Lecture 13

Three approaches to love and hate

Emotional experiences all people share; individual differences in ability to feel and control such emotions; dynamical phenomena that shape our behavior over time.

Fraud's theory of Thanatos

All people have a death instinct, drive toward death & self-destructive behaviors, projection of aggression, use of defense mechanisms to redirect Thanatos drive towards out-group members.

Jung's ruling type

Shadow + power complex + thinking-extroverted, a person who proceeds for own gain without consideration of others.

Adler and Horney

Hostile and hateful personalities develop during childhood.

Adler

Focus on early coping & rejection = world inhospitable and hostile.

Horney

Children who experience extended time when they do not feel safe repress anxiety and become neurotic, develop neurotic trends.

Neurotic trends

Self-protective mechanisms to achieve power & control over others.

Erikson's view of aggression

Emerges during social interactions in early childhood, 3 unsuccessfully resolved psychosocial stages (lack of trust as infant, treated in hostile manner as seeking autonomy, punished initiative & thwarted rather than realistically channeled).

Fromm's authoritarian personality type

Existential, biological, social interaction.

Existential

Growing feeling of loneliness & alienation in modern society, surrounding individuality in order to belong to the group.

Biological

Cruel penchant for exerting power, abusing and taking others possessions, want to cause the suffering of others.

Social interaction

Generated by negative relationship with parents, poor channeling of drives.

Roger's view of hatred

Negative emotions stem from lack of positive regard, grow up anxious, afraid to realize full potential threatened by life experiences, discrepancy between perception of self and life experience.

Maslow's view of hatred

Fear and doubts about self are root of immaturity and hate, unmet safety needs, hatred comes from deficient environment, need structure and regulation along with love and feelings of safety to grow and change.

Allport

Hatred and aggression are cardinal traits, characteristics which are highly influential in person's personality and daily actions.

Cattell

Factor analysis of aggression.

Eysenck

Aggression related to psychoticism.

Feshbach

Empathy inhibits aggressive feelings and behaviors.

Kelly's cognitive simplicity

People don't make many distinctions about other people, likely to perceive other people as similar to each other, authoritarian people might dismiss whole groups of people as enemies, hostility results when concept of others is not supported by evidence.

Hate as learned behavior

Aggression is acquired through the same mechanisms as all behavior, hateful emotions are conditioned responses, hateful behaviors are modeled, observed, imitated, and vicariously reinforced.

Ethnological theories of hate

Aggression is a product of adaptive evolutionary process, fatalistic view, hatred is inevitable and natural, hatred is innate since aggression was adaptive in evolution.

Brain disorders and hatred

Alcohol and drug-induced brain disorders.

Maslow's b-love

Unselfish and cares for the needs of others - more self-actualized and helps partners to actualization.

Maslow's d-love

Selfish, needy, and immature.

Erich Fromm's types of love

Immature, motherly, brotherly, erotic, mature (brotherly and self-love).

Rollo May types of love

Sex (lust), Eros (love-savoring), Philia (brotherly love), agape (unselfish love), authentic love (all types of love).

Romantic attachment styles

Secure, avoidant, anxious-ambivalent.

Secure

Easily forms and invites warm close relationships.

Avoidant

Feels uncomfortable in close relationships, has trouble trusting others.

Anxious-ambivalent

Wants closeness, but feels insecure and pushes others away.

Love explained by evolutionary psychology

Developed because of adaptive consequences, attraction to opposite sex necessary for reproduction.