chapter 8 textbook Flashcards
Eros
The erotic lover finds good looks compelling and seeks an intense, passionate relationship.
Ludus
The ludic lover considers love to be a game and likes to play the field.
Mania
The manic lover is demanding, possessive, and excitable.
Agape
The agapic lover is altruistic and dutiful.
Pragma
The pragmatic lover is practical, careful, and logical in seeking a mate.
Coolidge effect,
novelty causes sexual arousal in other species: If a male rat is caged with a female in estrus, he’ll mate with her repeatedly until he appears to be sexually exhausted; however, if the first female is then replaced with another receptive female, the male will mount her with renewed interest and vigor. By continuing to replace an old partner with a new one, researchers can elicit two to three times as many ejaculations from the male as would have occurred with only the single female
A Brief History of Love
Different societies have held very different perspectives on love, and only recently has love been associated with marriage.
The Triangular Theory of Love.
Intimacy, passion, and commitment are thought to
combine to produce eight different types of love.
Romantic, Passionate Love
Passion (which increases when a person becomes aroused for any reason) and intimacy combine to form romantic love. It is characterized by idealized evaluations of one’s partner.
Companionate Love.
Commitment and intimacy combine to form companionate love, a deep friendship with someone with whom one’s life is intertwined. Happy spouses usually say that they are good friends.
Compassionate Love.
Intimacy combines with selfless caring for the beloved to form compassionate love. Compassionate acts enhance relationships.
Styles of Loving.
Six themes in love experiences that are differentially correlated with the various types of love have also been identified.
Culture and love
Love is much the same around the world, but cultural nuances exist.
attachment style and love
Secure people enjoy stronger experiences of romantic, companionate, and compassionate love than insecure people do.
Age and love
People mellow with age, experiencing less intense love as time goes by.
Men and Women and love
Men and women are more similar than different when it comes to love. However, women pick their lovers more carefully and fall in love less quickly than men do.
Does Love Last?
In most—but not all—cases, romantic love decreases after people marry, sometimes quite rapidly.
Why Doesn’t Romantic Love Last?
Romance and passion involve fantasy, novelty, and arousal, and each fades with time. The Coolidge effect occurs when novelty increases sexual arousal.
intimacy
which includes the feelings of warmth, understanding, trust, support, and sharing that often character- ize loving relationships.
passion
hich is characterized by physical arousal and desire, excitement, and need. Passion often takes the form of sexual longing, but any strong emotional need that is satisfied by one’s partner fits this category.
commitment
which includes feelings of per- manence, 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 emo- tional 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.
Infatuation
Strong passion in the absence of intimacy or commitment is infatua- tion, which is what people experience when they are aroused by others they barely know. Sternberg (1987) admits that he pined away for a girl in his 10th-grade biology class whom he never got up the courage to get to know. This, he now acknowledges, was nothing but passion. He was infatuated with her.
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. Thus, one way to think about romantic love is as a combination of liking and infatuation. People often become committed to their romances, but Stern- berg argues that commitment is not a defining characteristic of romantic love.
Companionate love.
Intimacy and commitment combine to form love for a close companion, or companionate love. Here, closeness, communication, and sharing are coupled with substantial investment in the relationship as the partners work to maintain a deep, long-term friendship. Companionate love is 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 “lacking substance.”) This type of love can occur in whirlwind courtships in which two partners marry quickly on the basis of overwhelming passion but don’t know (or necessarily like) each other very well. In a sense, such lovers invest a lot in an infatuation—and that’s a risky business.
Consummate love
Finally, when intimacy, passion, and commitment are all present to a substantial degree, people experience “complete,” or consummate, love. This is the type of love many people seek, but Sternberg (1987) suggests that it’s a lot like losing weight: easy to do for a while, but hard to maintain over time.
