Similarity-Attraction Theory

“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

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

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.

In life, there is a common ground on which most every person can relate. At one time or another, we have all been promoters of or victims of the unremitting nature of stereotypes. According to the Webster’s dictionary, a stereotype is defined as “a simplified and standardized conception or image invested with special meaning and held in common by members of a group.” Most stereotypes take on a negative form and are based on characteristics such as age, gender, race, status, and personal beliefs. Generally speaking, the greatest problem that arises with stereotypes is that they judge group of people by the characteristics and actions of their ancestors, rather than on an individual basis. More often than not, these assumptions will

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.

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).

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

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,

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.

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.

In the first of two experiments participants were shown two faces that appeared simultaneously on a screen along with a single characteristic. They we then prompted to choose which person seemed more likely to fit the characteristic on the screen alternatively, they could choose to respond that they had no gut feeling. The researchers chose to focus on white and black races in particular. Faces were presented in three different combinations: white paired with white, black paired with black or black paired with white. Characteristics were either stereotypes against blacks or were neutral characteristics. Participants were found to be “less likely to make cross-race choices than same race choices and were significantly less likely to make choices involving stereotype relevant than irrelevant traits” (Norton et. al, 2012). It was found that “choice rates for same-race choices did not depend on the relevance of the trait” (Norton et. al,

This test will measure the strength of association between the concepts African American of Caucasian and the attributes pleasant and unpleasant. Participants will be asked to categorize words and pictures that represent these concepts and categories. For this experiment, either White faces will paired with pleasant words and Black faces paired with unpleasant words, or White faces will be paired with unpleasant words and Black faces paired with pleasant words. A respondents latency for the two different pairing combinations will be the basis for comparison. If participants were faster to pair White with pleasant and Black with unpleasant than White with unpleasant and Black with pleasant, we assumed that they implicitly preferred Caucasians over African Americans and vice versa.

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.

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