This study examined gender and race differences in children's interactions with infants. Subjects were 53 black and white children between 8 and 10 years of age. An experimenter of the same race as the children presented them with a 6-week to 12-month-old infant of the same race. Children were photographed with the infant; while playing the role…

Although attractive people are often assumed to have many socially desirable characteristics, observers also attribute certain negative traits to them (i.e., more snobbish, more materialistic, more likely to be unfaithful). To examine whether unattractive people would be seen as more machiavellian (having more negative traits) and whether…

Listening to an intimate self-diclosure does not always generate attraction for the revealer. One factor which may influence the relationship between disclosure and attraction is emotional empathy (i.e, an observer's reacting emotionally because he/she perceives that another is experiencing an emotion). To investigate whether emotional empathy on…

A study examined the influence of physical attractiveness and trait argumentativeness as predictors of responses to an argumentative situation. Subjects, 152 college students identified as either high or low in trait argumentativeness, were randomly assigned to one of two treatment conditions: attractive or unattractive anticipated adversary. A…

Research has shown that a client's positive views of a counselor enhance commitment to treatment, positive outcome expectancies, and receptivity to counselor influence. To examine the impact of counselor gender and physical attractiveness on perceived counselor effectiveness, 60 college students evaluated male and female counselors on 15 variables…

This study investigated the effect of similarity and reciprocity on dyadic friendship choices. Subjects were 34 third graders and 30 sixth graders. Reciprocal (mutual) and nonreciprocal (nonmutual) friendships were identified through use of the roster sociometric technique, whereby children choose their three best friends from an alphabetized list…

In his discussion of interpersonal balance theory Heider postulated that unit relationships induce sentiment relationships. The relationship between anticipated interaction and interpersonal attraction was examined with female high school seniors (N=109) who read a description of a fictitious student and rated that student as someone they would…

Research studies concerned with sex-role stereotypes have noted that behavior is often shaped by expectations others hold about certain individuals. In one experiment, female undergraduates who expected to meet attractive desirable men portrayed themselves as more feminine and performed less intelligently on a bogus IQ test when they thought the…

Duval and Wicklund proposed a theory of self-awareness that distinguishes between objective and subjective self-awareness, in which objectively self-aware individuals are assumed to focus attention on themselves and subjectively self-aware individuals direct attention toward external objects. To investigate self-awareness of physical…

Caregivers' expectancies and behaviors in relationship to young handicapped children were investigated in this paper. Two studies were conducted in an attempt to answer three questions: (1) How will caregivers respond to the young handicapped child? (2) Do the child's stimulus characteristics, such as physical appearance, create biases in…

Somatotyping is a term that has evolved for the reliable recognition of the expected relationship between body type and personality traits. Using a somatotypic measure, a study was conducted to identify the developmental changes in children's attraction preferences within their own peer groups, as tested in kindergarten, third, and sixth grades.…

The determinants of interpersonal attraction were examined in 10 dyadic situations involving an actor's behavior toward a perceiver. For each situation, the intentionality of the actor's behavior was varied at three levels (intentional, nonintentional, no information), and the affective implications of the behavior for the actor were also varied…

With the advent of the feminist movement it is probable that attitudes of women regarding mate selection have undergone significant changes in the 1970's. A replication of a study first conducted in 1939 which concentrated on the values and attitudes of females toward mate selection was updated using 935 single college females from 31 different…

Research indicates that traditional values regarding the family are learned early in life and tend to change slowly, if at all. Therefore, it is probable that values and preferences expressed in mate selection would vary little from one generation to the next. A replication of a study first conducted in 1939 which concentrated on male attitudes…

This paper reports two studies of the effects of empathic instruction on first graders' evaluations of other people. In Experiment 1, 23 children received either empathic or non-empathic instructions, listened to a taped conversation in which the main character obtained either a positive or negative outcome, and then evaluated both the main…