Similarity-Attraction Theory

In Paul Bloom’s TED Talk, “Can Prejudice Ever Be a Good Thing?,” he discusses the stereotypes people encounter in their everyday lives. Bloom asserts his personal opinions, along with facts, to show how prejudice and stereotypes begin to form in the human mind at a young age. He states that prejudice can be rational and useful but it can also be irrational, often leading to immoral consequences. He presents studies done by other psychologists that prove the development of stereotypes throughout the lifetime of an individual. Some of the studies show the way people react when they view an African American in relation to a white American. People favor the white Americans over the African Americans because it’s an instinct to choose white over

Stereotypes are socially constructed, over-generalized views regarding a particular group of persons with certain characteristics that are widely accepted, and usually expected, in a society. The dominant group of a certain society, which in this case is probably Caucasians and men, usually creates these social constructions. Claude M. Steele, a researcher from Stanford University, performed multiple research studies on the idea and psychological effects of stereotypes on its victims. In his studies, he coins the term “stereotype threat” as the “social-psychological predicament that can arise from widely-known negative stereotypes about one's group,” which implies that “the existence of such a stereotype means that anything one does or any of one's features that conform to it make the stereotype more plausible as a self-characterization in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in one's own eyes” (Steele 797).

“Tell her that you love her hair, that you love her skin, her lips, because, in truth, you love them more than you love your own.” Is a quote from Junot Diaz’s, "How to date a brown girl (black girl, white girl, or halfie)”? In this sartical quote by Diaz, is used to highlights multicultural girl stereotypes. The stereotypes are described based on ethnicity and social class of a basic teenage boy’s guide to racial dating. The main theme of short story is about appearances being manipulated to the extent that is discriminate the idea of social behavior of trying to get a soulmate from outside of one’s race. Diaz’s short story is a typical every boy dream to get a girl outside their race by offering advice of how to behave towards other race that differentiate from the Reader. The Short story involves mainly about ethnicity being a key factor that make guys treat their opposite sex differently. I will make analytical approach of Physical Attractiveness and Exchange Theory in Interracial Dating.

In people’s perspective, attractiveness possess a wide variety of positive personal qualities compared to unattractive people. Result from the study on physical attractiveness stereotypes show the attractive people had the most positive ratings. For example, they are judged as less disturbed, rated as happier and more successful, and more likely to be hired after a job interview. Thus, the concept of attractiveness having a correlation between an individual’s physical appearance and his/her achievements, abilities, psychological well-being and/or other status characteristics to create a perception is

Generally we want to approach decisions with placing ourselves in another’s shoes, however, seeing past how we view ourselves within our own racial group can again lead to stereotyping behavior.

Disappointingly, this video draws out many valid points of how our society asserts one’s physical appearance or differences with what race they belong to. There’s this social norm to identify people by their physical features such as hair type, skin color,

Throughout our lifetime we often find ourselves surrounding ourselves with people that look like us, think like us and all-around act like us. This behavior is common in humans because we tend to surround ourselves with people like us because we like the comfort that it brings. Our nature is to reject or turn away from things that are not like what we are used to. In Beverly Daniel Tatum’s “Why are all of the black kids sitting together in the cafeteria?’ She describes the psychological reasons why we as humans gravitate to the ones who are most similar to us.

The Different Shades of Beauty What is beauty? Is it determined by your body structure? Is it assessed by your skin color? Women of African American descent struggle with concepts of beauty based on complexion- dark skin or light skin. Colorism is discrimination against people based on skin color and it affects the African American women with regards to self-esteem and self-acceptance.

A chi-square test was performed to determine whether there is a preferred attraction among men to women of their own race. When responding to the question, “would you swipe right on this profile,” (M=_, SD=_) there was a significant preference for the same race among Latino (χ2 (6.47) = 2, p = .04) and White males (χ2 (11.10) = 2, p = .004). There was no significant difference among Black males (χ2 (2.22) = 2, p = .33). Furthermore, when responding to the questions “Do you want to get to know this girl?” and “Would you message this girl?” (M=_,SD=_) there was a significant preference for same race women among Latino (χ2 (8.40) = 2, p = .004) and White males (χ2 (11.10) = 2, p = .004). There was no significant preference among Black males (χ2

In adults, three variables were used to test the other-race effect on facial recognition: orientation, face type and ethnicity. Adults at least 18 years of age and older (N = 64) were asked to recognize upright and inverted adult and infant faces. Recognition was tested using a forced-choice procedure. 4 slides were shown during a trial to make sure participants understood the instructions. Next, participants viewed 48 slides with faces alternating between adult female and infant faces; first segment each face was upright, second segment faces were inverted. The results of the study found that there was no significance between race and facial recognition. Other research conducted has shown that race does in fact have a significant effect on facial recognition.

The significance of disregarding dissimilarity is disregarding human society, which a hazardous behavior that dismissively affects lifestyles. When we make the decision not to visualize other human beings as they really are whether they are indistinguishable or unalike, we are opposing many human beings are misguided into disregarding dissimilarity. Human beings who are treated unfairly or have no recognition because of their dissimilarities endure the repression, though may sustain to disregard dissimilarity in others. An example of this pattern is the desire of some European American women to generalize their experience as the encounter of all women. When a European American woman professes to declare for all women, she ignores individual

The term race describes groups of people having differences and similarities in biological traits that the society deems socially significant. For example, while similarities and differences in eye color have not been treated as socially significant, similarities and differences in skin color have been considered socially significant. Simply, race can be represented as a constituent of people who think and believe that their group is superior to other groups. More specifically, therefore, race entails a group of people possessing similar but distinct physical characteristics such as hair type and skin color. As such race constitutes a human population that is different and distinct from any other human groups based on their physical differences, whether they are imagined or not.

Race, a term people choose to blandly deny but affect our everyday lives. Whether or not we choose to be consciously aware of it or not, race has an astronomical effect on our society. A persons’ race affects what school that they attend, their form of employment and ultimately how they are perceived. Race is defined as “groupings of people believed to share common descent, based on perceived innate physical similarities”. Smith Lecture notes. Essentially, one can categorize or identify the race of an individual based on physical characteristics such as eye shape, nose, hair color, hair texture, and body structure.

The five factors that predict interpersonal relationships are: proximity, familiarity, similarity, physical appearance, and reciprocity. Proximity refers to the geographical location of persons. People are more likely to initiate, engage, or maintain relationships if someone’s geographical location is near or convenient to the person they are to pursue. Relationships, whether romantic or platonic, are not as likely to be initiated if the proximity does not allow individuals to cross paths or maintain a certain level of communication. As well, familiarity plays an important role in the fostering of relationships. People are said to have an increased attraction and fondness for individuals that they see more often than those they do not. In lay terms, similarity can be summed up by saying that people enjoy the presence of those like (or similar) to them. Individuals are more often drawn to and feel less intimidated by others that share their culture and belief systems; thus, are more likely to form relationships with them. Next, is physical attractiveness; which can be defined in two different ways. First off, people tend to believe that beautiful things equal good things and are more likely to seek out relationships with individuals they find beautiful. However, people are also likely to form relationships with people they believe to be on

Most people find stereotypes to be obnoxious, especially when they have to do with sensitive subjects like gender or race. “Stereotyping is a generalization about a group or category of people that can have a powerful influence on how we perceive others and their communication behaviors” (Floyd, 61). Because they underestimate the differences among individuals in a group, stereotyping can lead to inaccurate and offensive perceptions of other people. Although stereotypes are prevalent in almost every society, becoming aware of our perceptions of others, as well as differentiating between both positive and negative stereotypes can help us overcome those stereotypes.