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Close Relationships - Coggle Diagram
Close Relationships
Attachment Styles
Secure
- Trust others
- Believe worthy & liked
- Easy to be close & dependent
Avoidant: don't need anyone - not close
- Suppress attachment needs
- Previous attempts rebuffed
- Uncomfortable when close
- Jealous, lack of disclosure
- Difficult to trust / depend
Anxious: they'll leave me - too close
- Worry others won't reciprocate
- Feel partner doesn't love / will leave
- Highs & lows
- Wants to merge
- Scares people off
Attachment styles
- Describe nature of close relationships
- Active process throughout life
- Develop in childhood, carry into adulthood, carry across relationships
Affiliation: power urge to connect / make contact
- Lifecycle studies -> attachment
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Attraction & Liking
Attractiveness
Averageness effect: average face more attractive - universal
- Evolutionary fitness indicator - prototype of how should look
- Seem more familiar
- Signal of good health
Outcomes: higher grades, intellectual competence, popularity, job success, physical health, sexual experience, self-esteem
Stereotype: more kind, strong, outgoing, nurturing, etc.
More attractive if: average, symmetrical, 'baby-faced', high waist-hip ratio (women), high shoulder-waist ratio (men)
Evolutionary / reproductive fitness
- Cue to determine good genes in mate
- Receive extra care as child
- e.g. symmetry, physical health, youth, good looks, body ratio
- Cross-cultural differences, e.g. weight
Ideal partner dimensions
- Warmth-trustworthiness - most important
- Vitality-attractiveness
- Status-resources (socially, financially; current | potential)
- Tradeoff depending on goal (settle = 1 & 3, fling = 2)
- Matching hypothesis: choose similar in mate value (so not insecure)
Other Factors
- Work together
- Some about interaction, some not
Affect
Good mood -> attraction, bad mood -> less attraction
- Direct effect: person influences mood
- Indirect / associated effect: mood associated to person that happens to be around (classical conditioning, misattribution)
Similarity
More similar -> more liking (opposite DON'T attract)
- e.g. attitudes, values, mate value, demographics, personality, names/trivial
- Assortative mating: attracted to people who resemble us
- Because: validates self (social comparison), leads to balance (balance theory), implicit egoism (+ve self-view spills over to others), more +ve interaction, expect them to like us, agreement is reinforcing
- Opposite: dissimilar -> cog. dissonance -> not like person
Proximity
Physically close -> more attraction
- More likely to interact
- Mere exposure effect
-
Social skills
Social skills -> +ve interactions
- Social astuteness / perception
- Interpersonal influence
- Social adaptability
- Expressiveness
Personality
Attracted to particular traits
- Extraverted, agreeable, narcissistic (at first)
Familiarity
More familiar -> more attraction
- Mere exposure effect: like more with more good encounters
Mimicry
- -> rapport -> mimicry
- Esp. with implicit or explicit affiliation goals
Love
Difficult to define & measure
- Companionate love: less intense, affection/attachment
- Passionate / romantic love: intense, confusing
Three-factor theory of love
- Cultural concept of love
- Person to love
- Emotional arousal
- Necessary but not sufficient
Sternberg's model
- Passion: sexual attraction, arousal
- Intimacy: warmth, closeness, sharing
- Commitment: to maintain relationship
- Consummate love = ultimate, all 3
Differences
- Cross-cultural: arranged vs love marriages
Relationship Theories
Behavioural / reinforcement: rewards & punishments
- Person -> +ve feelings -> like them more
- Reinforcement-affect: we like people who we are around when we have +ve feeling
** e.g. negative background stimulus (heat, crowd) -> less attraction
Social exchange: reduce costs, increase rewards
- Exchange goods, info, love, money, services, status
- Cost-reward ratio: liking depends on cost vs reward/reinforcement
- Minimiax strategy: minimise costs, maximise rewards
- Comparison levels (CL): standard to judge whether relationship is profitable - based on past experience
- Relationship good if rewards > costs, profit > CL
Equity theory: give & take is fair
- Equitable if ratio of inputs/outcomes is seen to be the same by both partners
- Based on distributive justice: fairness of outcome