Interpersonal relationships Flashcards
The need for affiliation
The desire to experience and maintain close relations with others is generally viewed as a core attribute of human beings
- The need for involvement and belonging to a social groups such as friends, colleagues, teammates, etc.
- Leaders high in the needs for affiliation are more concerned about the needs of their followers and more engaged in transformational leadership (Steinmann, Otting, & Maier, 2016)
- People differ greatly in strength of need for affiliation
- What about people who claim they don’t need to affiliate? (Carvallo & Gabriel, 2006
Unmet needs for affiliation
Bing left out by others hurts!
- Sadness, anger, hurt feelings, and aggressive behaviors towards rejector (Buckley, Winkel, & Leary, 2004)
- Rejection experiences can influence the selective retention of social information (Gardner et al., 2000
Interpersonal attraction:
Proximity & Familiarity
Proximity is thought to be needed before feelings of attraction can develop
- Why does proximity influence our level of attraction to something? The repeated exposure effect (Zajonc, 1965)
- The more often we are exposed to a new stimulus the more favourable our evaluation tends to become
Moreland and Beach (1992) classroom setting study
•The more times an assistant attended the class the more liked they were.
Proximity & Familiarity
Reis et al 2011
its met to discuss several topics.
- Pairs discussed two, four, or six topics then rate their partners’ attractiveness
- The greater number of topics discussed the higher the ratings
- Similar findings in unstructured internet chats with a stranger
Frequency of exposure -> generates increased familiarity -> positive reactions towards the individual
Is physical proximity still needed?
With the advent of social media, we don’t have to be exposed to a person directly or even be near them physically to like them or develop friendships with them
- Technology has altered the effects of proximity and frequency of exposure! (e.g. Bumble BFF, social media, Tinder)
- Dating during COVID-19 (Marston & Morgan, 2020)
- Facebook status updates can lead to a greater sense of satisfaction and social support (Manago et al., 2012)
physical attractiveness
physically attractiveness appearance impacts interpersonal evaluations
- The ‘halo effect’, ‘What is beautiful is good’ (Dion, Berscheid, & Walster, 1972)
- Attractiveness is associated with positive characteristics such as being interesting, sociable, honest, and happy
physical attractiveness
Lemay, Clark, and Greenberg (2010)
partcipants viewed photos of strangers rated very high or below average physical attractiveness
- Rated their desire to form relationships with the strangers and the extent to which they believed those people desired to form relationships with others (their need to affiliate)
- Also rated interpersonal traits, e.g. kind, generous, warm, etc.
- ‘Attractive people’ viewed as higher in the need for affiliation and rated more favourably on interpersonal traits
- Effects mediated by participants’ level of desire to form relationships with attractive and unattractive strangers
The red effect
Colour-in-context theory (Eliot & Maier, 2012)
- Colour carries symbolic meaning
- The perception of a colour affects psychological functioning in line with connotations of that colour
- Colour meanings are derived from innate preferences and learning (culture)
- Colour influences affect, cognition, and behaviour; and vice versa
- Colour can encompass diverse meaning in different contexts and elicit different responses
- Elliot and Niesta (2008) across four experiments found that a photo of a woman in front of a red background was deemed more attractive and desirable
- HOWEVER, more recently studies have found no such effect, which they attribute to publication bias (See Peperkoorn et al., 2016)
What is an attractive face?
symmetry is important (e.g. Fink, Neave, Manning, & Grammer, 2006)
- The ‘averageness effect’ •Rhodes (2006) investigated the cues that make faces attractive
- Participants judged caricatures of faces, which varied from average to distinctive
- Averageness was correlated with facial attractiveness
•Why would facial averageness make a person more attractive? One explanation relates to familiarity
Critical point of these studies
These studies are heavily influenced by heteronormativity/ ‘cultural heterosexism’ (Herek, 2007)!
- Heteronormativity: The idea that binary gender identity and heterosexual orientation are the norm. A cultural ideology that takes heterosexuality and cisgenderism for granted.
- We are now theorising in a world that is more equal
- Heteronormativity might prescribe inequality when it leads psychologists to theorise a specific relationship trajectory – recognising ‘healthy’ development and creating an ‘ideal’; consequently positioning non-heterosexual relationships as the ‘other’
- We need to mitigate heterosexist bias in research
Similarity
classical social psychology study (Newcomb, 1956)
•Studied students who had not met each other before coming to university
•Measures their attitudes beforehand, about issues such as family, religion, public affairs
.•Liking of one another was assessed weekly after coming to campus
•The more similar the students were initially the more they liked each other by the end of the semester
.Lab experiments (Byrne, 1961)
•Attitudes of participants were assessed and they were then exposed to the attitudes, beliefs, values, and interests of a stranger and asked to evaluate that person
•People consistently indicated that they liked the stranger similar to themselves, and judged them more favourably
Similarity: More recently
Gonzaga, Campos, and Bradbury (2007) study:
- Sample of 66 dating couples provided measures of personality, relationship quality, and emotions.
- Couples were similar on personality and emotion
- Personality similarity positively predicted relationship quality
- Emotion similarity positively predicted relationship quality
Some researchers have found that partners do not have more similar personalities than randomly paired couples (Luo & Klohnen, 2005)
However, Gonzaga et al. (2007) longitudinal study found couples were more similar to each other than to strangers in both emotional experience and personality
When opposites attract
complementary needs theory (Winch, 1958)
- We make up for our own personal deficiencies by choosing partners who are strong in our weakest qualities
- Differences that, when combined, help to make the individual parts work together.
Markey and Markey (2007)
- Personality traits of 212 couples who had been romantically involved for at least one year
- The model of similarity somewhat applied to personalities
- Couples who reported higher levels of relationship quality were more similar in warmth, but dissimilar in terms of dominance
Why do we like others who are similar?
Balance theory (Newcomb, 1961; Heider, 1958) –
people naturally organise their lives in a balanced way.
When two people like each other and discover they are similar = state of balance, which is emotionally pleasant when two people like each other and discover they are
dissimilar = state of imbalance
How can we restore balance? Encouraging on person to change, underestimate difference or ignore dissimilarity
When two people dislike each other = state of non-balance, which isn’t pleasant or unpleasant because they are indifferent
Why do we like others who are similar?Social comparison theory (Festinger, 1954)
We compare our attitudes and beliefs with those of others because that’s the only way we can evaluate accuracy
- When you learn that someone else holds the same attitudes and beliefs, it feels good because it provides validation.
- Dissimilarity suggests the opposite and creates negative feelings
What do we desire in others?
Cottrell, Neuberg, and Li (2007):
- Asked undergraduate students to ‘create an ideal person’ by rating 31 characteristics in terms of importance
- Trustworthiness and cooperativeness were viewed as the most important traits, followed by agreeableness and extraversion
What about varied types of relationships? •Asked students to create ideal members of different groups and relationships (e.g. study group members, close friends, employees, etc.)
- Rated importance of 75 different traits
- Across all seven relationships, trustworthiness and cooperativeness were rated most important, followed closely by agreeableness and extraversion
- Other traits were viewed as more or less important depending on the relationships
Love (Sternberg, 1986)
Passionate love
A state “of intense longing for union with another” (Hatfield et al., 2011)
Often experienced most intensely during adolescence
Farber (1980) identifies that adolescents rarely know very much about the powerful feelings they are experiencing and know little about the differences between passionate love and the more realistic feelings of companionate love/intimacy that occur later
Hatfield, Brinton, and Cornelius (1989)
- Examined measures of anxiety (Child Anxiety Scale; State-Trait Anxiety Inventory for Children) and the Juvenile Love Scale in young adolescents
- Significant correlations between anxiety and the Juvenile Love Scale
Companionate Love
Very close relationship in which two people have a great deal in common, care about each other’s wellbeing, and express mutual liking and respect (Caspi & Herbener, 1990)
- The affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwine (Hatfield, 1988)
- Less intense, but a warm feeling of affection and tenderness that people feel with whom their lives are deeply connected (Jungsik & Hatfield, 2004)
- Jungsik and Hatfield (2004) found life satisfaction was strongly predicted by companionate love, whereas positive and negative emotions were more accounted for by passionate love than companionate love
Attachment theory
bowlby, 1973
Attachment experiences shape our social relationships throughout life
Infants acquire two basic attitudes during earliest interactions with an adult:
(1) an attitude about the self – behaviour and reactions of the caregiver provide information about whether they are valued, important, loved
(2) attitudes about others – interpersonal trust is based on whether the caregiver is perceived as trustworthy, dependable and reliable
Attachment Styles (Bartholomew & Horowitz, 1991)
Secure attachment: High in self-esteem and trust. More likely to form lasting, committed, satisfying relationships (Shaver & Brannen, 1992)
- Fearful-avoidant: Someone low in both self-esteem and interpersonal trust. Tend to not form close relationships or tend to have unhappy ones (Tidwell, Reis, & Shaver, 1996)
- Preoccupied: low self esteem and high interpersonal trust. Tend to want closeness (sometimes excessively). Cling to others but expect to be rejected because they believe themselves unworthy (Lopez et al., 1997; Whiffen et al., 2000)
- Dismissing: High self-esteem and low interpersonal trust. Believe they are deserving of a good relationship but don’t trust others. Dismisses the importance of close relationships (Carvallo & Gabriel, 2006
What factors are important in forming interpersonal relationships
Proximity, familiarity, attractiveness, and similarity
What is the need for affiliation
Desire to experience and maintain close relation
Who developed the triangular theory of love?
sternberg
