Relationship Science Exam #1 (10/14/24) Flashcards
1
Q
relationship definition
A
the way in which two or more people or things are connected, or the state of being connected
- Ellen Berscheid: “relationships with other humans are both the foundation and theme of the human condition”
2
Q
science definition
A
- an approach to discovery, not a collection of established facts: all scientific knowledge is provisional
- Alan Lightman: “the history of science can be viewed as the recasting of phenomnea that were once thought to be accidents as phenomena that can be understand in terms of fundamental causes and principles”
3
Q
relationship science field history
A
- first philosphers, artists and yentas
- 1900-1960s: smattering of empirical findings
- assortative mating: opposites attract etc
- mate preferences: to what degree are you looking for people with certain traits
- liking among children
- 1960s-1970s: laboratory experiments on attraction between strangers (Berscheid)
- 1980s-today: an increasingly sophisticated discipline that also investigates established relationships
4
Q
relationships and health
A
- need to belong: humans desire close, non-aversive, long-term relationships
- quality of our intimate relationships is an extremely important predictor of overall happiness
- positive relationship with quality of life more so than other factors like hobbies or job
5
Q
relationships and health: heart disease study
A
- relationship quality was measured through surveys and coding based on a lab-based conflict discussion
- participants with congestive heart faliure were less likely to die over the next 4 years if they had a better marriage
6
Q
satisfaction trajectories
A
- satisfaction tends to decline over time on average
7
Q
the kiss of the porcupines
A
- balancing the need for connection with the fear of rejection
- especially fraught among people with lower self-esteem
- when they feel insecure they are more likely to prioritize self-protection over relationship enhancement
- higher self esteem people have the opposite effect and tend to get closer when they feel insecure
8
Q
the kiss of the porcupines: unspoken complaints study
A
- participants completed a rigged survey about their relationship
- insecurity condition: items focused on partner’s possible irritation with the participant
- control: items focused on neutral topics
- question: how good a person is your partner?
- when taking the rigged survey ppl w low self-esteem rated their partner as less worthy
- high esteem rated their partner as a good person
9
Q
objectivity delusion
A
- reconciling the tendency to believe our experience captures objective reality with the fact that relationship success relies on recognizing our own bias
- subjectivity and the communication divide: we are all trapped in our own reality
- competing narratives about conflict are linked to hurt feelings and anger
10
Q
subjective belief thresholds
A
- evidence quality: can i believe this? is this plausible? vs. must I believe this? is it indisputable?
- aren’t aware that we’ve adjusted our belief threshold, feels like we are drawing the only viable conclusion
11
Q
all-or-nothing marriage: pragmatic era
A
- 1620-1850
- life was precarious
- marriage was about basic needs
- spouses were workmates, not soulmates
12
Q
all-or-nothing marriage: the love-based era
A
- 1850-1965
- industrialization → urbanization → independence
- marriage was increasingly about spouses’ personal fulfillment
- gender roles and the cleaved psyche
13
Q
all-or-nothing marriage: the self-expressive era
A
- 1965-today
- the countercultural revolution (60s): the pill, anti-war protests, the feminine mystique
- love remains crucial, but no longer sufficient
- increasing emphasis on self-expression and personal growth
- much more important to be happy in relationship for overall life satisfaction
14
Q
maslow + marriage
A
- as marriage has shifted over the last 700 years, we have made it harder to be happy and satisfied in a marriage that would have been perfect in a previous era
15
Q
lincoln’s time
A
- it was more important and necessary for his father to leave the kids alone for a winter to find a wife so she could cook and clean than to be with them alone
16
Q
normative flux and ambiguity
A
- relationships don’t initiate themselves
- even in a climate of good faith, such behavior takes place under uncertainty about the other person’s preferences
17
Q
normative flux and ambiguity: 4 outcomes
A
- true positive: A initiates, B wants initiation
- false positive: A initiation, B doesn’t want initiation
- false negative: A doesn’t initiate, B wants initiation
- true negative: A doesn’t initiate, B doesn’t want initiation
18
Q
normative flux and ambiguity: tensions
A
- society faces a tension btw 2 norms
- tolerate false positives to reduce false negative: don’t miss out
- tolerate false negatives to reduce false positives: don’t take risks
19
Q
relationship norms
A
- tend to be oblivious to the variation of sex, dating ect across cultural and historical contexts
- stronger-than-typical upheaval due to dating apps, more empowered women etc
- relationship norms are relatively unsettled
20
Q
methodological challenges: fundamental attribution error
A
- when we observe an individual in a relationship, it is tempting to attribute their behavior to some stable aspect of their personality
21
Q
3 distinct sources of relationship phenomena
A
- Person A
- Person B
- intersection of A and B
22
Q
relationship phenomena: Jeni has a crush on jeff
A
- Self: Jeni has a crush on all the bys
- Partner: all the girls have a crush on Jeff
- Relationship: Jeni has a crush on Jeff beyond her tendency to crush on the boys and the girls’ tendency to crush on him
23
Q
relationship phenomena: speed dating
A
- self-variance: some people like others more (13%)
- partner variance: based on the person being percieved as attractive (24%)
- relationship variance: uniqueness btw the two of them (34%)
24
Q
limits of self-reports
A
- useful for subjective experiences: explicit
- problematic for cases where people lack introspective insight or are reluctant to tell the truth
- explicit and implicit evaluations are largely uncorrelated, they tap different aspects of relationship well-being
25
Q
indirect measures to study how people feel about their relationship
A
- Partner Evaluative Priming Task
- Measures how easily people associate their partner (vs other people) with positive vs negative concepts
- Taps evaluations that are unintentional, effortless, and (at least partially) beyond one’s control
- Study: categorize words after a brief prime
- When the word and the prime match up you should categorize the word faster
- The PEPT predicts relationship satisfaction trajectories across the newlywed years beyond any effect of self-reported satisfaction
26
Q
attraction: familiarity
A
- liking those we’ve had contact with more times
- tends to increase liking, effect depends on the familiarity and type of attraction
- familiarity can exceed one’s satiation threshold, which can make additional increases of familiarity unappealing (knowing someone too well)
27
Q
familiarity: classroom study
A
- mere exposure
- confederates didn’t interact with people in the class but showed up 0-15 times
- confederate who came more times was coded as more attractive by P
28
Q
familiarity: I.M study
A
- get-acquainted chats
- randomly assigned people to pairs of people to have 1-8 messaging chats over a quarter
- found that ppl who were assigned 8 chats found their partner more attractive than those with only 1 chat
29
Q
familiarity: MIT study
A
- residential proximity
- grad student dorm, randomly assinged rooms
- asked people how likely they would be to consider other ppl in the dorm as a close friend
- found that those who lived next door were 4x more likely to think of that person as close friends than those who were 4 doors away
30
Q
negative effects of familiarity
A
- same vs new erotic video (Coolidge Effect study)
- habituation trial: same 60 sec video over and over, after watching video 9 times arousal goes down
- brief delay
- focal trials: watch same video or new video
- same: slight increase comapred to 9th hab
- new video: arousal is much higher
31
Q
reciprocity
A
- liking those who like us
32
Q
reciprocity: conventional wisdom
A
- playing hard to get
- don’t call him, always end phone calls first etc
33
Q
reciprocity: reality
A
- we like ppl who like us, especially if they are selective
34
Q
dyadic reciprocity
A
liking that is uniquely shared btw two people
- jeni and jeff like each other more than they like other people
35
Q
generalized reciprocity
A
- the tendency for people who generally like others to be liked themselves
- jeni (or jeff) tends to like everybody and is liked in return
36
Q
reciprocity: speed dating
A
- previous studies (platonic)
- positive if 2 ppl uniquely like each other
- positive if I like most people, on average those ppl liked me too
- romantic
- positive if these ppl uniquely like each other
- but negative if someone likes everyone, those ppl don’t like them back
37
Q
percieved similarity
A
- liking those we think are similar to us
- suprising lack of evidence that actual similarity predicts attraction (interests, personality, etc)
- when people have a lot of percieved similarities they are very attracted to the person but you often like the person and then seek out the similarities
- actual similarity has very little effect on the assoication w romantic desire
38
Q
misattribution of arousal
A
- romantic attraction can emerge when we incorrectly conclude that another person is the source of unrelated physiological activation
- bridge study
- important caveat: attraction only increases if the target person is attractive
- if the target is unattractive, the receiver’s arousal reduces attraction
39
Q
unpredictability of attraction: online dating
A
- companies claim they have a matchmaking algorithm
- but they claim they can predict long term relationship qualities and persistence without taking into account the other steps between initial communication and long-term relations
- misleading bc they only use data on individuals
40
Q
unpredictability of attraction: data types
A
- data on individuals: traits, values, preferences
- data on dyads: satisfaction, conflict behavior
- data on circumstances: stress, attractive alternatives
41
Q
do we know what we want in a partner?
A
- people who posses a given desirable quality are more liked than those who don’t
- but our idiosyncratic preferences for some desirable quality is essentially irrelevant for explaining how attracted we are to people who possess vs lack that quality
42
Q
do we know what we want in a partner?: NU speed dating data
A
- for people who said they cared a lot about looks before the experiment, they were more interested in the people who are physcially attractive
- however for people who said they do not care, were equally as interested in those who were attractive
- worked equally for amibition and warmth
43
Q
is romantic attraction like a comet (predictable) or like an earth quake (unpredictable)
A
- existing evidence says earth quake
- machine learning approach: 150 predictors, predicting relationship variance, found that attraction is unpredicatble
44
Q
mate value: matching hypothesis
A
- we tend to pair up with others whose desirability is similar to our own
- hypothesis: most desirbale people pair up and therefore are off the market
45
Q
attraction is in the eye of the beholder
A
- even on first meeting, we differ substantially in how much we find a particular person more attractive
- exhibit only a modest amount of consensus about a person’s attractiveness
- and this small amount of consensus gets even smaller as we get to know people better
- partner variance decreases, relationship variance increases
46
Q
is it true that love and marriage always go together
A
- “if a boy/girl had all the other qualities you desired, would you marry this person if you were not in love with them” (No, Yes, Undecided)
1967
- 65% of men say no, 10% say yes
- 25% of women say no, 4% say yes
1976
- 86% men say no, 2% say yes
- 80% women say no, 4% say yes
47
Q
is it true that love and marriage always go together: culture variation
A
- low is essential in the early 1990s
- ultimately, love conquered marriage in Western cultures first, but its grip is proving to be global
48
Q
love metaphors: argument as war
A
- we win or lose
- attack positions
- gain or lose ground
49
Q
love metaphors: love
A
- love is a physical force (magnetic)
- love is a patient (healthy relationship)
- love is madness (i’m crazy about her)
50
Q
love metaphors: love as a collaborative work of art
A
- active
- coorperation and dedication
- shared responsibility
51
Q
love metaphors: relationship qualities
A
- “collaborative work of ar” is positive
- “a roller coaster” is negative
52
Q
the triangular model
A
- intimacy (warm): feelings of closeness and affection
- passion (hot): the drive that leads to romantic, physical attraction
- decision.commitment: a decision that one loves the partner and the commitment to maintain that love
53
Q
the triangular model: variations
A
- combinations
- amount of love: triangle size changes
- actual vs ideal love: under, over, mis-involvement
- mismatch partnerships: matched, moderatly matched, mismatched
- study: married ppl vs NU students
- married ppl more committed but less intimate and passionate than NU undergrads
54
Q
passionate love
A
- a state of intense longing for union with another
- dominates Western canon, including all-consuming depictions of ecstasy and agony (cross-cultural universal)
- like a craving
- passionate love is higher at beginning and companionate love is higher later on
- fades faster for ppl who are less creative
- 7 min in the lab study
55
Q
companionate love
A
- affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined
56
Q
natural selection
A
differential evolutionary success due to differences in phenotype
- heritability: many traits have genetic features that can be passed on to the next gen
- random variation: organisms in a pop possess such traits to diff degress
- selection: depending on enviornemnt, some traits variants prompt survival and are therefore retained
- adaptation: a feature of an organism that has become prevalent bc it contributed to survival (long neck, camouflage)
57
Q
sexual selection
A
- intrasexual: competition among members of one sex for access to members of the other sex, other sex is passive
- fights
- intersexual: competition among members of one sex to be chosen by members of the other sex, other sex is active
- peacock’s tail
58
Q
differential parental investment
A
- sex that invests more in gestating and rearing offspring is more selective about mating
- mating effort: effort expended in pursuing mates and having sex
- less investing sex exhibits higher levels of intrasexual competition for access to mates
59
Q
sexual selectivity: receptivness
A
- men are more receptive to causal sex offers
- The three questions study
- Date condition: would you go out w me tonight - 50% men and women say yes
- apartment condition: would you come over to my apartment tonight - 70% of men yes, 6% women
- sex condition: would you go to bed with me tonight? - 75% men say yes, 0% of women
60
Q
women-get-worse- offers critique
A
- 3 questions study manipulates more than the gender of the responder, especially in the sex condition
- men are getting a better offer bc women are better lovers at the beginning
- women perceive more danger in saying yes to men than the other way around
- no sex difference when considering a casual offer from an attractive famous person
- bisexual women are more likely to accept a casual sex offer from woman than man
61
Q
short-term vs long-term: evolutionary theory
A
- suggests that people adopt either a short-term or a long-term mindset
- short: fling, one-night stand or brief affair
- long: committed romantic relationship
62
Q
short vs long term: men vs women
A
- men are theorized to be more interested in ST mating on average
- self reports support conclusion
- equally interested in long term
- women may be receptive to ST with men who have “good genes”
63
Q
willingness to have sex: men vs women
A
- after one week: men a little willing, women strongly opposed
- after 5 years: equally willing
64
Q
the single-mindest critique
A
- people don’t approach relationships in one mindset or the other
- the initial trajectories of ST and LT relationship are virtually identical and they don’t differ by gender
- study with number of events: met, went out, first kiss, oral sex, i love you
- correlation btw ST and LT interest is positive
65
Q
mate preferences: evolutionary theory
A
- women care more abt mating w a partner who has material resources and who may invest them in her and potential offspring
- men care more about mating w a partner who is physically attractive
66
Q
37-cultures study
A
- stated mate preferences across six continents and five islands: consistent results across cultures
- earning prospects: women care more than men
- importance of attrativeness: men care more than women
67
Q
social roles critique
A
- biological factors push men and women into different roles, driving their mate preferences
- UN scores cultures on “gender empowerment measure”
- sex differences, especially for earning prospects, are much smaller in nations with higher GEM scores
- women who can make their own money easily are less likely to care about earning prospects
68
Q
hypothetical-partners critique (NU)
A
- people’s stated mate preferences don’t predict their revealed attraction in real life
- stated pref: men care more abt looks, women care more abt earning
- revealed pref: no sig diff in attractivness or earning prospect
- null effects revealed preferences generalize in huge meta-analyses
- sex diff in desire for attractivness and earning prospects disappear once people have actually met irl
