Chapter 8: Thinking and Feeling Flashcards
Relationship Cognition / Relationship Affect
The perception, attributions, beliefs, and thoughts (cognition), and the feelings, sentiments, and emotions (affect), that people experience and express in their intimate relationships.
Implicit Relationship Theories
People develop a vest array of beliefs, expectations, values, attitudes and assumptions about relationships from their own interpersonal experiences and by conservation.
- this knowledge is organized in the form of cognitive structures called relationship schemas or implicit relationship theories that influence interpersonal behaviour and are associated with relationship satisfaction and stability.
Romantic Beliefs
The Romantic Beliefs Scale (RBS) contains items that reflect the essential tents of romanticism:
- “Love finds a way.”
- “Love at first sight.”
- “one and only.”
- “Idealization,” i.e., idealization
- At least two personal factors - age and sex - are associated with romantic beliefs.
- younger adults were more likely than their older counterparts to believe in “instant love” and that “all problems can be solved if there is enough love.”
- Romantic idealism: men score higher than women on the RBS
- Those who endorse the romantic ideal report higher leaves of passionate love and liking for their partners than less romantic counterparts; they also tend to fall in love earlier and think more about their relationship during their partner’s absence.
Dysfunctional Relationship Beliefs
Some romantic beliefs can prove to be maladaptive; the six include:
- “Disagreement is destructive.”
- “Mindreading is expected and essential.”
- “Partners (and relationships) cannot change.”
- Relational sex should be perfect.”
- “Men and women are fundamentally different.”
- “Partners are either compatible (and destined to be together) or not.”
Relationship Belief Inventory (RBI)
Used to measure dysfunctional relationship beliefs
- scores on the RBI are negatively correlated with relationship satisfaction and adjustment among married and dating couples.
- correlated with greater use of ineffective coping strategies, e.g., denial, mental disengagement, behavioural disengagement, when faced with an upsetting relationship event
- correlated with negative behaviour in a conflict
Positive Illusions
People develop and possess beliefs about their specific relationships, partners, and themselves. Many of these illusory beliefs are more positive than can be logically sustained by objective reality or supported by the laws of probability.
Unrealistically positive self-views
Held by the majority of people, they judge positive traits as overwhelmingly more characteristic of themselves than negative traits; dismiss any unfavourable attributes they may have as inconsequential while at the same time emphasizing the uniqueness and importance of their favourable attributes.
Illusion of Control
Consisting of exaggerated perceptions of their own ability to mater and control events and situations that are solely or primarily determined by chance.
Unrealistically Optimistic
Most individuals are unrealistically optimistic about the future, believing that positive life vents are more likely (and negative events are less likely) to happen to them than to others.
Self-serving Biases / Self-enhancement biases
The cognitive process functions to protect and enhances people’s self-esteem and colour perceptions of the events that occur in their closet and most intimate relationships.
- married individuals overestimate the extent of their own contributions, relative to their spouses, to a variety of joint marital activities (e.g., planning mutual liesure activities, carrying the conversation, resolving conflict, providing emotional support, initiating discussion about the relationship, etc.)
- people tend to adopt a self-serving orientation when interpreting and responding to negative relationship events.
- ppl who overestimate = may end up feeling under-benefitted relative to their partners
- being overly optimistic about their chances of romantic happiness may not pay sufficient attention to identifying and avoiding common relational pitfalls; may result in them being ill-prepared to deal with conflict and other unexpected interpersonal situations
Relationship-enhancement biases
- e.g., research reveals pervasive memory bias for relationship events such that partners recall more positive experiences, fewer negative experiences, and greater improvement over time in relationship well-being than actually occurred.
- actual changes < perceived changes
Partner Idealization
The idealization effect is not limited to perceptions of romantic partners - parents view their children as possessing more positive qualities than the average child
Negativity Bias
Dissatisfied individuals often demonstrate a negativity bias such that they anticipate unpleasant behaviour form the partner, focus on the flawed or displeasing aspects of the partner’s character, and remember and rewrite the history of the relationship in an unfavourable way.
Sentiment override
The tendency for current feelings to influence cognitive appraisals of the partner and the relationship is called sentiment override - the individual overreaching positive or negative sentiment for the partner functions as a filter through which all aspects of the relationship are perceived, thus overriding the objective valence of specific partner actions or relationship events.
Neuroticism / Negative Emotionality
Refers to a person’s sensitivity to negative stimuli, the propensity to experience negative emotions, and stability over time.
- finding this particular disposition predicts dissolution,m and dissatisfaction or maladjustment
