Attraction and Close Relationships

Vocabulary flashcards on key terms related to attraction, love, and relationships.

Attraction

The feeling of being drawn to someone, often a necessary condition for friendships to begin.

Love

A complex emotion that includes passionate, companionate, and consummate forms.

Passionate (or Romantic) Love

An intense state of longing for another person, involving physiological arousal.

Consummate Love

A complete form of love involving passion, intimacy, and commitment.

Companionate Love

Affection and tenderness felt for those with whom our lives are deeply intertwined.

Cluster Analysis

A statistical method for automatically classifying data into groups.

Assortative Mating

Nonrandom mating where individuals mate with others similar to themselves.

Self-Regulation

The ability to control one's behavior and emotions.

Self-Disclosure

Revealing intimate information about oneself to another person.

Benefit

A positive outcome or advantage gained from a relationship.

Well-being

A state of being comfortable, healthy, or happy.

Big Five

The five broad personality traits: openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism.

Social Compatibility

The ability to get along well with others.

Attachment Behavior

Actions that aim to maintain closeness with an attachment figure.

Commitment

The state of being dedicated to a relationship.

Mere Exposure Effect

The phenomenon that repeated exposure to novel stimuli increases liking of them.

Averaging Effect

The preference for faces that are average and symmetrical.

Minimax Strategy

A strategy that minimizes potential losses and maximizes potential gains.

Attachment Styles

Patterns of relating to others that are based on early childhood attachments.

Familiarity

The state of being known or recognized.

Gain-Loss Hypothesis

The idea that people are more attracted to those who initially disliked them but then grew to like them, compared to those who consistently liked them.

Hospitalism

A condition of social and emotional disturbance in institutionalized children.

Archival Research

Analyzing existing records or data.

Distributive Justice

Fairness in the allocation of resources.

Meta-Analysis

A statistical technique that combines the results of multiple scientific studies.

Relationship Dissolution Model

A model that describes the stages of breaking up.

Emotion in Relationships Model

A model relating emotions to expectations and disruptions in close relationships.

Reinforcement-Affect Model

The theory that we like people who are associated with positive feelings and dislike people who are associated with negative feelings.

Need to Affiliate

The basic human motive to seek out relationships with others.

Comparison Level

The standard against which people evaluate the desirability of a relationship.

Reciprocity Principle

The tendency to like those who like us.

Proximity

Physical closeness.

Evolutionary Social Psychology

The study of social behavior from an evolutionary perspective.

Dyadic Regulation

The process by which couples coordinate their emotions.

Cost-Reward Ratio

The balance of positive and negative aspects in a relationship.

Attitudinal Similarity

Sharing the same beliefs, values, and interests.

Social Comparison Theory

The idea that we evaluate our own abilities and attitudes by comparing ourselves to other people.

Equity Theory

The theory that people are most satisfied in a relationship when the ratio between rewards and costs is similar for both partners.

Three-Factor Theory of Love

Hatfield and Walster's theory that passion, intimacy, and commitment combine to create different kinds of love.

Social Psychology of Evolution

An extension of evolutionary psychology that adapts complex social behavior, helping individuals, families, and species survive as a whole.

Averaging Effect

The principle that humans have evolved to prefer average and symmetrical faces over those with unusual or distinctive features.

Proximity

Living nearby, a key factor in the early stages of friendship formation.

Familiarity

The more familiar we become with a stimulus (or even another person), the more comfortable we feel with it and the more we like it.

Mere Exposure Effect

Repeated exposure to an object determines a greater attraction to that object.

Reciprocity Principle

Law of 'do to others what they do to you'. It can refer to the attempt to gain complacency by first doing someone a favor, but it also applies to mutual aggression or mutual attraction.

Gain-Loss Hypothesis

Paradox that people like us more if they initially disliked us and later liked us, and that they like us less if the sequence is reversed.

Similarity (of Attitudes)

A powerful and positive determinant of attraction.

A non-experimental method that involves the collection of data, or data communications, collected by others.

Assortative Mating

Non-random selection of a partner based on the similarity of one or more characteristics between its members.

Self-Disclosure

The act of sharing intimate information and feelings with another person.

Five Big

The five main dimensions of personality: extraversion or 'surgency', kindness or affability, conscientiousness, emotional stability, and intellect (reason) or openness to experience.

Reinforcement-Affect Model

Attraction model that postulates that we like the people around us when we experience a positive feeling (which is, in itself, a reinforcement).

Cost-Reward Ratio

Principle of social exchange theory according to which liking for another is determined by calculating what it will cost to be supported by that person.

Minimax Strategy

Strategy through which, in relationships with others, we try to minimize costs and maximize accumulated rewards.

Benefit

Income, gain or profit that flows from a relationship when the accumulated rewards of continued interaction exceed the costs.

Comparison Level

Standard that appears over time, which allows us to judge whether a new relationship is beneficial or not.

Equity Theory

Special case of social exchange theory that defines a relationship as equitable when both parties consider the contribution-outcome ratio to be the same.

Distributive Justice

Fairness in the outcome of a decision.

Need to Associate

Drive that leads us to establish connections and enter into contact with other people.

Social Comparison Theory

Comparison of our behaviors and opinions with those of others to establish the correct or socially approved way of thinking and behaving.

Hospitalism

State of apathy and depression observed in institutionalized infants deprived of close contact with someone to care for them.

Attachment Behavior

Tendency of an infant to maintain close physical proximity to the mother or primary caregiver.

Attachment Styles

Descriptions of the nature of people's close relationships, which are thought to be established in infancy.

Passionate (or Romantic) Love

State of intense abstraction by another person that involves physiological arousal.

Companionship Love

Understanding and affection for another person that usually arises from sharing time together.

Three Factor Theory of Love

Hatfield and Walster distinguished 3 components of what we call 'love': a cultural concept of love, an appropriate person to love, and emotional arousal.

Social Compatibility

Way in which people are attracted to partners of approximately the same level of attractiveness or social convenience.

Self Regulation

Strategy we use to match our behavior with an ideal or 'should be' standard.

Couple regulation

Strategy that encourages a couple to conform to an ideal standard of behavior.

Relationship Dissolution Model

Duck's proposal of the sequence that most long-term relationships go through if they ultimately break down.