Close Relationships. Passionate love Must come into contact with someone who is an appropriate love...
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Transcript of Close Relationships. Passionate love Must come into contact with someone who is an appropriate love...
Close Relationships
Passionate love
• Must come into contact with someone who is an appropriate love object. – Role of chance
Passionate love
– Given a chance encounter, what increases the probability that you will fall in love?
• Role of arousal
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
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)
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?
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 woman’s
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.
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.
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.
• 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.
• Figure on overhead
Conflict and Communication in Long-term Romantic Relationships
• Conflict is common in romantic relationships.
• Sometimes conflict arises from differing expectations.
• Sometimes conflict arises because partners have different perceptions of the same events.
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.
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 _______.
• Figure -- overhead
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)
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?
• Video clip
• 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?
Main predictors of divorce
• Frequency of ________________
_______________________________.
• Contempt (e.g., rolling the eyes) = one of the ____________signals of _______ marital problems, especially combined with ______________.
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
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
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
HIGH ANXIETY
LOW ANXIETY
HIGH AVOIDANCE
LOW AVOIDANCE
SECURE PREOCCUPIED
(anxious-ambivalent)
DISMISSING- AVOIDANT
FEARFUL-AVOIDANT