Key Terms and Understanding
6.1 Personal Relationships
6.1.1 Formation of Personal Relationships
Key Definitions
Familiarity: cognitive state of knowing a person well because of meeting him or her on multiple occasions
Mere exposure effect: cognitive effect of being presented with the same stimulus repeatedly multiple times
Major histocompatibility complex: a group of genes that are involved in the formation of the immune system
Proximity: closeness in physical space
Essential Understanding
→Personal relationships can be in many forms
↳romantic relationships— being attracted to another person, forming romantic bonds, getting married
↳ Biological origins of romantic relationships are mainly relevant to attraction
→ Some biological explanation of attraction are:
↳ evolutionary explanations
→ Predicts that females will find desirable males who can provide better economic care for offspring
→ Predicts males will look for females who are healthy and can produce healthy offspring
→ If this is true, these patterns should be universal across cultures
can be seen in Buss (1989)
↳ genetic explanations
→ linked to evolutionary explanations
→ suggest that the basis of interpersonal attraction may be biological markers of genetic compatibility
→ can be seen in “Dirty T-shirt Study” or Wedekind et al (1995)
↳ neurochemical explanations
→ have included research on pheromones and hormones like oxytocin and neurotransmitters like dopamine
Cognitive explanations
↳ have included several prominent theories like:
Similarity-attraction hypothesis:
↳ Byrne (1961)
→ claims that we are attracted to others who resemble ourselves
→ we perceive people more positively if we believe that they share our attitudes to important issues
Matching hypothesis
↳ Walster et al (1966), Berscheid et al (1971)
→ people seek contact with people whose attractiveness are similar of their own
→ the studies above have shown that people do try to match their attractiveness to that of their potential mates, at least during the start of a relationship
Social explanations
↳ have focused on such factors like:
Familiarity and Mere Exposure Effect
→ can be seen in Zayonc (1968), Moreland and Beach (1992)
Proximity: being close to each other in physical space
→ can be seen in Festinger, Schachter, and Back (1950)
Social Proof: being more attracted to people who we perceive to be well-accepted in society
→ can be seen in Jones et al (2007)
6.1.2 Role of Communication in Personal Relationships
Key Definitions
Attribution: process of explaining other people’s behavior by assigning causes to it (either situational or dispositional)
Attributional style: preference for attributing situational/dispositional causes to a partner’s positive/negative behaviors
Patterns of accommodation: shifts in communication styles that occur between partners to better adapt to each other in the course of interaction; they can be thought as strategies of resolving interpersonal conflict
Self-disclosure: purposeful disclosure of personal information (like feelings, concerns, fears) to another person
Essential Understanding
→ Once a personal relationship has been made, it needs to be maintained
↳ Relationships sometimes break apart and constructive communication is a major means of preventing this
→ There are several approaches that try to explain how exactly communication is used in personal relationships:
↳ Social penetration theory
→proposed by Altman, Taylor 1973
↳claims that individuals move in a relationship from a shallow level of communication to a more intimate one
→ this is done through intimacy which is characterized by greater self-disclosure
Acts of disclosure has been shown to have a range of effects (Collins et al 1994):
→ people disclose more to those they initially like
→ when you disclose to another person, the person tends to like you more
→ when you disclose to another person, you tend to start liking that person more
→ So, act of self-disclosure increases liking of both actors in the process
↳ self-disclosure may be an important component of communication that’s responsible for maintaining relationships
Onion metaphor: sometimes used to illustrate the social penetrations theory
→ In the metaphor, as interpersonal relationships develop, layer after layer of an individual’s personality is peeled off, moving from the layer of superficial social self to personal core
↳ Approaches focusing on attributional styles
→proposed by Heider (1958)
→ claims that people are “naive psychologists” who try to understand the behavior of others
→ they then assign causes to behaviors they observe
↳ allows the social world to be more predictable and easier to navigate
→ The causes assigned to behavior of others may be broadly divided into two types:
↳Dispositional attributions:
→ when we decide that someone’s personality is responsible for the behavior
Ex: he must have exceeded speed limit because he is reckless
↳Situational attributions:
→ when we decide that the behavior was caused by external factors
Ex: he must exceeded the speed limit because there was an emergency
→ For interpersonal relationships, the way attributions are made and communicated may be important in making and maintain mutual trust
→ Healthy relationships are described by a positive attributional style
↳ Partners assume best intent on the part of each other an refrain from automatically blaming the other person when a negative behavior is observed
→ A positive attributional style is attributed to the partner’s personality
→ A negative attributional style is attributed to the adverse circumstances (situational factors)
↳ Approaches focusing on patterns of accommodation
↳key: patterns of accommodation that acknowledge the disagreement and try to resolve it constructively (voice) are associated with higher marital satisfaction over time, as opposed to destructive and/or passive strategies
→ In communication theory, the concept of accommodation describes a situation in which shifts occur in the partners’ speech styles to adapt to each other
→ Accommodation can also be thought of as a strategy for resolving interpersonal conflict
Rusbult and Zembrodt (1983)
→ analyzed student self-report essays to identify four main communication strategies used to resolve conflict or disagreement in a relationship
These are:
→ Voice: acknowledge dissatisfaction and try to improve the situation (more active and constructive)
→Exit: acknowledge dissatisfaction and try to end the relationship (more active and destructive)
→Loyalty: not acknowledge dissatisfaction and passively wait for the situation to improve (more passive and constructive)
→Neglect: not acknowledge dissatisfaction and allows the relationship the deteriorate (more passive and destructive)
Gottman and Krokoff (1989)
→ conducted longitudinal observational studies of couples
→ Couples were observed in their home environment or a lab while engaging in a discussion on either a low- or high-conflict issue
Results:
→ expressing anger and disagreement was not necessarily associated with marital dissatisfaction over time
→ In fact, couples who solved their conflict constructively were more satisfied with their relationship
→ Those couples who avoided the conflict were less satisfied
↳ Researchers explained that such couples do not have the opportunity to experience constructive conflict resolution together
6.1.3 Explanations for Why Relationships Change or End
→ Researchers were also interested in how to model the break-up of a relationship
↳ understanding the stages which relationship dissolution progresses and identifying factors that trigger this process
→ Prominent models of this area include the following:
↳ Gottman’s Four Horsemen of Relationship Apocalypse
↳ Rollie and Duck (2006)’s Five-stage Model of Relationship Breakdown
→ supporting these models empirically in their entirety needs a large number of longitudinal studies, so it’s difficult to illustrate them with separate examples
→ however, there are some specific studies that do aspects of the models
→ Research in the area typically relies on retrospective self-report measures which are open to a variety of biases like social desirability or effects of reconstructive memory
↳ there’s also ethical concern since participants may be required to recreate hurtful episodes in their memory
Gottman’s Four Horsemen of Relationship Apocalypse
→ Gottman Institute headed by John and Julie Gottman performed longitudinal research into couples through observation, questionnaires, and interviews and tries to predict how relationships will unfold
↳ utilized a rich combination of quantitative and qualitative data
→ Couples are invited to the lab (“Love Lab”)
↳ interaction was recorded with two remote-controlled cameras
→ Biometric data from a polygraph (machine that detects and records physiological characteristics like breathing rates) was recorded simultaneously and projected on the same screen so that researchers can see both people and biometric data in real time
↳ in addition, relationship history is studied through self-report measures and individual interviews
→ The Four Horsemen is a popular name for the four main elements of relationships that have proven to be predictive of relationship deterioration (i.e divorce)
↳ Criticism:
→ refers to a general statement that expresses a dispositional attribution about a person
Ex: you always forget to feed the dog
↳ Contempt:
→ treating someone with disrespect or mocking sarcasm
Ex: insulting the partner or eye rolling (primary factors/predictors of divorce)
↳ Defensiveness:
→ someone claims to be under attack for no reason
Ex: shifting blame to others
↳ Stonewalling:
→ essentially ignoring the partner
Ex: withdrawing them from conversation; refusing to interact with the partner; pretending not to hear
Rollie and Duck (2006) Five-Stage Model of Relationship Breakdown
→ According to this process, relationship breakdown in a process, not an event
→ Also conducted longitudinal observations of couples
↳ led to five stages of relationship breakdown→ such stages are sequential, so a stage they can’t be skipped
→Intrapsychic stage
↳ dissatisfaction is experienced internally by one or both partners, but not shared with anyone
↳ includes social withdrawal, rumination, silent resentment
→Dyadic stage
↳ partners voices their discontent
↳ discuss their issues with each other
→ Depending on their attributional styles and patterns of accommodation, conflict in this stage may either be constructively resolved or avoided and become latent (hidden and unresolved)
→Social stage
↳ partners start to seek support from others
→ problems are shared to a wider community
→ alliances may start to be built and partners can reinforce their disconnect with each other
→Grave dressing
↳ stories are prepared that will be told to people to save “face”
↳ partners defend their decisions to break up
↳ come up with arguments to justify this decision to others
→Resurrection
↳ partners recover from the relationship
↳ start to redefine what they look for in future relationships