Week 9 - Dating, Mating, and Partnering

Singles and Casual Relationships

• In 2010, 27% of adult Americans reported living single (unmarried and living alone)

• Singlism: prejudice against singles

  • Being single viewed as a “deficit” identity

• Sexuality among singles

  • Some may be fully or partially celibate

  • Most are sexually active

    • Hookups, FWBs, actively dating/pursuing committed relationships

TED Talk - Dr. Barry Schwartz takeaways

• “Official dogma” in Western societies is that to maximize welfare of citizens, we want to maximize freedom

• We maximize choice in order to maximize freedom

• We can see how choices have permeated all aspects of our lives

  • Shopping at the supermarket

  • Health care decisions

  • Constructing our identities

  • Deciding on marriage and family

• There are pros and cons to having so many choices. Pros may be more obvious, so he wants to discuss cons

  • Paralysis rather than liberation

  • Opportunity costs

Maximizers and satisficers

• Maximizers want the best

• Satisficers (combo of “satisfy” and “suffice”) want good enough

• Maximizers seem to make better choices and do often get better outcomes (e.g., jobs with higher salary) but they are less happy/satisfied with them

• The older you are, the less likely you are to be a maximizer

The paradox of choice and dating

• “If you are in a big city or on an online dating site, you are flooded with options. Seeing all these options… are we now comparing our potential partners not to other potential partners but rather to an idealized person whom no one could measure up to?”

• “How many people do you need to see before you know you’ve found the best? The answer is every damn person there is. How else do you know it’s the best? If you’re looking for the best, this is a recipe for complete misery.”

“To Fall in Love With Anyone, Do This” by Mandy Len Catron

• “The 36 Questions That Lead to Love”

• Based on the study by psychologist Arthur Aron and colleagues that explored whether intimacy between two strangers can be accelerated by having them ask each other a specific series of personal questions 

• 36 questions in the study are broken up into three sets, with each set intended to be more probing than the previous one

• Based on premise that mutual vulnerability fosters closeness

The Study (“Experimental Generation of Interpersonal Closeness,” 1997) - Study 1

• Looked at effect on cross-sex and all female pairs

• People had to be strangers/not already know one another

• Counterbalanced different patterns of attachment styles

• Didn’t match people who disagreed on an important value

• Pairs did either small-talk or closeness-generating procedure

• Results: pairs who did the closeness generating procedure did report feeling more close to partner in all groups/pairings

The Study - Study 2

Same as first, but put people together for task even if they disagreed on important issues

• Disagreement didn’t seem to affect results: people still felt closer in the closeness manipulation task

• Study 2 also examined whether telling people they were expected to like each other before the task increased feelings of closeness

  • No effect here either

• Across both studies, found that those with avoidant/dismissive attachment styles experienced less closeness

  • But also found that perceptions of others might change if you experienced closeness with them

The Study - Study 3

Introverts might experience less closeness than extroverts, unless they were told the task was to get close