Attraction, relationships, and love - summary of chapter 12 of Social Psychology by Smith, E, R (fourth edition)

Social psychology
Chapter 12
Attraction, relationships, and love

Challenges in studying attraction, relationships, and love

By necessity, most research on close friendships uses nonexperimental settings that leave some ambiguity about causal relations between variables, and most studies have focused on romantic attachments between heterosexual couples in individualist cultures.

From attraction to liking

We are fist drawn to people on the basis of their immediately obvious appearance or behavior.
Attraction follows rules:

• An alluring face, a pleasant interaction, or the perception of similarity might spark an initial attraction.

As those factors draw tow people together, liking can develop, as each individual goes beyond surface features to start knowing the other better.

Physical attractiveness

Attraction to strangers is strongly influenced by perceptions of physical attractiveness. Some features are regarded as attractive across cultures. Other features that make people attractive are more dependent on experience, exposure, and expectation.

Biological bases of physical attractiveness

There are some immediately obvious physical features that almost everyone agrees are attractive.

• Faces and bodies that are symmetrical are judged more attractive and likable by both men and women and in both western populations and in African hunter-gatherers.
  Symmetry has greater impact on judgments of attractiveness when concerns about disease are uppermost in people’s mind.
• Faces and bodies that suggest access to resources are attractive.

Experimental bases of physical attractiveness

Despite the generally universal nature of cues of health and wealth, individuals and groups can also differ greatly in some of the physical characteristics they find attractive. This is because judgments of what is physically attractive are also strongly influenced by our experience and expectations.

• We like what we see most
• Although we like people who are physically attractive, the opposite is also true. People find others they like more physically attractive than others they don’t like.

Similarity

Similarity of many kinds increases attraction and liking because of:

• Our natural tendency to see anything connected to the self as positive
• Similarity makes things seem familiar
• Similarity contributes to fulfilling needs for mastery and connectedness

Once you find someone ‘your type’, chances are you will end up liking this person.
Similarity breeds attraction and the better people get to know one another, the more their liking depends on similarity (does not have to be deep).
The more similar they are, the more people like each other. Liking is even greater is the qualities we share with others are important to us, and if they are very salient.

Why similarity increases liking

Reasons:

• Similarity signals who is ‘me and mine’
  We tend to view our own characteristics as desirable.
  Just as we like similar others, if we know that someone is similar to us, we usually assume that person will like us. Being liked by someone is one of the strongest reasons for liking that person.
• Similarity signals familiarity
• Similarity contributes to mastery
• Similarity validates connectedness

The powerful effects of similarity on liking can be seen in its long-lasting influence on relationships.

Positive interaction

People are attracted to those with whom they have positive interactions. Interaction makes people familiar, provides opportunity for mimicry, helps people master the world, and helps people find connectedness.

People often come to like people they interact with, even if they are thrown together by chance.
Factors:

• Physical proximity
  Bringing people physically together often leads to friendships.

Why interaction increases liking

• Interaction makes others familiar
• Interaction contributes to mastery
• Interaction helps us feel connected

When interaction fails to meet our needs or even harm us, it will lead to disliking.

Initial attraction can be sparked by the draw of an attractive face, shared attitudes, or chance proximity, but as these factors all start to work together, liking quickly develops.
Similarity encourages interaction, and when people interact, they discover more similarities. The more we interact with someone, the more attractive we typically find them, and the more attractive they are, the more we are drawn to interact with them.

From acquaintance to friend: relationship development

If the same people interacted for weeks, months, or years, the patterns of liking would be very different.
Although initial attractions might have some lingering footprint, preferences will mostly reflect the unique history of the interactions between specific pairs of individuals.
People’s feelings will have become mutual.

Friendship develops through interactions that fulfill the needs to master the environment and the need for connectedness.

Exchanges of rewards: what’s in it for me and for you?

As a relationship begins to develop, the partners exchange rewards.

For voluntary relationships to develop and deepen, each partner must receive benefits and rewards.
People who know each other casually typically share activities that directly reward both partners. Or two people may directly exchange benefits.
Exchange relationships: a relationship in which people offer rewards in order to receive benefits in return.

Different kinds of relationships have different exchange rules.
As relationships develop, the rules about who gets what de-emphasize concerns about what the self gets and start to reflect the growing importance of the other person.
Changes in how rewards are exchanged signal important transitions in the development and deepening of a relationship.

Self-disclosure: let’s talk about me and you

Relationship development also includes exchanges of self-disclosures as the partners come to know each other better. Self-disclosures increase liking and offer opportunities for sympathetic, supportive responses.

Effects of self-disclosure

Disclosing something about yourself makes both strangers and friends like you more. (can also go too far)

• When people are entrusted with a self-disclosure, the norm of reciprocity prescribes that they should respond kind
• Self-disclosures can have many positive effects that work to deepen a relationship.
  Receiving as well as giving emotional disclosures fulfills a listener’s need for connectedness.

Coordinating mutual activities is easier when each partner knows something of the other’s abilities and preferences.
Deeper mutual understanding lets each partner meet the other’s needs more easily.
Self-disclosure signals trust.

There is a strong gender difference in the intimacy level of self-disclosure.
Women self-disclosure more than men, particularly by revealing their feelings and emotions.
The difference is the largest in same-sex friendships.

As a relationship starts to deepen, the give and tak of self-disclosures starts to be less about the disclosure , and more about the partner.

Close relationships

Close relationship: a relationship involving strong and frequent interdependence in many domains of life.
Interdependence in a relationship means that each partner’s thoughts, emotions and behaviors influence the other’s.

Love: thoughts, feelings, and actions that occur when a person wishes to enter or maintain a close relationship with a specific person.

Cognitive interdependence: the partner becomes part of the self

In a close relationship, the partner is incorporated into the self-concept. Partner knowledge becomes more like self-knowledge, and we start to make attributions about our partners as if they were us.

Cognitive interdependence means thinking about the self and partner as inextricably liked parts of a whole rather than as separate individuals.

In the intense and frequent interaction that marks a close relationship, partners learn a lot about each other.
As each partner becomes increasingly familiar with intimate an varied information about the other, the differences that typically exist between self-knowledge and knowledge about the partner are erased.
As the boundaries between self and other break down, mental representations of the self and partner become a single unit, defining feature of cognitive interdependence.
When the other becomes part of the self, we also start to make attributions about our partners as if they were us.

Behavioral interdependence: transformations in exchange

Relationship closeness alters the way partners exchange rewards. In a close relationship, partners reward each other to show affection and because they want to make the partner happy.

Behavioral interdependence means that each person has a great deal of influence on the partner’s decisions, activities, and plans.
In close relationships, the exchange of rewards that characterizes casual relationships gives way to providing rewards that benefit the relationship itself.

• Caring about the partner’s feelings can complicate decisions about what to do.

Communal relationship: a relationship in which people reward their partner out of direct concern and to show caring.
The shift from an exchange to a communal orientation makes and important transition point to a close relationship.

Different people get different benefits from relationships.
Men and women place different emphases on the various rewards that relationships offer

• Men prefer participating in enjoyable activities with their friends and partners
• Men value relationships as a source of social standing and mastery
• Women value relationships for the sharing, intimacy, and connectedness
  Closeness affects both men and women similarly in that it changes the types of benefits the partners bestow on each other.
• Material rewards are typically exchanged in relationships that are not close, whereas love and emotional support are more often the coin of close relationships

Affective interdependence: intimacy and commitment

Intimacy, a positive emotional bond that includes understanding and support, is a key component of close relationships. Commitment, a dedication to maintaining the relationship for the long term, helps keep the relationship going.

Affective interdependence: the affective bond that links close relationship partners.
Interdependence means that each partner’s emotional well-being is deeply affected by what the other does.
Usually, close relationships are marked by deepening feelings of warmth and positivity.

Intimacy

Intimacy: a positive emotional bond that includes understanding, acceptance and support.

How does intimacy develop?

• First step is reciprocating self-disclosures, particularly personal and emotional ones.
• Second step is responsiveness. The partner responds to the emotional content of the self-disclosure. Express validation and caring.
• When you disclose, you feel that your partner correctly perceives your feelings.

Closeness also depends on people responses when other’s have successes to share.

Commitment

Commitment: the combined forces that hold the partners together in an enduring relationship.

Emerges from three factors:

• Personal satisfaction with the relationship
• The realization that equivalent rewards would not be available in alternative relationships
• The number of barriers that make leaving the relationship difficult

Commitment usually grows as a relationship continues.

Individual differences in close relationships: attachment styles

People have different attachment styles in close relationships. Securely attached individuals are comfortable relying on he partner for support and acceptance. In contrast, some individuals avoid reliance on other people, and some individuals worry that the partner will not be available and responsive.

In a committed relationship, psychological intimacy allows caring partners to share self-disclosures and to comfort and support each other.

Attachment styles: people’s basic securely attached, avoidant, or anxious orientation toward others in close relationships.

Researchers tend to think of attachment styles not in terms of categories, but as two continuous dimensions.

• The extent to which people seek or avoid intimacy with others
• The extent to which they are anxious about being abandoned by others

Types

• Secure individuals
  Feel good about themselves and others, are unafraid of intimacy and unworried about abandonment
• Dismissing individuals
  Feel good about themselves but do not trust others. They avoid intimacy and are not worried by the lack of it.
• Preoccupied individuals
  Want to be intimate with others but worry that others don’t want to be as close or as caring as they do.
• Fearful attachment
  Anxiety about abandonment and a fear for intimacy.

Maternal experiences at 18 months predict how people form attachments with romantic partners and peers about 20 years later.
But attachment styles can and do change as a result of relationship experiences over a lifetime.

One effect of attachment styles is the way close partners give and receive social support.
Attachment styles influence both people’s trust in their partner’s support and responsiveness and their own willingness to offer support.
Attachment styles influence the ways people attain intimacy and experience love in all close relationships.

Romantic love, passion, and sexuality

Passionate feelings

Some relationships involve passionate feelings and emotions. Passionate emotions can arise quickly and are closely linked to sexual desires and behavior.

Romantic love: involves sexual feelings, a sense of intense longing for the partner, euphoric feelings of fulfillment and ecstasy when the relationship goes well, and anxiety and despair when it does not.
Romantic love is quite different from liking.

• Like all strong emotions, passion is linked to a set of beliefs about the beloved and motivations for specific types of action.
• Like all emotions, passion has its peaks and valleys

Mate preference: who’s looking for what?

The social context of a relationship, especially whether it is short-term or long-term, determines the qualities people look for in mates.

Some aspects of physical appearance are initially attractive to almost everyone.

• Men attach more importance to physical attractiveness than women do
• Women care more about qualities related to a partner’s status, ambition, and financial success.

Evolution.

When researchers specify a social context for judgments of attractiveness, short-term versus long-term relationship, what men and women want is not as different as if first might appear.

• Short-term → physical attractiveness
• Long-term → personality traits

Both physical attractiveness and earnings potential were important, and equally so for men and women.

Cultural and social factors matter as well.

Sex in the context of a romantic relationship

Like other mutually enjoyable activities, sexual activity can strengthen a relationship. But it can also be a focus of conflict.

Sexual intimacy is associated with increased stability within romantic relationships.
Satisfaction with sex is also closely tied to relationship satisfaction. But this pattern is not unique to sex, satisfied couples do many things together more frequently.

Reasons for sexual dissatisfaction tend to differ for women and men.

• Women become dissatisfied if they see their sexual relationships as lacking warmth, love and caring
• Men who are dissatisfied want more frequent and varied sexual activity

This difference seems to diminish among older adults.

Sex uniquely combines the two fundamental processes that motivate people to form and maintain close relationships in the first place: mutual pleasure and enjoyment, and intimate self-disclosure.

When relationships go wrong

Threats to relationships

Relationships can be threatened because interdependence inevitably leads to disagreement and because external factors, social norms, and the real or perceived presence of rivals can trigger relationship difficulties as well.

• Some pressures come from within
• External factors also place stresses on relationships
• Social norms
• Real or imagined rivals

Handling conflict: maintaining relationships in the face of threat

Conflicts can be handled constructively or destructively. There are many resources that afford constructive responses, and such responses lead to better relationship outcomes. It attempts to respond constructively fail, conflict escalates, which can lead to declining intimacy and commitment.

Constructive and destructive accommodation to negative acts

Accommodation: the processes of responding to a negative action by the partner.

• Constructive accommodation involves actions that help maintain the relationship
• Destructive responses actively endanger the relationship.

A shift toward negative attributions often precedes other indicators of marital conflict, suggesting that attributions are a basic cause of relationship dissatisfaction.
The nature of a couple’s conversations about the conflict is extremely important.

Four especially problematic types of communication often used in conflict:

• Criticism that goes beyond complaining about a specific act to characterize the person as a whole
• Contempt, a lack of respect for the partner
• Defensiveness, a response to criticism that makes excuses or conveys to the partner that a complaint is not being taken seriously
• Stonewalling, turning out or withdrawing form interaction

Resources for constructive accommodation

A couple’s patterns of accommodation influence their satisfaction and the relationship’s longevity. Some relationships and some relationship partners have more resources to bring to bear to maintain relationships in the face of threats.

• Attachment style
  Couples with secure attachment styles tend to accommodate more positively
• Commitment
  Constructive accommodation is more likely when people are committed to the relationship
• Idealization of partner and relationship
  Romantic partners often idealize each other. It helps people deal in conflict.
• Beliefs about relationships
  Different people have different views, or implicit theories, of what it takes to make a relationship succeed.

Break-up, bereavement, and loneliness

All relationships end, either because of break-up or death. If a relationship breaks up, each partner usually blames the other for its general decline. Individuals cope more effectively if they feel they controlled the final separation. The end of a relationship because of partner death is particularly painful, in part because death is typically beyond our control. After the end of a close relationship, loneliness and other negative feelings are common.

For many couples rising dissatisfaction and frustration with the relationship eventually outweigh the loving feelings that are still present.

After the break-up: grief and distress for two

Experience of ending a relationship almost always has more negative than positive consequences.
The cognitive and emotional consequences of the end of a close relationship can be long-lasting.

Till death do us part

The death of a spouse is regarded as the most stressful major life event.

Loneliness

No matter what terminates a close relationship, the end usually brings loneliness.
Loneliness is an emotion arising from unmet needs for affection and self-validation from a psychologically intimate relationship.