Chapter 10: Attraction and Intimacy: Liking and Loving Others

Question 1

Need to Belong

Answer 1

A motivation to bond with others in relationships that provide ongoing, positive interactions

Question 2

Satisfaction of 3 Human Needs

Answer 2

• The need to belong
• The need to feel autonomous
• The need to feel competent

Question 3

Ostracism

Answer 3

• Being left out
• Challenges our need to belong
• Not being acknowledged feels worse than bullying
• Once feeling ostracized, people are more likely to lash out at the people they wish to be accepted by

Question 4

Ostracism: Self-defeating behaviors

Answer 4

• Those who feel neglected are more likely to participate in antisocial behavior and have less control over bad habits
• Ostracized people show worse brain mechanisms for inhibition of unwanted behavior

Question 5

Ostracism: Social Pain

Answer 5

• Ostracized people feel heightened in the brain centers for pain
• Taking a Tylenol can actually help with ostracism pain
• Love is a natural painkiller

Question 6

Friendship & Attraction: Promximity

Answer 6

• Functional distance between people
• Promotes liking due to increased interactions
• Most people marry someone who lives, works, or studies near them.

Question 7

Friendship & Attraction: Interaction

Answer 7

• People often grow to like those who they often interact with in common spaces
• Interactions play much more of a role in relationships than our personality or “type”

Question 8

Friendship & Attraction: Anticipation of Interaction

Answer 8

• When anticipating a relationship with someone that will cause us to interact with them, we pragmatically tend to spin their actions as positive so we can get along with them

Question 9

Friendship & Attraction: Mere-Exposure Effect

Answer 9

• When exposed to something repeatedly, even when it has no meaning, we interpret it as better than unfamiliar stimuli
• Stronger when unaware of stimuli
• However, if exposure is incessant, liking will most-likely drop

Question 10

Mere-Exposure Effect: Adaptive Significance

Answer 10

• Emotions semi-independent of thinking
• Lesion’s in amygdala impairs emotion, but not thought, vice versa
• Familiarity (even subversive) means assumed safety
• Causes fear of the unfamiliar (prejudice)
• Used by corporations in advertising (brief messages that expose rather than convince)

Question 11

Physical Attractiveness: Dating

Answer 11

• Importance to men vs women is debated
• Importance in general is clear (one of the most important factors)
• Becomes less important over time

Question 12

Physical Attractiveness: Matching Phenomenon

Answer 12

• People tend to seek those who are similar levels of attractiveness, or who make up for it with some other form of social asset

Question 13

The Physical Attractiveness Stereotype

Answer 13

• We assume that attractive people have other socially desirable traits
• As a result, we treat attractive people better because we assume they are better people
• Changing our appearance can have positive effects on how people treat us

Question 14

Physical Attractiveness: First Impressions

Answer 14

• In short & novel interactions, physical attractiveness makes more of an impact on judgements

Question 15

Physical Attractiveness: Is the Stereotype Accurate?

Answer 15

• Not in most basic personality traits
• However, attractive people are more socially adept, probably because of self-fulfilling prophecies

Question 16

Physical Attractiveness: Who is Attractive?

Answer 16

• Beauty standards are cultural
• Attractiveness influences life less in kinship-focused cultures than choice-focused ones
• More ‘average’ features are considered more attractive universally

Question 17

Physical Attractiveness: Evolution

Answer 17

• Beauty as biological information (health, youth, fertility)
• Men across cultures preferred features of reproductive capacity
• Women find physical strength attractive but are more likely to desire

Question 18

Physical Attractiveness: Social Comparison

Answer 18

• Attraction is not totally hardwired, it also depends on comparison standards
• When around attractive people, we view ourselves as less attractive

Question 19

Physical Attractiveness: Those we Love

Answer 19

• The more in love one is, the less likely they are to focus on the attractiveness of others

Question 20

Do Opposites Attract?

Answer 20

• We like people who smell different to avoid inbreeding
• Other than that, we mostly prefer similarities
• Complementarity: The “supposed” tendency for 2 people to ‘complete’ one another

Question 21

Similarity VS Complementarity

Answer 21

• All people in relationships are more similar to each other than to randoms
• We like people that are similar to us (roommates, strangers, babies, miming, cultures)
• Dissimilarity breeds disliking stronger than similarity breeds liking

Question 22

Liking Who Likes Us

Answer 22

• One person’s liking of someone predicts the other person’s liking
• We are more likely to like someone who shows liking for us first

Question 23

Liking Who Likes Us: Attribution

Answer 23

• Our reactions to others depend on our attribution of their actions
• INGRATIATION: The use of strategies, such as flattery, to gain someone’s favour
• If we sense ingratiation, the flattery loses its appeal

Question 24

Self-esteem & Attraction

Answer 24

• People w/ low self-esteem are more attracted to those who show interest in them
• People like those more who initially dislike them, and then change their opinion

Question 25

Reward Theory of Attraction

Answer 25

The theory that we like those whose behaviour is rewarding to us or whom we associate with rewarding events

Question 26

What is Love: Passionate Love

Answer 26

• A state of intense longing for union - we care a lot about receiving our partner’s love
• Sternberg: 3 components (passion, intimacy, commitment)
• Some elements are common to all loving relationships (mutuality, support, enjoying time together)
• Some are distinctive (Passionate-physical, exclusivity, fascination)

Question 27

What is Love: Theory of Passionate Love

Answer 27

• TWO-FACTOR THEORY OF EMOTION: Arousal is independent of our emotions, which depends on the label we put on it
• When we are aroused, we are likely to attribute our arousal to the wrong thing if something else comes up

Question 28

What is Love: Culture & Gender

Answer 28

• Love follows certain social scripts that tell us what lovers do
• Women and men have different responses in relationships and break ups

Question 29

Companionate Love

Answer 29

• Those who we feel love for based on interwoven lives (arranged marriages)
• Arranged marriages are more ‘successful’ than love marriages - love is based on interwoven lives more than choice
• Passions are likely to cool down, but interwoven lives provide an increased incentive

Question 30

Attachment

Answer 30

• Attachment is biological, we are hardwired to be attached to others
• Babies’ first emotion is love
• Parent-child love is also passionate

Question 31

Attachment Styles: Secure Attachment

Answer 31

Rooted in trust and marked by intimacy (70%)

Question 32

Attachment Styles: Avoidant Attachment

Answer 32

Marked by discomfort over, or resistance to, being close to others - an insecure attachment style (20%)

Question 33

Attachment Styles: Anxious Attachment

Answer 33

Marked by anxiety or ambivalence - an insecure attachment style (10%)

Question 34

Attachment Styles: Relationships

Answer 34

A mix of attachment styles can impact relationships - we are always working on getting what we want, and it depends on the partner’s attachment style if they give it to us

Question 35

Relationship Equity

Answer 35

Equity: A condition in which the outcomes people receive from a relationship are proportional to what they contribute to it
- P.S. Equitable outcomes needn’t always be equal outcomes

Question 36

Long-Term Equity in Relationships

Answer 36

• When one feels like they are not getting as much as they are giving, they will begin keeping a scorecard
• When we feel that we are not being reciprocated, we will be distressed and may lash out

Question 37

Perceived Equity & Satisfaction in Love

Answer 37

• If we perceive inequity, we get stressed, which makes us perceive more inequity

Question 38

Self-Disclosure

Answer 38

• Revealing intimate aspects of oneself to others
• This leads to having ‘shared-knowledge’ with another, which enables intimacy and trust

Question 39

Self-Disclosure: Disclosure Reciprocity

Answer 39

The tendency for one person’s intimacy of self-disclosure to match that of a conversational partner

Question 40

Divorce

Answer 40

People usually stay married if:
- Married after 20
- Grew up in stable homes
- Dated long before marriage
- Well/similarly educated
- Stable income/good job
- Live in small town
- Did not cohabit or conceive before marriage
- Are religious
- Are of similar age, faith, and education

Question 41

Detachment Process

Answer 41

1. Agitated preoccupation w/ last partner
2. Deep sadness
3. Emotional detachment
4. Letting go of old - focus on new
5. Renewed sense of self