Attraction and close relationships (VL 13) Flashcards
Affiliative behavior
Acts that indicate that a person or animal chooses to be with others
Why affiliate? Benefits
Isolation seriously impairs cognitive and social functioning in the long run
- Schachter´s experiment on anxiety and social comparison: It is better to share a hospital room for recovery
Attractiveness
What makes one person feel positively about another
Physical Attractiveness
Theories for understanding attractiveness effects
- Socialization/Social Expectancy Theory: Cultural norms influence perception
- Fitness-Related Evolutionary Theories:
o Good Genes: Beauty signals health
o Mate Selection: Beauty signals reproductive fitness, which may be more important for men than women
o Differential Parental Solicitude: Parents invest more into more attractive children to enhance reproductive success
Propinquity effect
The more we see and interact with people, the more likely they are to become our friends
o Westgate Studies by Festinger, Schachter and Back: Housing studies for veterans who were randomly assigned showed that people that were more likely to cross ways were more likely to become friends
o Mere Exposure Effect presumably involved in the propinquity effect
Reciprocal Liking
One of the most potent determinants of our liking someone is if we believe that that person likes us
Similarity
Another factor that plays into determining if we like someone besides propinquity and attractiveness is if the person is similar to ourselves
- Study by Newcomb: Students who received free accommodation in return for filling out questionnaires about attitude; their attraction was first predicted by proximity and later on by similarity
Self-disclosure
The sharing of intimate information and feelings with another person
- We disclose to those we like
- We like those who disclose to us
- We like those to whom we have disclosed
Theories of attraction and relationships:
- Balance theory by Heider
- Reinforcement theory: Reinforcement Affect Model by Clore and Byrne, Liking for a person can be the result of evaluative conditioning: Positive and negative feelings aroused by stimuli become linked to the people around us
- Social exchange theories: Holding that how people feel about a relationship depends on their perceptions of the rewards and costs of the relationship, the kind of relationship they believe they deserve (comparison level) and their chances for having a better relationship with someone else (comparison level for alternatives)
Resources that can be exchanged in relationships
- Goods
- Information
- Love
- Money
- Services
- Status
Equity theory
People are happiest with relationships in which the rewards and costs a person and experiences and the contribution he or she makes to the relationship are roughly equal to the rewards, costs and contributions of the other person
Exchange relationships
Relationships governed by the need for equity
Communal relationships
Relationships in which people´s primary concern is being responsive to the other person´s needs
Companionate love
The feelings of intimacy and affection we feel for another person when we care deeply for the person, but do not necessarily experience passion or arousal in his or her presence
Passionate love
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
