Week 3-Relationships Flashcards
Formation: What’s the need for affiliation?
■ Need to form positive and lasting interpersonal relationships
■ Lack of social contact can cause serious long term consequences
■ Harlow monkey research
■ Self-regulation of social contact, but Individual differences
■ Korean and Caucasian Americans (You & Malley-Morrison, 2000). Caucasian Americans reported more intimate friendships and higher expectations
Formation: What variables are associated with loneliness (Berscheid and Reis, 1998)
a) Dispositional factors
b) Social circumstances
c) Social cognitive tendencies
Formation: How do Proximity and Similarity influence relationships?
■ Proximity allows familiarity, availability, and expectation of continued interaction
■ Important consequences for design of housing, workplaces etc
■ Implications for both the formation and maintenance of relationships
■ Proximity and similarity may be particularly important for elderly men and women living in residential care (Roberts, 2018)
■ Co-presence leads to friendship in elderly meeting in Beijing public parks (Richaud, 2018)
■ Important outcomes (Costa, et al. 2018)
■ Assortative mating – background, personality etc
■ Increased similarity over time
What contextual factors influence relationships?
■ Killias (2018)
■ Iranians (mostly students) living in Malaysia viewed others with suspicion
■ Potential friends (from the same cultural background) were perceived to pose a risk of betrayal and political infiltration
■ Due to formal and informal monitoring within the apartment complex, they often chose to maintain a distance from those of a similar background
Formation: How does Reciprocity influence relationships?
■ We like those that like us and dislike those that do not like us
■ Important individual differences
■ Attachment
■ Self-esteem
■ Situation – gain loss hypothesis
■ We like most those who initially dislike us but then start to like us
■ We dislike most those who initially like us but then become cold or distant
Formation: How does Disclosure influence relationships?
■ Premature disclosures
■ Dishonest disclosures
■ Factual disclosures
■ Failure to notice the information or dismiss the disclosure as unimportant
■ Laurenceau, Barrett, and Rovine (2005) self disclosure predicts partner responsiveness, which predicts stronger feelings of closeness
■ Disclosure important for the formation of both romantic relationships and
friendships
■ Kudo and Simkin (2003)
■ Interviews with Japanese students at an Australian University
■ Factors impacting on the development of a friendship include frequent contact, similarity, and self-disclosure (including openness of communication)
■ For example, “I don’t take the initiative in telling my acquaintances about my secrets …or something important to me…. If they disclose such important things to me, I recognise that they trust me. Then, I start to trust him or her. Gradually, we come to know about one another.”
Formation: How does Physical Attractiveness influence relationships?
■ Broad cross-cultural agreement re physical attractiveness
■ Attractive people rated more positively (“beauty is good” effect) and attractiveness influences romantic relationships
■ Friends tend to be of similar attractiveness (Bleske-Rechek & Lighthall, 2010)
■ Range of physical characteristics are important
Hendrie and Brewer (2012):
■ Genetic and environmental factors
■ Disease and ageing
How does signalling commitment maintain relationships? (Yamaguchi et al., 2015)
■ The pro-relationship acts used to signal a commitment to a friend or romantic partner are similar
■ Costly commitment signals are more effective than non-costly commitment signals
■ Failing to display appropriate signals of commitment (e.g., forgetting a birthday) is more detrimental to romantic relationships than friendships
How does shared activities maintain relationships?
■ In romantic relationships, declining expressions of affection and perceived responsiveness after the first two years
■ “typical honeymoon then years of blandness pattern”
■ Self expansion model – desire to enrich identities, may share perspectives
■ Shared activities lead to additional opportunities for understanding each other, disclosure
■ Shared activities can lead to relationship satisfaction (Reissman, Aron, & Bergen, 1993)
How does support maintain relationships?
■ Support provided by a partner is unique and difficult to replace
■ Supportive relationships are more satisfied
■ Perceived support can be beneficial
■ Received support can be beneficial or detrimental
■ The partners response to positive events are also important
■ Broaden and Build Theory (Frederickson, 2001)
■ Experience and expression of positive emotions
a) Expands how we attend and respond to events
b) Builds resources for maintaining wellbeing
Define relationship maintenance
Behaviours and strategies to ensure that the
relationship will continue
■ Maintaining strong relationships, avoiding relationship decline, repairing poor relationships
Define the Intimacy Process Model (Reis & Patrick, 1996; Reis & Shaver, 1988)
Framework for understanding daily exchanges and their impact on intimacy
How can information processing maintain relationships?
■ The same events may be interpreted very differently, by different people or at different times
■ Felmless (1995, 1998) fatal attraction phenomenon
■ Qualities that are initially attractive in a partner become the same qualities that end the relationship
How can memory bias maintain relationships?
■ McFarland and Ross (1987) memories of past feelings are distorted by current feelings about a relationship
■ Memory bias allows us to forget information which may threaten our current feelings about the relationship
How do long-distance relationships affect the maintenance of relationships?
■ May include a range of categories, e.g. college students, military couples, dual career commuter couples
■ LDRs typically report higher levels of dedication, relationship quality, trust, andcommitment (e.g. Kelmer, et al. 2013; Jiang & Hancock, 2013)
■ LDRs appear to engage in more adaptive self-disclosures which may promote intimacy (Jiang & Hancock, 2013)
■ Greenberg and Neustaedter (2013) - the importance of digital technologies (particularly video chats). Allow people to spend time together over extended periods of time which enhances intimacy. The remaining issues include time zone distances, technical issues