Chapter 9

1. Chapter 9 Attraction and Close Relationships

2. The Need to Belong • The need to belong is a basic human motive. • We care deeply about what others think of us. • Those with a network of close social ties tend to be happier, healthier, and more satisfied with life than those who are more isolated.

3. The Thrill of Affiliation • Need for Affiliation: The desire to establish social contact with others. • We are motivated to establish and maintain an optimum balance of social contact. • Stress arouses our need for affiliation. • “Fearful misery loves company.” • But, “embarrassed misery seeks solitude.” • “Misery loves the company of those in the same miserable situation.”

4. The Agony of Loneliness • A feeling of deprivation about social relations. • Most likely to occur during times of transition or disruption. • Loneliest group in American society are those 18 to 30 years old. • We employ various strategies to combat loneliness. • How do we find others?

5. Perspectives on Attraction • We are attracted to others with whom a relationship is directly or indirectly rewarding. • All humans exhibit patterns of attraction and mate selection that favor the conception, birth, and survival of their offspring. • Evolutionary perspective

6. Familiarity: Being There • Who are we most likely to become attracted to? • Two basic and necessary factors in the attraction process: • Proximity effect • Mere exposure effect

7. The Proximity Effect • The single best predictor of attraction is physical proximity, or nearness. • Where we live influences the friends we make. • College students tend to date those who live either nearby or in the same type of housing as they do.

8. The Mere Exposure Effect • Contrary to folk wisdom, familiarity does not breed contempt. • The more often we are exposed to a stimulus, the more we come to like that stimulus. • Familiarity can influence our self-evaluations.

9. Physical Attractiveness:Getting Drawn In • We react more favorably to others who are physically attractive than to those who are not. • Bias for beauty is pervasive. • Is physical beauty an objective or subjective quality?

10. Why Are We Blinded by Beauty? • Inherently rewarding to be in the company of people who are aesthetically appealing. • Possible intrinsic and extrinsic rewards • Tendency to associate physical attractiveness with other desirable qualities. • What-is-beautiful-is-good AKA physical attractiveness stereotype

11. Is the Physical Attractiveness Stereotype Accurate? • Good-looking people do have more friends, better social skills, and a more active sex life. • But beauty is not related to objective measures of intelligence, personality, adjustment, or self-esteem. • The specific nature of the stereotype also depends on cultural conceptions of what is “good.”

12. The Benefits and Costs of Beauty • Being good-looking does not guarantee health, happiness, or high self-esteem. • Attributional problems with being good-looking: • Is the attention and praise one receives due to one’s talents or just one’s good looks? • Pressure to maintain one’s appearance. • In American society, pressures are particularly strong when it comes to the body. • Women are more likely than men to suffer from the “modern mania for slenderness.” • Overall, being beautiful is a mixed blessing. • Little relationship between appearance in youth and later happiness.

13. Matching Hypothesis • People tend to become involved romantically with others who are equivalent in their physical attractiveness. • Matching is predictive of progress in a relationship.

14. Why Don’t Opposites Attract? • Is there support for the complementarity hypothesis, which holds that people seek others whose needs “oppose” their own? • Research shows that complementarity does not influence attraction.

15. First Encounters:Liking Others Who Like Us • Heider (1958): People prefer relationships that are psychologically balanced. • A state of balance exists when the relationship is characterized by reciprocity. • Mutual exchange between what one gives and what one receives • Liking is mutual, which is why we tend to like others who indicate that they like us.

16. The Intimate Marketplace:Equity Theory • Most content with a relationship when the ratio between the benefits and contributions is similar for both partners. • Balance is what counts.

17. Mate Selection: The Evolution of Desire • Men and women by nature must differ in their optimal mating behaviors. • Women must be highly selective because they are biologically limited in the number of children they can bear and raise in a lifetime. • Men can father an unlimited number of children and ensure their reproductive success by inseminating many women.

18. Supporting Evidence for the Evolutionary Perspective • Universal tendency in desired age for potential mate. • Men tend to seek younger women. • Women tend to desire older men. • Men and women become jealous for different reasons. • Men become most upset by sexual infidelity. • Women feel more threatened by emotional infidelity.

19. Sternberg’s Triangular Theory of Love

20. Marital Satisfaction Over Time

21. Relationship Issues:Communication and Conflict • Communication patterns in troubled relationships: • Negative affect reciprocity • Demand/withdrawal interaction pattern • Basic approaches to reducing the negative effects of conflict: • Increase rewarding behavior in other aspects of a relationship • Try to understand the other’s point of view

22. Attributions and Quality of Relationship • Happy couples tend to make relationship-enhancing attributions. • Unhappy couples tend to make distress-maintaining attributions.

23. Breaking Up • A relationship is likely to be long-lasting when the couple: • Has incorporated each other into one’s self • Has become interdependent and have invested much into the relationship • But these factors also intensify stress and make coping more difficult after the relationship ends.