Chapter 12 Terms

Question 1

Passionate Love

Answer 1

Strong feelings of longing, desire, and excitement toward a special person.

Question 2

Companionate Love

Answer 2

Mutual understanding and caring to make the relationship succeed.

Question 3

Passion

Answer 3

An emotional state characterized by high bodily arousal, such as increased heart rate and blood pressure.

Question 4

Intimacy

Answer 4

A feeling of closeness, mutual understanding, and mutual concern for each other’s welfare and happiness.

Question 5

Commitment

Answer 5

A conscious decision that remains constant.

Question 6

Communal Relationship

Answer 6

Relationships based on mutual love and concern, without expectation of repayment.

Question 7

Attachment Theory

Answer 7

A theory that classifies people into four attachment styles (secure, preoccupied, dismissing avoidant, and fearful avoidant) based on two dimensions (anxiety and avoidance).

Question 8

Secure Attachment

Answer 8

Style of attachment in which people are low on anxiety and low on avoidance; they trust their partners, share their feelings, provide and receive support and comfort, and enjoy their relationships.

Question 9

Preoccupied (anxious/ambivalent) Attachment

Answer 9

Style of attachment in which people are low on avoidance but high on anxiety; they want and enjoy closeness but worry that their relationship partners will abandon them.

Question 10

Dismissing Avoidant Attachment

Answer 10

Style of attachment in which people have both high anxiety and low on avoidance; they tend to view partners as unreliable, unavailable, and uncaring.

Question 11

Fearful Avoidant Attachment

Answer 11

Style of attachment in which people have both high anxiety and high avoidance; they have low opinions of themselves and keep others from getting close.

Question 12

Self-Acceptance

Answer 12

Regarding yourself as being a reasonably good person as you are.

Question 13

Investment Model

Answer 13

Theory that uses three factors- satisfaction, alternatives, and investments- to explain why people stay with their long-term relationship partners.

Question 14

Distress-maintaining style of attribution

Answer 14

Tendency of unhappy couples to attribute their partner’s good acts to external factors and bad acts to internal factors.

Question 15

Relationship-enhancing style of attribution

Answer 15

Tendency of happy couples to attribute their partner’s good acts to internal factors and bad acts to external factors.

Question 16

Social-Constructionist Theory

Answer 16

Theories asserting that attitudes and behaviors, including sexual desire and sexual behavior, are strongly shaped by culture and socialization.

Question 17

Evolutionary Theory

Answer 17

Theory of sexuality asserting that the sex drive has been shaped by natural selection and that its factors thus tend to be innate.

Question 18

Social Exchange Theory

Answer 18

Theory that seeks to understand social behavior by analyzing the cost and benefits of interacting with each other; it assumes that sex is a resource that women have and men want.

Question 19

Coolidge Effect

Answer 19

The sexually arousing power of a new partner (greater than the appeal of a familiar partner).

Question 20

Erotic Plasticity

Answer 20

The degree to which the sex drive can be shaped and altered by social, cultural, and situational forces.

Question 21

Extradyadic Sex

Answer 21

Having sex with someone other than one’s regular relationship partner.

Question 22

Social Reality

Answer 22

Beliefs held in common by several or many people; public awareness of some event.

Question 23

Paternity Uncertainty

Answer 23

The fact that a man cannot be sure that the children born to his female partner are his.

Question 24

Double Standard

Answer 24

Condemning women more than men for the same sexual behavior (e.g., premarital sex).

Question 25

Reverse Double Standard

Answer 25

Condemning men more than women for the same sexual behavior (e.g., premarital sex).