Intimate Relationships Lecture Notes

Vocabulary practice flashcards covering foundational concepts, theories, gender differences, and attraction based on intro to intimate relationships lecture material.

Interdependence

The mutual influence people have over each other which is bidirectional, extended over time, and extended across situations.

Selection effects

The concept that happy people are more likely to get married than stay single, and less happy people are more likely to divorce.

Protection effects

The idea that marriage itself provides benefits such as improved physical health, financial status, and sexual frequency.

Passion

A component of love involving an intense emotional response and often sexual desire.

Intimacy

A component of love characterized by warmth, closeness, and sharing.

Commitment

The decision to maintain a relationship over time.

Romantic love

A form of love characterized by high passion and intimacy but lacking commitment, often seen in short-term flings.

Companionate love

A type of love seen in long-term couples where there is strong friendship and commitment, but passion and sex are no longer present.

Hindsight bias

The tendency for research findings to seem obvious after they have been reported.

Operationalization

The process of defining abstract concepts in a specific way that allows them to be measured and observed.

Sentiment override

When a partner's global feelings about the relationship color their perceptions of specific behaviors and experiences.

Attrition bias

A problem in longitudinal research where specific types of participants, such as low-trust couples, are more likely to drop out, leaving biased data.

Natural selection

The process by which features contributing to survival and successful reproduction are passed down to future generations.

Sexual selection

The evolution of features that help an organism compete for or attract mates.

Theory of parental investment

The idea that men and women evolved different preferences based on the amount of energy and resources required to raise healthy offspring.

Internal working model

A mental representation of the self as worthy of love (model of self) and others as reliable (model of others).

Preoccupied type

An attachment style characterized by obsession with relationships, clinginess, and dramatic fluctuations in emotional states.

Dismissing type

An attachment style where individuals are uncomfortable with closeness, resist intimacy, and are not supportive when partners are distressed.

Fearful type

An attachment style combining anxiety and avoidance, where individuals long for relationships but withdrawal due to fear of being hurt.

Social Exchange Theory - Outcome

$$\text{Outcome} = \text{Rewards} - \text{Costs}$$

Comparison level ($CL$)

The expectations or standards against which relationship outcomes are compared to determine satisfaction ($\text{Satisfaction} = \text{Outcome} - CL$).

Comparison level for alternatives ($CL_{alt}$)

Perceptions of alternatives to the current relationship, which determines dependency or independence ($\text{Dependency} = \text{Outcome} - CL_{alt}$).

Coercion theory

A social learning concept where partners inadvertently reinforce negative behaviors by giving in only when the behavior becomes intense.

Negative reciprocity

A pattern where one person responds to their partner's negative behavior with a negative behavior of their own.

ABC-X Model

A social ecological model where $A$ is the stressor, $B$ is resources, $C$ is the perception of the stressor, and $X$ is the crisis.

Stress pile-up

The buildup of multiple stressors resulting from an initial stressful event.

Sex

Biological status dictated by chromosomes, hormones, and anatomy.

Gender

The social presentation of sex influenced by culture.

$d$-statistic

A standardized way of quantifying differences between groups; a value of $0$ means no difference.

Intrasexual competition

The competition between members of the same sex to make themselves more attractive to potential mates.

Social structural theory

Explains gender differences as a result of the division of labor, physical specializations, and social constructions of gender.

Androgyny

A sex role identity high in both masculine and feminine traits, associated with higher self-esteem and more secure relationships.

Agency

A sex role focus on self and separation, often associated with domineering or cold behavior.

Communion

A sex role focus on connection to others, which can lead to neediness or a lack of self-worth if not balanced.

Sexual fluidity

Shifts in sexuality at different points in life, which occurs more often in women than in men.

Asexuality

A distinct sexual orientation characterized by a lack of sexual desire and attraction.

Big 5 dimensions

Clusters of traits including Conscientiousness, Agreeableness, Negative Affectivity, Openness to experience, and Extraversion; they are approximately $50\%$ heritable.

Negative affectivity

A personality trait involving anxiety, hostility, and self-consciousness that predicts relationship dissatisfaction and divorce.

Dependence Regulation Model

A model showing how low self-esteem leads individuals to underestimate a partner's feelings, causing them to devalue the partner and feel unsatisfied.

Felt security

A child's experience of safety from a caregiver, or an adult's confidence in a partner's affection and commitment.

Matching phenomenon

The tendency for people to pair up with partners who are similar in physical appearance.

Mere exposure effect

The tendency for liking to increase after repeated interaction or exposure to a stimulus.

Actor effect

The tendency for a specific individual to desire others.

Partner effect

The tendency for a specific individual to be desired by others based on traits like attractiveness or extraversion.

Relationship effect

The desire for a specific partner, often referred to as "chemistry."

Proceptivity

Nonverbal signals shown by one person to another indicating that an approach would be acceptable.

Intimate relationships matter because they are the only setting in which feelings and experiences like these occur

• To love and to be loved are the most basic of human needs - few punishments are more costly than loneliness and social isolation  

• Sharing life’s stresses and strains with trusted confidant is best way to shield ourselves against depressions

Relationships fundamental to our emotional lives - soothed by even smallest gesture from loved one

• Brain regions governing responses to emotional and behavioral threat were activated less when holding a partner’s hand than when holding either no hand or a stranger’s hand 

  • Biologically attuned to people with whom we share an intimate bond 

  • Human capacity for intimacy enables us to regulate our emotions and emotions of people close to us - adapt to the world we live in

• Subjective well-being - how happy we are with life in general, relationships affects this 

• Relationship status - independent of relationship quality, the type of relationship and individual is currently experiencing 

• Those in relationships report greater well-being than those who are single, due to less societal discrimination while receiving more social support from friends and relatives 

• Married people report greater happiness - those living with a partner are happier than those living alone

• Relationship quality - how good or bad people judge their relationship to be - affects their overall subjective well-being  

• The quality of intimate relationships indicates more about a person's overall satisfaction than any other domain in their life (work, finances, friendships, etc.) 

• Just because relationship is happy right now does not mean the relationship is consistently fulfilling - enduring relationship of high quality leads to happier people  

  • Intimate relationships promote happiness because of the beneficial effects they exert on our physical health (people who resolve relationships conflicts are less vulnerable to catching common cold, their bodies heal more quickly) 

  • People live in committed relationships live longer compared to those in unstable relationships - greater levels of stress exposure promote inflammation while slowing down cell division - those whole have high degree of closeness with spouse more likely to view stressors as shared rather than individual which reduces impact of stressor 

  • People in 60s - self-reported levels of criticism from pattern found to predict likelihood of death over next five years 

• Close relationships promote happiness through sexual intimacy - people report being happiest when engaging in sex and physical intimacy  

  • People with steady partner have more sex than those who are not partnered

Relationships have surprising effects on financial well-being - value of married is $100,000 a year, relative to being separated or widowed - those who remain married carry more wealth throughout adulthood

People tend to pay a price for relationship transitions especially when partnership end

People who are happier and healthier are more likely to marry than stay single, and those happier pre marriage are less likely to divorce 

• Selection effects - happiness is said to “select” people into certain sorts of relationships, and it is the initial happiness that makes for the better relationship, not the reverse  

• Protection effects - captures the idea that something real about being in a committed relationship does provide some measure of protections that is not available to single or cohabitating individuals 

Infant’s profound vulnerability and dependence, the developing child might be affected by the intimate relationships of their caregivers 

• Relationship status of parents more influential than race and education in determining whether children will experience poverty  

• Children feel more upset and less emotionally secure when their parents argue, leading them to act out and display aggression with their peers  

  • Arguing parents affects biological systems in children, reducing quality of sleep, speeding up onset of puberty, and compromising their physical health 

  • Marital conflict in home disrupts adolescents attachment to their caregivers, disrupts relationship with peers, and increases addictive online behavior

Children exposed to more parental disruptions tend to have more behavioral problems and poorer health, risk for obesity grows as they anticipate and experience parental separation 

How well child fares closely related to quality of parents’ relationship before breaking up than to the split itself 

Families that children grow up in influence the way they manage their own intimate relationships

• Children of identical twins to examine effects of parental divorce on children’s emotional difficulties and tendencies to later divorce - effects of genes shared by parents and offspring, parental divorce really does increase the likelihood of emotional difficulties and divorce tendencies 

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• Having a divorced parents increases one's chance of divorce by about 10-20%, but most children with divorced parents can go on to have relationships that are indistinguishable from those of children who have intact parents  

Are intimate relationships truly private?

• Relationship issues are present in 38% of all mass murders

• Classmates of child exposed to domestic violence go on to have lower reading and math scores, reducing classmates’ future earnings years later  

• Every divorce costs taxpayers about $30,000 in the form of welfare payments, childcare, food stamps, and similar expenses 

Social control theory - social relationship impose limits on how individuals behave, with weaker relationships increasing deviant behavior

• Regulatory effect occurs because relationships encourage people to internalise and abide by social norms, due to the personal costs that can result when these norms are violated  

• If a convicted criminal forms a stable relationship, they are less likely to commit crimes in the future, unless partner also has a criminal record  

• Cocaine use drops as people enter committed relationships and increases when committed relationships are dissolved 

Intimate relationships are a universal experience

• Pairbonds - connection between two people who have some degree of emotional investment, usually for purpose of reproducing 

• Hardwired capacity for intimacy does not mean this capacity is the same for all people within a culture, or for all cultures at a specific time or for all people across historical time 

  • Experience of love differs across cultures 

• Differences between individualistic or collectivist societies can be seen how people choose their mates 

  • Individualistic, family is support system, person falls in love, introduces mate to family, and pursue relationships 

  • Collectivist, individuals are the support system for families - families collaborate to find partners for their offspring, not to promote happiness but to enhance the family’s stability or social standing   

• Women who choose who they marry are more satisfied in their relationship - love marriages more satisfying than arranged marriages  

• Westernized values in marriage are changing - instead of obligations more to form fulfillment and individual growth, demands for lifelong partnerships are rising when forces that keep people in relationships are weakening  

  • Religious and legal codes for marriages now waned

Interdependence - the mutual influence that two people have over each other is the defining feature of any social relationship, intimate or otherwise 

• Interdependence in bidirectional, it operates in both directions at once  

• It also extends over time, with later exchanges gaining meaning from earlier ones 

• “Relationship” - carries the implication that there is some degree of continuity between the successive interactions  

• Interdependence is a necessary condition for intimacy, but it is not a sufficient condition for intimacy 

Intimate relationships occur between interdependent people, but two people who treat each other as unique individuals rather than as interchangeable occupants or particular social roles/positions 

Impersonal relationships - tend to be formal and task-oriented (shoekeeper and regular customer, patient and nurse, etc.) 

Personal relationships - relatively informal and engage us at a deeper emotional levels - the unique characters of personal versus impersonal relationship is the character of the relationship

• Not all personal relationships are intimate ones  

• A close relationship is one of strong, frequent, and diverse interdependence that lasts over a considerable period of time - the presence of closeness adds something special to personal relationships, as reflected in the strength, frequency, and diversity of the influence partners have over each other 

Seven Common Attributes of Intimate Relationships

• Desire - wanting to be united with the partner, physically and emotionally 

• Idealization - believing the partner is unique and special  

• Disclosure - sharing events, emotions, and experiences 

• Coordination - working together to accomplish key projects and tasks 

• Proximity - taking steps to maintain or restore physical closeness or emotional contact with the partner 

• Prioritizing - giving the relationship more importance than other interests and responsibilities 

• Caring - experiencing and expressing feelings of empathy and compassion for the partner

Intimate relationship

 - being characterized by strong, sustained mutual influence over a broad range of interactions, particularly when those interactions serve to deepen and expand a sense of closeness beyond that in a friendship

Love in intimate relationships is defined by three main components:

• Passion - magical love at first sight aspect of love, full of ardor and longing, tinged with obsession and an intense preoccupation with the partner, and often arousing a strong desire for sexual fulfillment 

• Intimacy - sharing and caring element of live, marked by warm and comfortable feelings of attachment, trust, and authentic friendship, as well as profound sense of mutual caring and respect 

• Commitment - through thick and thin part of live, demonstrated first by the decision to be in a relationship and then by a willingness to remain in it, and involving a dedication to maintaining the partnership 

Kinds of Love

• Romantic love - these relationships tend to burn brightly and fade quickly - many involvement during adolescence and early adulthood fall here 

• Fatuous love - whirlwind courtships full of passionate sex and vows to remain together, but lacking the sharing and caring needed to sustain those feelings  

• Companionate love - where passion and sex are not so central to the relationships, while friendship, open disclosure and dedication give partners a foundation for working together  

• Consummate love - passion, intimacy, and commitment - sustaining this is the real challenge 

  • Intimacy and sexual passion accomplish different goals - governed by different brain regions - sexual passion promotes mating, while love deepens our connection to a specific partner 

  •  Commitment is different from intimacy - people committed to strong relationship communicate more constructively 

  • Intimacy, passion, and commitment develop at different rates - intimacy develops first and most rapidly, then sexual passion then rises holds steady then declines, commitment comes later but increases at much same rate as intimacy

• Social scientists tend to theorize about ideas instead of things

Psychological constructs - an abstract concept, such as love, trust, and commitment, that scientists strive to define, and study - products of human thoughts

• Operationalization - translate abstract ideas into something concrete that can be observed or measured - researches never actually measure the constructs themselves; they can only measure operationalizations  

• Relationships are multidetermine, meaning they’re affected by many different sources of influence at once  

• Unlike objects, couples are human beings who understand and react to being studied, so researchers are required to be sensitive to the needs of their participants

Self-reports - from partners, their own descriptions and evaluations, are the most commonly used sources of data relationship researchers use

Zick Rubin developed the classic Love Scale - respondent indicate their agreement with 13 statement about their feelings for their current patterns on a scale of 1 - 9

• Fixed-response scales - (love scale) the researcher determines the specific questions and possible answers, making it easy to compare responses between individuals 

• Open-ended question - the researcher asks a questions and the respondent gives any answer that comes to mind  - can use to generate more specific questions  

• Qualitative research - approach that relies primarily on open-ended questions and other loosely structured information

Pros and cons to self-reports:

• The require little equipment 

• Often only way of measuring constructs of great interest to relationship researchers  

• Self resorts have high construct validity - great deal of overlap between the operationalization and the construct in which the researchers are interested  

• Convenience of self-reports can lead researchers to overlook some complexities in interpreting the results  

• People can’t tell you what they don’t know  

• People can’t describe what they don’t remember - self-reports about behavior may be unreliable  

• People can’t give meaningful answers if they misunderstood the questions  

• People’s reluctance to answer questions accurately when a true answer makes them look bad - social desirability effect - the tendency of research participants to give answers they think will make them look good, rather than saying what they actually know 

Omnibus measure - the idea that satisfaction with a relationship is based on opinions about the relationship as a whole, as well as opinions about a range of specific aspects 

• These measures work fine until you want to compare those scores with scores from another instrument that measures something more specific 

• Item-overlap problem - when tools that are measuring different constructs contain questions about similar topics  

• Global measures - measures that ask partners only about their evaluations of their relationship as a whole 

Observational measures - gather data about relationship events without having to ask the people who are experiencing them, often by audio or video recording them instead

• Sentiment override - partner’s general feelings about the relationship frequently overwhelm their perceptions of specific aspects of the relationship  

• Deciding what behaviors to observe can be challenging to determine  

• Interrater reliability - the extent to which different observers agree that a specified behavior has or has not occurred  

• Pros and Cons 

  • Observations directly assess behaviors of great interest to relationship researchers  

  • They avoid some specific problems with self-reports - less chance to rely on faulty/limited memories 

  • Main problems is possibility of reactivity - when the act of observing a behavior actually changes that behavior 

Indirect measures - which the couple being studies either don’t know, or can’t control, the information they are providing 

• Reaction time - the time it takes to recognize a stimulus when its flashed briefly on a screen  

• Implicit attitudes - the automatic tendency to associate a stimulus with positive or negative feelings  

• Pros and Cons 

  • Indirect measures can show what they are thinking and feeling anyway when people are unwilling or unable to answer direct questions  

  • Distance between specific behaviors that indirect measurements examine and the abstract constructs researchers want to study is the biggest limitation

Psychological responses - the body’s physical reactions to specific experiences

• fMRIS have helped examine how feelings of love relate to the activation of specific areas in the brain  

  • Area associated with reward and motivation lit up more brightly when partners gazed at their loved one than when they viewed a friend  

• Pros and cons 

  • The ultimate indirect measure - free from concerns about social desirability or faulty memories 

  • Offer window to link between body and mind  

  • Meaning of any physiological response can be ambiguous

• Best research adopts a multiple-method approach - operationalizing the construct of interest in different ways and hoping the limitations of each measurement strategy will eventually cancel each other out, thereby letting the effects the research is most focused on emerge clearly

Correlational research - study naturally occurring associations among variables; it is aimed primarily at answering descriptive questions 

• Pros and cons 

  • Valuable when studying variables that cannot be maniu;ated or studied in other ways 

  • Can’t confirm any causal effects - correlation does not imply causation  

• Cross-sectional data - data describe a cross-section, or a snapshot, of a single moment 

Longitudinal research - important type of correlational research, describes what a phenomenon looks like over time and how it might change 

• Can be hard determine the appropriate interval between each measurement  

• To understand variability and change at a daily levels research use a daily diary approach  

• Experience sampling - gathering data from people throughout the day, “sampling” from the totality of their daily experiences  

  • Rochester Interaction Record (RIR) - asks people to fill out a short form every time they interact with some for more than 10 minutes  

• Pros and cons 

  • Helpful when wanting to describe how relationships change, or predicting which relationships will last/end

  • Lets researchers examine processes that would be impossible or unethical to study in other ways (breakups) 

  • This design is expensive and time consuming  - can lose participants along the way  - attrition bias - final sample in a longitudinal study differs from the initial sample as certain kinds of couple have dropped out  

  • The conclusions that can be drawn are limited - closer than cross-sectional to supporting causal statements due to cause has to precede its effect, still now causal in the end

Experimental research - take more active role by manipulating one element of a phenomenon or situation to determine its effects on the rest

• You need a dependent variable, an independent variable, control, and random assignment  

• DV - the effect our outcome that researches want to understand  

• IV - the possible cause, the aspect of the experimental situation the researcher manipulates 

• Control - hold constant, all aspects of the experimental situations that are not manipulating  

• Random assignment - guarantees that every research participant has an equal chance of being exposed to each version of the experimental manipulation  

• Pros and cons 

  • Move beyond description and prediction to address explanations about intimate relationships  

  • Isolating effects of specific variables risk distorting how those variables behave in the real world 

  • Issue of external validity - whether the results of an experiment apply in other situations, or generalize to different contexts  

• Archival research - research examines existing data that have already been gathered, often for an unrelated purpose, by someone else

Sample - people who provide the data, they are a subset of a broader population that could have provided very similar data

• Representative samples - samples consisting of people who are similar to the population to which the researchers would like to generalize  

• Convenience samples - samples that are collected because they are easy to find, such as white people easy to find on campuses where a lot of this research takes place

Psychoanalysis - theory that popularized the distinction between the conscious and unconscious mind (Founded by Freud) 

• More ask about early childhood memories, and recent dreams 

• Believed relationship problems surface when partners begin to play out with each other their unresolved issues and conflicts with their parents 

Radical behaviorism - idea that behaviors are shaped, or conditioned, by their consequences, and that positive consequences make behaviors more likely and negative make less likely (founded by Skinner)

• More ask about current relationship and recurring patterns/behaviors  

• Successful relationships depend on the extent to which pleasing behaviors are extinguished through negative reinforcement 

Theory - an interconnected set of beliefs, knowledge, and assumption that are used to understand a phenomenon or situation

• Influential theories: 

  • Consist of a set of explicit premises, forms the basis for the specific predictions about how the world works 

  • Inspires research and scholarship 

  • Make accurate predictions 

Evolutionary perspective - seeks answers in the distant past, when species first evolved to its present form

• Humans must reproduce to pass their genes to the next generation - natural selection 

• Evolutionary psychology - assumes that the brain, like every organ in the body, evolved in response to specific selection pressures that led some preferences and capacities to be associated with more successful reproduction, and others to be associated with less successful reproduction 

  • Features of the brain today exist because they were beneficial or adaptive

  • Questions here surround the adaptive function of human behavior  

• Feature may be adaptive for two reasons: 

  • It increases an organism’s chance for survival

  • It directly increase an organism’s chance of successfully reproducing by helping the organism attract or compete for mates - sexual selection

Psychological mechanisms - the preferences, capacities, responses, and strategies characterizing our species 

• Some people feel this implies people are merely biological machines lacking ability to respond and learn from the environment - but think of psychological mechanisms like physiological organs, so responsive to the environment  

• Evolutionary mismatch - situations in which evolved tendencies that were adaptive in our ancestral past fail to be adaptive, or even maladaptive, in the present (preference for sweet flavors vs bitter)  

• Environment of evolutionary adaptedness - the period tens of thousands of years ago when our species took it current form  
  
  

Theory of parental investment

• expanded on Darwin’s ideas - sexual selection pressures can vary based on the amount of energy and resources each parents must invest to raise offspring 

  • Typically high for partner who becomes pregnant, whereas men have low parental investment  

  • Direct response to different challenges in environment of evolutionary adaptedness, observe gender differences in preferences and mating behaviors of men and women  

    • Women more likely to value long-term mate with better financial prospects

    • Men more likely to value long-term mate who more physically attractive  

    • Most women with partner older than themselves  

    • Men more upset when find out partner in another sexual relationship  

    • Women develop greater sensitivity to and preferences for cues indicating a partner's fertility and fidelity  

• Evolutionary psychologists argue if they can identify aspects of mating behavior common to entire human species, these behaviors are likely to represent evolved mechanisms  

• They also think about what the environment was like, what adaptive challenges humans would have faced and what mechanisms may have developed 

• Promise of evolutionary perspective is how people attract and select mates  

Attachment theory - proposes that the intimate relationships we form as adults are shaped by the nature of the bonds we formed with our primary caregivers during infancy and early childhood 

• Established by John Bowlby - familiar with Freud’s theories about childhood on adult life  

• Survival during infancy requires active presence of a primary caregiver 

• Attachment figure - someone who provides the child with comfort and safety   

• Attachment behavior system - set of behaviors and reactions that monitors and promotes the closeness of caregivers  

  • Three key factors: 

    • We pay attention to our own internal states 

    • Keep track of our caregiver’s availability and responsiveness 

    • We look out for potential threats in the environment  

  • Want to maintain felt security  

  • Early interactions with caregivers teach infants two important lessons about the world: 

    • Infants learn about themselves - if treated with warmth, learn that they are lovable 

    • Infants learn about their attachment figures - if caregivers are dependable, they learn people can be trusted  

Working models

•  if experiences accumulated in memory they developed into these, internal structures that represent the conscious and unconscious beliefs, expectations, and feelings people have about themselves, others, and relationships  

• Same system that maintains our attachments to caregivers should get activated by our other attachments, like romantic ones  

• Lessons learned in infancy affect how we think about closeness and intimacy  

• Bowlby thought every person’s working models were as distinct as fingerprints, but have two dimensions: 

  • Anxiety 

  • Avoidance 

• Each dimension corresponds to two key lessons: 

  • Views about the self correspond to levels of anxiety about relationships 

  • Views about attachment figures correspond to the tendency to avoid closeness and vulnerability 

• Attachment styles - useful in describing how people’s orientations toward intimacy can differ: 

• Secure attachment - positive view of themselves and others, low in attachment related anxiety and avoidance  

• Preoccupied attachment - have a positive view of others, and therefore are low in attachment-related avoidance. Their low self-worth leaves them chronically high in anxiety   

• Dismissing attachment - view themselves as worthy of others’ care and attention, so low in attachment-related anxiety. View others as not likely to be caring and available, and tend to value self-sufficiency 

• Fearful attachment - negative view of themselves and others, causing high anxiety, tend to seek validation from others, but have sense others will not provide the affirmation they need 

60% of people have secure attachment style

• When partner was nervous for a speech, secure people steeped up and provided support, where insecure people responded with same need by pulling back, weak support  

  • Insecure people more alert to signs of problems in intimate relationships, and get more upset when discussing those problems - their excess concerns about threats to relationship appear to make threats more damaging   

• Attachment styles can change. Continuity of attachment between childhood and early adulthood is significantly lower for children exposed to many difficulty life events  

• Attachment theory adopts a developmental perspective that is lacking in other theories of intimate relationships  

  • Early experiences description on intimacy, offers explanation for how this continuity may come about 

  • Explains variability in values and expectations people bring to their relationships  

  • Intimate relationships, parent-child relationships, and primate ones manifest in a single behavioral system  

• Attachment theory has limited explanation of how a specific relationship develops between two people  

  • Basic premises about what healthy intimacy looks like based in Western, industrialized society

Social exchange theory - suggests that participants in all social interactions pursue their self-interest through the exchange of social goods, such as status, approval, and information

• By identifying the perceived payoffs of specific behaviors, this theory predicts what people will do in any given situation and how they will feel about the results of their actions  

• Developed in late 1950s/early 1960s that combined principles of Skinner’s behaviorism, with elementary economics  

• Thibaut and Kelley first people to propose that the defining feature of any relationship was interdependence, their version of social exchange theory was interdependence theory  

• People approach relationships like economic decisions, analyzing the benefits and drawback (rewards and costs) 

  • Rewards - any of the ways a relationships may meet the needs and desire of each partner 

  • Costs - any of the consequences of being in a relationship that prevent partners from meeting their needs and desires  

• Theory assumes people driven to maximize their rewards and minimize their costs - people have good instincts about possible advantages and disadvantages of a situations  

• Material rewards - adequate food and protection 

• Social rewards - companionship, validation and security  

• Opportunity cost - price of not pursuing a possible reward

Subjective probability

• your own judgement about the likelihood of different possible outcomes your actions will have  

Comparison levels

 partners to compare their perceived experiences to a certain standard of what they think they deserve - positive must exceed the level we think we deserve

Dependence

on the relationships, how free a person feels to leave, should be a function of how the relationship compares to the possible alternatives

Comparison level for alternatives (CL_alt)

 partner’s perceptions of potential options, pointing out that this standard may be entirely independent from that person’s CL

Alternatives - ll possible situations outside of a current relationships, including being alone 

• Barriers - all the forces outside of a relationship that act to keep partners together  

• Investments - the resources a committed couple shares that would presumably be lost following a breakup  

• Commitment - the intention to remain in and maintain a relationship 

Helped explain why couples stay together or drift apart - where there are fewer alternative partners, people are more dependent on their current relationship

• Also research how people who are committed to each other, respond to threats in their relationship  - committed partner more willing to make sacrifices on behalf of their relationship  

• This theory can be applied to any specific question to suggest how different variables combine to affect relationships  

  • Little to say about how initially satisfied couples reach those outcomes  

Social learning theory - more interpersonal approach and defines rewards and costs in terms of the behaviors partners exchange during their interactions with each other

• One partner’s behavior in the other’s presence may be rewarding or punishing to another partner, this will lead to some rewarding or punishing response, which is responded to in turn  

• Narrower approach than social exchange, focusing on what goes on between partners  

• Behaviors partners exhibit during their interactions directly predict the quality of their intimate relationship, positive behaviors strengthen  

• Emphasis on behaviors/skills arose in response to needs of clinical psychologist - couples complain about quality of their communication  

• Theory grows out of assumption daily interactions are essence of any interpersonal relationship - sequence of action and reaction between partners, is the way two people make contact  

• Partners learn from their experiences in each interaction about the quality of their relationship  

  • Satisfying exchange, partners learn they can trust each other, communicate effectively, and be loves/respected 

Coercion theory - offshoot of social learning theory, two people may reinforce each other’s undesirable behaviors unintentionally

Escape conditioning - reinforcing of behaviors that lead to ending a negative experience

• Social learning theory had large impact on how research on intimate relationships was conducted - early research was questionnaires, which then turned into recording couples interactions and observing them 

• Initially goals was to identify specific behaviors associated with satisfying relationships and effective problem solving  

  • Negative reciprocity - distressed couples more negative in general, also demonstrated greater tendency to respond to each other’s negativity with more negativity - big predictor of unhappy relationships  

• Social learning theory emphasizes ongoing dynamics between patterns, as couple (dyad) basic unit of analysis  

• Offers perceptive a perspective on change in intimate relationships other theories lack - offer explanation how how change may come about 

• Developed new methods for observing and describing couples  

• Strong focus on interactions is the biggest limitation  

  • Silent about where communication skills come from and why they might vary across couples  

  • Its inability to explain certain common patterns of relationship development 

Social ecology - range of approaches emphasizing the interplay between people and their environment

Social ecological model - explains how the stresses, supports, and constraints in the environment of a couple may affect the way partners think, feel, and act in their relationship 

• Microsystem - couple’s family and friends  

• Mesosystem - neighbourhood, social system, and culture in which relationship takes place  

• Macrosystem - national and historical forces affecting the relationship 

ABC-X Model (crisis theory) - four letters corresponding to four elements Hill considered crucial to understanding the effects of external challenges on relationships

• A - stressor - any event requiring some sort of behavioral response (having baby, losing job, getting sick) 

• B - resources - all the assets a couple may use in coping with a stressor (money, family, religious group 

  • Family’s level of resources changes how they experiences a particular stressor 

• C - interpretation of the event - whether the couple perceived the stressor as a challenge to be overcome or a catastrophe to be endured 

• X - crisis - nature of A, B, and C lead to this, the couple’s experience of and response to the stressful event 

  • If stress is severe, resources are low, and interpretation is negative, Hill predicts couples will find it hard to adapt effectively, so weaker relationships

• Criticism - every element addresses state of relationship in a single moment 

• Double ABC-X model - suggests each elements in Hill’s model has initial meaning as well as one that emerges gradually 

  • Stress pile-up - domino effect, can be as stressful or even more stressful, than original event itself  

  • Accounts for resources couple can access in response to an event

  • Accounts for couple’s interpretation of ongoing coping efforts will also affect relationship 

Lifespan studies - assess individuals repeatedly over the course of 50 years or more

• Husbands got married pre war and served more likely to end in divorce than those who did not serve  

• Problems is its expense and duration - so maybe identify couples who tend to have varying degrees of stress day to day  

• Theory helps explain patterns of changes by proposing relationship satisfaction usually decreases when environmental demands exceed couple's ability o cope effectively  

• Limitations stem from failure to specify how some of the links between relationships and outside influences affect personal dynamics within the relationship

Three unifying themes in theories of intimate relationships:

• Dyadic interaction 

• Individual differences - partners are not blank slates, bring past experiences with them  

• External circumstances - relationships affected not only from within them, but also external circumstances