pos psych quiz 4/8/25

Passionate and Companionate Love

• offered by Berscheid and Hatfiled-Walster (1969)

passionate love

• intense arousal that fuels a romantic union

• state of intense longing for union w another

• complex functional whole including appraisals or appreciations, subjective feelings, expressions, patterned physiological processes, action tendencies, and instrumental behaviors

• Tend to fall passionately in love with people who are relatively good looking, personable, affectionate and similar to ourselves.

• Generally very fleeting

Companionate Love

• The soothing, steady warmth that sustains a relationship

• Involves feelings of mutual respect, trust and affection, while passionate love involves intense feelings and sexual attraction.

• Manifested in a strong bond and intertwining of lives that brings about feelings of comfort and peace

Love Styles

Susan and Clyde Hendrick (1986) propose a more complex taxonomy of love, comprising six love styles

Eros

passionate love, intense emotions of desire and sometimes obsessive thoughts

Ludus

“Game-playing” or flirtatious love, attraction or affection without commitment

Storge

Committed love, warmth and affection.

Pragma

Practical love, pragmatic reasons to be together.

Mania

Painful love, sense of jealousy or dependence.

Agape

Selfless love, orientation toward giving rather than receiving.

Triangular Theory of Love

• Developed by Robert Sternberg (1996).

• Places various types of love along three dimensions:

  • Intimacy or liking (warmth, closeness)

  • Passion (intense emotional response)

  • Commitment (decision to maintain relationship)

• Different types of love are characterized by different levels of each of these dimensions. For instance, ”romantic love” involves high levels of both intimacy and passion.

Love 2.0

• Developed by Barbara Fredrickson (2013).

• Argues that love isn’t passion, commitment, loyalty, trust, family connection, or romance. These can accompany love, but they aren’t love itself

• Love is a moment-to-moment emotional experience characterized by warm and mutual caring, something called “shared positivity”

• A moment of love occurs anytime two people connect over a shared positive emotion, even between strangers

• positivity resonance

• oxycotin and vagus nerve

positivity resonance

• When we experience shared positivity, our brains and behaviors “sync up”

• Important study: Liu et al. (2017)

  • Positivity resonance can be reflected in the brain.

  • Researchers recorded a native English speaker and two native Turkish speakers telling real-life stories while wearing a brain imaging device known as functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS).

  • Later, they played these stories for study participants—all of whom were English speakers—while they also wore fNIRS equipment.

  • Results showed that listeners’ brain activity was correlated with the story-teller’s brain activity; but this was only the case when they listened to the English speakers.

oxycotin and vagus nerve

• higher levels of oxytocin may help people read social cues as well as be more generous and alturistic

• extends from the brain to various parts of the body, lower vaginal tone is associated with lower emotional regulation which is important b/c those who better able to regulate their emotions tend to act more prosocially toward others (Beauchaine, 2001; Thayer et al., 2012)

4 kinds of relationships

• merely having people in one’s life

• friendships

• online/social media relationships

• marriage

having people in one’s life

• size of one’s social network (the number of people in one’s life) is related to greater levels of psychological well-being

• diener and seligman (2002)

  • tracked 222 undergraduates for a semester, administering surveys to participants and people who knew them

  • results: happiest 10% of participants spent less time alone than the least happy 10%, they were also much more satisfied with their relationships than the unhappy participants, including their close friend , family and romantic relationships

What Attracts Us to Another?

• Proximity, physical attractiveness, attitude similarity, reciprocity

• Physical allure

• The color red

• Ideals of attractiveness differ among cultures

• Similarity of attitudes and values—see high similarity with happily married couples

Friendship

• A voluntary interdependence between two people that includes the satisfaction of interpersonal needs or desires such as intimacy, support, or self-validation.

• Both quantity and quality of friendships are associated with happiness, but quality matters more.

  • Quantity: Although studies have shown positive associations between quantity of friends and psychological well-being (e.g., Berry & Hansen, 1996; Demir & Weitkamp, 2007), correlations are typically below 0.20.

  • Quality: Correlations for friendship quality with psychological well-being are generally in the range of 0.20–0.60 (e.g., Brannon et al., 2013; Demir et al., 2015).

  • The relationship between friendship quality and well-being depends on the closeness of the friendship

  • the quality of close friendships—including best friendships—are associated with well-being to a greater degree than the quality of less-close friendships (Demir et al., 2015).

social media relationships

• Some studies show positive associations between social media use and well-being; others show the opposite. Overall, the research is slightly more weighted toward the negative side (Orben, 2020).

• How people use social media matters (Varduyn et al., 2017):

  • Passive use (scrolling through posts) is associated with greater social comparison, insecurity, and envy.

  • Active use (posting, messaging, etc.) is associated with greater well-being and feelings of social connectedness.

marriage

• Generally, being married is associated with higher psychological well-being than not being married (Becker et al., 2019; Dush & Amato, 2005; Williams, 2003).

• However, the size of the association is relatively weak (Haring-Hidore et al., 1985).

divorce

• About 40 to 50 percent of marriages end in divorce (CDC, 2018).

• The end of a marriage—whether through divorce or death—typically leads to lowered well-being, and this decrease in well-being appears to be stronger than the positive effects of being married (Lucas, 2005).

Wight et al. (2013) and marriage

• Years prior to federal recognition of same-sex marriage in the U.S., same-sex marriage was legalized in California for a brief five-month period in 2008. Marriages during this period remained legal, even after same-sex marriage was again prohibited.

• Following this period, researchers accessed data from a statewide survey, which included 1,166 lesbian, gay, or bisexual (LGB) individuals.

• Although the survey didn’t measure well-being, it did measure degree of general psychological distress.

• According to the results, LGB persons in legally recognized marriages were significantly less distressed than both LGB people in registered domestic partnerships (which remained legal in California) and LGB people not in legally recognized relationships.

Attachment Theory

• Attachment theory was originally developed by John Bowlby (1969) and later expanded by Mary Ainsworth (Ainsworth et al., 1978).

• Major assertions of attachment theory:

  • Parents and other early caregivers who are dependable and responsive to a child’s needs help that child develop a sense of trust and security, known as a secure attachment style, which children carry into adulthood.

  • Adults with a secure attachment style have more stable and satisfying relationships than adults who have insecure attachment styles + they also have higher levels of satisfaction and stability in romantic relationships than adults with insecure attachment styles

Dinero et al. (2008) and attachment theory

• Interviewed 269 individuals when they were 15-16 years old together with their parents, then again in their mid-20s together with their romantic partners.

• Used a behavioral coding system to assess various different aspects of the relationships participants had with their parents (as children) and romantic partners (as adults).

• Correlations between the various ways the individuals and their families interacted when they were teenagers and the ways they interacted with their partners a decade later were statistically significant, but only small to moderate, ranging from 0.17 to 0.41

Thibault and Kelley (1959) Social Exchange Theory

• proposed that people use two factors when making relationship decisions

• Comparison level: Evaluation of how attractive the relationship is based on the cost-benefit analysis.

• Comparison level for alternatives: Evaluation of whether other potential relationships would be more rewarding or less costly than the current one.

Rusbult’s (1980) social exchange theory

• investment theory of commitment

• asserts 3 factors to predict relationship commitment

• satisfaction level: Similar to “comparison level” in Thibault and Kelley’s theory.

• Quality of alternatives: Similar to “comparison level for alternatives” in Thibault and Kelley’s theory.

• Investment size: Amount of resources put into a relationship (e.g., money, effort, trust, shared memories).

• The more someone invests in a relationship, the more likely they are to remain committed, even if the relationship falls short on the other two factors

Balance Theory of Relationships

• Developed principally by John Gottman (1993).

• Asserts that the stability and degree of satisfaction in a relationship depend on achieving a balance between negative and positive interactions.

• Based on his research, Gottman suggested a 5:1 ratio of positive to negative interactions is necessary for a relationship to be stable.

• A couple is regulated if they have a stable balance of positive and negative interactions, and unregulated if not.

• Three types of regulated couples:

  • Validating couples are calm and have an easy-going.

  • Volatile couples experience a wide array of ups and downs emotionally, but tend to eventually work things out.

  • Conflict minimizing couples try hard to avoid or ignore disagreements.

• Although the last two styles may seem problematic, they are considered regulated because they tend to last.

Culture, Love, and Marriage

• Culture influences how people practice marriage:

  • Marriage rates, although declining in most places in the world, differ from culture to culture (Ortiz-Ospina & Roser, 2020).

  • Culture may influence the degree to which people marry for love vs. other, pragmatic reasons (Levine et al., 2004).

  • Arranged marriages are relatively common in certain parts of the world, including India, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa, among others (Hatfield et al., 2015).

  • Attitudes toward same-sex relationships and marriage also differ from culture to culture.

conflict

• Primary cause of marital dissolution

• communication problems are the chief reason given for getting divorced

The Demand-Withdraw Pattern and Stonewalling

• Four-step pattern particularly destructive to relationships

• Stonewalling: A passive-aggressive attempt to punish the other person

• Demand-withdrawal pattern of marital communication

Gottman’s Multidimensional Therapy Approach

• identifies and addresses behaviors that undermine relationships and replaces them with behaviors that enhance connection and intimacy

• replace negative interaction patterns with healthier, more supportive behaviors

gottman 4 horseman apocalypse (relationship undermining behaviors)

• criticism

  • Complaint vs. criticism: Complaining is normal and focuses on behavior; Criticism attacks the character of the person

• contempt: Often follows criticism, Person uses "sarcasm, cynicism, name-calling, eye-rolling, sneering, mockery, and hostile humor”

  • Worst of the 4 because it communicates disgust to the person it is directed toward, which escalates conflict

• defensiveness: When one partner uses contempt, the other typically becomes defensive

• stonewalling: One partner tunes out the other; More common in men than women

replace with relationship enhancing behaviors (antiodes)

• complaint

• appreciation

• responsibility

• self-soothing

The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work (Gottman & Silver)

• Enhance your love maps

• Nurture your fondness and admiration

• Turn toward each other instead of away

• Let your partner influence you

• Solve your solvable problems

• Overcome gridlock and move toward dialogue

• Create shared meaning

gratitude & forgiveness

• gratitude: acknowledging contributions of others in making life better

• forgiveness: process of letting go of negative emotions when hurt or transgressed against

• both require taking the other person’s perspective

Why does perspective taking matter?

• Makes the world a smaller place

  • Access lessons through the experience of others

  • Highlights shared experiences

• Builds, nurtures, and maintains relationships

• Gratitude and forgiveness related to psychological health

  • Particularly eudaimonic well-being

  • Purpose and meaning

Gratitude

• Trait – tendency to easily experience appreciation, be aware of life’s abundance, and acknowledge the good in one’s life across circumstances

• State – emotional experience of grateful, appreciative, or thankful in a moment

• More gratitude is associated with:

  • Lower loneliness, perceived stress, symptoms of depression

  • Higher subjective health, self-esteem, and positive affect

Gratitude & Sleep

• In a sample of 401 adults from the community:

  • Higher self-reported gratitude associated with more hours of sleep, better sleep, less daytime sleepiness, and less time to fall asleep

  • These relationships were explained by pre-sleep cognitions

• Gratitude → more positive thoughts at bedtime → better sleep

gratitude study: Sorority Big and Little sisters

• Little sisters completed on-line questionnaire after each receipt of a reveal week gift

• Perceived responsiveness, surprisingness, and liking predicted gratitude for event

• Cost and perceived effort predicted gratitude

• Gratitude predicted feelings of closeness and integration into sorority one month later

• The gratitude reported by the “Little” before reveal predicted “Big” rating of relationship and time spent together one month later

individual circumstances that facilitate or suppress gratitude

• individual:

  • 40% of the tendency to experience gratitude is inherited (steger et al. 2007)

  • can be related to oxytocin and CD38 (algoe and way 2014)

• environmental:

  • perception that you have benefitted from something you can’t control (rusk et al. 2016)

  • perception that the beneficial circumstance was surprising (koo et al. 2008)

  • perception that action was responsive to wants or needs (algoe el al. 2008)

Gratitude Interventions

• Three Good Things

  • Write down three good things that happen every day

  • Compared to placebo, increases in happiness 1, 3, and 6 months after intervention (Seligman et al., 2005)

• Gratitude Letter/Visit

  • Identify someone to whom you haven’t yet adequately expressed your gratitude

  • Write letter with specific details

  • Option to visit and read them the letter

  • Compared to placebo, large increases in happiness that lasted one month (Seligman et al, 2005

aspects of forgiveness

• cognitive (changing negative judgements)

• emotional (overcoming resentment)

• behavioral (ending indifference)

Phases of Forgiveness

• Uncovering phase: Explore how resentment and anger are destructive

• Decision phase: Making choice to forgive

• Work phase: Tries to find understanding of why offender did so

• Deepening phase: Gain deeper sense of meaning as result of injury

Cognitive-Affective Transformation (Tangney and Colleagues)

• Freely choosing to “cancel the debt”& give up the need for revenge

• Giving up negative emotions is key

• Removing self from the victim role

self-compassion

• being kind toward oneself is better way to change behavior

• makes us happier, optimistic, wiser

• greater motivation for self-improvement

what forgiveness is and is not

• is: reducing negative emotions, thoughts and motivations toward another person who has wronged you

• is not: excusing, pardoning, condoning, forgetting

Forgiveness Interventions and Enright et al. (1996)

• Recognize and express negative emotions, including anger

• Consider what it would mean to find and grant forgiveness

• Commit to forgiveness, generating empathy and understanding for the offender

• Attempt to find meaning in the pain you’ve experienced

Engaging in prosocial behavior:

• More meaning and purpose in life

• More happiness and life satisfaction

• More popular in grades 3 – 8

• More attractive to others

• Social structure rely on prosocial behaviors

• It seems like the “right” thing to do

Altruism

• Behavior by an animal (including humans) that is not beneficial to or may be harmful to itself but that benefits others of its species

• kin altruism: genetic relatives

• mutualism: members of community or team

• reciprocal altruism: people who can help you

• competitive altruism: anyone, but in the presence of rivals

Desmond Doss

• The only conscientious objector to receive the Medal of Honor

• He saved 75 men

Egoism-Motivated Altruism

• Engaging in prosocial behaviors because it benefits you to do so

• Financial rewards, social capital, increased self-worth

Empathy-Motivated Altruism

• Engaging in helping behaviors to reduce the needs of others, without consideration of costs or benefits to self

• Altruism can be motivated by empathetic concern, an emotional response that occurs when we see others in need

empathy and altruism Grant & Hoffman, 2011

Healthcare workers more likely to sanitize hands when reminded it keeps patients safe than when reminded it keeps them safe

empathy and altruism Pfattheicher et al., 2020

Empathy for most vulnerable in population associated with social distancing in US, UK, and Germany at beginning of COVID-19 pandemic

empathy and altruism Brethel-Haurwitz et al., 2018

Altruistic kidney donors more activation in bilateral anterior insula (empathy area) than controls when watching others experience pain

Benefits of Giving Support

• Toddlers aged 19 to 23 months, coded as happier when giving treats than when receiving them (d = 1.12)

  • Also, happier when giving away own treats to a puppet compared to giving away experimenter’s treats (d = .46) Aknin et al., 2012

• Older adults (N = 1,118) who reported giving more help also reported being physically healthier

  • To relatives or non-relatives

  • Controlling for: age, gender, ethnicity, education, income, marital status, size of social network, functional mobility

  • Neither receiving help nor reciprocity related to health

  • Brown et al., 2005

• Older married adults (N = 846)

  • Prosocial behavior = unpaid hours providing instrumental support to people with whom they don’t live

  • Stress related to increased risk of death in next 5yrs

  • Prosocial behavior related to decreased risk of death

  • Prosocial behavior moderated association between stress and death Poulin et al., 2013

• Providing support related to psychological benefits even for those with recent trauma (Frazier et al., 2013) and after recent loss of spouse (Brown et al., 2008)

more likely to provide support

• women more than men

• older people than younger people

• people who are more religious than those who aren’t

• high of agreeableness and honestly, humility

• Machiavellianism, psychopathy and narcissism associated with less prosocial behavior

Jason Thomas

• Was in Long Island

• Had been out of Marines

• Put on fatigues and drove to NYC

Dave Karnes

• Accountant; was in Wilton CT; left work

• 23yr Marine veteran

• Drove to church and asked them to pray that God would lead him to survivors

• Reinlisted

When are People Most Likely to Be Prosocial?

• In a sample of males, participants more cooperative after completing stressful task (von Dawans et al., 2012)

• More likely to be prosocial when experiencing positive emotions (Aknin et al., 2018)

• Subjective well-being in community is associated with “extraordinary” altruism

• Statewide rates of altruistic kidney donation correlated with statewide rates of subjective well-being

• Brethel-Haurwitz & March, 2013

Why Are Prosocial Behaviors Good for Us?

• In an undergrad sample, giving support associated with lower blood pressure Piferi & Lawler, 2006

• Participants assigned to engage in prosocial behavior to specific people across four weeks had decreases in the expression of CTRA (conserved transcriptional response to adversity) indicator genes (CTRA is a pattern of gene expression changes in immune cells that occurs in response to chronic stress, adversity, or threat) Nelson-Coffey et al., 2017

  • No changes for those assigned to prosocial behavior toward the world, self-kindness, or neutral conditions

  • Why prosocial related to better health: engage in prosocial may lower levels of CTRA pattern

Kindness Interventions

• Meta-analytic evidence suggests kindness interventions are linked to improved well-being for the helper

  • Small to medium sized increases in well-being

  • Strength of effect not impacted by sex, age, type of intervention, control conditions, or outcome measure

• Effects attenuated by:

  • Engaging in prosocial behaviors for self-oriented reasons

  • Feeling obligated to engage in prosocial behaviors

Alden & Trew (2013)

• Undergraduate students with elevated social anxiety in 4-week intervention

• Randomized to:

  • Acts of Kindness (AK) 3x/day for 2 days/week

  • Behavioral Experiments (BE) 2 days/week

  • Life Details (LD) – record 3 events/day for 2 days/week

• Participants in AK greater increases in PA and relationship satisfaction and decreases in efforts to avoid negative social consequences than BE & LD

• No group differences in NA or social approach behaviors

Self-image goals

focus on constructing and maintaining images of the self

Compassionate goals

• focus on supporting others and ensuring that you aren’t causing harm

• What is good for others is also good for you

• More satisfying relationships

• Tend to be held in higher esteem by others

• Related to decreases in symptoms of depression and anxiety over 10-weeks in college students (Crocker et al., 2010)

• In those diagnosed with depression or anxiety disorders, associated with fewer daily symptoms and perceptions of support from others over 10 days (Erickson et al., 2017)

Moral Elevation

• Warm uplifting feeling that you get when you see unexpected acts of human goodness, kindness, courage, or compassion

• Provides evidence of morality, human decency, pride, community, etc.

• Opposite of social disgust

• Described as being touched, inspired, or moved

• Promotes prosocial motivation

• Related to psychological growth and compassionate goals following trauma (Tingey et al., 2019)

Singularity Effect of Identifiable Victims

• Tendency to have stronger reactions to and more willingness to help an identified individual as opposed to a group with the same need

• People tend to be relatively insensitive to the scale or scope of need/crisis

• Participants with collectivistic values less likely to demonstrate this effect

  • More likely to contribute to group than those with less collectivistic values

  • When primed with collectivistic values – using we, us, ours – more likely to donate to group than individual

• Kogut et al., 2015