1. REMINDERS: Grades for the midterm will be posted soon. To review your exam, attend Natalie’s office hours. Dr. K does not have the exams. The paper is due May 19 th. Now is a great time to start it. Must be turned in as hard copy. This week’s video segment is especially good! Psychology 137C: Intimate Relationships Week 6, Lecture 1: Managing Differences, Part I

2. A Few Words about the Paper Goal: Use sections of the book to address a review question about intimacy and modern families. Choose a question that interests you! 5 double-spaced pages Explicit instructions in your syllabus Make it neat. Proof-read your work. Make it interesting. Please!

3. The Mystery of Conflict in Couples Consider what everyone wants from their intimate relationships. Consider what everyone knows about how we should treat our intimate partners. So how is it that we get into our worst, meanest, loudest, most hostile fights with the people we love the most?

4. When divorce rates climbed in the 1960s, couples therapy became more acceptable. The big complaint? Conflict. Social learning theorists assumed that mismanaged conflict was a primary cause of relationship distress. Clinicians as a driving force. They studied conflict and developed treatments based on this assumption. The History of Studying Couple Conflict

5. What IS Conflict? What IS Conflict? “Conflict arises when one person pursues his or her goals and in doing so interferes with the other person’s goals. … Responses to this interference can vary in many ways.” SO: - In every intimate relationship, some conflict is inevitable. - What matters is how we respond to conflict situations. - Social learning theory focuses on this question. Kurt Lewin 1890-1947

6. The cross-sectional question: What exactly is it that unhappy couples are doing wrong? The longitudinal question: What behaviors predict the future outcome of the relationship? The Research Agenda

7. Self-reports proved inadequate quickly. Learning to observe couples was key. The typical observational conflict paradigm: Locate happy and unhappy couples. Ask each spouse to identify a topic. Record their discussion for a few minutes. Compare observations of happy and unhappy couples. Methods: How to study conflict?

8. Deciding what to code Affect vs. verbal content Non-verbal behavior Sequences Microanalytic vs. global coding Behaviors as choices from a menu Getting reliability is hard. Observational Coding

9. Unhappy couples are more negative with each other than happy couples. (No big surprise.) Some subtleties: Kitchen-sinking Self-summarizing Presumptive attributions (i.e., mindreading) Cross-complaining Prescription So what are unhappy couples doing wrong?

10. Unhappy couples are more rigid and predictable. Negative reciprocity Unhappy couples take longer to exit negative exchanges. Happy wives, in particular, follow partner negatives with neutral behaviors. Free advice: Do not be the one to convert a neutral behavior into a negative behavior!! Negative Patterns and Sequences

11. Do we ever reinforce each other’s negative behaviors? A case study: The demand/withdraw pattern Social learning in action! Escape Conditioning

12. Negative behaviors should predict negative outcomes, right? Some weird results: Gottman & Krokoff, 1989 Karney & Bradbury, 1997 Is it ever productive to get angry? Predicting the Future

13. 172 newlywed couples, first marriages Dependent Variable: Slope, or rate of change in satisfaction over 4 years. Independent Variable: Positive vs. negative affect Positive vs. negative content Content & Affect & Slopes

15. Couples who are negative will experience faster declines in marital quality … But only when humor, interest, and affection are relatively rare. Positive emotion can override the effects of negative content during conflict. What do humor, interest, and affection contribute to our conversations? What is the message? What is the impact of this message? So, what predicts the future?