Attraction In Cross-Sex Relationships Essay

Traditionally, young men and women preferred friends of their own sex and engaged in sex-specific activities with them. Male friendships centered on shared activities such as sports, cars, and contests (sometimes fighting with words, not weapons). Women’s friendships were more intimate and emotional, involving self-disclosing talk about health, romances, and relatives (p.437)

What are the social factors that influence interpersonal attraction? Discuss in relation to relevant psychological theories and studies

I found it interesting that the authors found that actual similarity did not predict romantic attraction, that in fact similarity was significantly or marginally related to romantic liking for 6 of the 26 results were in the expected direction. They also found that significant effect of socio-sexuality similarity on liking, and socio-sexuality shares some conceptual overlap with extraversion.

Friendships of pleasure are based on the amount of pleasure the people get from being in the relationship. People who go to football matches together, or who go to the pub together might be in this type of relationship. They are friends for their own sake, because the friendship brings them pleasure and enjoyment, not for their friend’s sake. Friendships of pleasure are common among young people. Young people quickly become friends and quickly cease to be friends because what pleasures them changes constantly.

Females also favour their same sex friend more than opposite sex friends in kinder garden.(Lundy, Field et al. 1998) People also enjoy more about the interaction with same sex friends in preadolescence.(Strough and Covatto 2002) The situation changes as they grow older, OSFs are found more intimate than in younger age.(Sharabany, Gershoni et al. 1981) Adolescents over 16 are more probable to have a OSF who is very close to them.(Kuttler, La Greca et al. 1999) Older adolescents are also expected to enjoy more when interacting with OSF.(Strough and Covatto 2002) Another interesting research by Hartup and Stevens found that having SSFs in childhood will forecast the romantic relationship later during adolescence.(Hartup and Stevens 1997) Above all, SSF plays a important role in early life span of individuals, but OSF gradually become more frequent as the person grows older. There is an implication that OSF is taking the role of SSF in the childhood period. SSF is also a preparation for the relationship growth of OSF. Regarding that OSF is a potential beneficial component of mating process and therefore reproductive success. It seems that SSF relates to evolutional success of individual through the function of OSF

Often times women’s studies are overshadowed by topics pertaining to other matters. Because of this, Steve Duck of University of Iowa calls women’s studies “understudied relationships”. In his book, Under-Studied Relationships: Off the Beaten Track, Steve delves into the complicated world that is friendship between women. He reveals that even the best of friendships, more often than not, will dissolve due to geographical distance, especially during the transition from high school to college. However, Duck claims that this occurrence is more detrimental to male friendships than female friendships. According to Duck, “…men’s inability to maintain distal friends may be due to a lack of awareness about and skills to utilize effective strategies that maintain a [friendship]” (184). This argument implies that men simply do not put as much emotional value into friendships as women do. While distance may seem challenging for women to overcome, they put more effort into preserving their friendship. Duck further instills this concept by explaining that “women’s same-sex friendships tend to be based more on intimate and emotional discussions than men’s…” (186). Men, Duck argues, lack the depth in their friendships that women possess and for this reason have difficulty sustaining a friendship that is met with the strain of distance.

In Bret Aston Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction, drug and alcohol abuse runs rampant throughout the novel. The main characters of the novel, Sean Bateman, Lauren Hynde, and Paul Denton, heavily use drugs and alcohol throughout the novel. Moreover, as the author portrays, drug and alcohol use are heavily integrated into the college campus culture, as nearly every character is using a wide assortment of drugs or alcohol readily available in the 1980s. Even though awareness of this problem is spreading, drug and alcohol use is still a big concern decades later. First, the problem of alcohol use and abuse will be explained. An analysis will reveal that Ellis’s The Rules of Attraction is an accurate portrayal of the drug culture on college

The friendships form because they lack care from other people in their lives and need the friendship to compensate their loss of emotion. Although two people in the friendship have different genders and ages, they have similar life experiences and living background so they can understand each other’s feelings.

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

says Anthony Rotundo, attempting to define the boundaries between romantic friendship and erotic love, in relation to same gender friendships, in the late nineteenth century (Miller 4). Same gender relationships could exist on a physical level, expressing affection, without bringing up questions of sexual preference. Further, F.S. Ryman, a gentleman in his twenties, wrote of the very

A cross-sectional survey method was employed to test CPM in the context of disclosing romantic feelings in cross-sex friendships. Specifically, it examined whether people would choose implicit or explicit demand message strategies when revealing romantic feelings to a friend of the opposite sex in hypothetical scenarios. Participants were college students enrolled in two academic institutions—a small liberal arts college and a large university. A student sample is appropriate when studying cross-sex friendships because young adults typically have

Friendships and romantic relationships makes our lives go round. Without them our lives would be dull and lonely. Unlike family members, we are allowed to choose our friends and lovers. There are various levels of friendships and diverse forms of romantic relationships, and they can all lead to being close, intimate, and loving. Both friendships and romances considerably enrich the well-being of our physical and mental state. Friendships can lead to romantic relationships, and romantic relationships can lead to just being friends.

Gender and sexual orientation is a topic that has been and still today is not talked about in such a way it should be because of how society has chosen to structure and control it. Social stratification is a system in which groups of people are divided up into layers according to their relative privileges (power, property, and prestige). It’s a way of ranking large groups of people into a hierarchy according to their relative privileges (Vela-McConnell 2016). People, who deviate from the norm of the “accepted” gender and sexual orientation that society has placed upon us, are stratified below the norm of a dominating binary gender and sexual orientation. People who are queer face the struggle of mistreatment and an unaccepting society that has been socialized to see and act on gender and sexual orientation to being a dualistic system.

Attraction plays an important part in developing relationships because when a person is attracted to someone, he or she will want to get to know that person more by spending time with him or her, thus leading to a bond and deeper understanding of each other.

First, when people have their own perspective of relationship on how they should be maintained compared to how society or different cultures depict relationships. Because the five factors of personal attraction affect friendships and relationships because have a major impact on how we all deal with each other on different levels. When dating and in imamate relationships and friendships there has to be different attractions that keep us connected or disconnected from one another. First you are attracted to them by Proximity which means when you feeling close to someone, there is also familiarity, when you are attracted to someone that you see often then you also have to have a similar attraction to someone which is called, similarity is somethings that you have with people like others who are like them. Also there is Physical appearance, when you like someone looks, reciprocity, you are also more attracted to people that are like them. “There are five important factors that initiate and predict interpersonal attractions: proximity, familiarity, similarity, physical appearance and reciprocity in liking” (Clarke, 1952). When searching for a friendship and romantic relationship these are the five factors that would necessary when searching for a healthy friendship or relationship. When dealing with society and different cultures sometimes our opinion about the right friendship and relationships.