1. Psychology 301 Social Psychology Lecture 21, Nov 18, 2008
Attraction and Relationships
Instructor: Cherisse Seaton

2. Overview Defining Intimacy & Love Theories of Love
Why relationships? Evolutionary perspective
Maintaining close relationships: Social Exchange Theory

3. Announcements
Also:
Leading global media company, Pearson, is seeking college and university students to be part of the Pearson Student Advisory Board program from June June 2010 for their Higher Education business
Pearson Seeking Two Canadian Student Advisors

4. Readings for this section
Aronson et al. Chapter 9

5. Review II. Relationships Similarity Self-disclosure Satisfaction
Ending

6. What Defines a Close Relationship?
Different types:
Friends
Romantic partners
Parents
Children
Siblings

7. Interpersonal attraction: The positive attitude that we form about another person.

8. Love versus liking: Quantitative Vs Qualitative difference
Unidimensional: Heider
LOVE Liking Neutral Dislike HATE
Distinct:
Freud:
love = sublimated sexual desire
Maslow:
love = stems from self-deficiencies
Rubin (1973)
Distinct – overlapping

9. Love
The movement from close relationships to romantic relationships involves greater interdependence and intimacy.
Love appears to come in several varieties that arise in different ways and have different consequences.
How many kinds of love are there?

10. In fact, there are quite a few kinds of love . . .

11. Love Hatfield and Walster (1981) Two major kinds of love:
1.Companionate love
2. Passionate love
Distinction between these two

12. Companionate love Definition: Friendship Familial love
“The feelings of intimacy and affection we feel for another person about whom we care deeply”
Friendship
Familial love
High level of liking
Mutual respect
Care

13. Passionate Love Definition: Characteristics:
“The feelings of intense longing, accompanied by physiological arousal, we feel for another person; when our love is reciprocated, we feel great fulfillment and ecstasy, but when it is not, we feel sadness and despair”
Characteristics:
Intense pain and pleasure
Preoccupation
Idealize
High arousal

14. Gender & Love Men: Women: Fall in love more quickly than women.
Are more likely to endorse romantic beliefs such as ‘true love lasts forever’.
Women:
Hold a more practical, friendship-based orientation to love (i.e. a companionate view of love).

15. Close Relationships
The movement from casual to close relationships involves the development of interdependence.
The first close relationships develop in the family and set the stage for the relationships that we will form throughout our lives.

16. John Bowlby’s Theory of Attachment Relationships
Infants have two competing needs:
The need for safety
The need to explore
There must be an evolutionary mechanism that provides a balance between these two needs
This mechanism is attachment
“Attachment” is a pre-wired, biological mechanism that is best understood in an evolutionary context
Attachment to parents provides the infant with a secure base

17. Patterns of Infant Attachment
Secure
Use the attachment figure as an effective secure base from which to explore the world.
Avoidant
Anxious about the attachment figure's responsiveness and have developed a defensive strategy for managing their anxiety.
Bartholomew splits category into:
Fearful
Dismissive
Ambivalent
Both anxiety and mixed feelings about the attachment figure are readily observable.

18. Attachment Relationships
Our earliest developmental experiences allow us to form two working models--one about the self and another about other people.
The working model about the self reflects our basic feelings of self-worth or self-esteem.
Model of self = the self as worthy of love and support
The working model about others reflects our basic beliefs involving interpersonal trust.
Model of others = other people are seen as trustworthy and available vs. unreliable/rejecting
Romantic attachment styles vary along these two dimensions

19. Romantic Attachment Styles

20. The Four Romantic Attachment Styles
Secure (47%) = a sense of worthiness (lovability) plus an expectation that other people are generally accepting and responsive.
Preoccupied (14%; F > M) = a sense of unworthiness (unlovability) combined with a positive evaluation of others.
Fearful (21%)= a sense of unworthiness (unlovability) combined with an expectation that others will be negatively predisposed (untrustworthy and rejecting).
Dismissing (18%; M > F) = indicates a sense of love-worthiness combined with a negative disposition toward other people.

21. Types of Love Henrick & Henrick’s “wheel of love”
Eros -- emotionally intense
Agape -- selfless, sacrificing love
Mania – possessive, dependent love
Pragma -- practical love
Storge -- friendship love
Ludus -- selfish love; practiced as a game

22. Aspects of Romantic Love: Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love
Sternberg claims that different types of relationships are based on different combinations of three qualities:
Intimacy – warmth, closeness and sharing of self
Passion – an intense emotional response to another person
Commitment – the decision to maintain the relationship
Different combinations of the three
results in seven different ‘forms’ of love

23. Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love

24. Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love
The components of Sternberg’s model change in level over time, accounting for the changing nature of love in most long-term relationships.

25. What’s Love Got to Do With It?
Evolutionary psychologists (e.g., Buss & Schmitt, 1993) argue that “love” is just an adaptation to insure survival of the species. It keeps parents together to provide protection of offspring who require a lengthy period of development before they can fend for themselves.
According to this view, men and women have quite different mate selection strategies that can be detected today in their views about sexual relations, desirable features in a mate, and infidelity.
Genetic or evolutionary ‘fitness’ = reproductive success (ability to pass on genes)
Human behaviour adapted to maximize reproductive success

26. Evolutionary perspective
We behave in ways to further the existence of our offspring
For women, reproduction is more demanding
For men, reproductions is much less constraining
Leads to different types of mate preferences

27. How many sexual partners do you desire?
How do the different evolutionary concerns of men and women affect their attitudes about sex and love?
How many sexual partners do you desire?

28. Buss & Schmidt (1993) From: Buss & Schmidt (1993)
But see: Pederson et al. (2002) for a refutation

29. How important is good financial prospects in a mate?
How do the different evolutionary concerns of men and women affect their attitudes about sex and love?
How important is good financial prospects in a mate?

31. How important is physical attractiveness in a mate?
How do the different evolutionary concerns of men and women affect their attitudes about sex and love?
How important is physical attractiveness in a mate?

33. Gender and the Personal Columns
Males
Females
Offer
Seek
Offer
Seek
Money
Job information
Personality traits (e.g., sincerity)
Money
Status
Career
Young
Physically attractive
Physical attractiveness

34. Infidelity
National surveys indicate extramarital infidelity in 20-25% of American marriages (Atkins et al., 2001).
Men – more likely sexual; women more likely ‘love affair’ (emotional)

35. Sexual Vs. Emotional Infidelity
Buss et al. (1992): Jealousy and Distress

36. Sexual Vs. Emotional Infidelity
Buss et al. (1992)
Physiological correlates

37. Maintaining close relationships
Jealousy caused by infidelity
One of the most damaging issues for a relationship
One of the most difficult problems to treat in therapy; although therapists estimated 50-65% of couples undergo therapy as a result of infidelity (Atkins et al., 2001)
Other issues:
Existence of low rewards and high costs.
Inequity in relationship (E.g., Equity theory)
What (other) theories explain why people maintain relationships?

38. Social Exchange Theory
Definition:
How people feel about their relationships depends on:
Their perception of the rewards and costs of the relationship.
The kind of relationship they deserve.
Their chances of having a better relationship with someone else.
Based on the Max-Min principle
People seek to maximize their benefits and minimize their costs
A relationship is more satisfying the more rewards and fewer costs it entails

39. Social Exchange Theory
Rewards: All positive things that a close relationship offers people. These are all of the reasons why somebody would want to be in a relationship.
Costs: All of the downsides to a relationship. These are all of the reasons why somebody would not want to be in a relationship.
Outcome: The difference between the rewards and costs of a relationship.
Outcome = Rewards - Costs

40. Social Exchange Theory
Additional factors that influence one’s interpretation of the outcome:
Comparison level (CL): The standard against which the outcome is compared
Comparison level alternative (CLalt): A person’s expectations about his or her other alternatives.

41. Social Exchange Theory
Loss of freedom, $, time, etc.
Costs (Inputs)
Benefits (Outputs)
Companionship, sexual fulfillment, etc.
Comparison Level (e.g., a standard)
Other person in a relationship, yourself in the past, an ideal
Comparison Level for Alternatives
Evaluation of the value of other partners

42. Social Exchange Theory: The investment model
Rusbult (1983)
The investment model suggests that people’s commitment to a relationship depends on:
Their satisfaction with the relationship in terms of rewards, costs, and comparison level for alternatives.
How much they have invested in the relationship that would be lost by leaving it.

43. Social Exchange Theory: The investment model
The investment model argues that commitment (C) to a relationship is determined by satisfaction (S) with the current relationship, investment (I) in the current relationship, and the availability of attractive alternatives (A) to the current relationship.

44. Social Exchange Theory: The investment model
The investment model explains why people will sometimes remain (High Commitment) in unhappy (Low Satisfaction) relationships.
Low alternatives may keep a person in an unhappy relationship just because there is nowhere else to go
High investments create a situation of psychological entrapment. The trapped person stays to justify the past investments. More may be invested in the relationship to try to make it better, but that escalates the need to remain to justify those investments.
What theory explains this?

45. Social Exchange Theory: The investment model
Rusbult (1983)

46. Commitment Personal dedication Constraint commitment Moral commitment
Motivation to maintain or enhance a relationship
Constraint commitment
Negative factors that keep a relationship going
Moral commitment
Based on sense of obligation
Factors that impact commitment
Investments of time, money, energy, and emotions in the relationship
The availability of alternatives

47. Commitment & “mate poaching”: The availability of alternatives
Schmidt (2004)
N = 16,000
53 countries
Mate poaching:
Approx 20% of long-term relationships begin when 1 or both partners are involved with others
Attempted to poach
Succumbed
Men
62%
47%
Women
40%
32%

48. In Summary,
Although “love”, or at least commitment, may have evolved to insure protection of offspring that required a lengthy period of development, today it is influenced by a large number of situational and cultural factors.