6 ways that intimate relationships differ from more casual associations
knowledge (extensive personal and often confidential knowledge about each other)
caring (feel more affectionate for each other than they do for most others)
interdependence (the extent to which they need and influence each other is frequent, strong, diver
The Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale measures this quality of intimate relationships
mutuality (it does a great job of distinguishing between intimate and more casual relationships)
Evidence for the "Need to Belong
- we don't need a lot of close relationships, just a few
- when the need to belong is satiated, our drive to form additional relationships is reduced
- doesn't matter much who our partners are (we can find replacement partners after a relationship ends)
-
how come if people don't already have plans to marry, cohabitation does not make it more likely that a subsequent marriage will be successful?
- couples who cohabit are less committed to each other than those who marry (they experience more conflict, jealousy, physical aggression, as a result, the longer that people cohabit, the less enthusiastic about marriage and more accepting of divorce they
Sources of change in today's intimate relationships
- Increasing socio-economic development: industrialized societies harbor more single people, tolerate divorce and support a later age of marriage
- Increasing Individualism- the support of self-expression and the emphasis on personal fulfillment has becom
Define attachment styles
Bowlby discovered that infants displayed various patters of attachment to their major caregivers, the assumption is that this is based on responsive and reliable caregiving. Styles can be:
1. If care was consistent and reliable: SECURE- happily bonded wit
2 demensions underlying the 4 attachment types:
Avoidance (of Intimacy)
Anxiety (about abandonment)
*both are continuous dimensions that range from low to high (they are not 4 discrete categories)
Low avoidance of intimacy, low anxiety about abandonment
Secure
Low avoidance of intimacy, high anxiety about abandonment
Preoccupied
High avoidance of intimacy, low anxiety about abandonment
Dismissing
High avoidance of intimacy, high anxiety about abandonment
Fearful
the term ______________ refers to biological distinctions between men and women. ____________ refers to social and psychological distinctions created by our cultures and upbringing (for example ________
sex differences
gender differences (e.g. gender roles)
Relationship researchers refer to "masculine" task-oriented talents as ________, and "feminine" social and emotional skills as __________.
instrumental traits
expressive traits
a person who is high on both instrumental and expressive traits
androgynous
someone who is high in instrumentality/expressiveness of the other sex
cross-typed
someone who is low in both instrumentality and expressiveness
undifferentiated
Problems of believing men and women have nothing in common
-if so, you are less likely to repair your heterosexual relationship when conflict occurs
Do traditional men and women get along better than androgynous men and women
no, worse!
-being put in a room experiment, and unhappier marriages than less traditional couples
-the most desirable spouses, are people who are both instrumental and expressive
Personality traits influence people's behaviour in their relationships across their entire _________
lifetimes
3 of the Big 5 traits that if people score higher on have happier relationships
Extraversion
Agreeableness
Conscientiousness
List the Big 5 in order of least influential on relationship quality to most influential
Openness to experience
Extraversion
Conscientiousness
Agreeableness
Neuroticism
One theory is that self-esteem is a ________ (a subjective gauge that measures the quality of our relationships with others)
sociometer (theory)
*in this way, self-esteem is an evolved mechanism that serves our need to belong- self-esteem became a psychological gauge that alerted people to declining acceptance by others, and dislike or disinterest from others gradually caused p
In what ways does the textbook say gays and lesbians are similar to heterosexual couples?
- exhibit the same attachment styles in the same proportions
- both happier with romantic partners high in expressivity
Differences the textbook points out between same-sex and other-sex relationships
- gay men are more expressive on average
- lesbians on average more instrumental
- less likely to adhere to traditional gender roles
- gays and lesbians better educated and more liberal (on average)
- gay men- more sex in new relationship
- gay women- les
3 assumptions of evolutionary psychology
1. we are shaped by sexual selection/natural selection (advantages which have resulted in greater success at reproduction) *any universal psychological mechanism exists in it's present form because it consistently solved some problem of survival or reprod
How does parental investment result in different mating strategies for men and women from an evolutionary perspective
- women in our ancestral past reproduced more successfully if they were careful in choosing their mates (based on a limited number of children she can have, and the enormous investment of time and energy)
-men who are less careful and pursue every availab
Relationship science can be said to have begun in...
1930s, but didn't really become a broad focus of research until an explosion of studies in the 60s and 70s (when a new emphasis on laboratory experiments in social psychology occurred)
2 types of subject recruitment in relationship research
1. convenience sample: use anyone who is readily available and who consents to participate
2. representative sample: strives to ensure that collectively their participants resemble the entire population of people who are of interest (difficult and expensi
This concept refers to the fact that of the people invited to participate, those who do may differ from those who don't
volunteer bias (found in convenience and representative sampling)
This early experiment demonstrated that similarity CAUSES ________
liking
Advantages of correlational designs
- can study compelling events in the real world that we can not manipulate and control (e.g. commitment to a relationship, passionate love, unsafe sex, break-ups)
(limited in conclusions of causation)
Advantages of experimental designs
- can examine causal connections
(limited in what we can study)
3 major types of developmental designs
1. cross-sectional design (most common, compares people at one stage in development to another, data taken at one time-point, always correlational, they confuse age with history)
2. longitudinal design (some participants, data taken from them over a perio
Some behaviours are difficult to study because they are rare, or unpleasant, or very intimate. One way researchers get around these difficulties is to have subjects: ________, a new technology of which is: _________________
role-play (ethically defensible way of studying emotionally charged topics)
immersive virtual environments (IVEs)- people interact with three-dimensional computer reresentations of other people
Benefits and weaknesses of self-report data (people telling us about their experiences)
A: allow us to get inside people's heads and understand personal points of view that may not be apparent to outside observers, inexpensive and easy to obtain, don't need elaborate equipment
D: people may misinterpret researchers questions, what people tel
2 participant biases often seen in self-reports
self-serving bias and social desirability bias
an observational method that uses intermittent, short periods of observation to capture samples of behaviour that actually occur over longer periods of time
experience-sampling
Observational research can suffer the problem of ___________: people may change their behaviour when they know they are being ovserved
reactivity
2 methods that avoid the problem of reactivity
physiological measures
archival materials