Is selectivity an aphrodisiac ?

R e s u m e n En un artículo reciente, Eastwick, Finkel, Mochon y Ariely (2007) reportaron datos que indicaban que la selectividad podría ser un factor importante para determinar el deseo romántico. Usando un paradigma de citas rápidas, se encontró que los individuos que en promedio calificaron posibles citas como altamente deseables eran los que recibían más bajas calificaciones en promedio de sus citas, como lo que demuestra lo que ellos denominan como correlaciones negativas generalizadas. Sin embargo, las correlaciones diádicas fueron positivas, lo que sugiere que, a través de pares el deseo era algo recíproco. Eastwick et al. (2007) van más lejos al afirmar que “ ... personas que se citan de alguna manera difunden su no selectividad... “ (p 318), donde encontramos una explicación profundamente desalentadora. Presentamos una aproximación alternativa y un enfoque basado en la disociación entre las correlaciones generalizadas y diádicas. Hemos implementado un modelo multi-agente que permite una evaluación de las contribuciones relativas de la selectividad y la congruencia en las calificaciones de la atracción. El modelo sugiere que la igualación entre el atractivo potencial de personas que se citan es el predictor más importante del deseo romántico. Creemos que el artículo de Eastwick et al (2007) es sólo otro ejemplo de un patrón peligroso en la investigación en el campo de la psicología social: las afirmaciones espectaculares son realizadas con la evidencia más débil. Palabras clave autores Citas, modelamiento, atracción, causación vs. correlación. Palabras clave descriptores Explicaciones, ciencia cognitiva, psicología social. doi:10.11144/Javeriana.UPSY125.isaa Para citar este artículo: Gomez, P. & Erber, R. (2013). Is selectivity an aphrodisiac?. Universitas Psychologica, 12 (5), 1601-1607. doi:10.11144/Javeriana.UPSY12-5.isaa * DePaul University, Chicago, USA. Pablo Gomez, Department of Psychology. DePaul University, Chicago, IL 60614. E-mail: [email protected] Pablo Gómez, RalPh eRbeR 1602 Un i v e r s i ta s Ps yc h o l o g i c a V. 12 No. 5 c i e n c i a c o g n i t i va 2013 One of the cardinal rules of dating holds that a person who is selective is considered to be more desirable than others who appear overly anxious to forge a union. The seminal study by Walster, Walster, Piliavin and Schmidt (1973) added some important qualifications to this rule. Playing hard to get increases one’s desirability only when the selectivity appears directed towards everyone except to the potential suitor. Being selectively hard to get increases a person’s desirability because she is perceived as warm, friendly, flexible, and popular. Although important, Walster et al.’s (1973) findings have two limitations. First, their study only considered the desirability of women (and not men) who appear selective. Second, and more importantly, their experiments examined the effects of selectivity aggregated across raters, but did not address the effects of selectivity in the contexts of dyads (i.e., potential couples). Recently, investigators have developed research programs to address these oversights by using speed dating. This methodology has the advantage of providing individuals with a real-world dating situation in a relatively controlled environment (Finkel, Eastwick & Matthews, 2007). It allows individuals interested in meeting potential romantic partners to attend an organized event where they go on a series of brief dates, each lasting a set amount of time (average of 4 minutes), with other attendees. After each speed-date, individuals indicate whether or not they would desire a future interaction with their date. If there is a match between daters (both daters indicating that they would like to see their date again), they are given the ability to contact each other. This paradigm allows researchers to study aspects of initial desire and might lead to a better understanding of how individuals evaluate others’ romantic potential during an initial encounter. In this manuscript, we present a simple model to account for an intriguing finding: different patterns of effects of reciprocity in romantic and nonromantic situations. These findings were recently reported by Eastwick, Finkel, Mochon, and Ariely (2007; EFMA07 from now on). EFMA07 used a speed-dating paradigm to explore the interaction of romantic selectivity and reciprocity. They distinguished between two different indicators of reciprocity: (1) dyadic, which is the correlation between the reciprocal liking measures across all couples, and (2) generalized, which is the correlation between how much each individual tends to like other people, and how much he/she tends to be liked back (Kenny, 1994; Kenny & Nasby, 1980). In nonromantic contexts, both the generalized and the dyadic correlations are positive. In other words, people tend to like people who like them back, and individuals who tend to like more people, are, in turn, more likable. This is not the case in romantic contexts, as reported by EFMA07, where a more complex pattern emerges. EFMA07 provided participants with a questionnaire after each “speed-date”, that asked them to estimate the “desire” and the “chemistry” they felt for their speed-dating partner. There were positive dyadic correlations (0.14 for desire and 0.20 for chemistry), which indicates that on a couple-bycouple level, participants tended to reciprocate romantic desire. But surprisingly, there were negative generalized correlations (-0.41 and -0.32), which indicated that individuals who rated others highly, were rated as less desirable (to compute the generalized correlations, the average ratings by each dater are correlated to the average ratings to each dater. EFMA07 interpreted this dissociation as evidence for selectivity being an important component of desirability. We call this explanation selectivity-asan-aphrodisiac, and it is, at first glance, an appealing one, as evidenced by the notoriety EFMA07’s short report has gained in national and local media like the New York Times (Tierney, April 10, 2007), Chicago-Public-Radio (February 14, 2007), and others. In spite of the appeal of the selectivity-as-anaphrodisiac explanation, we believe that a more stringent test for this hypothesis is in order. Let us begin with a conceptual issue: because participants were not able to observe their dates’ behavior towards other people, selectivity would be hard to estimate. EFMA07 proposed that: “ ... participants who desired everyone somehow broadcasted their unselectivity on their speed-dates, which ultimately proved costly.” (page 318). Unfortunately, this exIs selectIvIty an aphrodIsIac? Un i v e r s i ta s Ps yc h o l o g i c a V. 12 No. 5 c i e n c i a c o g n i t i va 2013 1603 planation is somewhat ambiguous with regard to the mechanism at play in the ratings. How could selectivity be communicated, and in turn, used by the daters? And, perhaps more importantly, what does “somehow broadcasting” mean? These are important questions because the selectivity-as-anaphrodisiac hypothesis would require the dater to assess how his/her counterpart behaved towards others in the absence of any direct observation, making it hard to know if-and-when the other dater is hard to get (see Walster et al, 1973). It is important to note that our approach is to make a good faith attempt to interpret EFMA07’s claims, although there is some level of ambiguity in what exactly they mean by selectivity, and what the mechanism in play might be. This report emerges from the need to better understand the meaning of the dyadic/generalized dissociation, and to provide an explanation for EFMA07’s results that is grounded on simple yet plausible decisional processes and current interpersonal relationship theories. The direction of the causal relationship could be the opposite of the one claimed by EFMA07. Instead of selectivity being a desirable feature in a potential mate, individuals who, through interactions with others, perceive themselves to be highly desirable, can afford to be selective. At the center of our argument is an effort to implement the selectivity-as-an-aphrodisiac hypothesis (as well as a competing hypothesis) in a simple computational model. Computational models of mate selection have been used before to gain insights into the dynamics of populations (e.g., Pashler, Mozer & Harris, 2001). In the social sciences, and across almost all scientific disciplines, there are clear advantages of implementing computational or mathematical models. For example, ideas that might be vague or ambiguous would have to be made precise, and their explanatory power would be improved (Hunt, 2007). In the following two sections, we present and evaluate two different approaches: (1) we attempt to implement EFMA07’s selectivity-as-an-aphrodisiac explanation in computational models, and (2) we provide an alternative explanation that assumes that daters tend to prefer others who have similar or higher attractiveness than themselves; we term this the Matching Model. All models were implemented in R1 and are inspired by multi-agent modeling principles: units represent agents that have a collection of attributes that allow them to relate to other agents in order to generate a romantic-desire measure. For simplicity, the models do not assume gender-based mating; all units rate all other units. This is appropriate because EFMA07 reports no differences between males and females.