Interpersonal Relationships: Cog Theories of Attraction Flashcards
What is the internal working model?
Hazan and Shaver
- Bowlby posited that as children we form mental representations/schema based on our first bonded relationship - often with our mother or another caregiver
- the motivation to form attachments is biologically based but the process of forming attachments is based on experience
- ie. If a child experiences love and affection, she will come to see herself as worthy of love and attention - this is her working model
- the working model will determine her relationship with other people and the way she sees herself in the future
- Bowlby believed that humans tend to reproduce the internal working model in later relationships
What are the three components of the internal working model?
- ideas about attachment figures and what can be expected from them
- ideas about the self
- ideas about how self and others relate
What are the 3 attachment styles?
Ainsworth’s Strange Situation Test
Insecurely attached - avoidant: The child shows apparent indifference when the mother leaves the room, and avoids contact with her when she returns. The child is apparently not afraid of strangers
Securely attached: The child is upset when the mother leaves and is happy to see her again. The child is easily comforted by the mother.
Insecurely attached: The child is very upset when the mother leaves the room, and the mother has difficulty soothing the child when she returns. The child seeks comfort, but at the same time rejects it.
Hazan & Shaver - Aim
- To determine if there was a correlation between one’s attachment style and their satisfaction in romantic relationships
Hazan & Shaver - Procedure
- Researchers devised a questionnaire (“love quiz”) in a local newspaper
- A self-selected sample responded to the love quiz
- The questionnaire was divided into 3 parts:
1. Statements concerning the participant’s most important relationship
2. Specific questions about the nature of the relationship
3. Questions about the participant’s childhood relationships with their mother/father and the parent’s relationship with each other - Participants responded to a Likert scale to indicate points along a strongly disagree to strongly agree continuum
Hazan & Shaver - Findings and conclusion
Findings:
- Most respondents demonstrated a secure attachment style
- The best predictor of adult attachment type was the participants’ perceptions of the quality of their relationship with each parent and the parents’ relationship with each other
People who were securely attached:
- Said their parents had been readily available, attentive, and responsive
- Secure lovers described their most important love experience as especially happy, friendly, and trusting - their relationships tended to endure longer than the ambivalent and avoidant participants
- Secure participants said that romantic feelings wax and wane but at times reach the intensity experienced at the start of the relationship and that in some relationships romantic love never fades
People who were avoidant:
- Said their parents were unresponsive, rejecting, and inattentive
- Avoidant lovers were characterized by fear of intimacy, emotional highs and lows, and jealousy
- The avoidant participants said the kind of head-over-heels romantic love depicted in novels and movies does not exist in real life; romantic love seldom lasts
People who were ambivalent:
- Parents: anxious, only sometimes responsive, and generally out of step with their needs
- Experienced love as involving obsession, desire for reciprocation and union, emotional highs and lows, and extreme sexual attraction and jealousy
- Claimed that it’s easy to fall in love and that they frequently feel themselves beginning to fall, although (like the avoidant participants) they rarely find what they would call real love
- Like the secure participants, the ambivalent participants said they believe that romantic feelings wax and wane over the course of a relationship
Conclusion:
- Although the researchers found there was some correlation between childhood attachment style and the quality of one’s adult romantic relationships, they warned about drawing too many conclusions about the continuity between early childhood experience and adult relationships
- It would be overly deterministic to say that insecurely attached children would also end up in insecure adult relationship patterns
Hazan & Shaver - Evaluation
Limitations:
- Self-selected sample: perhaps not representative, more motivated to take part in the task
- Sampling bias: more females than males, level of education was higher than the population average
- Self-reported data: open to demand characteristics, less reliable, questionnaires were anonymous which served as a control for the social desirability effect. However, it is difficult for people to articulate exactly how they feel in love relationships.
- The peak-end rule may play a role in distorting memory
- It would be useful to assess both partners in a relationship to triangulate data and get beyond self-report
- Since the study was conducted in the Western world it would be important to carry out cross-cultural research to see if this is a consistent pattern before final conclusions can be made
- The Likert scale could compromise construct validity as participants may have different interpretations of the questions and/or the scale itself
- The study is correlational and cannot determine a cause-and-effect relationship
What is the similarity attraction model?
Markey and Markey
- The similarity-attraction model argues that people like and are attracted to others who are similar, rather than dissimilar to themselves
- Maybe this is because there is a tendency for people to live in areas where people are like themselves
- It makes sense that other people’s support for one’s own views and attitudes is rewarding because it validates one’s opinions and boosts self-esteem
Markey and Markey - Aim
To investigate the role of similarity in choosing a romantic partner
Markey and Markey - Procedure
- A self-selected sample of young undergraduate students who were single but interested in finding a romantic partner were recruited through advertisements
- Participants first completed a questionnaire where they rated their own personality and then described the personality of their romantic ideal
- They also completed filler questionnaires to disguise the true purpose of the study in order to reduce demand characteristics
Markey and Markey - Findings and Conclusion
Findings:
- All participants wanted a romantic partner similar to themselves
- Warm people were attracted to others who were warm
- Dominant people found dominance attractive
Conclusion:
- The results indicate that people believe that similarity in a potential partner is important but maybe this ideal partner is difficult to find
Markey and Markey - Evaluation
Limitations:
- Study was based on self-report questionnaires: responses may have been influenced by demand characteristics
- The sample consisted of young American students: It’s not possible to generalize to other populations unless similar research was to be conducted with couples in different kinds of relationships, or from other cultures to confirm the results
- The study used correlational analysis: difficult to establish a cause and effect relationship between personality and preference in a romantic partner
Strengths:
- However, the results are based on a relatively large sample, and this enhances the reliability of the study
