Chapter 8 Love Flashcards
attitudes toward love have varied on at least four dimensions:
Cultural value - Is love a desirable or undesirable state?
Sexuality - Should love be sexual or nonsexual?
Sexual orientation - Should love involve heterosexual or same-sex partners?
Marital status - Should we love our spouses, or is love reserved for others?
triangular theory of love
The first component of love is INTIMACY, which includes the feelings of warmth, understanding, trust, support, and sharing that often characterize loving relationships.
The second component is PASSION, which is characterized by physical arousal and desire, excitement, and need. Pas-sion often takes the form of sexual longing, but any strong emotional need that is satisfied by one’s partner fits this category.
The final ingredient of love is COMMITMENT, which includes feelings of permanence, stability, and the decisions to devote oneself to a relationship and to work to maintain it. Commitment is mainly cognitive in nature, whereas intimacy is emotional and passion is a motive, or drive.
nonlove
If intimacy, passion, and commitment are all absent, love does not exist. Instead, you have a casual, superficial, uncommitted relationship between people who are probably just acquaintances, not friends.
Liking
Liking occurs when intimacy is high but passion and commitment are very low. Liking occurs in friendships with real closeness and warmth that do not arouse passion or the expectation that you will spend the rest of your life with that person. If a friend does arouse passion or is missed terribly when he or she is gone, the relationship has gone beyond liking and has become something else.
high intimacy, low passion or commitment
Infatuation
Strong passion in the absence of intimacy or commitment is infatuation, which is what people experience when they are aroused by others they barely know.
high passion, no intimacy
Empty love
Commitment without intimacy or passion is empty love. In Western cultures, this type of love may occur in burned-out relationships in which the warmth and passion have died, and the decision to stay together is the only thing that remains. However, in other cultures in which marriages are arranged, empty love may be the first, rather than final, stage in the spouses’ lives together.
romantic love
When high intimacy and passion occur together, people experience romantic love.
combination of liking and infatuation.
Companionate love
Intimacy and commitment combine to form love for a close companion, or companionate love but there’s low passion
closeness, communication, and sharing are coupled with substantial investment in the relationship as the partners work to maintain a deep, long-term friendship.
epitomized by a long, happy marriage in which the couple’s youthful passion has gradually died down.
Fatuous love
Passion and commitment in the absence of intimacy create a foolish experience called fatuous love. (“Fatuous” means “stupid” and “lack-ing substance.”)
in which two partners marry quickly on the basis of overwhelming passion but don’t know (or necessarily like) each other very well
consummate love
when intimacy, passion, and commitment are all present to a substantial degree, people experience “complete,” or consummate, love.
passion and intimacy are distinct experiences. true or false?
true
lust
the sex drive, regulated by the sex hormones
providing us the motivation to mate with others.
attraction
promotes the pursuit of a particular preferred romantic partner
drives pair-bonding by fueling romantic love, which is regulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine in specific regions of the brain that control feelings of reward
attachment
a term used here to describe the feelings of comfort, security, and connection to a long-term mate that keep a couple together long enough to protect and sustain their very young children
drives companionate love, which is regulated by the neuropeptide oxytocin.
passionate attraction is rooted in two factors:
(1) physiological arousal such as a fast heart beat that is coupled with
(2) the belief that another person is the cause of your arousal
adrenaline fuels love. true or false?
true
Some of the thoughts that underlie romantic love are apparent in a Love Scale that assesses:
Intimacy: “I feel that I can confide in my partner about virtually anything”
Dependence: “If I could never be with my partner, I would be miserable”
Caring: “I would do almost anything for my partner”
If you’re in love with someone, it’s probably partly ____ —you love your partner because of how that person makes you feel—and partly ______; you genuinely care for your partner and will work to satisfy and protect him or her.
selfish
generous
self-expansion model suggests …
that love causes our self-concepts to expand and change as our partners bring us new experiences and new roles, and we gradually learn things about ourselves that we didn’t know before
Long-lasting, satisfying marriages seem to include a lot of______ love.
companionate
dopamine is involved with ____ love which works in reward and pleasure centers of our brains
romantic
Oxytocin is involved with ____ love which promotes relaxation and reduces stress. aka “love and cuddle hormone,”
companionate
compassionate love
a type of love that com-bines the trust and understanding of intimacy with compassion and caring that involves empathy, selflessness, and sacrifice on behalf of the beloved
involves empathy for others and the benevolent wish to aid those who are in need of help
share the pain or joy that their loved ones experience, and they would rather suffer them-selves than to allow someone close to them to be hurt.
attentive, empathic, and generous
provide their partners more support—and take more pleasure in doing so—than do those who are less compassionate
compassionate love is rooted in more accurate understanding of our partners’ strengths and weaknesses;
which love is blind?
romantic
