Part 1: Family Background

1. FAMILY BACKGROUND/ATTRACTION Part 1: Family Background

2. Why examine family background? • Background influence – • The family is the chief socializing influence on children. • Children learn about social relations via modeling and rewards and punishments. • The extent of family influence is contingent on the child’s personality and how they react to the environment.

3. How do we overcome negative influence? • Examine your family background and develop a self understanding. • Take responsibility for your past. • Make peace with the past.

4. Areas of Influence • Parental attitudes toward children/the importance of approval and acceptance • If parents love and approve of children, children develop high self esteem and feel they are loveable and capable of being loved. • Parents who criticize make children insecure in marriage, sensitive to criticism, jealous. • Parents who ignore children lead children to feel inferior or unworthy. In turn, they will expect partner to fulfill unmet needs.

5. Attitudes toward the opposite sex (based on psychodynamic theory ) • Boys attitudes toward women • If boys had good relationships with mother and sisters, they will learn to like women. • If father had good relationships with mother and daughters, sons will repeat this pattern of relationships toward women. • If father was hostile and cruel toward women, boys will dislike and distrust women. • If mother was controlling, abusive or cruel to husbands and sons, boys will later resent women.

6. Attitudes toward the opposite sex (based on psychodynamic theory ) • Girls attitudes toward men • If girls had good relationships with father and brothers, they will learn to like men. • If mother had good relationships with father and sons, daughters will repeat this pattern of relationships toward men. • If mother were hostile, cruel, or distrusting toward men, daughters will dislike and distrust men. • If father were hostile or cruel toward wives and daughters, daughters will learn to dislike men.

7. Family Attitudes toward Physical and Verbal Affection • Children in undemonstrative families, or families who don’t express affection, they have difficulty expressing affection as adults. • If children are deprived of affection as a child, they may expect or demand it from mates. • Attitudes towards Sex • It is best for parents to be open and accepting about nudity and sexuality. • Parents who cover up children and attempt to repress sexual desires may lead children to have discomfort around their own sexuality or be hypersexual as young adults.

8. Gender Role Socialization • A gender role is a person’s outward expression of maleness or femaleness in a social setting. • Children learn masculinity and femininity via modeling and identification. • Areas influenced by gender roles are masculine and feminine traits, division of role responsibilities, and vocational roles. • Children who come from more flexible gender roles may become more flexible, and from more traditional may become more traditional.

9. Family Values and Work Habits • Children learn work ethics from their family environment. • Children learn materialism from their family environment. • Communication • Effective communication is essential to a good marriage. It includes listening, understanding, being open, positive, supportive and discussing conflict reasonably. • We learn communication styles, open vs. closed, dominant vs. submissive, etc. from our family environment. ( See Chapter 1 of your book for other influences outside of the family).

10. FAMILY BACKGROUND/ATTRACTION Part 2: Attraction

11. Attraction – Definition: • cognitive – a belief; structure of knowledge about another person • affective – a feeling/emotion about another person • behavior – the tendency to approach or avoid another person

12. Theories of Attraction (to be explained in class) • Balance theory • Reinforcement theory - definition • Gain loss theory – a person who provides a gain in esteem is more liked than a constant rewarder • anxiety reduction – negative evaluation causes anxiety, gain condition reduces anxiety and results in positive feelings towards the evaluator • competence- if evaluator changes opinion over time, it may be due to hard efforts of the person being evaluated, leads to a positive sense of competence • discernment – change in opinion over time of evaluator implies s/he is a discerning individual. Discernment proves the person is worthy. • contrast – positive things following negative makes the positive seem more so in contrast.

13. Factors that Affect Attractiveness – • Proximity – Frequent precursor to attractiveness • Physical attractiveness • Physical attractiveness vs. Character/Personality (notes to be given in class) • The importance of physical attractiveness • matching hypothesis – we tend to pick mates similar in attractiveness to ourselves • couple attractiveness – Study • Standards of Attractiveness

14. Other factors: Personality and Social factors • Similarity – we tend to like those who are similar to us in attitudes, opinions, and preferences. • Complementarity – opposites attract, seems to be less strong than similarity. • Reciprocity – we like those who like us. • Personality is also important – people with positive personality. qualities are more liked than those who possess negative qualities, extroversion is very important in first impressions. • Self disclosure – how much we tell others about personal things, as long as it is appropriate disclosure, may facilitate attraction. • Unconscious factors – sometimes we do not know what attracts us, someone may be reminiscent of a parent we were close to or they have qualities we wish we had - some believe in a concept known as “physical chemistry”.