Relationships Flashcards
Evolutionary Explanations for Partner Preferences
AO1
Anisogamy
Inter-sexual selection
Intra-sexual selection
Evolutionary Explanations for Partner Preferences AO1
Anisogamy
The difference between male and female sex cells
Natural selection theory: genes that confer reproductive advantage will increase in the gene
pool
Evolutionary Explanations for Partner Preferences AO1
Inter-sexual selection
selection of mates between sexes
female strategy:
- quality not quantity
- invest in child rearing qualitites
- physical attributes = healthy offspring
Impact on mating:
preferences of both sexes determine attributes likely to be passed on (height)
Evolutionary Explanations for Partner Preferences AO1
Intra-sexual selection
Selection of mates within sexes
male strategy:
- quantity over quality = reproduce frequently
- competition necessary as women limited + choosy
- those compete successfully = more likely to pass on their genes
Impact on mating behaviour:
- leads to pressure to act in a certain way
- most agg = most likely to reproduce
- male preference for young as sign of fertility
Evolutionary Explanations for Partner Preferences
AO3
+ Clarke + Hatfield 1989: males more likely to seek short term mating strategies
75% males agreed to have sex with attractive stranger
0% females
Therefore, males evolved reproductive mechanism to inc success
+ Wynforth + Dunbar 1995:
lonely heart adverts in US newspapers to see how people describe themselves to potential partners
MALES: offered resources + sought youth
FEMALES: offer physical attraction + sought resources
Therefore, supports evolution explanation
- hard to falsify: correlation not causation (can’t see causation as its evolutionary and can’t test it)
- sexual selection over natural selection
Self Disclosure
Refers to revealing intimate information to another person.
Without it in relationships they will fail.
Social Penetration theory
AO1
Altman and Taylor 1973
Relationships are a gradual process of revealing your inner self to someone.
Involves reciprocal exchange of info between partners leading to deeper understanding of each others lives.
More disclosure = deeper penetration
Revealing info displays trust and other part er must reveal sensitive info.
Breadth and depth (peeling the onion)
1 superficial 2 intimate 3 personal 4 core
Social Penetration theory
AO1
Breadth: narrow to start as too much info is off putting
Depth: increases as relationship develops (more layers peeled)
Low risk info to start then high risk later on.
Needs to be balanced self disclosure that is received sensitively to have a successful relationship where feelings of intimacy increase and deepens the relationship.
Social Penetration theory
AO3
+ Sprecher and Hendrick 2004: studied heterosexual relationships and found strong positive correlation between satisfaction and self disclosure xcorrelation not causation
+ Laurenceau 2005: writing daily diary entries, found self disclosure in a parter = linked to higher levels of intimacy in long term married couples (+ vice versa) = increases the val of the theory.
+ Hass and Stafford 1998: 57% gay men and women said open and honest self disclosure was how they maintained relationships = demonstrates value of psychological insight (if people understand how important it is they might do it more) = real world app
- Cultural differences Tang et al 2013: reviewed research self disclosure + satisfaction = men and women in USA more likely to self disclose than in China = SD may not be an important factor in romantic relationships for some cultures = can’t generalise theory to everyone.
- Self disclosure is used when couples try to save a relationship by negotiating in the dyadic phase but sometimes this leads to further break down of the relationship.
Explaining the importance of physical attraction
AO1
- Evolutionary: traits associated with attractiveness act as indicators of good health (important because woman needs to bear child and man needs to provide food) = healthy offspring
- Shakelford and Larson 1997: baby face hypothesis: we are attracted to neotenous features (widely spread eyes) as trigger an innate caring instinct. Doesn’t indicate fertility but adaptive feature.
McNulty 2008: evidence that initial attractiveness that brought partners together continued to be an important feature of relationship after marriage for several years. - The matching hypothesis predicts that people select partners of comparable physical attractiveness. This may be to maintain balance (see Equity Theory ), or due to a fear of rejection, or because of the halo effect.
Explaining the importance of physical attraction
The Halo Effect
AO1
- preconceived ideas about the personality traits of attractive people which are almost universally positive (physical attractiveness stereotype) e.g. Kind, strong, sociable, successful.
- because good looking people associated with these traits it makes them more attractive
- halo effect used to describe how one feature tends to have a disproportionate influence on our judgements of a person’s attributes.
Explaining the importance of physical attraction
AO3
+ Palmer and Peterson 2012: found physically attractive people rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent than unattractive people. HE so powerful it persisted even when participants knew these ‘knowledgeable’ people had no expertise
- individual diff’s for attractiveness: Towhey 1979: gave males and females a set of photos and biographical info about people, ask to judge how much they’d like an individual based on photo. P’s complete MACHO questionnaire (measures sexist attitudes and beh’s) those scored high = more influenced by attractiveness of photo when judging likeability and vice versa.
+ what is considered physically attractive is consistent across cultures
Cunningham 1995: found female feature of large eyes , prominent cheek bones, small nose, high eyebrows were v attractive by white, Hispanic and Asian males.
Wheeler and Kim 1997: found Korean and American students judged physically attractive people as trustworthy, concerned for other people, mature and friendly.
Therefore, stereotype just as strong in collectivist cultures as it is in individualist cultures
- there are large individual differences for importance of physical attractiveness
- The computer dance experiment (Walster et al., 1966) did not find support for the matching hypothesis. Nearly 400 male and female students were randomly paired at a dance, and later asked to rate their date. Physical attractiveness (which was independently assessed) proved to be the most important factor in liking, rather than similarity. It was also the best predictor of the likelihood that they would see each other again.
Factors Affecting Attraction
Filter Theory - Kerckhoff and Davis
1. Social demographic filter Proximity, age, religion 2. Similarity in attitudes filter Similarity attitudes, values, interests 3. Complementarity filter Fulfilling each others needs
Factors Affecting Attraction
Filter Theory: Proximity
Most people form a rel with geographically close people mainly due to the chance they’ll meet, speak, become aware of each other
Factors Affecting Attraction
Filter Theory: Physical Attraction
How good looking someone is (v important for initial rel formation + longer lasting rel’s)
Factors Affecting Attraction
Filter Theory: Similarity
Most come into contact with same cultural/social background can be same for attitudes or personality traits.
Factors Affecting Attraction
Filter Theory: Complement of needs
Not all personality characteristics need to be the same, we are often attracted to people who can give us what we lack (dominating and submissive person)
Factors Affecting Attraction
Filter Theory: Competence
How intelligent one appears, can be influential in how attractive they are
Filter Theory - Kerckhoff and Davis 1962
AO1
- First consider field of availables (pool of people accessible to us)
- From these we select the field of desirables (similarity in attitudes - share beliefs and values, social variables - proximity, social class, age complementarity - meeting each others needs important in long term)
Kerckhoff and Davis studied students in a rel for <18 mths (short term) and thos in >18 mths (long term), used self-report questionnaire = attitude similarity was more important factor in STM but complimenting more important for LTM.
Filter Theory - Kerckhoff and Davis 1962
AO3
+ Winch 1958: found similarities in attitudes, interests and personalities are typical in early stages
+ Festinger et al 1950: found students more likely to form friends in own building and the most popular people lived near stairs/post boxes as most likely to bump into people = functional distance.
- Levinger 1974: difficult to replicate original finding due to social changes and difficult to define depth of rel in terms of length = poor generalizability to homosexuals or rel’s in another culture
- Direction of cause and effect: wrong that initial attraction because of similarity: Davis and Rusbult 2001 found attitude alignment effect on long term rel’s
- based on W culture
- Reductionism: what about biological?
- Outdated: theory 50 years ago
