Interpersonal Relationships: Fairness, Love, Attachment, and Sexuality

A comprehensive vocabulary review deck containing definitions of fundamental theories, models, empirical findings, and classifications from lecture modules on fairness and equity, romantic love, attachment across development, and human sexuality.

Social Exchange Theory

A theoretical perspective positing that all human interactions can be viewed in terms of the exchange of mutually rewarding activities, assuming people conduct relationships to maximize rewards and minimize costs.

Rewards (Social Exchange Theory)

Any pleasures, satisfactions, gratifications, or positive benefits that a person values and receives from being in a relationship, ranging from social acceptance and approval to money and physical touch.

Costs (Social Exchange Theory)

The drawbacks, expenses, or negative aspects associated with a particular relationship, including sacrificed rewards, time, effort, and parent or partner insensitivity.

Opportunity Costs

Costs almost always incurred because engaging in one relational activity precludes participation in an alternative activity.

Particularistic Resources

Resources whose reward value directly depends on the specific person providing them, with love being the most particularistic resource and money being the least particularistic.

Equity Theory

A theory proposing that individuals closely examine their outcomes relative to their inputs and compare that ratio to their partner's inputs and outcomes to determine fairness.

Inputs (Equity Theory)

A person's contributions to an exchange that entitle them to rewards, which can also be regarded as the costs of the relationship.

Outputs (Equity Theory)

The positive or negative consequences that individuals perceive they have received as a result of an exchange.

Underbenefitted

A state in an inequitable relationship where an individual's outcomes relative to their inputs are lower than their partner's, leading to feelings of anger, depression, unhappiness, and exploitation.

Overbenefitted

A state in an inequitable relationship where an individual's outcomes relative to their inputs exceed those of their partner, typically leading to feelings of guilt.

Comparison Level (CL)

A standard in the Thibaut and Kelly model representing what individuals expect to get or deserve from a relationship, serving as a benchmark for relationship satisfaction.

Comparison Level for Alternatives (CLalt)

A standard in the Thibaut and Kelly model where people contrast current relationship outcomes with the potential outcomes obtainable from an alternative relationship, determining dependency and stability.

Attractive Stability

A relationship state in which a person's current outcomes exceed both their Comparison Level ($\text{CL}$) and their Comparison Level for Alternatives ($\text{CL}_{\text{alt}}$), leading to high satisfaction and dependence.

Attractive Instability

A relationship state where current outcomes exceed an individual's expectations ($\text{CL}$), but could be surpassed by available alternatives ($\text{CL}_{\text{alt}}$), making the relationship vulnerable to ending.

Unattractive Stability

A relationship state where a person is dissatisfied because outcomes fall below their expectations ($\text{CL}$), but they remain because leaving for alternatives ($\text{CL}_{\text{alt}}$) would leave them worse off.

Unattractive Instability

A relationship state where current outcomes fall below both the person's expectations ($\text{CL}$) and available alternatives ($\text{CL}_{\text{alt}}$), predicting an imminent breakup.

Investment Model

A model stating that relationship attraction and dependence are determined by satisfaction, the quality of alternatives, and the magnitude of temporal and tangible investments.

Communal Relationship

A relationship type where the giving and receiving of benefits are guided exclusively by the partner's needs and the desire to please them, rather than tit-for-tat reciprocity.

Exchange Relationship

A relationship type where benefits are given either in direct return for past benefits or with the explicit expectation of receiving comparable benefits in the near future.

Freud's Definition of Love

A compensatory psychological mechanism that activates whenever the basic desire for a sexual union is blocked, turning sexual frustration into idealization of the other person.

Rubin's Love Scale

An attitude scale measuring loving as characterized by an affiliative/dependent need component, an exclusiveness and absorption component, and a predisposition to help.

Rubin's Liking Scale

An attitude scale measuring liking based on favorable evaluations of the other, respect for their judgment, and perceived interpersonal similarity.

Fehr's Prototype of Love

A conceptual framework identifying the consensus features of love, with trust, caring, honesty, friendship, and respect identified as the most central attributes.

Biparental Care

An evolutionary adaptation to the prolonged dependency and early weaning of human offspring in which both parents invest resources, protection, and learning models to ensure child survival.

Love as Misattribution of Arousal

A theory positing that any arousal-producing physiological event can intensify feelings of love, provided there is ambiguity regarding the true environmental cause of the arousal.

Love as Preoccupation with the Other

A theory proposing that continuous, persistent thinking about the loved person intensifies loving feelings by generating a self-reinforcing cycle of congruent positive thoughts.

Colors of Love

John Lee's typology proposing that individuals possess distinct preferences for primary and secondary styles of love that function analogously to color hues and color mixing.

Eros

A primary love style characterized by intense passion and powerful physical attraction, where individuals place supreme importance on finding the perfect mate and crave verbal and physical reassurance.

Storge

A primary love style representing companionate, friendship-based affection that grows gradually out of shared interaction and interests, common in agrarian societies with low mobility.

Ludus

A primary love style characterized by playful, non-committal, short-term interactions, typical of individuals who prefer to remain single.

Mania

A secondary love style resulting from a blend of Eros and Ludus, characterized by obsessive preoccupation, emotional instability, intense jealousy, and an insatiable need for assurance.

Pragma

A secondary love style combining Storge and Ludus that approaches mate selection logically and practically, seeking compatibility through rational criteria, effort, and persistence.

Agape

A secondary love style combining Eros and Storge that is selfless, altruistic, and dutiful, offering care without demanding reciprocation; most commonly found in parental love.

Triangular Theory of Love

Robert Sternberg's model conceptualizing love as an interpersonal construct composed of three fundamental building blocks: intimacy, passion, and decision/commitment.

Intimacy (Sternberg)

The emotional component of Sternberg's triangle involving feelings of warmth, bondedness, mutual understanding, support, and sharing.

Passion (Sternberg)

The motivational and physical arousal component of Sternberg's triangle driven by sexual needs, submission, dominance, self-esteem, and self-actualization.

Decision/Commitment (Sternberg)

The cognitive component of Sternberg's triangle consisting of the short-term decision to love a partner and the long-term commitment to maintain that love over time.

Consummate Love

In Sternberg's model, the complete and ideal form of love achieved when high levels of intimacy, passion, and commitment are simultaneously present.

Fatuous Love

In Sternberg's model, a whirlwind relationship characterized by high passion and high commitment but a lack of stabilizing emotional intimacy.

Companionate Love (Sternberg)

A form of love combining high intimacy and high commitment with low physiological passion, typical of long-term marriages and deep friendships.

Guilt

A social emotion arising from moral transgressions involving harm to others, particularly valued relationship partners, functioning to protect and maintain social bonds.

Shame

A social emotion resulting from perceived failure combined with concern about others' negative evaluations following an improper, dishonorable, or ridiculous action.

Internal Working Model (Bowlby)

A cognitive mental representation that infants construct from early caregiver interactions, which serves as a developmental template for future social and romantic relationships.

Ethological Theory of Attachment

John Bowlby's theory viewing an infant's emotional tie to the primary caregiver as an evolved, innate response mechanism designed to promote proximity and biological survival.

Preattachment Phase

The first phase of Bowlby's attachment model (birth to $6\,\text{weeks}$) wherein innate signaling behaviors bring adults close, though the newborn does not mind being left with unfamiliar caregivers.

Attachment in the Making Phase

The second phase of Bowlby's attachment model ($6\,\text{weeks}$ to $8\,\text{months}$) where infants begin reacting differently to familiar caregivers versus strangers and build trust, but do not yet protest separation.

Clear-Cut Attachment Phase

The third phase of Bowlby's attachment model ($8\,\text{months}$ to $2\,\text{years}$) marked by the unambiguous emergence of separation anxiety and distress whenever the caregiver leaves.

Formation of a Reciprocal Relationship Phase

The fourth phase of Bowlby's attachment model ($18\,\text{months}$ to $2\,\text{years}$ and on) where separation protest declines as the child acquires the cognitive capacity to understand parental departure and predict return.

Strange Situation

An experimental laboratory paradigm designed to assess attachment security by exposing $12$- to $18$-month-old infants to brief separations from and reunions with their caregiver in the presence of a stranger.

Secure Attachment (Infancy)

An infant attachment pattern characterized by using the caregiver as a secure base, showing reduced crying and seeking immediate proximity upon parental reunion; observed in $65\%$ of middle-class U.S. children.

Avoidant Attachment (Infancy)

An infant attachment pattern marked by unresponsiveness to the parent, absence of distress during separation, and active avoidance upon reunion; observed in $12\%$ of middle-class U.S. children.

Anxious Attachment (Infancy)

An infant attachment pattern where the child clings to the caregiver, fails to explore, exhibits intense distress during separation, and cannot be easily soothed upon reunion; observed in $23\%$ of middle-class U.S. children.

Disorganized/Disoriented Attachment

An attachment category reflecting the greatest insecurity, characterized by contradictory, confused, or depressed behaviors and flat affect upon the caregiver's return in the Strange Situation.

Secure Adult Attachment Style

An adult attachment pattern endorsed by approximately $56\%$ of adults in Hazan and Shaver's research, characterized by ease in becoming close, mutual dependence, and absence of abandonment anxiety.

Anxious Adult Attachment Style

An adult attachment style endorsed by approximately $19\%$ of adults in Hazan and Shaver's research, marked by chronic worry that partners do not truly love them, desire for total merger, and jealousy.

Avoidant Adult Attachment Style

An adult attachment style endorsed by approximately $25\%$ of adults in Hazan and Shaver's research, characterized by discomfort with closeness, distrust of others, and fear of intimacy.

Preoccupied Attachment Style

One of Bartholomew's four adult attachment styles (replacing anxious-ambivalent), characterized by nervously seeking others' approval, pervasive unworthiness, and total preoccupation with relationships.

Fearful Attachment Style

One of Bartholomew's four adult attachment styles characterized by a strong desire for closeness combined with chronic social avoidance due to intense fear of rejection.

Dismissing Attachment Style

One of Bartholomew's four adult attachment styles characterized by viewing intimacy as not worth the trouble, actively defending self-worth, and maintaining rigorous self-reliance.

Erotic Plasticity

The degree to which an individual's sexual motivation, attitudes, and behaviors can be modified by cultural, social, and situational factors, exhibited to a significantly higher degree in women than in men.

Kinsey Report

A landmark pair of books by Alfred Kinsey based on $18{,}000$ interviews that revolutionized sex research by highlighting that human sexual behaviors are diverse, natural, and distributed along a continuum.

Global Study of Sexual Attitudes and Behaviors (GSSAB)

A multinational study surveying $27{,}500$ adults across $29$ nations, revealing that sexual satisfaction is highest in gender-equal societies and lowest in male-centered, collectivistic countries.

Rapid-Involvement Couples

Couples who initiate sexual intercourse very early in their relationship trajectory, often on the first date.

Gradual-Involvement Couples

Couples whose sexual intimacy progresses in stepped stages (kissing to petting to intercourse) matching the emotional growth from casual dating to formal couplehood.

Delayed-Involvement Couples

Couples who postpone all forms of sexual activity until they have explicitly established themselves as a committed couple, representing the largest percentage of couples.

Low-Involvement Couples

Couples who remain relatively inactive sexually despite viewing themselves as an established couple, constituting the smallest percentage of dating couples.

Hookup

A contemporary dating practice involving a casual, typically one-time-only sexual encounter between acquaintances or strangers, frequently facilitated by campus norms and alcohol.

Avoiding Proceptivity

A sexual refusal strategy in which an individual discourages or turns down unwanted sexual overtures by explicitly ignoring or physically avoiding them.

Incomplete Rejection

A sexual refusal strategy where an individual says no to immediate intercourse by postponing it until a particular situational or temporal condition is met.

Extradyadic Sex

Engaging in sexual activity with an individual outside of one's established committed relationship, sought by men primarily for physical reasons and by women primarily for emotional fulfillment or relationship distress.

Social Construction of Sexual Orientation

A theoretical stance arguing that sexual orientation categories are culturally and historically invented constructs rather than fixed, immutable biological realities.

Biological Essentialism (Sexual Orientation)

A framework arguing that sexual orientation is innate and determined by underlying biological substrates, including genetics, neuroanatomy, and prenatal hormonal exposure.

Exotic Becomes Erotic (EBE) Theory

Daryl Bem's developmental theory proposing that biological factors influence childhood temperament, leading to gender conforming or nonconforming behaviors that make unfamiliar peers feel exotic, later converting into sexual attraction via autonomic arousal.

Biobehavioral Model of Sex and Love

A neurobiological model stating that romantic attachment (regulated by oxytocin and vasopressin) and sexual desire (regulated by androgens and estrogens) are mediated by distinct, bidirectionally interacting neural systems.

Obergefell v. Hodges

The landmark United States Supreme Court ruling decided on June 26, 2015, which established that the fundamental right to marry is constitutionally guaranteed to same-sex couples.