Miller Intimate Relationships, 6/e Chapter 4 Social Cognition Copyright (c) 2012 by The McGraw-Hill...

Miller Intimate Relationships, 6/e

Chapter 4

Social Cognition

Copyright (c) 2012 by The McGraw-Hill Companies, Inc. All rights reserved.McGraw-Hill/Irwin

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First Impressions (and Beyond)

• First impressions have enormous staying power. They influence our judgments of others for a long time. Why?

• We don’t start from scratch.– Everybody we meet fits some category of people about

whom we already hold stereotyped first impressions: They’re male or female, pretty or plain, young or old…

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Then, primacy effects occur:

The first information we obtain about others carries special weight, influencing our interpretations of the later information we encounter.

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First impressions also affect our choices of the new information we seek.

A confirmation bias is typical: We’re more likely to pursue information that will confirm our beliefs than to inquire after data that could prove them wrong.

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We too rarely confront convincing evidence that our first impressions are wrong.

As a result, we tend to be overconfident: We put too much faith in our judgments, and think that we’re right about others more often than we really are.

We make more mistakes than we realize.

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The Power of Perceptions

• Idealizing Our Partners

We often judge our lovers with positive illusions that portray them in the best possible light, emphasizing their positive qualities and minimizing their faults.

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• Idealizing Our Partners

We judge our lovers more positively than other people do, and those perceptions are associated with greater satisfaction, love, trust, and commitment as time goes by.

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• Attributional Processes

Attributions are our explanations of events.

They identify the causes of events, emphasizing the role of some influences and minimizing the role of others.

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We can emphasize influences that are:

– Internal to a person, such as personality or mood, or external, describing the situation the person faced.

– Stable and lasting, or unstable and temporary.

– Controllable, so that we can manage or influence them, oruncontrollable, so there’s nothing we can do about them.

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The actor/observer effect: People generate different explanations for their own actions than they do for the similar actions they observe in others.

As actors, we note external pressures, but as observers, we make internal attributions.

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The actor/observer effect means that partners will often agree about what each of them did, but typically disagree about why each of them did it.

Even our closest partners seldom comprehend all of our reasons for why we behave as we do.

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Self-serving biases lead people to see themselves as responsible for the good things that happen to them, but as relatively blameless when things go wrong.

People routinely believe that relationship problems are mostly the other partner’s fault.

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Relationship Enhancing attributions help maintain relationship satisfaction by giving partners credit for their kindnesses and explaining away their misbehavior.

Distress Maintaining attributions are used by unhappy partners to explain one another’s behavior in ways that maintain their distress.

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• Memories

Our memories are not DVDs that store past facts in a pristine state.

The term reconstructive memory is used to describe the fact that our memories are continually revised and rewritten as new events occur.

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• Memories

Partners’ current feelings about each other influence what they remember about their shared past. By misremembering the past, partners can remain optimistic about their future:

We’ve had some problems in the past, but things are better now…

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• Relationship Beliefs

Romanticism is the view that love should be the most important basis for choosing a mate:

• Our love will be nearly perfect.

• There’s only one “true love” for me.

• True love will find a way to overcome any obstacle.

• Love is possible at first sight.

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Other beliefs are dysfunctional and disadvantageous:• Disagreements are destructive.

• “Mindreading” is essential.

• Partners cannot change.

• Sex should be perfect every time.

• Men and women are different.

• Great relationships just happen.

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Destiny beliefs assume that two people are either well-suited for each other and destined to live happily ever after, or they’re not.

Growth beliefs assume that good relationships are a result of hard work.

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• When conflict occurs (as it inevitably will), people who hold growth beliefs respond more constructively, remaining more optimistic about the future and more committed to the relationship.

• Some assumptions can be so idealistic and starry-eyed that no relationship can measure up to them, and disappointment and distress are certain to follow.

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• Expectations

We often get the reactions we expect from others.

Self-fulfilling prophecies are false predictions that come true because they lead people to behave in ways that make the erroneous expectations come true.

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• Expectations

When they expected to be liked by a stranger, people were,

And when they expected to be disliked, they were…

…even when the stranger knew nothing about them, and the bogus expectations existed only in their own minds.

(Curtis & Miller, 1986)

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• Self-Perceptions

Our self-concepts encompass all the beliefs and feelings we have about ourselves.

– The self-enhancement motive leads us to seek feedback that makes us look good.

– The self-verification motive leads us to seek feedback that supports and verifies our existing self-concepts.

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• Self-Perceptions

People with negative self-concepts want to move away from roommates who like and approve of them.

People with negative self-concepts spend less time with and are less close to their spouses when the spouses like and approve of them.

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Impression Management

Whether or not we’re thinking about it, we’re often engaging in impression management: trying to influence the impressions of us that others form.

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Nearly anything we do in the presence of others may be strategically regulated to influence what they think of us.

• What we say

• What we wear

• How much we eat

• Even whether or not we wash our hands in a public restroom

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• Strategies of Impression Management

– Ingratiation – doing favors, paying compliments, and being friendly and charming to elicit liking from others.

– Self-promotion – recounting accomplishments or displaying skills to elicit respect from others.

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• Strategies of Impression Management– Ingratiation – seeking acceptance and liking from

others.– Self-promotion – recounting our accomplishments or

arranging public demonstrations of our skills– Intimidation – appearing threatening or dangerous to

elicit fear and compliance from others.– Supplication – appearing inept or infirm to elicit help

and nurturance from others.

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Impression Management in Close Relationships

We usually go to less trouble to maintain favorable images for our intimate partners than we do for others.

– We already know they like us, so there’s less motivation to gain approval.

– They know us well, so there’s little we can do to affect what they think.

– And some people simply get lazy and work less hard to be polite and charming.

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We also work to create desirable images of our partners – and our relationships – for others.

Couples may fight bitterly on the way to a party, but try to appear perfectly happy once they arrive.

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Individual differences may also be important.

High self-monitors pay close attention to social norms and adeptly adjust their behavior to fit.

Low self-monitors are less flexible; they make more similar impressions from one audience to the next.

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High self-monitors are good at small talk. They enjoy higher intimacy when a new relationship begins. They have a wider circle of more diverse friends…

…but they invest less of their time in each one of their relationships. They tend to have shorter, less committed relationships than low self-monitors do.

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So, Just How Well Do We Know Our Partners?

How accurate are our perceptions of our partners?

We misunderstand our partners more than we realize.

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• Knowledge

Intimate partners have detailed knowledge about each other…

…and they do come to understand each other better as their relationship develops.

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• Motivation

However, long periods of close contact gradually result in less, not more accuracy.

Accurate judgments depend in part on the interest and motivation with which two people try to understand each other.

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• Partner Legibility

Moreover, some people are easier to read than others are.

Extraversion is easy to detect, but neuroticism is not.

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• Perceiver Ability

Some judges are more discerning than others, too.

There are big disadvantages to misreading your partner, but training and practice can help.

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• Threatening Perceptions

There may things we do not want to know.

The closer their relationship, the less accurate people were in judging their partners’ interest in other attractive people…

…unless they had a preoccupied attachment style. (Does such accuracy lead to chronic anxiety?)

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• Perceiver Influence

If we realize that our partners are not the people we wish they were, we may try to change them.

Due to perceiver influence, judgments that are initially inaccurate may become more correct as we induce our partners to become the people we want them to be.

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Right or wrong, our perceptions of our partners are clearly influential.

If we think well of our partners and expect the best, we may be more likely to get it.

Doubting our partners and expecting the worst may make it more likely that our relationships will fail.

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For Your Consideration

Martha looked forward to meeting Gale, because those who knew her said that she was friendly, outgoing, and bright. But their paths happened to cross when Gale was suffering from a bad case of poison ivy; she was uncomfortable from the endless itching and drowsy from the allergy medicine, and altogether, she was having a really bad day. So, things did not go well when Martha said hello and introduced herself. Martha came away from their brief interaction thinking that Gale was really rather cold and unsociable.

After Gale recovered and was back in her usual spirits, she encountered Martha again and greeted her warmly, but was surprised when Martha seemed distant and wary.

What do you think the future holds for Martha and Gale? Why?

Miller Intimate Relationships, 6/e Chapter 4 Social Cognition Copyright (c) 2012 by The McGraw-Hill...

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Transcript of Miller Intimate Relationships, 6/e Chapter 4 Social Cognition Copyright (c) 2012 by The McGraw-Hill...