Close Relationships

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Close Relationships
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Passionate love

• Must come into contact with someone who is an
  appropriate love object.
• Role of chance

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Passionate love

• Given a chance encounter, what increases the
  probability that you will fall in love?
• Role of arousal

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Passionate love

• Two factor theory of passionate love (Hatfield
  Berscheid)
• First, person must experience a general state of
  arousal
• Second, person must attribute this arousal to
  the potential partner

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Passionate love

• Excitation transfer The process whereby arousal
  caused by one stimulus (e.g., an anxiety
  provoking situation) is added to the arousal from
  a second stimulus (e.g., an attractive potential
  partner) and the combined arousal is attributed
  to the second stimulus (e.g., the potential
  partner)

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Excitation transfer?

• Dutton Aron (1974)
• Quasi-IV Walked across a scary suspension bridge
  (high arousal) or a more standard bridge (low
  arousal)
• DV Later calls or does not call the attractive
  female E
• Results Men who had crossed the scary bridge
  were ___________to call the attractive female E
  than those who had crossed the standard bridge.
• Limitations?

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Excitation transfer

• White et al (1981) study
• IV1 Men ran in place for 2 mins or 15 seconds
  (to create high/low arousal)
• IV2 Woman in video was attractive or
  unattractive
• DV After watching video, men rated womans
  attractiveness.
• Results Men in the _____________condition rated
  the attractive woman as ______attractive and the
  unattractive woman as ______ attractive than did
  men in the ____ arousal condition.

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Passionate love usually cools over time.

• In U.S., initial honeymoon period is followed by
  a drop in satisfaction continues to decline from
  2-3 yrs levels off around 4 yrs
• After 2 years of marriage, spouses express
  affection about half as often as when they were
  newlyweds.

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Divorce rate

• Occurs most often within 7 yrs, with peak at 4-5
  yrs.
• Second danger point about 16-20 yrs into marriage
  (16.4 yrs.) -- when kids leave home, or midlife
  crisis.

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• May differ cross-culturally in arranged vs.
  love-based marriages.
• Gupta Singh (1982) study of 50 couples in
  India. Half in arranged marriages, half married
  for love.
• Results Those who married for love reported
  ________feelings of love if they had been married
  more than five years. In contrast, those in
  arranged marriages reported ______love if they
  were not newlyweds.

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• Figure on overhead

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Conflict and Communication in Long-term Romantic
Relationships

• Conflict is common in romantic relationships.

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• Sometimes conflict arises from differing
  expectations.

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• Sometimes conflict arises because partners have
  different perceptions of the same events.

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What is the trajectory of conflict in long-term
stable relationships?

• Classic study by Harriet Braiker and Harold
  Kelley (1979) 20 married couples provided
  accounts of their relationships, from casual
  dating, to serious dating, engagement, marriages,
  etc, and indicated degrees of love and
  conflict/negativity.
• Main point Both love and conflict ________from
  casual to serious dating and _________at
  engagement and marriage.

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What is the trajectory of conflict in
relationships that breakup?

• Sally Lloyd and Rodney Cate (1985) took an
  approach similar to Braiker Kelley, but they
  looked at 49 men and 48 women who had been in
  serious romantic relationships ), but had broken
  up in the last twelve months.
• Main point Both love and conflict ________from
  early to later stage of relationship, but as
  relationships moved into a state of uncertainty,
  conflict _______and love _______.

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• Figure -- overhead

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Is conflict good or bad for a relationship?

• It depends on how the people deal with the
  conflict!
• Good Open communication, constructive
  problem-solving
• Bad Negative affect reciprocity (a tit-for-tat
  exchange of expressions of negative feelings) and
  demand-withdraw pattern (one person wants to
  discuss a relationship problem, the other
  withdraws)

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How might couples improve their relationships?

• John Gottman, at University of Washington. Love
  Lab)
• What kinds of measures do the researchers
  collect?
• What kinds of information do you think the
  researchers are using to estimate whether a
  couple is likely to divorce or remain together?
• What constructive behaviors (i.e., those that are
  probably good for the relationship) did you
  observe in these couples?
• What destructive behaviors (i.e., those that will
  likely harm the relationship) did you observe?

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• Video clip

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• Gottman claims that his assessments (in the Love
  Lab) allow him to predict with ________accuracy,
  which married couples are likely to remain in a
  stable relationship and which ones are likely to
  get divorced.
• Thought question How well would you be able to
  predict married couples likelihood of divorce?
  On what would you base your prediction?

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Main predictors of divorce

• Frequency of ________________
• _______________________________.
• Contempt (e.g., rolling the eyes) one of the
  ____________signals of _______ marital problems,
  especially combined with ______________.

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Romantic love as an attachment relationship

• Hazan Shaver, 1987
• Romantic love relationships are similar, in many
  ways, to the attachment relationship observed
  between children and their parents

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Adult Attachment Theory

• Infant-caregiver bond serves the function of
  helping infants to regulate distress
• Sensitive responsive caregivers help to calm
  the infant and to restore felt security
• Threatening situations trigger attachment
  behaviors
• Threats can be physical or psychological
• Parallels between infant-caregiver relationship
  and adult romantic relationships (Hazan Shaver,
  1987)
• Both types of relationships may serve this
  regulatory function

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Attachment theory

• Normative processes all people engage in these
  processes
• Individual differences
• Different experiences shape mental
  representations (internal working models) of the
  self in relation to others

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LOW AVOIDANCE
SECURE
PREOCCUPIED (anxious-ambivalent)
LOW ANXIETY
HIGH ANXIETY
FEARFUL-AVOIDANT
DISMISSING- AVOIDANT
HIGH AVOIDANCE