Chapter 12 Exercises: Cognitive Biases in Attraction

These exercises are designed to help you move from understanding cognitive biases as abstract phenomena to recognizing them in your own experience, your environment, and the systems around you. Some exercises are reflective; others ask you to design research or evaluate real-world systems. None have a single correct answer.

Exercise 12.1 — The Personal Bias Audit

Type: Reflective journaling + small-group discussion Time: 30–45 minutes individual reflection; 20 minutes group discussion Materials: Journal or word processor

Cognitive biases are easier to recognize in others than in ourselves. This exercise asks you to practice the more difficult and more valuable skill: examining your own attraction history through the lens of the biases discussed in this chapter.

Part A: The Inventory

Think back over the past two to three years and identify two or three people you found yourself attracted to (romantic, aesthetic, or otherwise). For each person, work through the following questions honestly:

  1. Mere exposure: Was proximity or repeated contact part of how this attraction developed? How long did it take before you noticed the attraction? Was there a specific moment of recognition, or did it develop gradually?

  2. Similarity: What do you share with this person — in values, background, communication style, or interests? What differences exist? Did the similarity drive the attraction, or did the attraction make the similarities more salient?

  3. Contrast effects: What was your social context when you first became aware of this person? Who else were you spending time with? Is it possible the contrast between them and others in your environment played a role?

  4. Halo effect: When you first became attracted to this person, did you notice yourself assuming positive qualities about them that you did not yet have evidence for? Looking back, were any of those assumptions wrong?

  5. Confirmation bias: After the attraction developed, can you recall instances where you interpreted ambiguous behavior generously because of the attraction? What would a neutral observer have made of those same behaviors?

Part B: The Reflection

Write a short paragraph (200–300 words) addressing this question: Looking back, how much of what I called "chemistry" or "just something about them" was actually shaped by cognitive context, and how much do I believe reflected genuine compatibility? How does this reflection change (or not change) how you think about that person or about attraction generally?

Discussion prompt for group sharing: You do not need to share the specific people — but you can share the patterns you noticed. What bias appeared most prominently in your audit? Were there biases that seemed not to apply? Did any of your reflections surprise you?

Exercise 12.2 — Designing a Media Priming Experiment (Hypothetical)

Type: Research design exercise Time: 45–60 minutes Materials: Pen/paper or word processor

You are a social psychologist who wants to test whether media priming affects attraction judgments. You have access to a sample of 200 university undergraduate volunteers (100 men, 100 women, representing a range of sexual orientations) and a three-hour window to conduct your study.

Design a study to test one specific media priming hypothesis. Your design should include:

  1. Hypothesis: State the specific, testable prediction you are making. (Example: "Participants who watch a 20-minute compilation of physically dominant action heroes will rate physically dominant facial features as more attractive in subsequent face-rating tasks compared to participants who watch a neutral nature documentary.")

  2. Condition assignment: How many conditions will you have? How will you assign participants? Justify your choice of between-subjects vs. within-subjects design.

  3. Stimulus materials: Describe the media exposure (the "prime") in each condition. What would you show, and why? How would you ensure that the conditions differ on the variable of interest but not on confounds (length, emotional valence, etc.)?

  4. Dependent measure: How will you measure attraction? What are the advantages and disadvantages of your chosen measure (self-report, behavioral, physiological, or some combination)?

  5. Anticipated confounds: List at least three factors that could produce the result you are predicting without involving media priming. How does your design address these?

  6. Ethical considerations: What potential harms could this study produce? What informed consent process would you use?

After completing your design, answer briefly: What would a null result (no priming effect) tell you? Would it definitively refute the hypothesis, or would it leave the hypothesis intact? What methodological reasons might explain a null result even if the hypothesis is true?

Exercise 12.3 — The Scarcity Effect in Dating App Design

Type: Critical analysis Time: 30–40 minutes Materials: Access to descriptions of dating app features (no account required)

Dating applications are not designed neutrally. They are designed by profit-motivated companies whose business models depend on keeping users engaged, uncertain, and returning. This exercise asks you to analyze the design choices of a specific dating application through the lens of the cognitive biases discussed in this chapter.

Choose one of the following applications (or one you are familiar with): Tinder, Hinge, Bumble, or OkCupid. Research its core design features. Then answer the following questions:

  1. Scarcity mechanics: Does the application use any scarcity-based design? (Examples: limited daily swipes, matches that expire, limited "super likes.") For each feature you identify, explain how it could exploit the scarcity effect in attraction.

  2. Contrast effects: How does the application present profiles — sequentially, or as a grid? What does the presentation format suggest about the contrast effects users are likely to experience? How does this compare to how you might encounter potential partners in non-mediated social contexts?

  3. Variable reward schedules: Variable reward — getting a reward unpredictably rather than on a predictable schedule — is known to produce highly persistent behavior (it is the psychology behind slot machines). How might the match/no-match notification system in your chosen app leverage variable reward? How does this interact with the scarcity effect?

  4. The ethical dimension: In 200–300 words, argue one of the following positions (or a nuanced position of your own): - App designers have an ethical obligation to avoid design choices that they know exploit cognitive biases. - App designers have no special obligation beyond standard product ethics; users are responsible for managing their own responses to design. - Something more complicated — sketch your view.

Exercise 12.4 — Discussion Seminar: Can You Override a Cognitive Bias? Should You?

Type: Structured seminar discussion Time: 50–75 minutes class session Format: Two rounds of structured argument, followed by open reflection

This exercise structures a seminar debate around one of the most challenging questions raised by this chapter: if we know about cognitive biases in attraction, can we (and should we) try to override them?

Round 1 — Can you override them?

Divide into two groups:

  • Group A argues: Yes, knowledge of cognitive biases provides meaningful capacity to override them, at least in deliberate decision-making contexts. Support your argument with specific examples from the research discussed in this chapter.

  • Group B argues: No, the evidence suggests that knowing about biases does not significantly change behavior; they operate primarily at the System 1 level, below the reach of deliberate intervention. Support your argument with research and reasoning.

After ten minutes of preparation, groups take turns making their argument (5 minutes each) and responding to the other group (3 minutes each).

Round 2 — Should you try to override them?

Now everyone debates the normative question (no assigned sides):

The following three positions are possible starting points:

  • Position 1: We should actively try to override cognitive biases in attraction, because attraction shaped by heuristics rather than genuine compatibility often leads to poor outcomes.

  • Position 2: We should not try to override them — cognitive biases are part of the system that makes attraction feel like attraction, and a fully deliberate, bias-corrected attraction process would be both impractical and undesirable.

  • Position 3: The interesting question is not "override or not" but "which biases deserve more scrutiny" — the halo effect for physical attractiveness may deserve challenge in ways that the mere exposure effect does not. Case-by-case attention is better than a wholesale approach.

Reflection: After the discussion, write a 150-word personal reflection: What is your actual view, after the debate? What did you hear that shifted your thinking or confirmed it?