Lecture 1: The Why & How of Relationship Science

Question 1

Why does survival tend to be higher when people form groups?

Answer 1

• 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

Question 2

For humans, is it “survival of the fittest,” as with other animals?

Answer 2

• 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

Question 3

What is the need to belong (Baumeister & Leary, 1995)?

Answer 3

A drive to establish and maintain close relationships/social contact with people you feel connected to

Question 4

What are the 4 requirements for social bonds to be considered a “need” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995)?

Answer 4

1. Naturally motivated to pursue it (and avoid being deprived of it)
2. 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
3. Can be satiated
4. Should see it across all cultures

Question 5

Are we naturally motivated to pursue social bonds?

Answer 5

• 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)
• 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

Question 6

Are we averse to being deprived of social bonds?

Answer 6

• 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
• 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

Question 7

Does being deprived of social bonds have negative consequences?

Answer 7

• 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

Question 8

What health benefits do married couples see?

Answer 8

• 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

Question 9

Can our need to belong be satiated?

Answer 9

• 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
• 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

Question 10

Is the need to belong universally seen across cultures?

Answer 10

• 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

Question 11

What are the 7 ways that intimate relationships differ from more casual associations?

Answer 11

1. Knowledge — personal, confidential
2. Interdependence — the extent to which partners need and influence each other — is strong, frequent, diverse, and enduring
3. Caring — feel more affection for one another than for most others
4. Trust — expecting to be treated fairly and honorably
5. Responsiveness — to needs and being concerned for welfare
6. Mutuality — recognize their connection (thinking in “us” instead of “me” and “them”)
7. Commitment — expect partnerships to continue indefinitely, invest time/effort/resources to pursue this goal

Question 12

What are the 3 main sources of individual differences in intimate relationships?

Answer 12

1. Interpersonal experiences — especially bonds with caregivers → attachment styles
   
   • Which is perhaps the most important factor
2. Culture — economics, individualis, technology, sex ratios
3. Biology — the role of sex and gender
   
   • Which may be a lot less important than people think it is

Question 13

How can economics (culture) influence intimate relationships?

Answer 13

• 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

Question 14

How does individualism (culture) influence intimate relationships?

Answer 14

• 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

Question 15

How does technology (culture) influence intimate relationships?

Answer 15

• 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

Question 16

How does a country’s sex ratio (culture) influence intimate relationships?

Answer 16

• 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

Question 17

What is attachment?

Answer 17

• 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

Question 18

What is John Bowlby’s attachment theory?

Answer 18

• 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

Question 19

What are the 3 processes in Bowlby’s model of attachment?

Answer 19

1. Proximity maintenance: Staying near and resisting separations from caregiver
2. Safe haven: Turning to caregiver for comfort, support, and reassurance
3. Secure base: Using caregiver as a base from which to engage in non-attachment behaviour (explore)

Question 20

What did Bowlby suggest was the purpose of attachment?

Answer 20

• 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)

Question 21

What problems did Mary Ainsworth find in Bowlby’s attachment model?

Answer 21

• 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

Question 22

How can individual differences in attachment form?

Answer 22

• 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

Question 23

What is Ainsworth’s strange situation?

Answer 23

• 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

Question 24

How do the characteristics of the infant influence attachment styles?

Answer 24

• 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)

Question 25

How does childhood attachment relate to adult attachment?

Answer 25

• 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

Question 26

How do we measure adult attachment?

Answer 26

• 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

Question 27

What is secure attachment (low anxiety and low avoidance)?

Answer 27

• 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

Question 28

What is anxious-preoccupied attachment (high anxiety and low avoidance)?

Answer 28

• 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

Question 29

What is dismissive-avoidant attachment (low anxiety and high avoidance)?

Answer 29

• 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

Question 30

What is fearful-avoidant attachment (high anxiety and high avoidance)?

Answer 30

• 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

Question 31

Are attachment styles relatively stable throughout your life?

Answer 31

• 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

Question 32

Are sex differences and gender differences the same thing?

Answer 32

• 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

Question 33

Is there such a thing as “masculine” or “feminine” traits?

Answer 33

• “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

Question 34

Do gender differences really matter that much in intimate relationships?

Answer 34

• 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

Question 35

What is the most influential personality factor in intimate relationships?

Answer 35

• 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

Question 36

How can (low) self esteem impact intimate relationships?

Answer 36

• 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

Question 37

How can sexual selection influence intimate relationships?

Answer 37

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

Question 38

What is the parental investment theory?

Answer 38

• 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

Question 39

What is paternity uncertainty and how does it impact intimate relationships?

Answer 39

• 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

Question 40

How do men and women differ in their short-term vs. long-term mating strategies?

Answer 40

• 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

Question 41

How does the influence of one-on-one interaction impact intimate relationships?

Answer 41

• 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