The Social Psychology of Relationships - Summary - All Notes PDF

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Week 1: Social Cognition and Ideal Standards Social Cognition: Process by which information about the social world is encoded, stored (as schemas), retrieved and applied to social contexts. Critical aspects of relationship cognitions = content, structure and process Content: Beliefs and values moderate the impact of specific experiences on relationship satisfaction. 1. Beliefs: General ideas, theories, assumptions or expectations about relationships and/or fairly specific or narrow expectations about the functioning of a given relationship. May motivate relationship behaviours that bolster initial satisfaction because we engage in self-fulfilling prophesies. 2. Values: Constitute standards or ideals about the relationship that should be maintained or met. They relate to what individuals think should, or wish, would occur in relationships. Structure: Cognitive complexity and accessibility. 1. Cognitive complexity: The intricacy of our knowledge-base and how we compartmentalise and integrate this information. Cognitive complexity is associated with more flexible and adaptive problem-solving behaviours, and possibly higher satisfaction (moderated by satisfaction/distress). Pertains to:  Differentiation: Number of categories or kinds of information taken into account in evaluating persons or events.  Integration: Degree and quality of connections amongst these pieces of information. 2. Accessibility: The extent to which we can retrieve certain forms of relationshiprelevant information. The more accessible a cognition is, the more stable it is likely to be due to frequency with which it is primed and accessed, increasing likelihood that new info will be assimilated into these highly accessible knowledge structures. Process: Encompasses many things, including the ways in which we evaluate, recall, integrate and seek our general and specific information. Maintain and enhances positive relationship views by:     

Derogation of alternatives. Selective attention: Only attending to information consistent with impressions. Rationalisation: Narratives that highlight positive elements of relationship and discount negative elements. Temporal comparison: Comparing current state of relationship with past points in time. Social comparison.

Ideal Standards: Mental images of something or someone that serves as a standard of excellence and is highly desirable. Ideals comprise of three related types of mental representations – the self, the partner, and the relationship. Draws from Gangestad and Simpson’s “Strategic Pluralism Model”: Evolutionary theory of mating in which people are attracted to a mate depending on what is important to them.

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Good genes: Attractiveness and vitality (men place more importance on this). Good investment: Warmth/trustworthiness and having status/resources (women place more importance on this).

Functions of ideal standards: How individuals serve these functions is guided by partner/relationship enhancement motives and accuracy motives. Relationship threats likely to increase enhancement. Critical relationship periods involving major decision associated with accuracy. 1. Evaluation: Assessing or estimating quality of partners and relationships (current or potential). 2. Explanation: Better understanding of what is happening in relationship. 3. Regulation: Control and adjust one’s relationship or partner. Enhancement: Dominant and accessible when relationship is stable and highly committed. Discrepancies handled by: 1. Changing perception of partner. 2. Changing ideal standards. 3. Derogate/discount importance of ideal standards. Flexibility: Flexibility of ideal standards related to the degree to which a partner can fall below an ideal standard and still be deemed acceptable. Self-assessments on the same dimension should influence the setting of ideal standards and flexibility. Higher scores on ideal standards associated with less flexibility however relationship quality higher if more flexible. Change:   

Direct negative strategies (demanding, anger, threats): Does not increase satisfaction but partner behaviour can change over time. Direct positive strategies: Yield’s change in partner behaviour but with negative relationship outcomes. Indirect positive strategies: Perceived as successful but do not produce change over time.

Week 2: Attachment Theory Bowlby’s biological basis for attachment need:  

Emotional bonds serve as survival mechanism in which care-giving and care-seeking are complementary behaviours. Motivation to feel secure during times of ill-health, anxiety or threat.

Three defining features that constitute an attachment figure (and an attachment bond): 1. Proximity Maintenance: Need to maintain close distance to attachment figure. 2. Safe Haven: Attachment figure is regarded as a sanctuary. 3. Secure Base: Attachment figure acts as a secure foundation from which child can explore his or her environment and engage in non-attachment behaviour. Attachment tested by “Strange Situation” paradigm developed by Mary Ainsworth. Three infant attachment styles and a series of corresponding parenting styles revealed: Attachment Style Secure

Infants Seek comfort, proximity and contact followed by comfortable return to play (approx. 50 – 60%)

Parents Constantly responding to infants’ signals.

Anxious

Display contact seeking behaviour interspersed with angry resistance, not easily comforted during stress (approx. 20 – 30%) Actively avoid contact with caregiver when distressed (approx. 10 – 20%)

Inconsistent and inept dealing with infants’ signals.

Avoidant

Exhibited cold and rejecting tendencies towards infants.

Attachment Internal Working Models: Mental representations “schemata” of the attachment relationship. Consists of two broad schemas which people hold either negative or positive views of these schemas, based on early child-parent attachment interactions in fulfilling attachment functions: 1. Self: Evaluations of whether the self is worthy of receiving love, affection, care and support. 2. Other: Evaluation of whether the attachment figure is a reliable, responsible, trusting caregiver. In Romantic relationships, three attachment styles summarised by Hazen and Shaver.  

Secure individuals: Reported romantic love relationships as comprising of trust, friendship and positive emotions. Anxious individuals: Reported being preoccupied with the need to merge with another person.

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Avoidant individuals: Reported their romantic relationships as involving a fear of closeness and a lack of trust.

Self-Presentation: Tactical decision regarding how to show oneself to another.   

Secure: Present themselves with greater authenticity. Anxious: Emphasise the self as weak/helpless and needy as a means to solicit sympathy and compassion. Avoidant: Present their strengths and attempt to inflate their self-image in order to validate their self-reliance and maintain emotional distance.

Self-Disclosure: To tell someone personal information or share feelings with another.  

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Secure: Responsive self-disclosure, disclosing in proportion to the relationship partner. Anxious: High self-disclosure, disclosing too early, indiscriminately, and failing to draw on their partner’s self-disclosure in their own disclosure, thus seeming needy and resulting in unreciprocated intimacy. Avoidant: Low self-disclosure to validate their self-reliance and maintain emotional distance.

As the relationship becomes consolidated, attachment style continues to influence various aspects of the relationship, including: 1. Goals and Beliefs:  Secure: Endorse goals of intimacy and closeness and maintain optimistic beliefs about the relationship/partners.  Insecure: Emphasise emotional distance (a need to be too close or too far) and the relationship beliefs are negatively biased (either too little value placed on relationship or they are overwhelmingly concerned with them). 2. Cognition and Perception:  Insecure: Hold more negative views/perceptions of their romantic partners, finding them to be unsupportive, distrusting, and attributing their negative behaviour to stable, global aspects of their partner. 3. Trust:  Secure: View relationship as trusting and are quick to recall memories as evidence of this trust.  Anxious: View partners as untrusting and respond to trust violations with strong negative affect and ruminate over the violation.  Avoidant: View relationship partners as untrusting, but increase emotional distance and dismiss the importance of trust when a violation occurs. 4. Commitment:  Secure: Higher commitment, easily recalling episodes that strengthened this commitment.  Anxious: Recall when their partner behaved in ways that demonstrated less commitment towards them/relationship.  Avoidant: Recalling when they reduced their commitment toward their romantic partner/relationship. 5. Support Seeking:

Anxious: Ambivalent pattern – sometimes they don’t express need for help (if they suspect neediness will result in rejection) and sometimes engage in excessive reassurance seeking.  Avoidant: Reluctant to seek out support as their partners are not appraised as a safe haven. 6. Support Giving:  Secure: Support is generally sensitive and responsive – may even forgo own needs to assist partner.  Anxious: Support is often intrusive or compulsive in nature (thought to be driven by own needs of validation and to maintain proximity to partner).  Avoidant: Support is often in a distant manner to maintain emotional distance. 

Week 3: Attachment and Mental Health

According to Mikulincer and Orbach’s (1995) study, secure people seem to acknowledge distress and emotion, but limit its spread to involve other emotions. Anxious people seem unable or unwilling to limit the distress to include other emotions, so their emotional architecture is not so differentiated. They experience a flood of emotions when distressed. Avoidant people inhibit the processing of negative events and emotions, which explains their slow recall time and shallow affect. Anger:   

Secure: Scored highest on anger expressed openly, constructive goals, adaptive responses and positive affect. Anxious: Most anger prone, holding anger in and displaced anger. Least amount of anger control. Avoidant: Scored highest on hostility and escapism.

Folkman and Lazarus’ (1984) transactional model of stress-coping is a process model with two outcomes (problem-focused and emotion-focused coping), which Carver, Sheier and Weintraub (1989) extended to four: 1. Problem-focused coping: Involves active coping, planning, suppressing competing activities to focus on the problem, and restraint in taking action so as not to make a mistake in solving the issue. 2. Emotion-focused coping: Eases inner tension without solving the problem, such as self-criticism, wishful thinking, rumination, etc. 3. Distance coping: Involves cognitive disengagement such as the suppression of thoughts, and a need to ignore emotions through behavioural disengagement (this is also an emotion-focused strategy as it is about ignoring feelings and not solving the problem) 4. Support seeking: Restoring proximity to a significant other who can assist with the situation. Attachment insecurity makes a person more vulnerable to psychopathy. Secure people have positive wellbeing and lower psychological distress whereas anxious people have negative wellbeing and higher psychological distress. Avoidant people’s wellbeing and distress is moderated by the severity of the stress (under high stress wellbeing similar to that of anxious individuals). Eating disorders: Particularly, eating disorders that have a restraint component (Anorexia Nervosa and Bulimia Nervosa) and a binge eating component (BN and Binge Eating Disorder) to a lesser extent.  

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Secure: Negatively associated with binge eating symptomology. Anxious: May be a risk factor for perpetuating a thing, child-like body to delay maturity and autonomy. Positively associated with binge eating symptoms among females due to inability to effectively regulate emotions. Avoidant: Most associated with dietary restraint due to suppressive, need-denying nature of deactivating strategies of attachment avoidance.

Insecure attachment combined with genetics, history of trauma, and abuse is associated with psychopathology. In terms of this and anxious attachment, associations have been found with:    

Borderline Personality Disorder Dependent Personality Disorder Paranoid Personality Disorder Suicidal thoughts

In terms of avoidant attachment, associations have been found with:     

Antisocial Disorder Schizotypical Disorder Avoidant Personality Disorder Extreme cases of Borderline Personality Disorder Dissociative Disorder

Week 4: Social Interdependence and Relationship Investment

Interdependence theory draws on two arithmetic tools to help represent the outcomes of interactions between people:  

Matrices: The available ways of behaving in an interaction and the costs and rewards associated with these behaviours. Transition lists: Shifts (transitions) in people’s behaviours as a function of reevaluating outcomes and the progress of time.

Repeated social interaction experiences yield adaptions that are reflected in relatively stable orientations to adopt particular transformations. These adaptions reflect differences in orientation between people across partners and situations (dispositions), orientations that people adopt to a specific interaction partner (relationship-specific orientations), and rulebased inclinations that are shared by many people within a culture (social norms). Outcomes are evaluated on the following basis: 

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Comparison Level (CL): Standard against which all of one’s other relationships of that type are judged (i.e. social comparison). If relationship outcomes exceed CL then one feels satisfied, but if they fall below it they feel unsatisfied. Comparison level for alternatives (CL-alt): Standard used to decide whether to stay in the relationship or leave based on the availability of alternative outcomes. Discrepancy between CL-alt and outcomes defines dependence level.

Dependence Level (DL): Degree to which an individual relies on relationship for fulfilment of needs – explaining the CL-alt. The more reliant one is on their partner, the more power their partner possesses. Voluntary Dependence (VD): Occurs when outcomes exceed CL and their CL-alt.  

Outcomes moderately exceed CL-alt but greatly exceed CL = satisfied and moderately dependent. Outcomes moderately exceed CL but greatly exceed CL-alt = moderately satisfied but highly dependent.

Dimensions affecting situational structure: 1. Level of Dependence: Dependence level for person A is high when their action control (Reflexive Control [RC]) is low and their partner’s control (FC) and joint control (BC) over A’s outcomes are high. 2. Mutuality of Dependence: Through balanced power exploitation is reduced and negative emotions are less likely. 3. Basis of Dependence: The degree to which the dependence relies on joint vs partner control (BC vs FC).  High in FC = other-controlled. Prone to use of threats, promises and other forms of agreement.  High in BC = jointly controlled. Can lead to freeloading or contributing little while still collecting profits. 4. Covariation of interests: Degree to which partners’ preferences for joint outcomes correspond as opposed to conflict. Non-correspondent relationships involve suspicion, distrust or even hostile attitudes amidst partners.

5. Temporal Structure: The dynamic and sequential aspects of relationship. Certain interactions result in certain future behaviours, outcomes or situations becoming more or less tenable. Interactions vary in hold long they last and transition from one situation into another where behavioural options/outcomes differ. 6. Information availability: Degree of information accessible and known about partner. Given Matrix: Preferences based on immediate self-interest, self-centred preferences. Effective Matrix: Redefined set of preferences closely linked to actual behaviour. Mechanisms specific to commitment with the intent of enhancing couple functioning: 1. Behavioural maintenance acts: Change behaviour.  Accommodative Behaviour: Inclination to inhibit destructive tendencies and react in a constructive manner to one’s partner’s destructive behaviour. The greater one’s commitment, the greater the accommodation. Accommodation is often mediated by perspective taking, empathetic accuracy, and benign attribution and generally leads to pro-relationship behaviour.  Willingness to sacrifice direct self-interest: Accomplished either by forgoing behaviours that are desirable and/or enacting behaviours others would find desirable. This is driven by commitment above all else and benefits the relationship in the long-term.  Forgiveness of betrayal: The desire to forego retribution and acting in less judgemental and a more constructive way. Higher commitment results in a greater tendency to forgive, even when controlling for recency and severity of betrayal. 2. Cognitive maintenance acts: Mental restructuring.  Forgoing tempting alternatives: Acts/symbols of commitment (e.g. wedding ring) indicating to others that they are not available. This may also derogate alternatives, thus minimising alternative partner’s attributes and abilities. Committed individuals tend to do this more and also spend less time attending to tempting alternatives. These tactics are motivated in the face of a threat, however the more tempting the alternative, the greater the derogation for committed individuals.  Positive illusion: Developing idealised beliefs about one’s partner and relationship. It includes sustaining ideas of one’s partner as very positive, even turning their faults into virtues. The higher one perceives their partner’s superiority (social comparison), the greater the number of positive thoughts and fewer negative thoughts about the relationship. Positive illusion can also include excessive optimism (relationship is doing better than most) and unrealistic perceptions of control (more control over relationships than others).  Cognitive interdependence: Movement from viewing the self as a collective representation of partner-and-self, rather than just individual-based. Committed individuals talk more in terms of “we” and “ours” rather than less committed individuals who talk more in terms of “I” and “mine”. It is assumed that this collective view promotes pro-relationship behaviour. Cognitive interdependence is likely to be associated with MaxJoint transformation.

Week 5: Emotions Positive emotions in relationships:

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Happiness > Joy (high arousal, passion and approach) > Contentment (low arousal, savouring the moment). Promotes interest and excitement > exploration and growth. Love: Results in passion and commitment for another. Compassion: Leads to concern for other and behaviours that alleviate suffering. Gratitude: Allows us to appreciate personal costs of our partners.

Clark and Mills (2012) and Clark et al. (2001) suggest that relationships differ in the degree that implicit rules guide the distribution of benefits (i.e. the meeting of needs). On this basis relationships can either be: 

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Communal: Members feel obliged to demonstrate concern for the welfare of another and are non-contingent. Thus, benefits are provided to meet partner needs or to express concern while the caregiver does not expect anything in return. Emotions are more frequently and intensely expressed in communal relationships, and are more likely to be responded to. Exchange: No responsibility for another’s welfare, but rather benefits are provided and received on the expectation of being repaid. These relationships are low on comm...