Lecture 3: Close Relationships

What are Close Relationships? 

• Attachment bonds among family, friends, or romantic partners that tie together two or more people over an extended period of time

Close Relationships are Good for us

• May have different personalities, SES but unifying factor was good close relationships 

• Study that found happiest people

• People with strong relationships are… 

  • Happier

  • Have greater life satisfaction

  • Less likely to get sick

  • Have less overall health vulnerabilities 

    • Lower risk of coronary heart disease & stroke 

    • Not just depression and anxiety, even in medical world one of best buffers for negative outcomes healthy wise is close relationships

    • Live longer

Need to Belong

• All have need to belong, longing, desire to belong

• Need food, water, this is like one of those needs but human context in social world

• Need to affiliate & connect with people

• Human emotional need to affiliate with and be accepted by others

• Evolutionary basis for relationships

  • We all exist today because ancestors formed good relationships, bonds, had children

  • Embedded in evolutionary blueprint is capacity for relationships

  • Idea because need romantic bond to raise vulnerable offspring like babies, thats whats been passed down through our history

• The need to belong is universal.

  • Anthropologists, psychologists have gone to cultures

  • No culture that people don’t seek others

  • Universal, suggests evolutionary 

• Desire to belong should be satiable.

  • Western cultures, people have max for how many close friends they have and don’t see them seeking close friends 

  • 6 max and then that need is fulfilled, harder to make friends when transfer because already have friends

• If unmet, we will suffer profound negative consequences.

  • Consequence of solitary confinement for psychological & physical health, this is torture

  • Is Solitary Confinement Tortue? The New Yorker

• Need to belong deep and embedded, guides us and our decision making

Classifying Relationships

• Romantic

• Family

• Friends 

• Acquaintance

• Strangers someone see but don’t know name, or anything about them

What are Communal Relationships?

• Feel a special responsibility for one another

• Give and receive according to need

• Expect their relationship to last for the long term

• Sense of “oneness” or common identity

  • Sense of ‘we’

What are exchange relationships?

• Feel little responsibility for one another

• Give and receive based on equity and reciprocity

• Expect their relationship to be short term

• No common identity

• Imagine romantic relationship one person sees it as communal, one sees as exchange 

  • Not a unit, like a big pot

  • Conflict

  • Generally refer to different types 

  • Workers, colleagues have more exchange

  • Friendships, relationships more communal relationships 

  • Lead to friction 

What influences how you form close relationships?

What is Attachment Theory?

• Influence on how form and exist in adult relationships

• Babies are vulnerable 

• Attachment to caregivers helps them survive 

  • Human babies cannot do anything

  • Need attachment figure to take care of them to survive 

• Parents offer security which allows children to explore

  • Safe place

• Children use this relationship to develop working models of how relationships function

  • First relationship we form as individual

  • Working model we use in future relationships

  • Cradle to the grave: what learn in cradle take to grave, working model apply to other meaningful relationships (friendships, relationships)

What are Childhood Attachment Styles?

Secure

• Most people here

• Parents there for them, responding to needs, engaged

• Kids develop secure attachment, safe to explore world

Anxious

• Caregiver unpredictable responsiveness, sometimes there something not

• Baby unsure and uncertain, self-doubt

• Anxiety & sensitivity to caregiver

• Clinginess 

Avoidant 

• Caregiver unresponsive consistently to needs as baby 

• Become self-reliant, this pearson doesnt help me i have to do this myself, independent, distant 

Disorganized/fearful avoidant

• Avoidant and anxious elements

• Score high on both

• ‘Worst’ negative effects

• Self-sabotagging

• Comes from unresolved trauma, dysregulated

• Anxious & avoidant at same time

Adult Attachment Styles

Airport Study

• Whether see differences of attachment styles of adults when people going on trips, one person leaving one staying

• Looked for romantic partners one leaving, one staying have emotional interaction

• Then gave survey to get attachment style & their emotions

• If looked at their attachment…

• Avoidant partners sought less physical contact, embraced & held hands less 

• Anxious partners reported more fear & sadness 

  • More upset & disturbed by partner leaving

Why do we have different attachment styles? 

• Anxious & avoidant attachment are adaptive responses to the type of care that people received (i.e., it’s not safe to trust someone who is unreliable)

  • Avoidant right response as a baby

  • Appropriate response not to ideal environment 

• BUT…Problems can arise when we carry them forward into new relationships

Lingering Questions

1. Many of us have two caregivers. How does this fit with Attachment Theory? 

• child can develop different attachment relationships with different caregivers.

• For example, if one caregiver is consistently responsive and supportive but another is unpredictable or unavailable, the child might develop:

• a more secure attachment with the responsive caregiver

• a more anxious or avoidant attachment with the other caregiver.

2. Do we have the same attachment styles in all our relationships?

• Generally don't

• Reflection of what relationship has created and other person

• If anxious might be different than someone who is avoidant or secure

• Your attachment style can partly reflect what that particular relationship has taught you and how the other person behaves.

• For example, someone might:

• - feel secure with a reliable and reassuring partner,

• - become more anxious with an inconsistent partner,

• - or become more avoidant in a relationship where they repeatedly feel rejected.

3. How stable is our attachment style within a given relationship over time?

• Update & learn from other relationships

• Attachment styles have some stability, but they are not completely fixed.

• Anxious attachment → partner repeatedly responds reliably → greater trust → more secure attachment

• Secure attachment → repeated rejection/betrayal → greater insecurity

What are factors that Influence Attraction?

• What draws us to a person, not necessarily relationships 

• Proximity

  • Underestimated 

  • Idea is closer proximity you are to someone, more likely to interact, more likely to be friends, romantic partner

  • Opportunities to engage with each other

• Physical attractiveness

• Similarity

Westgate Housing Study

• How do people become friends?

• Interested in physical proximity to friendship formation

• Utilized housing complex as MIT 

  • Track friendship formation between people who did not know each other

  • Isolated from rest of city 

  • Residence assigned to apartments randomly

  • Nearly all were strangers, not existing friendships 

  • Asked residence 3 closest friends, figured 

  • As proximity predict whether became friends had to do with all far apart lived from each other 

• Over 65% residence reported at least 1 friend lived in same building as them

• People more likely to be friends with people in their building

• 40% listed someone who lived next door (only 2 apartments) 

• Farther away getting less likely to be friends with them

• Most likely to be friends with someone around you a lot, closer they are, more likely to be friends

• Evidence proximity is playing a role 

How does it work?

1. Increased opportunity to meet people who live close to us 

• See them coming in, bump into them

• Need to make initial contact to realize you want to be friends with them

• Opportunity to initiate the friendship

2. We tend to like novel stimuli more after we have been repeatedly exposed to them (mere exposure).

What is the Mere Exposure Effect?

• The tendency for novel (new) stimuli to be liked more after we have been repeatedly exposed to them

  • Like things more familiar with, that we have more experience with

  • Correlational: how frequently exposed to something & how much they like it 

Mere Exposure Effect Study

• In this study, randomly assigned people to see a stimulus

• See one more likely, don’t know what stimulus means no association with the character 

• For example in 1 of 5 different conditions

  • See first character once

  • See first character twice

  • 5 times

  • 10 

  • 20

  • Amount of times exposed to character is different 

  • In each condition, researchers asked them whether they thought character referred to something good or bad

  • More they had seen it (25 compared to 1-2) more often thought it referred to something good

  • More exposure, more likely they thought this character was good. 

  • Replicated many times

• Rats (mozart or other musician)

  • Not exclusive to humans 

  • Proximity breeds friendship 

Similarity

• Not just proximity (which has powerful effect) friends & romantic partners similarity matters 

Selecting a Romantic Partner

• In study with 1000 engaged couples, they had them rate themselves on 88 characteristics, they looked at how similar couples were vs. any other person in study randomly selected

• Compared how similar person to partner, compared to random person in study who also filled out survey

• Engaged couples ore similar to partner than random person

• Suggests people form bonds with others more similar to them 

• Religiosity, physical characteristics (health) matters more than others

• Complimentary doesn't totally hold up in literature

• Drawn to people who have similar views & values

Why is Similarity Attractive?

1. Fluency in interactions

• If agree on things, see things makes things smoother

2. Similar people have characteristics we like

• We like ourselves, by extension have characteristics we like

3. Social Validation

• Validates our own view of the world

• Validate our own views thats conforming

• Someone liberal, validate way of thinking vs. politically conservative 

Physical Attractiveness

Benefits of Attractiveness

• Interviews rated job candidate on attractiveness (1-7)

• Cross reference rating  with wage ended up getting

  • Positive relationship

  • More attractive, more they got paid

  • Each point of attractiveness, 3500 

Physically Attractive People…

• Are more socially skilled

  • Good at managing people

• Develop good social interaction skills and report more satisfying interactions with others 

  • Receive more attention

• Are treated differently

What is the Halo Effect?

• Belief that attractive people possess a host of positive qualities beyond their physical appearance

  • If someone attractive, assumption also kinder, happier

  • Make assumption attractive people have all these good qualities 

  • Attractive people reak many benefits, also some differences in social ability that comes in life where constantly doted upon 

Gender Differences- Choosiness

“I have been noticing you around campus. I find you very attractive. Would you…

1. go out tonight? 

2. come over to my apartment? 

3. go to bed with me?”

• Big divergence 

• Differences in how men and women interact with each other

Why?

• Gender differences in ways attractiveness is conceptualized

• Investment: females invest more: if have baby have to feed, nurture it

• Men spread seed, short-term interactions with highly attractive females

Gender Differences-Men Prefer Younger Women

• Women's age vs. age of men who look best to her

• As ages of women get older, men around their age

Gender Differences- Women Prefer Men with more Resources

• Picture of men with photo of car

• Men rating women didn't matter

• For women slight boost for men standing in front of luxurious car

Gender Differences Cross Culturally

• The study of 4,764 men & 5,389 women 33 countries and 37 cultures

• Rank attributes on their desirability in someone you might marry

  • Men favor mates who are younger & physically attractive 

  • Women seek older mates with good financial prospects, higher status, slightly older & ambition

Critiques

• Overemphasis on Biology

  • Evolutionary explanations can place too much emphasis on biological and reproductive motives.

  • They may underestimate the influence of culture, social norms, personal experiences, and individual preferences on attraction and mate selection.

  • Human relationships are influenced by more than reproductive success.

• Overly simplistic

  • Does tend boil down to evolutionary drives

  • These theories can reduce complex relationship behaviours to basic evolutionary goals such as reproduction, survival, and parental investment.

  • Attraction is much more complex and can also be shaped by personality, attachment, similarity, social environment, and previous experiences.

  • Not every relationship behaviour can be easily explained as an adaptation.

• Hard to Falsify

  • Many evolutionary explanations are based on what would have been adaptive for our ancestors, which is difficult to directly test.

  • Researchers cannot go back and observe the environments in which these behaviours supposedly evolved.

  • This can lead to “just-so stories,” where almost any behaviour can be given an evolutionary explanation after the fact.

  • A strong scientific theory should make predictions that could potentially be shown to be wrong.

• Stereotypical Gender Roles

  • Cultures where women paid closer to what men paid: care less about mens salary 

  • Cultural forces or culture forces allow biological forces to dissolve away because being 

  • Evolutionary theories often propose that men prioritize youth and physical attractiveness, while women prioritize resources, status, and financial stability.

  • This can reinforce traditional gender stereotypes and may make these differences seem biologically fixed.

  • However, cultural and economic conditions can change these preferences.

  • For example, your notes point out that when women’s earnings become more similar to men’s, women tend to place less importance on a male partner’s income.

  • This suggests that some apparent gender differences may reflect social roles and economic inequality, rather than biology alone.

  • As gender roles become more equal, some of these differences may become smaller.

What are the Types of Love?

1. Passionate

2. Companionate Love

What is Passionate Love? What is Companionate Love?

Passionate Love: 

• Feelings of intense longing with physiological arousal

• When it is reciprocated, we feel fulfillment & ecstasy

• When it is not, we feel despair 

Companionate Love: 

• Feelings of intimacy and affection we feel for another person about whom we care deeply

• People in relationships feel both of these

• More passionate love at beginning, decrease over relationship at same time compassionate love starts to increase

Predicaments of Passion

• We make decisions about long-term commitment based on passionate love, which CHANGES. 
  
  

• Passionate love trumps intimacy and commitment (infidelity)

  • Have relationships where people been together for years (trust each other) but new person comes along feel fiery feeling cheating, leaving partner, not knowing that might happen in chunk of time with new person

Commitment

• Desire to stick it out with partner for better or for worse, up and down

• People committed show these signals depth of commitment 

1. Use more plural pronouns (e.g., “we”) that signal a sense of shared couple identity

2.  More willing to make sacrifices for a partner

• Little things like errands, or bigger things like moving to new city

3. More willing to forgive a partner’s transgressions

4. Derogate tempting alternatives

• Look down on attractive alternatives

• Protective strategy people engage in when they want to be in their long-term relationship

What is the Investment Model of Commitment?

• How predict when people choose to stay vs. go, committed or not 

• 1) how happy are you in this relationship:satisfaction

  • More committed and tend to stay in them

• Satisfaction alone is not enough

• (2) Investment

  • How much put into relationship 

  • If put a lot of time, money, children together keep you in relationship. Grater investments = greater commitment 

(3) Alternatives: Better alternatives → lower commitment

Investment

• High investments may enable couples to weather the inevitable stormy times. 

• Trap people in unhealthy relationships

Alternatives

• Alternatives: how happy would you be in another relationship or alone? 

  • Alternative around viable, then damaging for commitment 

• Most impact on commitment

Divorce

What are some Predictors of Divorce?

• Partnering with a neurotic personality

• Partnering with someone highly sensitive to rejection 

• Marrying at a young age

• Undergoing financial stress

Relationships Study

• 4 horseman of the Apocalypse 

• Signs a relationship dying 

• Discuss contentious issue (fight) 

  • Reported what happened

  • Measured physiological effects

  • Looked for specific behaviours & whether relationships later broke up

What are the 4 Horseman?

Criticism: Highlighting your partner’s personality “defects” 

• Not just critiquing them, but something wrong with them at personality level

Defensiveness: Warding off criticism through counterattack 

• Blaming partner when someone brings something to you

Contempt: Speaking “down” to your partner (superiority) 

• Eye rolling, mocking them, hostile humour, name-calling

• One of the worst ones 

Stonewalling: Ignoring or shutting out your partner (withdrawing)

• Partner comes to you, i dont have time for this, can we talk about it later

Examples (& Counter Examples) of 4 Horseman

“It’s not my fault that we’re always late, it’s your fault.” 

“Well, part of this is my problem, I need to think more about time.”  Defensivess

You always talk about yourself. You are so selfish.” 

“I’m feeling left out by our talk tonight. Can we please talk about my day?”  Criticism

“We’re not talking about this anymore.” 

“Let’s take a break and come back to this” Stonewalling

 “You’re an idiot.” 

“I’m proud of the way you handled that situation” Contempt 

How can we cultivate happy & healthy romantic relationships?

• Capitalizing on the good

  • When partner comes home & something great happened

  • Thats amazing, im so happy for you, enjoying moment with them

• Being playful

  • 
    

• Finding the good in partners

New Avenues in Relationship Research- Same-Sex Relationships

• Smaller rates in population 

• Very similar correlates for relationship quality

Gay couples: 

• Tends to be more autonomy 

• Fewer barriers to leaving

• More frequent relationship dissolution

Lesbian couples: 

• More intimacy

• More autonomy

• More equality

• More frequent relationship dissolution

Consensual Nonmonogamy

• Polygamy is a form of marriage consisting of more than two persons.

• Open relationships are based on a primary couple who are “open” to sexual contact with others.

• Polyamory allows people to openly conduct multiple sexual and/or romantic relationships simultaneously, with the knowledge and consent of all involved in or affected by the relationships.

• Polyfidelity Closed relationship style that requires sexual and emotional fidelity to an intimate group that is larger than two.

Ted Talk: Why We Love, Why We Cheat

• Helen Fisher 

• Talks about the 2 biggest social trends in coming century and 10 000 years

• Work on romantic love

• Put 32 people madly in love in fMRI, 17 mad in in love & accepted & 15 who were madly in love & they just had been dumped

• Our ancestors, human beings have wondered what is love a million years ago

• What romantic love was?

• Looking at research

• Specific happens when you fall in love

  • Person begins to take on “special meaning” 

  • Focus on this person, list what dont like sweep aside & focus on what you like

  • Love is blind

  • Read poetry from all over the world. 

  • There car different, their wine glass very different from everyone else's. 

  • Person takes on special meaning, focus attention on them, aggradize them, intense energy, up all night, intense elation when well, mood swings and despair when things going poorly, real dependence on this person

  • Sexually possessive, moment you fall in love sexually possessive of them. Darwinian purpose, the whole point of this is to pull two people together, strongly enough to begin to rear babies as a team

  • Main characteristics of love is craving: an intense craving to be with a particular person, not just sexually but emotionally. 

  • Another main characteristic motivation

  • Obsession

    • When put in MRI ask questions most important was “ what percentage of day and night do you think about this person” would say all day, all night. 

    • Very last question was “would you die from them” they would say yes

    • Scanned their brains, looking at picture of their sweetheart and looking at a neutral photograph with distraction task in between, look at same brain in heightened state & resting state. Found activity in many brain regions

    • One of the most important was a bran region that becomes active when you feel rush of cocaine. 

    • Romantic love is not an emotion, always thought it was a series of emotion

    • It is a drive, comes from motor of the mind, wanting part of mind, craving part of mind. Like when you want to win a promotion at work. Its a drive

    • More powerful than the sex drive. Don’t slip into depression, around the world people who are rejected in love will kill for it. People live for love, kill for love, die for love. Songs, poems, novels, sculptures, paintings, myth, legends

    • Powerful brain system: most powerful brain systems for great joy and great sorrow. 

• Its one of 3 basically different brain systems that evolved for mating & reproduction

• One is the sex drive, the craving for sexual gratification

• Second is romantic love: that elation, obsession of early love

• Third brain system is attachment: that sense of calm and security you can feel for a long-term partner

• Sex drive evolved to look for whole range of partners (can be applied to anyone), thinks romantic love evolved to focus mating energy on just one individual at a time thereby conserving mating time and energy. Attachment evolved for you to tolerate this human being, at least long enough to raise a child together as a team

Two profound social trends of last 10000 years and last 25 years that are going to have an impact on these 3 different brain systems

• Lust, romantic love & deep attachment to a partner

• The first is women working, moving into the workforce. 

  • Everywhere in the world not only moving into job market, slowly but its happening closing gap between men & women in terms of economic power, health & educaiton. Very slow. Moving into job market. 

  • IV moving back into job market

  • Gender differences: men and women are not alike. Gender differnces in the brain

  • One is womens verbal ability, women can talk. Womens ability to find the right word rapidly, basic articulation goes up in the middle of the menstrual cycle with estrogen levels peak. But even at menstruation they’re better than the average man. Becoming very powerful force. 

  • Women have incredible people skills, negotiating skills, highly imaginative, tend to be web thinkers collect more data when they think, put them into more complex patterns, see more options than outcomes, they tend to be contextual holistic thinkers

  • Men tend to on average, get rid of what they regard as extraneous, focus on what they do & move in more step by step thinking pattern 

  • Moving towards collaborative society: talents of both men and women are becoming understood, valued & employed

  • Women moving into job market is having a huge impact on sex & romance & family life

  • Women starting to express their sexuality. In Western world women start sooner at sex, have more partners, less remose fro partners they do, marry later, fewer children, leave bad marriages in order to get good ones. Seeing the rise of female sexual expression

  • Returning to an ancient form of marriage equality, “symmetrical marriage”, “pure marriage”, “companionate marriage”- this is a marriage between equals, pattern highly compatible with the ancient human spirit

  • Rise of romantic love, 90% American women & 86% American men, would not marry somebody who had every single quality they were looking for in a partner if they were not in love with that person. Want to be in love with person, arranged marriages declined. 

• The second on aging the aging world population 

  • Extension of middle age

  • The older you get, the less likely you are to divorce

  • Women educated, interested, capable

  • Opportunity to make good marriages is now. 

• These 3 brain systems: lust, romantic love & attachment don’t always go together, they can, thats why casual sex isn’t so casual 

• Hormones, why fall in love after making love

• These 3 brain systems aren’t always connected to each other: you can feel deep attachment to a long-term partner while you feel intense romantic love for someone else, while you feel the sex drive for people unrelated to these other partners. In short, we’re capable of loving more than one person at a time. Can swing from deep feelings of attachment for one person, to romantic love for somebody else. 

• Thinks we were built to reproduce, not to be happy, we can make good relationships with each other. 

• Worry is about antidepressants

  • 100 million prescriptions written every year in U.S. drugs going generic. More and more people taking them long term

  • Drugs raise levels of serotonin, suppressing dopamine circuit. Dopamine associated with romantic love & kill the sex drive- kill organsm, kill flood of drugs associated with attachment

• Why are we all alike? 

• Why do you fall in love with someone rather than someone else? 

  • Timing 

  • Proximity 

  • Mystery which elevates dopamine in the brain, over threshold to fall in love

  • Fits within ‘love map’ unconscious list of traits you build in childhood as you grow up

  • Gravitate towards people with somewhat complementary brain systems 

• Biology of love

  • If do something novel with someone, drive up dopamine in brain & trigger brain system for romantic love

  • Millions of years ago evolved 3 basic drives: sex drive, romantic love, and attachment to a long-term partner

  • These circuits are deeply embedded in the human brain, survive as long as our species survive. 

Main Ideas

• Humans have three separate brain systems related to mating and relationships:

  1. Sex drive (lust): motivates people to seek sexual partners.

  2. Romantic love: creates intense attraction, craving, motivation, and obsession toward one specific person.

  3. Attachment: produces feelings of calm, security, and emotional connection with a long-term partner

• Fisher studied people who were deeply in love using fMRI brain scans. Her research included people whose love was reciprocated and people who had recently been rejected. She found that romantic love involves brain systems associated with motivation, wanting, and reward, which is why people can become extremely focused on a romantic partner. 

• She argues that romantic love evolved for reproductive purposes. By concentrating attention on one person, humans could form a pair bond long enough to reproduce and begin raising children together. 

• Why do people cheat? Fisher argues that the three brain systems do not always operate together. Someone can experience attachment to one person, romantic love toward another person, and sexual attraction toward someone else. Because these systems are biologically distinct, humans are capable of having different forms of attraction toward multiple people at the same time. 

• Fisher also discusses changes in society, particularly the increasing economic and social independence of women. She argues that changing gender roles may influence how people form relationships, while the fundamental biological systems underlying love remain deeply rooted in human evolution. 

• Toward the end, Fisher raises concerns about serotonin-enhancing antidepressants, suggesting that their effects on brain chemistry could potentially interfere with romantic attraction, sexual desire, and attachment. She presents this as an area of concern requiring further attention. 

Overall message

Fisher’s main argument is that love is a powerful biological drive shaped by evolution. Humans evolved separate systems for lust, romantic attraction, and long-term attachment, and because these systems can operate independently, human relationships can be complicated. Romantic love can produce enormous happiness when reciprocated but also intense distress when rejected.