Week #11 Question #1

*Think about the filters you use to eliminate people from consideration as potential romantic partners. What characteristics or behaviors lead you to judge others as unattractive? Does Duck's theory make sense to you? Have you ever eliminated someone by using a sociological or pre-interaction cue only to reconsider them based on interaction and cognitive cues?

The characteristics or behaviors that I, and most other American males, use to judge others as unattractive may varry based upon the sex of who is being judged. For example, I believe that most American males, when observing the characteristics and behaviors of a woman, will first observe and rate based on physical characteristics. This may noyt ring true in every case as people are motivated by different factors, but I guarantee you'd be hard pressed to find a heterosexual male who will state he was attracted to his current (or previous) partner based on..lets say...her Gucci purse. Now, this is not to say that any interest needs to be sparked off of first contact, rather, if interest of an American male is sparked on first contact it is usally based on the perceptions of physical characteristics. On the American female side (and as I male I am making obserevations based upon my experiences with the opposite sex [family, friends, co-workers, etc,]) I believe the initial observations of characteristics and behaviors do not follow the usual model as with American males. Material and behavior defined as "machismo" have been what I have found to be two of the characteristics/behaviors which highly motivate women when it comes to attraction to men (I have encountered this here in the Bay Area...though I will admit that cultural trait is not as prevailant as it was in my previous home city of Miami, FL. Lets put it this way...in Miami..if you don't have the latest whip, threads, bling bling, and a phat roll to use to treat that significant other to a good time...don't even bother...and the funny thing is that a girl over there will look you up and down in 10 seconds and then tell you "Get away from me becuase of A, B, C, D." Club/material culture at its "best"). Now, again, this is not to force all women into the same box when it comes to how one rates or initially becomes aware of attractiveness. Rather, that at this point in time in our culture as my generation searches for physical partners, motivations have change quite drastically or simply evolved with technology and time. It was never a secret in the past that men looked for beautiful women and women looked for wealthy men who could take care of them and their future family. I find that today, however, it is easier to create the illusion of attractiveness or success.
Duck's theory does indeed make sense to me and I have been guilty in the past of judging someone based on sociological models, only to find myself to be completely wrong based on the time and interactions spent with that individual. On the same end, I have accepted someone based on sociological models and the wants and desires of the community in which I lived in, only to later realize that the person was in no way deserving of anything from me let alone my acceptance. I believe the present election may be a perfect example for this. On both ends of the parties there were those who, without any real or valid information, demonized the opposing candidate in the news media. This characterization in the news media then fed false information to the public which, due to the high level of political ignorance in this contry, motivated certain individuals to vote a certain way. For example, just the other day I was speaking with a friend who has been an adminany Republican his entire life. When we were speaking of Obama's child hood all I heard were 3 things: 1) Obama has the middle name Hussein...he must be a radical Muslim 2) Obama's father was a radical muslim and possibly a member of the Black Panther party and 3) based on these previous statements, Obama is himself a Muslim. Now, I sat and listened to this from my friend and then asked him where he got his information. I was in no way surprised when he said "Fox News...ofcourse". When I heard this I laughed and I told my friend just how wrong he was and how he had fallen into the great Republican propoganda trap. I explained to him that Hussein is a VERY common name in the Middle East and there are countless Americans (muslim and not) with the name Hussein. To make that correlation would also mean that any current living German by the name of Adolf has an uncontrollable need to commit genocide against Jews...simpley not true and more BS that ignorant Repubs try to pass off as scientific fact. Second, yes, Obamas father was a Muslim and may have infact been a memeber of the Black Panther party...but the most important part of that statement was so purposefully left out of the statement in order to sway Fox News viewers: Obama's father left and abandoned his family when he was only 2 years old thus never playing any type of major role in his education or upbrining (one could even easily imagine Obama striving to be the complete opposite of his father based on his abandonment thus negating the claim "Like father, like son". And finally, after stating these past 2 truths, the third statement, "Obama is a Muslim" fell apart without me having to say a word. My friend openly admited that he was wrong and had been fed missinformation...but that was still not enough for him to feel that he voted for the wrong candidate. Regardlesss, my friends image of Obama changed drastically after I told him of the lies he had been told and, despite claiming his allegiance to the Republican party, he admitted that he felt more secure in the fact that Obama was our President-elect (and he didn't have to worry about all the terrorist/Muslim theories) and that he would lead the country in a new and better direction.