Self-Presentations of Happiness: A Critical Review
Spencer T. Hyles
Red Deer College
Psychology 312
Blaire Turnbull
October 7th 2016
This paper is a review of “Self-Presentations of Happiness: Sincere, Polite, or Cautious?” authored by Sherri P. Pataki and Margret S. Clark of Carnegie Mellon University. The paper looked at men and women and their expressed and private feelings upon meeting a member of the opposite sex in correlation to attractiveness using participant self-report. Their hypotheses, methods, statistical analysis, and findings will be reviewed in detail and then critically evaluated.
Introduction
This paper will summarise and analyze the paper “Self-Presentations of Happiness: Sincere, Polite, or Cautious?” …show more content…
Methods
The study recruited 65 male and 15 female university undergraduate participants. The participants received either 5 dollars cash or class credit for participation (Pataki, Clark, 2004). In the first half of the study males received one of two Polaroid photos selected from 5 of random females from another university that had been scored for attractiveness by judges not participating in the research. All participants were lead to believe they were in a study about first impressions and acknowledged they did not know the identity of the person in the photograph they received. After receiving either the attractive or unattractive photo and some fabricated background information the participants were asked to fill out some background information of themselves, and mood forms, one to be kept confidential and one to be shared with the supposed female (Pataki, Clark, …show more content…
The lack of control and objectiveness over the imagined male’s attractiveness is also an issue, especially since the men had an image of predetermined attractiveness.
The lack of a control group such as heterosexual person to meet an attractive or unattractive heterosexual person of their gender, or a homosexual individual to meet an attractive or unattractive heterosexual individual of the opposing gender could provide useful information as to whether happiness in meeting someone attractive/ unattractive is correlated with the prospect of the possible development of an intimate or sexual relationship.
Upon analysis of the females expected expressed happiness vs. expected privately felt happiness as it correlates to the female participants attractiveness, the unattractive females show clear support of Pataki and Clark’s hypothesise (Expected expressed: 5.3, expected privately felt: 4.0) whereas the attractive females show an expected expressed value of 4.3 and an expected privately felt value of 4.4. The movement of only 0.1 is, in my opinion not nearly enough of a change to consider the results a positive correlation to the men’s self-report despite such adjudication by Pataki and Clark. There are explanations one could attribute to the data, but due to a lack of additional research provided we can only
Spencer T. Hyles
Red Deer College
Psychology 312
Blaire Turnbull
October 7th 2016
This paper is a review of “Self-Presentations of Happiness: Sincere, Polite, or Cautious?” authored by Sherri P. Pataki and Margret S. Clark of Carnegie Mellon University. The paper looked at men and women and their expressed and private feelings upon meeting a member of the opposite sex in correlation to attractiveness using participant self-report. Their hypotheses, methods, statistical analysis, and findings will be reviewed in detail and then critically evaluated.
Introduction
This paper will summarise and analyze the paper “Self-Presentations of Happiness: Sincere, Polite, or Cautious?” …show more content…
Methods
The study recruited 65 male and 15 female university undergraduate participants. The participants received either 5 dollars cash or class credit for participation (Pataki, Clark, 2004). In the first half of the study males received one of two Polaroid photos selected from 5 of random females from another university that had been scored for attractiveness by judges not participating in the research. All participants were lead to believe they were in a study about first impressions and acknowledged they did not know the identity of the person in the photograph they received. After receiving either the attractive or unattractive photo and some fabricated background information the participants were asked to fill out some background information of themselves, and mood forms, one to be kept confidential and one to be shared with the supposed female (Pataki, Clark, …show more content…
The lack of control and objectiveness over the imagined male’s attractiveness is also an issue, especially since the men had an image of predetermined attractiveness.
The lack of a control group such as heterosexual person to meet an attractive or unattractive heterosexual person of their gender, or a homosexual individual to meet an attractive or unattractive heterosexual individual of the opposing gender could provide useful information as to whether happiness in meeting someone attractive/ unattractive is correlated with the prospect of the possible development of an intimate or sexual relationship.
Upon analysis of the females expected expressed happiness vs. expected privately felt happiness as it correlates to the female participants attractiveness, the unattractive females show clear support of Pataki and Clark’s hypothesise (Expected expressed: 5.3, expected privately felt: 4.0) whereas the attractive females show an expected expressed value of 4.3 and an expected privately felt value of 4.4. The movement of only 0.1 is, in my opinion not nearly enough of a change to consider the results a positive correlation to the men’s self-report despite such adjudication by Pataki and Clark. There are explanations one could attribute to the data, but due to a lack of additional research provided we can only