Interpersonal relationships

  • Interpersonal Relationships

    • Friends 

    • Family 

    • Neighbors 

    • Coworkers 

    • Romantic Partners

Deal Breakers and Makers 

  • Big five 

    • Extraversion and Agreeableness correlate with the maintenance of interpersonal relationships more than the other traits. 

    • Extraversion

      • Meet new people 

      • Do more things

    • Agreeableness

      • Easy to get along with 

      • Avoid conflict with others

      • Resolve conflict when it does arise

    • Studies:

  • Likable people 

    • Sample

      • N=741 

      • University students 

      • 60% women

      • Had them rate 51 personality traits that make people seem the most likable. 

      • Found 

        • Outgoing and energetic traits were associated with being liked 

        • Dominance not so much 

        • Politeness was the strongest one of being liked.  

                  

  • Communal Orientation (Deal Maker) 

    • Defined as: Motivation to meet partners needs. 

    • People who are higher in communal orientation, end up doing more mutually enjoyed activities and have more sexual desire that doesn't drop off as much as couples who lack communal orientation. 

    • Machine learning: Can we create algorithms that can predict which two people like each other? 

      • No we cannot

  • Contempt (Deal Breaker) 

    • “I feel like others are wasting my time”

    • “I often lose respect for others” 

    • “All in all, I am repelled by others fault” 

    • Falls under the umbrella of 

      • Arrogance 

      • Cold 

      • Low Agreeableness

    • *Younger men are more likely to exhibit this trait. 

    • Outcomes 

      • Less committed to romantic partners  

      • Dissatisfied with their partners 

        • But it's mutual. 

  • Rejection Sensitivity (Deal Breaker)

    • Hyper vigilant to rejection

    • Challenging for them to utilize cues

      • Misinterpreting cues for signs of rejection. 

      • Which isn't healthy for interpersonal relationships. 

      • Leads to anxiety, or even panicked actions. 












Circumplex Space 

  • People who are high in communion are called warm 

  • People who are high in Agency are dominant 

Key:

Extraversion = Equal parts of dominance and warmth 

Unassuming= Equally warm and submissive 

Introversion= Equally cold and submissive 

Calculating= Equally Cold and dominant

Goal: Aims to describe how people interact with each other in interpersonal relationships. 

We can describe people's behavior with the circumplex 

Arrow = Vector that describes people's actions. 

Length of the vector: tells us about the intensity

Spin: Tells about the changes of their behavior in interpersonal interactions over time. 

- The more people spin the more inconsistent they are in their interpersonal interactions. 

The circumplex shows us that people's behaviors are not random interpersonally but they tend to follow a particular pattern. It articulates the natural patterns of interpersonal relationships 

Agency: When interacting with dominant people you tend to be submissive. When interacting with submissive people you tend to be dominant. 

Communion: Warm invites warm, Cold invites cold.

Online Dating 

  • Who uses it? 

    • Back then stats: 36% of Canadians (19% americans)

    • 19 to 20% enter long term relationships from online dating.

    • 70% growth rate of online dating 

    • What personality traits would lead someone to use online dating? 

      • It is really hard to predict, there's no correlation between the big five and online daters. Any personality trait could. 

      • They found that people who are more sensitive to rejection are more likely to use online dating. 

        • Correlation: r = 14

  • Compatibility

    • Online platforms use similarity to match 

    • In some sense similarity is important: 

      • Typical person enjoys the typical person 

      • Typical people understand each other 

    • In other cases it is not important at all: 

      • Two people high in rejection sensitivity, doesn’t make sense and doesn’t help for the making of a healthy relationship.

      • Two people who are high in contempt, they just constantly think bad about each other, creating toxicity.

      • Depressed people matching with other depressed people does work.

  • Its not about similarity or opposites attract, but instead trying to find somebody who has a lot of deal makers and avoid people who have deal breakers.

  • Online Dating and Dishonesty

    • More people believe that people are lying on their online dating profiles but fewer will admit to doing it themselves.

    • Researchers found that people who are higher in conscientiousness, agreeableness, and open-mindedness were less likely to lie.

    • Extroverts don’t lie about their hobbies but about the number of other people they’re talking to.

    • Researchers looked at linguistical cues to figure out what types of people lie. (These are really small effect sizes)

      • If they use fewer self references ( I and me) in their bio they tend to lie and they’re more likely to have filters on their images.

      • They found that those who use negations like (don’t and not) tend to have filters on their images.

      • The fewer words people had on their profiles in general, the more likely their pictures were altered in some capacity.