, 13, 24, 34—52, 174—175, 180—181, 187, 195 female gender as a prosocial characteristic, 180—181, 195 Gender composition, 20—22, 34—52, 174—175 Gender differences in initial dyadic interactions, 34—52 where they are evident, 50—51 where they aren’t evident, 51 Gender role orientation, 13 ‘‘Generalization Police,’’, 36 Glass, Carol, 145—146 Gloria, Alberta, 66 Goldberg, Lewis, 124, 127 ‘‘Golden ratio’’ facial proportion, 90—92 Gone with the Wind, 5 Gonzaga, Gian, 193—194 Grant, Cary, 172 Gray, John, 46—47 Gruen, Gerald, 75 Gruzen, Joan, 89 Gumpert, Peter, 165 Haig, Jeffrey, 191—192, 194 Halberstadt, Jamin, 94 Hall, Judith, 52 Hamer, Ronald, 154 Harold and Maude, 5, 8

Hate crimes, 187 Heath, Helen, 77 Heerey, Erin, 152—153 Height, 189 Heimberg, Richard, 154, 155 Heinlein, Robert, 13 Helmreich, Robert, 118 Hermitry, 1 Hickey, Carole B., 165 Hispanics (Mexican-Americans), see Latinos Hoagland, Edward, 36 Holloway, Renee, 61—69, 162, 175—176, 180—181 Holmes, John, 19 Homosexual interest, 44, 50 Honolulu Hotel, 152 Hoodenpyle, Tiffany, 162 Hope, Debra, 155 Hopper, Charles, 162—163, 175, 178, 180, 183—184 Huang, Ming-hong, 69 Hutchison, Joanna, 30 Hypotheses, 18—19, 111—118, 165—166 Hypothetical scenario studies, 11 Ickes, William, 30, 38, 42—45, 51, 55—69, 73, 75, 77—78, 82, 84—85, 88, 97—98, 100—101, 107—113, 116—117, 120, 126, 129—138, 148—153, 161—162, 164—169, 174—178, 180—184, 190—191 Ickes’s theory of sex-role influences in dyadic interactions, 108—118 Ideal facial feature sizes, 90—95 ‘‘babylike’’ and ‘‘adultlike’’ features, 90 Identity loss, 172 Institutional Review Boards (IRBs), 27 Instrumental and expressive capabilities, 80—81, 103, 106, 184 Intelligence (IQ), 24, 189, 191—192, 194 Interactional involvement, 38—45, 46, 50—51, 58, 63—65, 109—118, 134, 195

Interaction behaviors, 31—32 acknowledging, 32, 38—39, 41, 46, 50—51, 78, 130, 132—135, 138, 148, 153 asking questions, 32, 39, 41, 46, 50—51, 78, 99, 147, 149, 153 body orientation, 31, 150—151 body posture, 46, 51, 135—136, 148, 150—152 gazing, 32, 38—39, 46, 48, 50—51, 58—60, 63—65, 68, 78, 98—99, 113, 115, 117, 127, 134—136, 147—149, 151 gesturing, 46, 48, 51, 113, 115, 117, 150—151 initiating conversation, 31, 78, 99, 130, 132, 147, 149, 161—162 interpersonal distance, 31, 147, 189 interrupting, 46, 51, 147 mutual gazing, 32, 38, 50—51, 58—60, 63—65, 99, 113, 128—136, 145, 147—151, 153, 184 self-disclosure, 46, 100, 127—130, 133 smiling/laughing, 32, 38, 46, 50—51, 58, 63—65, 68, 78, 98—99, 117, 127—130, 132, 134—135, 148—149, 151, 171 talking, 32, 46, 48, 51, 59—60, 63—65, 68, 78, 98—99, 113, 115, 117, 127—132, 134—137, 147—149, 151 touching, 46 Interaction quality, see Perceived interaction quality Interdependence theory, 19—20 Interdependent integration of instrumental and expressive capabilities, 109—111, 116—118 Interracial and intraracial groups, 70—71 Interruptions, see Interaction behaviors, interrupting ‘‘Intersubjective themes,’’, 42 Intimacy level of self-disclosures, 170—171 Intimate and non-intimate relationships, 109—110

INDEX

215

Intraclass and other inter-partner correlations, 43, 190—193 Iwawaki, Saburo, 89 Jaffe, Joseph, 147 Johnson, Kelly, 147 Joint influence, 19—20 Jong, Erica, 35—36 Kafka, Franz, 142 Kelley, Harold, 19 Kerry, John, 186—187 Kleinke, Chris, 89 Klohnen, Eva, 189—194 Knight, Paul, 147 Koch, Helen, 80—82, 84—85 Kring, Ann, 152—153 Lamberth, John, 188—189 Lamke, Leanne, 114—115, 180, 182 Language use in conversations, 47—49 Lansky, Leonard, 118 Latino health advantage, 68—69 Latinos (Mexican-Americans), 54—71, 176 Latino social advantage, 68—69 Leary, Mark, 147 Lee, Fiona, 66 Levinger, George, 74 Liking for one’s interaction partner, 31, 39, 50, 65, 78, 98—99, 134—135 Linden, James, 75 Lisanski, Judith, 66 Lobster, Walter, 56—57, 60 Loehlin, John, 190 Lookism, 96—97 Lundgren, David, 118 Luo, Shanhong, 191—193 Machiavellianism, 164—167 attentional focus of high Machs, 165—167 Machiavellianism Scale, 164 Machiavelli, Niccolo`, 164 Maganã, Aizita, 69

216

INDEX

Majority and minority groups, 54—55, 60—62 Male-female interactions, 37—52, 73—85, 174—176 Male-female relationships, 35—37 Male-male interactions, 37—52, 175—176 Male-male relationships, 36 Marıń, Gerardo, 66 Marini, Richard, 69 Marital satisfaction, 192—194 Married and cohabiting couples, 12 Maruyama, Geoffrey, 76—77 Masculine and feminine ideals, 105 Masculinity and femininity, 103—120, 190 Mashek, Deborah, 30 Mathews, Carol, 190 Maxwell, Rose, 118 Mayhew, Julie, 74 McArthur, Charles, 76 McCain, Garvin, 69 McCain, Robin, 69 McCuan, Rich, 56—57, 60 Melchior, Lisa, 153 Mendelsohn, Mark, 75 Merluzzi, Thomas, 145—146 Meta-analysis, 185 Miller, Norman, 76—77 Millet, Kate, 35—36 Misunderstandings, 41, 51 Moon, Tae H., 165 Morse, Stanley, 89 My Fair Lady, 8—9 Nachamie, Susan, 165 Natale, Michael, 147 Negative, self-focused thoughts and feelings, 42—43, 144—154 Negotiations, 47 Nelson, Carnot, 165 Neuroticism (emotional instability), 121, 124—130, 190, 192—193 Nicholson, Ian, 190 Night Shift, 5 Nisbett, Richard, 66 Norman, Warren, 123—124

Norms governing social behavior, 42, 45—46, 170—171 see also Expectations ‘‘Null result,’’, 63 Nus Simms, Ericka, 191—192, 194 Oberlander, Mark, 77 Observational studies, 11—13, 21—22 a laboratory research setting for, 22—24 Observer-rated behavior, 127—131 Odbert, Henry, 122, 124 The Odd Couple, 5 Odd couples, 4—9, 13—14, 194—195 examples of, 4—9 Odd Couples (imaginary TV program), 9—12, 22—23, 26—27 Older and younger siblings, 73—85 asymmetrical influence of, 75—76, 79—84 ‘‘feminizing’’ and ‘‘masculinizing’’ influences of, 80—82 Openness to experience, 121, 124—130, 190, 192—193 ‘‘Opposites attract’’ aphorism, 3, 7—9, 173, 178 Opposite-sex siblings, 72—86 influence of, 72—86 social advantage of having, 78—79 The Origin of Species, 108 Ozer, Daniel, 126 Parental influence, 72, 75—76, 79 Parsons, Talcott, 103 Partner effects, 64—65, 133—136, 179 of the Big Five personality dimensions, 133—136 Partner-focused thoughts and feelings, 42—43, 149—151, 168—169 Partner influence, 19—20, 58—59, 64—65 Patterson, Miles, 164—167 Paulus, Paul, 69 Peabody, Dean, 124, 127 Perceived interaction quality, 31, 63—64, 98—99, 130, 132, 134—135, 174—178, 191, 195

Perceived rapport with partner, 113, 134—135, 137—138 Personalismo, 66 Personality psychology, 121—124 Personal pronoun usage, 38—39, 41, 50, 99, 131—132, 165—167 use of first-person plural pronouns to manipulate others, 166—167 Physical attractiveness, 13, 85, 87—101, 169, 175—176, 180, 182, 187, 189, 195 effects on hiring preferences and salary, 96—97 effects on jury sentences, 97 effects of men’s and women’s, 98—100 parental reactions to, 95 and perceived ‘‘adoptability’’ in infants, 95—96 and popularity, 96 as a prosocial characteristic, 180, 182, 195 rating of, 98 social rewards of, 95—97 Pike, Carolyn, 90 Pilkonis, Paul, 146—147 Pinsky, Drew, 10 Political attitudes, 24, 188—189, 191—193 Pop psychology, 12 Popular culture, 3—11 Post-interaction questionnaire data, 31, 40, 58—59, 65, 78, 161 collection of, 31 Power, 47 Prejudice, see Racial prejudice Presumptuousness, 48—49, 51 Pre-testing with ‘‘research surveys, ’’, 24—26 Pretty Woman, 8—9 Privacy as an ethical concern, 30 Profile correlations, 192—194 as a measure of global personality similarity between spouses, 192—194 Prosocial resources, 194

INDEX

217

Prosocial traits and characteristics, 179—188 Prototypical faces, 92—94 ‘‘familiarity’’ of, 93 ‘‘Psycho-lexical approach,’’, 122 Psychological research, 11—12 Purvis, James, 162—163, 175, 178, 180, 183—184 Quality and quantity of interactions, 1—2 Quindlen, Anna, 35—36 Race/ethnicity, 13, 24, 53—71, 175—176, 187 Race of experimenter, 55—60 Racially diverse settings, 70 Racial prejudice, 55—61, 69—71 avoidance as a form of, 55—61, 69—71 Rajecki, D.W., 44 Random assignment, 26—27 Rapport, see Perceived rapport with partner Reality television programs, 6—7, 9—12 Recursive taijitu, 119 Reidhead, Susan, 164—167 Reis, Harry T., 89 Religious background, 24, 189, 191—193 Research designs, 16—22, 27, 32—33, 36—37, 56—57, 61—62, 73—74 Responsiveness, 39—41 Reus, Victor, 190 Roberts, Alan, 89 Role models parental, 75—76, 79 sibling, 76, 79 Rusbult, Caryl, 19 ‘‘Safety behaviors,’’, 145, 147—148, 152—153, 156 conversational ‘‘safety behaviors,’’, 148, 153 Same-sex siblings, 79—84 Sampson, Edward, 118—119

218

INDEX

Sanchez-Burks, Jeffrey, 66 Satisfaction with an interaction, 109—118 with a relationship, 35, 36, 110—111, 117, 193—194 Schachter, Stanley, 77 Scheier, Michael, 143 Schermer, Brian, 107, 112—113, 175, 177, 180, 182, 184 Schroeder, Michelle, 100 Selection of interaction partners, 2 Selection of research participants, 24—27 Self-consciousness, 13, 31, 58—59, 131, 133—135, 140, 142—144, 154—155, 162 private self-consciousness, 143, 154 public self-consciousness, 143—144, 154—155 Self-containment, 119 Self-disclosure, 46, 100, 127—128, 130, 133 see also Interaction behaviors, self-disclosure Self-disclosure reciprocity, 170—171 Self-esteem, 154—155 Self-focused thoughts and feelings, 42—43, 149—151 Self-monitoring, 13, 140, 158—172, 175, 178, 180, 183—184, 195 attentional focus of high self-monitors, 165—167 characterization of high and low self-monitors, 159—160 moderate or high self-monitoring as a prosocial trait, 180, 183—184, 195 Self-Monitoring Scale, 160 validation of, 160—161 Self-report measures, 24—26 Sellers, Peter, 171—172 Sensation seeking, 190 Sex, 34 Sex-role influences on dyadic interactions, 106—118 influences in initial opposite-sex interactions, 116—118

influences in initial same-sex interactions, 111—115 Sex-role orientations, 103—118 Shaffer, David, 170—171 Shyness (social anxiety), 13, 140, 142—156, 175, 177—178, 180, 183, 195 as contagious, 143, 150—153, 177—178 effects of, after an interaction, 153—154 effects of, before an interaction, 145—146 effects of, during an interaction, 146—153 genetic predisposition toward, 155—156 non-shyness as a prosocial trait, 180, 183, 195 related to self-esteem and public self-consciousness, 154—155 Siblings, 72—85 Similar versus dissimilar personalities, 3, 11, 13, 18, 139—140, 173—195, 186—195 dissimilar personalities and antagonism, 186—187 in longer-married couples, 190—191 in newlywed couples, 191—192 role in partner selection versus relationship satisfaction, 191—195 Simpatıá, 66—67, 69, 179, 180—181, 185, 195 as a prosocial characteristic, 180—181, 185, 195 Simpa´tico, 66—69 Simpa´tico self-schema, 67 Simpson, Jeffry, 171 Smith, Jonathan, 170—171 Sneed, Carl, 127—131, 133 Snyder, Mark, 159—161 Social absorption, 190 Social anxiety, 143, 152—153, 155 see also Shyness the vicious circle of, 144—154, 156

Social desirability, 67 Social individuation, 190 Social phobia, 60, 143 Socioeconomic status (SES), 24, 68—69, 187 Sociosexuality, 190 Sonnheim, Maurice, 74 Spence, Janet, 118 Spontaneous self-concept, 67—68 Standards of beauty, 87—90 for body type versus facial type, 88—90 cultural and historical standards, 87—90 Status and dominance, 44, 47—50, 52 Steeno, Jeff, 107, 112—113, 175, 177, 180, 182, 184 Stereotyped gender roles, 44—45 Stereotypically sex-typed people, 106—119 Stiles, William, 48—49, 100 Stinson, Linda, 42—45, 97—98, 100—101, 148—150, 162, 168—169, 175, 177—178, 180, 182 Stranger in a Strange Land, 13 Sulloway, Frank, 80—81 Suspicion, 29 Taijitu, 103—104 Tannen, Deborah, 46—49 Thakerar, Jitendra, 89 Theory development, 107—108, 120 Theroux, Paul, 152 Thibaut, John, 19, 165 ‘‘Thought experiments,’’, 107 Thought-feeling data, 42—43, 68, 149—151 Toman, Walter, 74—75, 77, 84—85 Tomarelli, Michele, 170—171 Tooke, William, 42—45 ‘‘Transitivity rule’’ regarding prosocial traits and characteristics, 185—186 Triandis, Harry, 66 Turner, Marilyn, 73, 75, 77—78, 82, 84—85, 175—176, 180—182

INDEX

219

Undifferentiated people, 105, 109, 114—115 Unmitigated agency and unmitigated communion, 104 Unobtrusive observation, 12, 27—30 Values, 189, 191—192, 194 Vandenberg, Steven, 190 Va´squez, Melba, 66 Vicious circle of phobic behavior, 60—61 Vicious circle of social anxiety, 144—154, 156 Violence, ethnic, racial, and religious, 187 Wagatsuma, Erica, 89 ‘‘Waiting room’’ situation, 23—24, 28—30 Waldrip, Amy, 61—69, 175—176, 180—181

220

INDEX

Walz, Nicolay, 100 Watson, David, 189—192, 194 Wayne, John, 35—36 Weight, 189 Whites (European-Americans), 54—71, 176 Who Am I? Test, 67—68 Wife Swap, 6—7, 9, 12 Wilde, Oscar, 35—36 Williams, Laura, 100 Williams, Robert F., 88 Winkielman, Piotr, 94 Wolff, Ellen, 89 Wu, Cheng-Huan, 89 Ybarra, Oscar, 66 Yin-yang, 103 see also Taijitu You Just Don’t Understand, 46—47 Young, Mark, 10 Zen, 17

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