The document outlines a research proposal for a study examining how physical instability influences mate selection preferences, suggesting that individuals experiencing such instability may be drawn to partners who offer psychological stability. It discusses the methodology, including participant selection, data collection, and proposed analyses, and emphasizes the significance of the bodily experiences in shaping perceptions and preferences in romantic contexts. Findings indicate that physical instability affects participants' perceptions of relationship stability and their desire for stability-promoting traits in potential partners.

1. Research Methods Spring 2020 – Research proposal
Points:
0
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Introduction
APA Format
Not APA format
Tried APA format
Mostly APA, some errors
Good APA format
Literature Review
No real review of the existing literature
Minimal review. It’s not clear how cited lit relates to your
research
Decent review of the current literature on your topic. Have at
least 3 references that directly relate to your research question
Good review of the current literature on your topic. Have at
least 5 references that directly relate to your research question
Hypotheses
Hypotheses not mentioned or it’s not a testable hypothesis
Hypotheses stated at the end of intro. Hypotheses don’t really
follow from literature or don’t entirely make sense
Hypotheses that follow from the literature. Hypotheses are
testable and directional.
Well thought out and interesting hypotheses based on the
literature – testable and directional.
Methods

2. Participants
Very little thought into participant selection
Clearly state how data will be collected – e.g. what’s the
population. How would you obtain a sample from that
population
Clearly state how data will be collected, state the population,
include a sample size determination based on the literature
Well thought out sample size determination based on the
literature – clearly state the population and a feasible method
for collecting data from that population.
Procedure – research design
Little info about procedure
Not a clear procedure
Stated research design that tests the hypotheses
Procedure section clearly lays out research design. The research
design provides a good test of the hypotheses
Procedure - Materials
No or little info about materials
Vague info about materials
Materials (e.g. measures, manipulations) make sense given the
hypotheses and research design. Measures clearly labeled as
independent or dependent variables.
Well thought out materials. Materials selected make sense given
the hypotheses and research design and thought was put into
controls variables and choosing measures that are well-
established. Measures clearly labeled as independent or
dependent variables.
Proposed analyses
No info about proposed analyses
Include proposed analyses, but they don’t make sense given the
hypotheses
Proposed analyses make sense given the hypotheses.

3. Well thought out statistical analyses given hypotheses. Analyses
take into consideration all measures and manipulations in the
study.
Total (out of 21)
http://pss.sagepub.com/
Psychological Science
http://pss.sagepub.com/content/24/1/112
The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/0956797612457392
2013 24: 112 originally published online 12 November
2012Psychological Science
David R. Kille, Amanda L. Forest and Joanne V. Wood
Tall, Dark, and Stable : Embodiment Motivates Mate Selection
Preferences
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Psychological Science
24(1) 112 –114
© The Author(s) 2013
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DOI: 10.1177/0956797612457392
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Can the qualities people desire in a mate shift according to
the stability or instability of their physical state? In this investi-
gation, we examined whether physical instability motivates
people to seek partners who provide a sense of psychological
stability—for instance, by demonstrating reliability. Theories of
embodied cognition propose that knowledge is stored in mem-
ory as multimodal representations, and these representations
can include information about bodily states (for a review, see
Barsalou, 2008). For example, the concept “bed” might include
information about one’s sleeping posture, so the bodily state of
lying down may activate cognitions related to “bed,” and vice
versa. Research on embodied cognition has shown that bodily
states affect people’s perceptions of others; in one study, hold-

6. ing a warm—rather than a cold—drink led participants to per-
ceive another person as interpersonally warmer (Williams &
Bargh, 2008). Given such findings, we expected that experienc-
ing physical instability—a common, but unstudied, somatic
experience—would activate the construct of instability more
generally and would affect participants’ perceptions, leading
them to interpret other people’s romantic relationships as rela-
tively unstable. We further hypothesized that the experience of
physical instability would affect not only people’s perceptions
(cognitions) but also their preferences, which reflect underlying
motivational concerns (Higgins, 2012, chap. 2).
Bowlby (1988) proposed that the attachment system
evolved to provide infants with a sense of safety and security,
especially in stressful times. As Ainsworth demonstrated
(1979), infants left in an uncertain environment seek out their
caregivers, who provide a sense of security and stability.
Because adult relationships have also been shown to serve as a
source of security (Collins & Feeney, 2000), we hypothesized
that adults who experience physical instability will, like infants
who encounter an uncertain environment, seek security from
relationship partners and will therefore be attracted to poten-
tial romantic partners who promise psychological stability
(Chappell & Davis, 1998).
Note that we made opposing predictions for perceptions
and preferences: We expected that physical instability would
lead people to perceive less stability in other people’s relation-
ships, but to prefer more stability-promoting traits in their own
potential relationship partners. Broadly speaking, we extended
embodied-cognition research by (a) studying the effects of
physical instability; (b) examining preferences for potential
mates, in response to researchers’ call for important and
“action-
relevant” outcomes (Meier, Schnall, Schwarz, & Bargh, 2012,

7. p. 711); and (c) distinguishing between cognitive and motiva-
tional effects.
Method
Forty-seven romantically unattached undergraduates (25 men,
22 women; mean age = 21.08 years) were randomly assigned
to either a physically unstable condition or a physically stable
condition. In the physically unstable condition, participants sat
at a slightly wobbly table and chair: The wobble was achieved
by shortening two of the chair’s nonadjacent legs by approxi-
mately ¼ in. and securing a small pebble to the bottom of one
table leg. In the physically stable condition, participants sat at
an identical, but stable, table and chair. We administered
demographic and filler questionnaires to ensure that partici-
pants had experienced the furniture’s instability (or stability)
before they completed the dependent measures.
To determine whether physical instability—like other
somatic cues (e.g., warmth)—can affect people’s perceptions,
we asked participants to judge other people’s relationship sta-
bility. Participants rated the likelihood that the marriages of
four well-known couples (e.g., Barack and Michelle Obama:
married 19 years, two children) would break up in the next 5
years (1 = extremely unlikely to dissolve, 7 = extremely likely
to dissolve). We reverse-scored and averaged responses to cre-
ate an index of perceived stability (α = .60).
Participants indicated their preferences for various traits in
a potential romantic partner (1 = not at all desirable, 7 =
extremely desirable). We included traits that would provide a
sense of psychological stability (trustworthy, reliable) or
instability (spontaneous, adventurous), as well as traits with
less relevance to instability (loving, good with money, funny,
supportive). Pilot testing (n = 27), and a linear contrast,
Corresponding Author:

8. David R. Kille, Department of Psychology, University of
Waterloo, 200
University Ave. West, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada N2L 3G1
E-mail: [email protected]
Tall, Dark, and Stable: Embodiment
Motivates Mate Selection Preferences
David R. Kille, Amanda L. Forest, and Joanne V. Wood
University of Waterloo
Received 3/27/12; Revision accepted 6/17/12
Short Report
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Embodiment Motivates Mate Preferences 113
confirmed that the stability traits were perceived as providing
more psychological stability, safety, and security (1 = rela-
tively unstable, 9 = relatively stable) than the stability-neutral
traits, which were, in turn, rated as providing more stability
than the instability traits (stability traits: M = 8.23, SD = 1.30;
stability-neutral traits: M = 7.51, SD = 1.31; instability traits:
M = 4.50, SD = 1.67), F(1, 26) = 101.81, p < .001. We reverse-
scored the instability-trait items and created two composites:
preference for stability traits (vs. instability traits; α = .50) and
preference for stability-neutral traits (α = .65). Finally, we
assessed participants’ moods (e.g., annoyed, happy; 1 = not at
all, 9 = a great deal).
Results

9. A one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) revealed that, as
predicted, participants in the physically unstable condition
perceived less stability in other people’s relationships (M =
4.80, SD = 1.12) than did participants in the physically stable
condition (M = 5.55, SD = 0.84), F(1, 43) = 6.28, p = .016,
ηp
2 = .13 (Fig. 1). These results suggest that physical instabil-
ity activates the concept of instability more broadly.
More important, physical instability affected preferences:
A one-way ANOVA revealed that participants in the physi-
cally unstable condition reported a greater desire for stability
traits in a partner (M = 5.00, SD = 0.78) than did participants
in the physically stable condition (M = 4.38, SD = 0.72), F(1,
45) = 8.18, p = .006, ηp
2 = .15 (see Fig. 1). No differences
between conditions emerged in preference for stability-neutral
traits, F < 1, or in mood, except that participants in the physi-
cally unstable condition felt happier than participants in the
physically stable condition, F(1, 40) = 4.44, p = .041, ηp
2 =
.10. Two analyses regressing preferences and perceptions onto
happiness and condition indicated that happiness was unre-
lated to either outcome (ts < 1).
Discussion
Our study confirms that subtle bodily experiences affect not
only people’s perceptions of others, but also their preferences in
others: Participants who experienced physical instability per-
ceived less stability in other people’s relationships and desired
more stability in their own potential partners than did partici-
pants who did not experience such instability. Moreover, pilot

10. testing suggested that participants in the physically unstable
condition did not simply prefer more positive traits; using a
Likert-type scale (1 = relatively negative/undesirable/not very
fun, 9 = relatively positive/desirable/very fun), 24 participants
rated the traits in the stability composite as being marginally
less positive (M = 7.19, SD = 0.94) than the traits in the
stability-
neutral composite (M = 7.44, SD = 0.81), t(23) = 1.89, p = .071.
Consequently, we concluded that physical instability altered
participants’ motivation to seek psychological stability rather
than their motivation to seek positively valenced traits.
Mate selection is often viewed as a process that reflects
long-term goals rather than in-the-moment psychological
needs. The present study suggests that mate preferences may
shift with transient bodily states created by the physical envi-
ronment. By examining the important outcome of preferences
in mate selection (Meier et al., 2012), this study extends previ-
ous findings suggesting that the physical world can affect pref-
erences for movie genres (Hong & Sun, 2012) and cleansing
products (Zhong & Liljenquist, 2006). We suspect that previ-
ously studied physical states may also motivate mate selec-
tion: For example, given that physical dirtiness is linked to
moral impurity (see Lee & Schwarz, 2011), examining dating
profiles in a physically dirty environment might motivate peo-
ple to seek out moral puritans. Additionally, because perceived
power is associated with feeling tall (Duguid & Goncalo,
2012), feeling short—as when seated in a lowered chair—
could increase the attractiveness of high-status mates.
Our results also suggest that embodied cues can affect
motivation, because participants’ preferences (for stability)
likely reflected their goals (to achieve stability). Insofar as
goals and motivational states are represented as cognitive
structures (Kruglanski et al., 2002), those structures should be
represented—much like any other cognition—through senso-

11. rimotor information (Barsalou, 2008). Indeed, we suspect that
one reason cognition may become embodied is to ensure that
one’s needs—which may arise from physical states—are met
through goal pursuit. Embodied motivation, then, is a fruitful
avenue for future research.
Acknowledgments
The authors thank Vanessa K. Bohns, Richard P. Eibach, and
John G.
Holmes for their invaluable comments on an earlier draft, and
Alix
Collins and Lindsay Stehouwer for their assistance in
conducting this
research.
3.00
3.50
4.00
4.50
5.00
5.50
6.00
6.50
7.00
Perceptions of Stability Preference for Stability
Ra

12. tin
g
Physically Stable Condition
Physically Unstable Condition
Fig. 1. Mean perception of other people’s relationship stability
and
mean preference for stability (vs. instability) traits in a
potential mate as
a function of physical stability condition. Error bars represent
standard
errors of the mean.
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114 Kille et al.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared that they had no conflicts of interest with
respect to their authorship or the publication of this article.
Funding
This research was supported by a Social Sciences and
Humanities
Research Council of Canada grant awarded to Joanne V. Wood.
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