How are groups, friends and attractions treated in different cultures? - Chapter 11

What are cultural differences regarding attraction?

There seems to be cultural differences in how people try to make themselves attractive. For example, women from the Paduang in Thailand make their necks longer by putting more rings around them. Women from the Ainu in northern Japan tattoo a dark line around their lips. Women in the West use mascara and eye pencil to make their eyes appear darker and mark their lips. Yet there are also features that are seen worldwide as attractive:

1. A skin that is free of spots, pimples, wounds and rash is considered more attractive than a skin that is not. We see clean skin as attractive because it can be an indication of good health. If people have all sorts of wounds or pimples, this can be an indication of poorer health. With a healthy partner the chance of having healthier children is higher.

2. Bilateral symmetry is another characteristic that is universally seen as attractive. People are considered attractive if the right side of their face and body is identical to the left side. Bilateral symmetry is seen as attractive because it is an indicator of developmental stability.

3. A third characteristic of attractive faces is having average characteristics. Faces with an average size and average shape are seen as attractive. Reasons why average features are found attractive are:

   • People with average traits probably have no genetic abnormalities and are therefore healthy.

   • People can process average properties (prototype) quickly, and rapid processing is associated with positive feelings and feelings of attraction.

People not only find members of their own culture with average characteristics the most attractive, but also members of other cultures with average characteristics are found more attractive.

However, people find average bodies not the most attractive. The bodies that are seen as attractive deviate from the average. What an attractive body looks like differs per culture. In the West, very thin bodies are found attractive in women. In Africa, women are often found more attractive when they are fat. In the past, women were also seen as attractive when they were fat in the West.

Appearance is not the only thing that attracts people to each other. We form friendships with people we have met, this is called the propinquity effect. People will become friends with others sooner when they meet them often. We do not even choose our friendships entirely ourselves; they are shaped by the situation in which we find ourselves.

The mere exposure effect shows that we find something more attractive if we are often exposed to it. For example, we find some people, music or fashion more and more fun if we see or hear it often enough.

Another powerful predictor for attraction is the similarity attraction effect. People are most attracted to people who look like themselves. People see someone as attractive or as a potential friend or partner if they have the same attitudes, economic background, personality, religion, social background and activities. This predictor seems to be mainly true for Western cultures and not or to a limited extent in Eastern cultures.

Why do we form close relationships?

People are social beings. People live with others, eat with others, work with others, study with others and do fun things with others. People are happiest when they are with others. People are most sad when people from their environment die or when their relationships end.

All relationships are based on one or more four basic structures developed by Fiske (1991) below. All four forms work in relationships around the world, but there is also cultural variation.

1. Communal sharing: the members of a group emphasizing their common identity. Everyone is treated the same and everyone has the same rights and privileges as all other members of that group. Sharing is common in families. In families, it is not exactly recorded what someone has received or what they have contributed. Everyone gets what they need and contributes what they can.

2. Authority ranking: members of a group are linearly ordered according to a hierarchical social dimension. People with a higher rank have prestige and privileges that people with a lower rank do not have. The people with a lower rank do, however, receive protection and care from the higher ranked people. This form of relationships occurs in, for example, the army.

3. Equality matching: people keep track of what has been exchanged and are motivated to give back what they have received. This is based on the idea of balance and reciprocity.

4. Market pricing: all forms of aid that are exchanged can be reduced to an underlying dimension, often that is money. It is concerned with proportionality and ratios. For example, I buy coffee and give the seller money for it. 

Relational mobility

People who live in an independent culture only enter into friendships if both people can benefit from it. Enemies are not a problem for people in an independent culture, because they do not enter into a relationship with those people. As a result, people in independent cultures have almost no enemies; after all, they can easily avoid potential enemies. We can therefore say that people in an independent culture have a high relational mobility. 

People who live in an interdependent culture do not have the choice of being part of a network or not. They are by definition part of a network, because they are born into a family that already has ties with other families. The activities of daily life (going to school, working, having a partner) always take place in the same context and this is how relationships are formed. Not every relationship is positive, but the relationship does exist. So we can say that people in an interdependent culture have low relational mobility. Having a relationship is not an option. In this way enemy relations arise within their own group. Close relationships are seen by people in the West as very important. People in Africa see close relationships as natural and not coincidental, they are just present. People in Africa see friendship mainly to help others when needed and not so much to have a good time together.

Attractiveness is a greater factor in a context with high relational mobility than in a context with low relational mobility. In the latter, people have less choice in the relationships they enter into, and their social circle is largely stable. In a high mobility context, people are freer to put together their social circle, and any trait that potentially attracts new partners is very welcome. Attractiveness is therefore more important in this context. The same effect can explain the difference in the similarity-attraction effect found between independent and interdependent cultures.

Residential mobility

Relational mobility is influenced by residential mobility. In certain contexts people are more physically able, for example, to move. People who have experienced plenty of residential mobility are characterized by:

• They show more conditional loyalty to their colleges; they identify with their colleges only when they are described positively, not when they are described negatively.

• They have more Facebook friends on campus and continue to acquire more new ones over time.

• They view their personality traits to be a more central part of their identity than their group memberships.

• They prefer large national chain stores, which are the same wherever you go, over local regional stores.

An advantage of residential mobility is that those who are willing to move have better employment opportunities. 

Friends and enemies

Few things are more special in our lives than friendship. Friends ensure that we enjoy fun times even more and make bad times less painful. Friends help us when we need them, they make us laugh and they make us feel loved and important. Friendship is seen as the key to success. Having close friendships makes us happy and makes us live longer.

Enemies are people who hope for your downfall or try to sabotage your progress. Western people seem to have fewer enemies than people in, for example, Africa. If Western people already have enemies, they do not come from their own in-group (friends, neighbors, family), but from an out-group. The enemies of people in Africa come from the in-group more often than from the out-group. This is a striking outcome, because people in Africa have an interdependent culture and often there are close relationships between people. The people who can get close can also be enemies at the same time.

Friendship is universal, however, the nature and meaning of friendships can vary. Americans, for example, have more friendships than what is common in other cultures. Also, most of these friends are online, and not in real life. Also, different aspects are important in different cultures. For example, in collectivistic cultures, giving advice is important. The aspect of having a lot of friends is also viewed differently in different cultures. Ghanians would say that having a lot of friends is foolish. This has to do with the definition of friendship in the different cultures. 

Simpatico is a term used in Latin America for a highly valued relational style that focuses on harmonious relationships and making expressive displays of graciousness, hospitality, and congeniality. This focus is also to be seen in the workplace. People strive to maintain a warm and hospitable atmosphere. Latin Americans act in more sociable ways than European Americans, and they spend a greater proportion of their time socializing with others. 

How are feelings of love expressed?

Parents feel love for their children, so they take good care of them. People need care for a long time and therefore need love from their parents to survive. Taking care of people until they are independent is so long and demanding that it is often necessary for them to be cared for by both parents. In some other species the offspring are independent more quickly, they grow up without parents or with only the mother. To ensure that children are raised and cared for by both parents, love is also needed between the parents to keep them together. Love therefore has an evolutionary basis.

Romantic love is a universal phenomenon. However, there are cultural differences in romantic love. That people think differently about romantic love can be seen by the existence of arranged marriages and marriages based on love. Many marriages are arranged by the parents rather than by the people who marry each other themselves. In some cultures love is seen as an essential part of getting married, while in other cultures that is not the case. Romantic love is more important in cultures where the ties with family are becoming less and less strong. Feelings of romantic love can be irrelevant or even problematic in an environment with strong family ties. In such an environment the pressure to stay together because of the families is high. In cultures where family ties are less strong, another means is needed to keep partners together, namely romantic love.

Elements of love relationships

• Intimacy: The amount of intimacy individuals share and express to each other, differs across cultures. Western couples experience a great deal of intimacy compared to East Asian couples. A reason can be that people in non-Western cultures meet their intimacy needs across a larger network of close relationships. 

• Passion: The feeling of passion is universal in romantic relationships, but passion does not play a strong role in every relationship. Westerners report having higher degrees of passion than East Asians. The relationship satisfaction is based more on feelings of passion among Westerners than East Asians. The open relationship market, and the easy possibility of meeting new people, can explain why in Western cultures passion is more valued. Also relational mobility can be an explanation.

• Commitment: Feelings of commitment are stronger in Asia than in the West. This might be reflected in the culture's lower relational mobility. Idealizing a partner helps sustain commitment. An idealizing partner does not experience cognitive dissonance in the other person's bad behaviors such as getting angry, kicking the dog, becoming overweight or leaving dirty laundry on the floor.

Cultural variations in marriage

People in the West often wonder how arranged marriage can last without love. People have different assumptions about love:

• An arranged marriage often starts without feelings of love towards the partner, but a strong love develops between the couple during the marriage. People expect to love each other and that is what happens. People from an individualistic culture only get married if they know for sure that they love each other.

• If a marriage is arranged, this is done by the family. It is thought that the family can make a better choice for a partner than the person himself. The person who is married off relies on the choice of the family. In an individualistic culture it is assumed that you can make the best choice for a partner yourself, because you know best what kind of partner suits you best.

• In individualistic cultures, people think that marriage is doomed to fail if there is no love as the basis. In individualistic cultures, many marriages go through bad periods and sometimes even end in divorce. In cultures where arranged marriages are common, it is assumed that a marriage has a greater chance of success if it is arranged. A positive correlation has also been found between the extent to which a culture encourages marriages based on love and the number of divorces in that culture. Partners in an arranged marriage seem to be as satisfied with their marriage as people who are married to each other on the basis of love, although this often does not apply to women.