Lecture 1: The Why & How of Relationship Science Flashcards
1
Q
Why does survival tend to be higher when people form groups?
A
- Access to resources
- Division of labour
- Assistance for the weak
- Resolve to stay alive
- Family members have someone else encouraging them to make it; a reason to go one step further
- The importance of having direct social contact can’t be underestimated
- Even in modern times, the number of healthy social ties you have can be an even greater predictor of health than physical factors
2
Q
For humans, is it “survival of the fittest,” as with other animals?
A
- It tends to be survival of the most social!
- Humans who are better at keeping people around them are more likely to survive in the wilderness/hunt large game, etc.
- We’ve evolved to be creatures that are good at maintaining social bonds & sense that it’s important for our survival
- While we don’t technically need other people to survive anymore, social relationships are “written into our DNA” in a sense
- It’s no longer a matter of life and death, but we experience it as if it were
3
Q
What is the need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995)?
A
A drive to establish and maintain close relationships/social contact with people you feel connected to
4
Q
What are the 4 requirements for social bonds to be considered a “need” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995)?
A
- Naturally motivated to pursue it (and avoid being deprived of it)
- Deprivation has consequences
- e.g. With food, if you don’t have enough of it then you die — something equally dramatic should happen without social contact
- Can be satiated
- Should see it across all cultures
5
Q
Are we naturally motivated to pursue social bonds?
A
- Forming social bonds happens spontaneously
- Babies form attachments to caregivers (before able to calculate benefits, be convinced of utility)
- You don’t have to tell a baby that it should do this – they do it naturally
- Minimal group situations: People show in-group favouritism even when group membership is randomly assigned (e.g. Robber’s Cave Experiment)
- Babies form attachments to caregivers (before able to calculate benefits, be convinced of utility)
- There’s research that shows this is true even under adverse conditions (i.e. not just classical conditioning)
- Participants who experienced electric shock together liked each other more than controls
- More attachment among military veterans who experienced heavy combat
- Readily cooperate with people who were recently rivals or are members of disliked group
- We’re so good at it, that we
- a) don’t need the other person to help
- Parasocial relationships: one-sided relationships with personalities from the media
- b) don’t even need it to be a person
- Anthropomorphizing of pets and inanimate objects
- a) don’t need the other person to help
6
Q
Are we averse to being deprived of social bonds?
A
- Yes, social bonds are hard to break and we don’t want others to break our bonds with them
- Hard to end any relationship – even those that we elected to dissolved or wish to dissolve
- Staying friends after breaking up, divorcing
- Staying in toxic/abusive relationships
- Has a little bit to do with concern for the other person, but it’s mostly because we’re programmed not to break social ties
- Hard to end any relationship – even those that we elected to dissolved or wish to dissolve
- People are reluctant to admit that even relatively meaningless relationships will end (or have ended)
- Promising to maintain contact even when this is unlikely
- e.g. Having hundreds of Facebook friends
- “Why don’t you delete those friends?” – “What if I need to talk to them again?”
- Many rituals even promote the maintenance of relatively weak social bonds
- Christmas cards
- High school, college reunions
- Promising to maintain contact even when this is unlikely
7
Q
Does being deprived of social bonds have negative consequences?
A
- Lack of social connection is a strong predictor of mortality
- Rivals predictors like smoking in terms of how much it contributes to someone’s death
- i.e. In old age, someone who is lonely is at greater risk of dying than someone who regularly smokes
- Other serious consequences of loneliness:
- Poorer self-regulation, fewer health-promoting behaviours
- Reduced sleep quality
- Poorer physiological functioning (increased blood pressure, cortisol)
- Lower immune system functioning
- Cognitive impairment, psychological disorders
8
Q
What health benefits do married couples see?
A
- Happily married couples are healthier – psychologically and physically – than other groups (even non-married people in long-term relationships)
- e.g. More than 3x likely to survive open-heart surgery
- Extends to same-sex couples
- Since Denmark started recognizing same-sex marriages, death rates for same-sex couples have dropped
- i.e. Marriage added an extra layer of “protection” for these couples
9
Q
Can our need to belong be satiated?
A
- As an intimate relationship develops, people:
- Spend less time with other people such as friends
- Report lower desire for ex-partners
- Dunbar’s number: proposed that 150 connections
- Cognitive limit to the number of people one’s can have stable social relationships with
- We don’t have an unlimited mental capacity/structure to keep track of an infinite number of people
- If belongingness needs are thwarted:
- Individuals are more attuned (than normal) to people displaying positive emotions
- i.e. When we’re more lonely, we’re more on the lookout for potential connections, meaning we’re on the look-out for signs of friendliness
- Help others more
- Starting point to building trust/bonds with another person in order to start a friendship
- Individuals are more attuned (than normal) to people displaying positive emotions
- Our need to belong varies from situation to situations (in accordance with how much belonging we feel we have)
- Just like how we’re more/less hungry in certain situations
10
Q
Is the need to belong universally seen across cultures?
A
- Yes, although how much differs by person & situation
- i.e. It’s not universal in the sense that everyone experiences the same need
- People naturally form groups across cultures and experience distress when relationships end is universal
- No evidence of cultures in which people seem happier, healthier when single (compared to when they have close relationships)
- Across cultures, distinguish between close and less close others
- No known cultures where there’s no hierarchy of relationships
11
Q
What are the 7 ways that intimate relationships differ from more casual associations?
A
- Knowledge — personal, confidential
- Interdependence — the extent to which partners need and influence each other — is strong, frequent, diverse, and enduring
- Caring — feel more affection for one another than for most others
- Trust — expecting to be treated fairly and honorably
- Responsiveness — to needs and being concerned for welfare
- Mutuality — recognize their connection (thinking in “us” instead of “me” and “them”)
- Commitment — expect partnerships to continue indefinitely, invest time/effort/resources to pursue this goal
12
Q
What are the 3 main sources of individual differences in intimate relationships?
A
-
Interpersonal experiences — especially bonds with caregivers → attachment styles
- Which is perhaps the most important factor
- Culture — economics, individualis, technology, sex ratios
-
Biology — the role of sex and gender
- Which may be a lot less important than people think it is
13
Q
How can economics (culture) influence intimate relationships?
A
- Societies which are more industrialized and affluent tend to tolerate more singles, divorces, and a later age of marriage
- In general, socio economic development has been increasing around the world
14
Q
How does individualism (culture) influence intimate relationships?
A
- As we become more preoccupied with our own pleasures, we tend to be more materialistic, less trusting, and less concerned with others
- Societies in which there is a more collective sense of self (e.g. Japan) tend to have lower divorce rates, compared to the USA
15
Q
How does technology (culture) influence intimate relationships?
A
- Women are increasingly able to control their fertility
- An increase in technoference, the frequent interruptions of their interactions that are caused by their various technological device
- And phubbing, when one partner snubs another by focusing on a phone
16
Q
How does a country’s sex ratio (culture) influence intimate relationships?
A
- Cultures with a high sex ratio (more men than women) tend to support more old-fashioned gender roles for men and women
- Cultures with a low sex ratio (more women than men) tend to be less traditional and more permissive; e.g. seeking high-paying careers and extra-marital sexual relations
17
Q
What is attachment?
A
- An attachment bond is more than love/connectedness
- i.e. Not just a positive, warm feeling towards someone
- It’s an intimate emotional bond to a particular individual who is seen as providing protection, comfort, and support
- Our first attachment figure is (usually) our caregiver
- We learn about how attachment works from this person
18
Q
What is John Bowlby’s attachment theory?
A
- Conducted research on orphans
- Infants who were separated from their caregivers were highly distressed
- Often cried and clung onto caregivers in the orphanage, but always seemed to be searching
- It’s not just about connection, but attachment with your caregiver
- Theorized that we have an in-built attachment system which allows us to form bonds with others and leads us to become distressed if they are unavailable
- Evolutionary function of the attachment system: keep caregivers close to infants
- Infants cry in order to force the caregiver to come back to them – they can’t survive on their own
19
Q
What are the 3 processes in Bowlby’s model of attachment?
A
- Proximity maintenance: Staying near and resisting separations from caregiver
- Safe haven: Turning to caregiver for comfort, support, and reassurance
- Secure base: Using caregiver as a base from which to engage in non-attachment behaviour (explore)
20
Q
What did Bowlby suggest was the purpose of attachment?
A
- An innate behavioral system
- Behaviours that promote attachment to specific individuals who will care for and protect the vulnerable infant
- Behavioral system is most activated when infant in danger or distress – goal is to get the caregiver to help them regulate emotional distress and restore felt security
- (This is how it’s supposed to work theoretically, but there are a lot of individual differences)
21
Q
What problems did Mary Ainsworth find in Bowlby’s attachment model?
A
- Bowlby strong focused on developing normative aspects of attachment theory, but less so on individual differences
- Normative processes—ideal situation—but, not all relationships develop in an ideal manner
- Ainsworth was also concerned with whether children were attached, but more so with how they were attached
22
Q
How can individual differences in attachment form?
A
- Learn in early childhood what to expect from others
- Based on our experiences, we develop general beliefs and expectations/working models about
- Others: whether they will responsive to our needs
- Self: whether we are worthy of love
- These beliefs influence our thoughts, feelings and behavior in relationships
23
Q
What is Ainsworth’s strange situation?
A
- Infants and their caregiver entered an unfamiliar room containing lots of interesting toys
- Infant plays with toys and a stranger walks in the room
- Then, crucially the infant’s caregiver leaves the room
- Separation causes infants to become distressed (most of the time)
- After 3 minutes, caregiver returns
- What happens when they return?
- Responsive and sensitive caregiver → secure attachment (~60%)
- Explores when CG is present and upset when CG leaves
- Happy to see CG return; easily soothed, goes back to playing
- Inconsistent caregiver → ambivalent attachment (~20%)
- Clings to CG when present, extremely upset when CG leaves
- Cannot be soothed when CG returns; mix of seeking and resisting comfort
- Rejecting or hostile caregiver → avoidant attachment (~20%)
- Explores when CG is present and slightly/not upset when CG leaves
- Is distant and withdrawn, or ignores CG when they come back
- Responsive and sensitive caregiver → secure attachment (~60%)
24
Q
How do the characteristics of the infant influence attachment styles?
A
- Temperament
- Attachment of parents matters most for infants with difficult or reactive temperaments because parents have more difficulty gauging how to appropriately respond to their infants in the future
- Sensitivity matters important for shy infants (those who initiate interactions less)
- Training for parents does actually help promote secure attachment
- Susceptibility to environmental influences
- For some people, it’s more/less nature vs. nurture, i.e. environment is more/less important for their development due to aspects of their biology (e.g. dandelion vs. orchid kids)
25
Q
How does childhood attachment relate to adult attachment?
A
- Attachment system appears to generalize beyond caregiver/infant relationships to close relationships in adulthood
- With adults, we measure 2 dimensions of attachment
- Avoidance of intimacy: affects the ease and trust with which they accept interdependent intimacy with others; tend to distrust others, value their independence, and keep their emotional distance
- Anxiety about abandonment: the dread that others will find them unworthy and leave them; uneasy about being in an interdependent relationship due to possible mistreatment
- Avoidance vs. abandonment are on a continuous scale from low to high
- The biggest distinction is focussing on people who are secure and those who aren’t
26
Q
How do we measure adult attachment?
A
- Scales of low/high avoidance and anxiety form 4 different quadrants of attachment which people can fall into
- These are theoretical orthogonal constructs; they’re independent of each other
- Generally, you won’t find fearful-avoidant people because they’re fairly rare in the population
- You also don’t usually find anxious-preoccupied people in studies because they’re not the type of people who’d voluntarily participate in psychology experiments about relationships
- Most people tend to fall more in the middle of these scales, towards the secure side, rather than in the extremes of high/low
27
Q
What is secure attachment (low anxiety and low avoidance)?
A
- Working model of others: Positive
- History of warm and responsive interactions with attachment figures
- Working model of self: Positive
- Believes self to be worthy of responsive caregiving
- Learned that proximity seeking leads to support, protection, and relief of distress
- Turn to others when distressed; believe distress is manageable
- More stable and satisfying relationships
28
Q
What is anxious-preoccupied attachment (high anxiety and low avoidance)?
A
- Working model of others: Positive
- History of inconsistent responsiveness from attachment figures; know others are capable of responsiveness
- Working model of self: Negative
- Blame self for others’ lack of responsiveness; doubt self-worth
- Learned that others are capable of providing support, but are not sure when it will be provided or taken away
- Hypervigilant about loss and rejection
- When distressed, excessive reliance on others
- Demanding of closeness, attention and approval
- In relationships, are intrusive, demanding, and overly disclosing
- Also have a particularly hard time getting over break-ups
29
Q
What is dismissive-avoidant attachment (low anxiety and high avoidance)?
A
- Working model of others: Negative
- History of unresponsive or rejecting attachment figures
- Working model of self: Positive
- View themselves as self-sufficient
- Learned that proximity seeking does NOT lead to support, protection and relief of distress
- Avoid seeking support when distressed; instead, value self-reliance and independence
- Relationships lack intimacy
- Keep partners at a distance, averse to commitment
- Report feeling a sense of relief after break-ups
30
Q
What is fearful-avoidant attachment (high anxiety and high avoidance)?
A
- Working model of others: Negative
- History of neglect or abuse from attachment figures
- Working model of self: Negative
- Blame self for others’ lack of responsiveness; doubt self-worth
- High anxiety: hypersensitive to potential hurt and rejection
- High avoidance: withdraws when upset; avoidant coping
- Relatively poor personal and social adjustment
- Difficulty expressing feelings
31
Q
Are attachment styles relatively stable throughout your life?
A
- Theoretically, since they are learned in childhood, attachment styles can also be unlearned and thus change over one’s life
- However, once established, they tend to be stable and long-lasting considering they lead to new relationships which reinforce an individual’s existing tendencies
32
Q
Are sex differences and gender differences the same thing?
A
- Sex ≠ gender
- Sex is about biology (i.e. reproductive system and secondary sex-characteristics)
- Gender is not about biology
- Typically about social roles based on your sex and your internal perception
- There’s no place in the brain that “determines” your gender
- In psychology:
- Sex differences = differences that seem to be based on biology
- Gender differences = differences that seem to stem from social roles
- People inherit only about a quarter to a third of their tendencies to be assertive or kind; most of these behaviors are learned
33
Q
Is there such a thing as “masculine” or “feminine” traits?
A
- “Masculine” traits are really just instrumental and “feminine” traits are expressive
- People who are androgynous have nearly equal amounts of both
- These traits are all present to varying degrees in both men and women
-
Ickes & Barnes (1978): Paired men and women in couples in which (a) both partners fit the traditional gender roles or (b) one or both partners were androgynous.
- The traditional couples talked less, looked at each other less, laughed and smiled less, and afterward reported that they liked each other less than did the other couples
- Too high in instrumental traits means you’re not good at being affectionate/taking care of others
- Too high in expressive & too low in instrumental can mean low self-esteem and being less well-adjusted
34
Q
Do gender differences really matter that much in intimate relationships?
A
- ALL gender and/or sex differences in any given area are SMALLER than the ranges you find in each group
- e.g. Women tend to report fewer sex partners than men at 18, but there’s a huge range (some women will report 1 while others report 18)
- For a certain set of women, their average is going to be much higher than the average for men
- Whether or not such differences actually exist, sometimes your belief in something as true is enough to influence to behaviors
35
Q
What is the most influential personality factor in intimate relationships?
A
- The most influential Big Five personality trait is neuroticism: more neuroticism leads to unhappier couples
- Although our personalities can have a genetic basis, our enduring traits can be shaped to a degree by our relationships
- e.g. Dissatisfying and abusive relationships can gradually make us more anxious and neurotic, and warm, rewarding partnerships may make us more agreeable over time
36
Q
How can (low) self esteem impact intimate relationships?
A
- People with low self-esteem sometimes sabotage their relationships by underestimating their partners’ love for them and perceiving disregard when none exists
- e.g. Murray et al. (2013): Because they are confident about their partners’ love and regard for them, people with high self-esteem draw closer to their partners when difficulties arise
- They have lasting doubts about their partners’ regard and reliability, so when times get tough, they withdraw from their partners in an effort to protect themselves
- Even after 10 years of marriage, people with low self-esteem still tend to believe that their spouses love and accept them less than those faithful spouses really do
37
Q
How can sexual selection influence intimate relationships?
A
Motives such as the need to belong have presumably come to characterize human beings because they were adaptive, conferring some sort of reproductive advantage to those who possessed them
38
Q
What is the parental investment theory?
A
- Biological differences in the time, energy, and resources one must provide to one’s offspring in order to reproduce may have supported the evolution of different strategies for selecting mates
- Women choose their sexual partners more carefully than men do
- Want smarter, friendlier, more prestigious, and more emotionally stable partners than men will accept, and they are less interested in casual, uncommitted sex than men are
39
Q
What is paternity uncertainty and how does it impact intimate relationships?
A
- A man suffers paternity uncertainty; unless he is completely confident that his mate has been faithful to him, he cannot be absolutely certain that her child is his
- Perhaps because of that, even though women cheat less than men do, men are more preoccupied with worries about their partners’ infidelity than women are
40
Q
How do men and women differ in their short-term vs. long-term mating strategies?
A
- Men, short-term: more interested in brief affairs with many partners
- Attracted to sexually available (“easy”) women
- Men, long-term: more ready to have sex sooner in new relationships
- But prefer chaste women as spouses
- Value physical attractiveness more than women do
- As men age → marry women increasingly younger than themselves
- Women, short-term: seek charismatic, dominant men with masculine appeal
- Women, long-term: seek financial security, can provide for them
- Physical features less important
- Care more about financial security than men
41
Q
How does the influence of one-on-one interaction impact intimate relationships?
A
- Individually, two partners inevitably encounter fluctuating moods and variable health and energy; when they interact, their mutual influence on one another may produce a constantly changing variety of outcomes
- Over time, unmistakable patterns of interaction will often distinguish one relationship from another, but at any given moment a relationship may be an inconstant entity
- Working alongside generic influences (evolution to culture) are various idiosyncratic factors such as personality and experience, some of them learned and some of them inherited
- Because of all these idiosyncrasies, it’s difficult to predict whether the interactions between two specific people will be more or less likely to lead to the formation/maintenance of a relationship
