Chapter 23: Quiz
1. The "opposites attract" claim is: - A) Strongly supported by research - B) Debunked — similarity predicts attraction far more consistently than complementarity - C) True for personality but not for values - D) Only true for short-term relationships
Answer: B. Decades of research (Byrne, 1971 and hundreds of replications) show that similarity in values, attitudes, personality, and background predicts attraction. The opposites attract belief is a cultural myth.
2. Aron et al.'s 36 questions study actually measured: - A) Falling in love - B) Interpersonal closeness (not love) between strangers in a lab setting - C) Long-term relationship satisfaction - D) Sexual attraction
Answer: B. The study measured closeness (Inclusion of Other in Self scale), not love. The NYT essay's extrapolation from closeness to love was unsupported.
3. The single strongest predictor of who you'll form a relationship with is: - A) Physical attractiveness - B) Shared love language - C) Proximity — encountering someone regularly in your daily life - D) Opposite personality traits
Answer: C. Proximity is the most underappreciated and best-supported predictor of relationship formation. You're most likely to form relationships with people you encounter regularly.
4. In long-term relationships, physical attractiveness: - A) Remains the most important factor - B) Decreases in importance as personality, values, kindness, and responsiveness become more important - C) Becomes completely irrelevant - D) Increases in importance over time
Answer: B. Physical attractiveness matters most for initial encounters. Over time, personality and relationship behaviors become stronger predictors of satisfaction.
5. Buss's (1989) cross-cultural study of mate preferences found: - A) No sex differences in any culture - B) Some average sex differences (men valued attractiveness more; women valued resources more) but with modest effect sizes that shrank in more gender-equal countries - C) Identical preferences in all 37 cultures - D) That evolutionary psychology explains all human mate preferences
Answer: B. Some differences were consistent, but culture modulated them significantly, individual variation was large, and effect sizes were modest.
6. The "mere exposure effect" (Zajonc, 1968) shows that: - A) People dislike things they see frequently - B) Repeated exposure to a stimulus increases liking — you tend to like things (and people) you encounter often - C) First impressions determine everything - D) Exposure to social media increases attractiveness
Answer: B. The mere exposure effect is well-replicated: familiarity breeds liking, not contempt. This contributes to the proximity effect on attraction.
7. Many evolutionary psychology claims about mate preferences are criticized as "just-so stories" because: - A) They cite too many studies - B) They propose adaptive explanations that sound scientific but are often untestable — the same story could be told for the opposite preference - C) Evolution doesn't exist - D) Psychology can't study evolution
Answer: B. "Men prefer X because in the ancestral environment Y" is an adaptive narrative that can be constructed for virtually any preference, making many specific evo-psych claims unfalsifiable.
8. Reciprocity in attraction means: - A) You should always agree with the person you like - B) You tend to like people who like you — knowledge of someone's interest increases your interest in them - C) Relationships must be perfectly equal - D) Only mutual attraction can form
Answer: B. Reciprocity is one of the strongest attraction predictors: learning that someone is interested in you reliably increases your interest in them.
9. The personality-attractiveness interaction shows that: - A) Personality has no effect on perceived attractiveness - B) People who are liked for their personality are rated as more physically attractive over time — attractiveness is not fixed - C) Only attractive people have good personalities - D) Personality tests predict physical attractiveness
Answer: B. Perceived attractiveness changes based on how much you like someone. This undermines the idea that physical attractiveness is an objective, fixed quantity.
10. The chapter's overall message about attraction is: - A) Attraction is random and unpredictable - B) Attraction is determined entirely by physical appearance - C) Attraction is predicted by proximity, similarity, reciprocity, familiarity, and responsiveness — the pop versions (opposites attract, love at first sight, 36 questions) are oversimplified or wrong - D) Only evolutionary psychology can explain attraction
Answer: C. The evidence-based predictors are less dramatic than pop claims but more accurate and more useful for understanding real relationships.