CR Ch 10-14 - Close Relationships PDF

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Close Relationships...

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CH 10 (Stress and Strains) Powerpoint: ● Facebook: “gold mine” for relationship research ○ People show false representations of who they actually are ○ People engage in stalking ○ People can hide who they really are (fake profiles, catfishing..) ● Basic human motive #1: ○ People behave and think in ways that maintain high self esteem ■ Believe that we are better than ● Positive illusions: ○ We overestimate our good qualities ○ We overestimate our control ○ We are overly optimistic ● Can take all of the positive illusions and apply them to your relationship: “at what degree do you overestimate THEIR good qualities..” ● Basic human motive #2: ○ “People process information in ways that maintain consistency” ○ Cognitive Dissonance Theory: ■ Whenever we hold two cognitions that are inconsistent with one another, we will experience aversive tension (dissonance) that we are motivated to reduce ■ Can’t ignore something that doesn’t normally happen...have to “check it out” to reduce dissonance ■ A basic process - a way can we can deal with stress

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External justifications HAVE TO BE REAL

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Internal justifications CAN BE MADE UP In order to internalize desirable attitudes, an individual must engage in behaviors consistent with such attitudes under conditions of INSUFFICIENT EXTERNAL JUSTIFICATION (free choice) When making a new friend: HAVE THEM DO A FAVOR FOR YOU 9X MORE EFFECTIVE - Ben franklin effect ○ Relational Evaluation (relational value in book): The degree to which we perceive that others consider a relationship to be valuable Relational Devaluation: “Negative experiences carry more weight that positive ones” ○ 5:1 Ratio ○ Anxiety of Abandonment (fearful and preoccupied people) and Low self-esteem get hurt more easily ○ High avoidance of intimacy (dismissing) are less hurt. Don’t have close relationships to begin with so they don’t care Ostracism: The Cold Shoulder ○ Not including someone into the group. They feel like an outsider ■ Real easy way to hurt someone ■ Williams: The ball catching study ● High self esteem people less likely to put up with it ● Low self-esteem people likely to carry a grudge and ostracise others in return Jealousy: ○ Emotional response resulting from perception that one may lose a valued relationship to a real or imagined rival ○ The 2 edged sword: Love vs Paranoia ■ Jealousy is NOT true love. More paranoia than love ● Factors affecting Jealousy: ○ Low CLalt ○ Perceptions of adequacy as a partner ○ Discrepancy in Mate Value ○ Preoccupied Attachment style ○ Personality Traits: ■ Neurotics experience more ■ Agreeables experience less ● High Value on Sexual exclusivity ● Traditional gender roles ● Reactive Jealousy: Responding to an ACTUAL threat (real person) ● Suspicious Jealousy: No evidence of actual threat present (convinced) ● Evolutionary Theory: Men should be more jealous of sexual infidelity in their mates whereas women should be more jealous of emotional infidelity (came from the paternity uncertainty hypothesis) ● Responses to Jealousy: ○ Secure people and women are more likely to repair their relationship ○ Men are more likely to protect their egos, uge alcohol, confront and

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threaten the rival and pursue other women ○ Women are more likely to try to make their partner jealous Coping Constructively with Jealousy: ○ Jealousy is NOT a sign of true love ○ Reduce the connection between the exclusivity of our relationship and our sense of self-worth ○ Techniques to maintain independence: ■ Self-reliance and Self-Bolstering Deception and Lying ○ Deceiver's Distrust: When people lie to others, they may begin to perceive the recipients of the lies as less honest and trustworthy as a result ○ Who is more likely to lie: ■ Insecure: avoidance of intimacy and anxiety over abandonment ● We are better at lying to people we are not trying to attract ● Detecting Lies in a Relationship” ○ We get better with repeated attempts and feedback ○ Truth Bias: Intimate partners more likely to assume partner is telling the truth ○ Women may be better detectives ● Betrayal: ○ Hurtful actions by people we trusted and from whom we did not expect such misbehavior ■ Must have a desired relationship to get hurt ■ Men and women do not differ ■ White people betray more ■ Age, education and religion are negatively related ● 2 sides of Betrayal: ○ Those who ARE betrayed view the betrayal as causing great harm ○ Those who betray view the betrayal as less harmful\ ● Coping with Betrayal: ○ Women are more likely to respond constructively ○ Better Coping: ■ Face up to the betrayal instead of denying it ■ Reinterpret the event as a growth experience ■ Rely on friends for support ■ Men have more sexual affairs/ Women have more emotional affairs ● Revenge: ○ Vengeful people tend to be high in neuroticism, low in agreeableness, less happy, greedy and manipulative ● Forgiveness: ○ Sincere apology

○ Empathy on the part of the victim Book: Perceived Relational Value ● Relational value: degree to which others consider their relationships with us to be valuable, important or close, according to Leary ○ Maximal inclusion: people seek our company ○ Active illusion: people welcome us but don’t seek out ○ Passive inclusion: people allow us to be included ○ Ambivalence: people don’t care if we’re included (not accepting or rejecting) ○ Passive exclusion: people don’t ignore us but don’t avoid us ○ Active exclusion: people avoid us, tolerate us when necessary ○ Maximal exclusion: people banish, send away or abandon us ● Some rejections due to regarding people positively (Survivor, voting off best person) and doesn’t hurt as much as being rejected due to flaws, exclusion hurts more when we want acceptance ● Perceived relational value: perception of the value of our relationships with others Hurt Feelings ● Small difference in self-esteem between people disliking a little or a lot, any form of rejection causes self-worth to bottom out, positive regard also levels out ○ Evolutionary perspective: careful discernment of degrees of acceptance allowing access to resources and mates is more useful than monitoring enemies o ○ Decreases in acceptance have greater impact than increases in rejection ● Leary: manipulated evaluations research participants received from new acquaintances ○ Gave consistent negative feedback, consistent positive feedback, feedback starting poorly and getting better, feedback starting well and getting worse ○ Pattern of decreasing acceptance was more painful than constant rejection o ○ Relational devaluation: decreases in our perceived relational value In fMRI, brain responds the same to romantic rejection as it does to physical pain, acetaminophen reduces pain of social rejection, weed blunts social pain as well as physical ○ High anxiety of abandonment = more hurt when perceived relational value drops, ○ high in avoidance of intimacy = less pain when others withdraw ○ low self-esteem = feelings hurt easier Ostracism ● Ostracism: people are given the “cold shoulder”, ignored by others intentionally ○ People use to punish partner, avoid confrontation, calm down after a conflict ○ Threatens need to belong, hurts self-worth, reduces perceived control over interactions ○ “Cold shoulder” physically feels cold (room perceived as cold, warm drinks/food are more desirable) when people have been rejected, adrenal glands produce cortisol (stress hormone), time passes slower ○ People may work hard to regain partner by being compliant or look for

new partners, some become aggressive or angry and take it out on others Williams: 3 people in the waiting room for an experiment passing a racquetball around ■ The 1st minute the ball is passed to you, afterwards the people ignore you ■ Sometimes done online as well and people’s feelings are still hurt People with high self-esteem are more likely to end their relationship with the ostracizer and find new friends, low self-esteem are more likely to hold a grudge and be spiteful but not leave ○

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Jealousy ●

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Jealousy: negative emotional experience resulting from potential loss of a valued relationship (defined by hurt, anger and fear) ○ Hurt results from perception that partners don’t value us enough to honor commitment, fear results from prospect of abandonment and loss Two Types of Jealousy: ○ Reactive jealousy: someone becomes aware of an actual threat to a valued relationship ○ Suspicious jealousy: partner hasn’t misbehaved and one’s suspicions do not fit the facts at hand Who’s Prone to Jealousy? ○ Men and women don’t differ in their jealous tendencies ○ Dependence: if people have a low CLalt then any threat to the relationship is extreme ○ Inadequacy: people worried about meeting expectations are more prone to jealousy, high self-esteem people are less prone, difference in mate value (one partner is more desirable, less desirable partner is more likely to feel inadequate, reason for matching) ○ Preoccupied attachment style seek closeness but worry partner doesn’t love them, dismissing attachment style are least affected by threats ○ High in neuroticism (worry about a lot) are prone to jealousy, agreeable people aren’t as jealous Who Gets Us Jealous? ○ More jealous of friends than strangers, former lovers, rivals with high mate value pose a threat ○ Women value men’s resources, men are more jealous of men who are self-confident, dominant, rich; attractive competitors evoke more jealousy in men and women What Gets Us Jealous? ○ Evolution perspective: jealousy evolved to protect close relationships from interference, people vigilant about fending off rivals maintained their relationship and reproduced more successfully ○ “Paternity uncertainty”, raising another man’s offspring is an evolutionary disadvantage, evolution has favored men who were too suspicious over those who weren’t suspicious enough

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Women had more success raising children when more sensitive to signs a man might withdraw resources, sexual selection favored women who were skeptical ○ Men should experience more jealousy at the thought of sexual infidelity, women should react more to the threat of emotional infidelity ○ Buss: whether emotional attachment or sexual intercourse with a rival is more upsetting ■ Men chose sex would upset them more, emotional attachment upset women more ■ Criticism: forced choice, may exaggerate difference between genders ● Men believed to have sex without love, emotional infidelity more upsetting ● Women believed to have sex with love, sexual infidelity more upsetting ● Stresses and Strains on Facebook Box: ○ Upsetting when people ignore friend requests, don’t “like” things, see missed gatherings, old pictures ○ “Facebook official” is bothersome, women attach more meaning to the status ● Mate Poaching Box: ○ Mate poaching: behavior intended to lure someone away from an existing relationship, tend to be horny, extraverted people low in agreeableness, narcissistic, manipulative, avoidant attachment styles, ego boosts ○ Poaching tactics: women show good looks and sexual availability, men show resources ○ CLalt of person being poached is higher when poacher offers better benefits ● In areas of the brain controlling sex and aggression in men are more active when thinking about sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity, grandparents more worried when sexual infidelity was committed by a daughter-in-law and emotional infidelity was committed by a son-in-law ● Women believe partner is committing emotional infidelity, men worry about sexual infidelity ● Sex difference disappears when there’s no risk of conceiving a child (i.e. gay/lesbian sex), both dread sexual infidelity equally in this case Responses to Jealousy ● Secure and preoccupied attachment styles are more comfortable with closeness, more likely to express concern and try to work it out; dismissing or fearful more likely to avoid issues ● Shettel-Neuber: showed videos of scenario of finding your partner’s ex chatting after returning ○ Women said they would seek to improve the relationship and make self more attractive to partner, men said they would protect their egos and

getting drunk/threatening rival while possibly pursuing another partner Women are more likely to try to make partner jealous to “test” the relationship, wish that men would try to protect the relationship but instead men act differently (may drive guy away) Coping Constructively with Jealousy ● When jealousy is justified and rivalry is real, reduce the connection between the exclusivity of the relationship and sense of self-worth ○ Self-reliance: efforts to “stay cool”, avoid anger by refusing to dwell on situation ○ Self-bolstering: boosting self-esteem by doing nice things for yourself ● Clinical therapy works to: ○ Reduce irrational thinking ○ Enhance self-esteem of jealous partner ○ Improve communication skills so partners can agree on limits ○ Increase satisfaction and fairness Deception and Lying ● Deception: intentional behavior that creates an impression in the recipient that the deceiver knows to be untrue (concealment, diverting attention, half-truths) ● Lying in Close and Casual Relationships ○ Most common lie benefits liar, avoids embarrassment/guilt, seeking approval (lying for a date) ■ Men misrepresent income/commitment more, women promise sex and fake orgasms ○ Some lies told to benefit others or protect feelings (women tell self-centered lies) ○ People lie about serious topics more often to closest partners than anyone else ○ Deceiver’s distrust: when people lie to others they perceive the recipient as less honest, liars assume other people are like them to feel better about themselves, affects relationship ○ Liars believe their lies are more harmless than recipients ● Lies and Liars ● Tell more lies if outgoing, sociable, concerned with impressions, insecure attachment ● Performance depends on level of motivation (guilt/fear), lies typically short and less detailed, do a worse and more suspicious job than those less motivated, more obvious ● No relation between nonverbal behavior and lying (not necessarily fidgeting or shifty eyes) So, How Well Can We Detect a Partner’s Deception? ● Mannerisms are idiosyncratic, people lie when their ordinary demeanor changes ● Truth bias: intimate partners have knowledge to be able to judge each other’s behavior but partners trust each other so they assume partners are telling the truth ○ People’s accuracy decreases as relationship becomes more intimate and trust increases, people lie less in most rewarding relationships, lies put ●

stress on relationship Betrayal ● Betrayals: disagreeable, hurtful actions by people we trusted and from whom we reasonably didn’t expect such treachery, behaviors that violate norms of loyalty/respect/trust ○ Drops in perceived relational value, betrayal shows partner doesn’t value relationship, casual acquaintances can’t betray us, close friends/romantic partners distress us most, obligations overlap and competing demands mean you have to pick one ○ Example: may know a friend has cheated with a best friend, owe responsibility to both people ● Individual Differences in Betrayal ○ Betrayal less common among those who are older, better educated and religious ○ Unhappy, resentful, vengeful and suspicious people; prone to jealousy, don’t trust others ○ Men betray romantic partners and business associates more, women betray friends and family ● The Two Sides to Every Betrayal ○ Betrayers underestimate harm they do, people excuse and minimize their own actions ○ People being betrayed most of the time believed the betrayal harmed relationship ○ Betrayals have negative sometimes lasting effects on a relationship ● Why Revenge Isn’t Such a Good Idea ○ Victim and betrayer view fair revenge differently, victims inflict excessive revenge, cycles around when betrayer then feels victim’s revenge was excessive ○ Buunk: self-serving perceptions, couples where both partners cheated ■ Everyone through faithlessness was innocuous and meaningless but that partner’s infidelity had been a betrayal ● People expect revenge to be more satisfying, people are distressed and prolong injury ● People prone to vengeance are high in neuroticism, low in agreeableness, less happy ● A Practical Guide to Getting Away with It Box: ○ Least damage occurs if you admit your wrong doing without being asked ○ Shouldn’t deny it, make response as truthful as possible, don’t contradict the truth, best strategy is to confess a less serious offense, partial confession seems more trustworthy than claiming full innocence Forgiveness ● Forgiveness: decision to give up your perceived or actual right to get even with, or hold in debt, someone who has wronged you ● Anxiety about abandonment and avoidance of intimacy makes people less forgiving, high in agreeableness forgives easier, neuroticism impedes forgiveness, self-control promotes ● “Ingredients” to forgiveness:

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Sincere contrition: offenders acknowledge wrongs, accept responsibility, offer genuine atonement, express shame/regret, promise to be better in the future ○ Empathy: victim takes partner’s perspective and tried to understand why they behaved that way, admit no one is perfect ○ Less likely to forgive is victim broods about transgression and focuses on damage Forgiveness is more likely to occur in close committed relationships, partners more lenient, when forgiveness occurs partners behave better and are less likely to repeat the offense, reduces conflict, encourages communication (reduce declines in satisfaction) Personal well-being is better when people can forgive, better physical health Forgiveness associated with higher marital satisfaction when spouse rarely misbehave but lower satisfaction when spouse was frequently disrespectful

Video: Social Ostracism: ● From birth humans have a need to belong, have close relationships, connect with others ● When adults were asked what is a meaningful relationship ○ Satisfying close relationships with family, friends, and romantic partners ○ ● WIlliams and People studying ostracism: ○ Ostracism: the act of excluding and ignoring an individual or group BY an individual or group ○ Called shunning, exile, banishment, silent treatment, cold shoulder ■ England and Australia - called being sent to coventry ■ Amish: my doom - ostracize someone from there within their group when they violated some norm ● Threatens 4 human needs: ○ Need to belong ○ Sense of control ○ Self-Esteem ○ Meaningful Existence ● Ostracism is a metaphor for death: this is what it is like if you didn’t exist ● Cardiovascular short term tests show that subjects experience physiological arousal and stress experienced when people are ostracized for a long period of time ● To re-establish yourself one might conform to group more or be more pleasant ○ Other times people are frustrated and try to provoke a response ● One way to get control is to provoke and become violent ● Columbine High school ● Aronson: ○ Jigsaw classroom: group assignments, competition is replaced by cooperation Video: How Jealousy Distorts your Thinking: ● Jealousy arise in response to threats to a valued relationship ○ Sibling, friendships, relationships ● Evolutionary psychologists think jealousy evolved to protect social bonds

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Causes: ○ Mind reading ○ Personalizing ○ Fortune telling Some people are more prone to jealousy: ○ Genetics ○ Environment/Culture ○ Low self esteem ○ Insecure attachment Control jealousy: ○ Mitigation: dial down the source, focus on how you feel, cognitive pitfalls, consider goodtimes

CH 11- Conflict Video: ●

4 horsemen of the apocalypse: ○ Criticism: attacks the character of the person instead of the specific behavior ■ Antedote: use “I” statements. Then express a positive need - Contempt: expression of superiority that comes out as sarcasm or hostile humor - Antedote: Treat with respect and build appreciation - Defensiveness: self protectiveness through rightness indignation or playing the

victim - Antedote: accept responsibility - Stonewalling: lis...