Proposal that the way in which friendships initially develop – and break down – is dependent upon reciprocal self disclosure
Self-disclosure
Imparting of personal information about oneself to another person
What does properly placed self-disclosure lead to?
Greater intimacy – superficial to more in-depth and personal
During initial meetings, what norms do people follow?
Self-disclosure reciprocity
Self-disclosure reciprocity
Matching each other’s level of self-disclosure
If self-disclosure is too quick/too much what may the recipient feel?
Threatened and may evaluate the disclosure negatively – Kaplan, 1974
Depenetration
The way in which people emotionally withdraw from a relationship when it is in trouble by reducing the quantity and intimacy of information they disclose
Alternative to depenetration at the close of a relationship
Increasing the intimacy of information disclosed, but directing negative and personally hurtful information at their former friend
Women’s friendships tend to be?
More intimate and emotionally involved than men’s
Who found that although women were more emotionally expressive, both men and women met their same-sex friends to talk to one another?
Duck and Wright, 1993
Who performed a meta-analysis on self-disclosure studies and what did they find?
Dindia and Allen, 1992
Found that women self-disclose more than men, especially in intimate relationship
Women disclose more than men to same-sex friends but there was no gender difference in disclosure to male friends
What study did Darlega and Chaiken perform in 1976 on intimacy?
Study on the cultural norms for men in Western society
Methods:
Male and female participants read a story about a man or woman who was upset while on a flight
Noticing the emotional state, the person sitting next to them asked if he or she was afraid of flying
One condition – individual concealed the problem
Second condition – individual disclosed the problem
Results:
When asked to judge the character, men and women responded in the same way – a male character was seen as better psychologically adjusted if they did NOT disclose the problem, whereas a female character was seen as better adjusted if they DID
Men may avoid self-disclosure to avoid negative evaluations from both men and women
True or false: Men engage in less physical contact with same-sex friends than women
True
Cultural for UK and America
What did Derlega et al (1989) discover about physical contact and gender differences?
Methods:
Asked friends to act out an imaginary scene in which one person was greeting the other at the airport
The greetings were photographed and evaluated by independent judges for the intimacy of physical contact
Results:
Found that male friends employed significantly less touching than did female friends or mixed-sex friends
Male participants were more likely than female participants to interpret touching as an indication of sexual desire
How does social psychology explain gender differences in intimacy?
Men are socialized to conform to a norm of heterosexual masculinity
Masculine traits (power and control) are valued – for men
Feminine traits (tenderness and vulnerability) are devalued – for men
Men are particularly likely to conform to this norm in the company of other men
Men avoid acting in ways that might indicate homosexuality by avoiding emotional expression, self-disclosure and physical contact in same-sex friendships
Typology of love (Lee, 1977)
Classification of love into three primary types
1. Passionate love (eros)
2. Game-playing love (ludus)
3. Friendship love (storge)
Can be combined to form three secondary types of love
1. Pragmatic love (pragma) → friendship and game playing
2. Possessive love (mania) → passionate and game playing
3. Altruistic love (agape) → passionate and friendship
Triangular theory of love (Sternberg, 1986)
Love can be classified in several different ways depending on the degree of passion, intimacy and commitment
For what types of love is there strong evidence?
Passionate
Companionate
Passionate love
State of intense longing for another person that is experienced during the early stages of a romantic relationship
Relatively short lived
What is passionate love associated with?
Associated with some qualitatively distinct neurophysiological and psychological states
- Increase in dopamine
- Activation of caudate nucleus – associated with reward and pleasure
Hatfield and Walster developed what theory of love?
Three factor theory of love
Three factor theory of love
Argues that three conditions must be met to fall in love
1. Understanding and accepting the concept of love
2. Meeting a suitable potential lover
3. Attributing physiological arousal to the presence of the potential lover
Zillman (1984) described the psychological process by which arousal caused by one stimulus is transferred and added to arousal elicited by a second stimulus as what?
Excitation transfer
Dutton and Aron (1974) performed what study on arousal and attraction?
The idea that arousal from another source may be incorrectly attributed to romantic attraction in presence of an attractive person
Methods:
Male or female research assistants waited by two different bridges
One bridge was short and not too high
One bridge was really long, high and wobbly
When unaccompanied males began to cross either bridge, they were asked if they could write a story in response to a picture while standing on the bridge, the assistants also gave our their phone numbers
Results:
Men who were approached by women on the suspension bridge told stories with the highest sexual imagery of all the experimental groups and were also more likely to call the assistant afterwards for ‘further details’ of the study
Why does the three factor theory not fully explain why we fall in love?
It cannot be produced in lab setting
Other factors are involved
Companionate (compassionate) love
The affection we feel for someone with whom our lives are deeply entwined and can be applied to friends as well as romantic partner
Replaces and is more enduring than passionate love
Can lead partners to begin to see themselves as a collected entity
Smith, Coats and Walling (1999) used reaction times to investigate what?
Used reaction times to investigate the effect of self-partner overlap on mental representation
Methods:
Undergraduate students who had been in a romantic relationship for at least 3 months were given a list of 90 personal traits and asked to indicate how descriptive each trait was of them
They repeated this task with their romantic partner in mind, indicating how much each trait was a description of their partner
Then they completed a computer task with the traits being displayed one at a time in random order – participants were required to respond to each trait by pressing a ‘yes’ key if descriptive of their partner or ‘no’ if it wasn’t
Results:
Participants were significantly faster at making judgments about whether their partner was characterized by a trait if it matched their perception of themselves – if the trait was descriptive of their partner and themself, they responded more quickly
If the trait characterized the partner but not the participant, they appeared confused and took longer to come up with a correct response
How do evolutionary psychologists explain the pathway from passionate to companionate love?
In the early stages of a relationship, the sexual mating system, the goal of which is to sexually reproduce and pass on genes to the next generation, is dominant
In the later stages of a relatinship, the attachment system, the goal of which is to establish and maintain a strong emotional bond between two people, is more important
Key norms in cultural knowledge about love
1. Moderation in love
2. Suppression of feelings toward attached others
3. Monogamy continuous love
Social exchange theory
A key characteristic of social relationships is the exchange of valuable ‘goods’, whether material or emotional
People seek out relationships where benefits outweigh the costs and the relationship has overall positive outcomes
People compare relationships to the possible rewards and costs in alternative relationships
Equity theory
Based on social exchange theory but is specifically concerned with an individual’s expectations of exchange in close relationships and how they respond to equality and inequality in those exchanges
People in close relationships expect an equal exchange in terms of love, emotional and financial support and household tasks
They may feel guilty if they receive more from a relationship than they can give or resentful if they give more than they get in return
True or false: inequity has severe negative implications for a relationship
True
Intimacy in relationships
Reis and Patrick (1996) argued that intimate relationships are those that are
1. Caring
2. Understanding
3. Involve validation
Caring
Feeling that our partner loves us and cares about us – central component in intimacy
Understanding
When a partner is perceived to have an accurate perception of how we see ourselves – they understand our feelings, needs, beliefs and life circumstances
Validation
Reflects whether our partner is able to communicate their acknowledgement and support for our point of view
Interpretation in relationships
People in happy and unhappy relationships interpret their partner’s behavior differently
Happy relationship
- Problems are blamed on the self and the partner given credit for solving the problems
Unhappy relationship
- People blame problems on their partner and see their partner’s problematic behavior as affecting other aspects of the relationship
- Unlikely to get better in the future
Social comparison in relationships
When happy couples compare themselves to other couples, they tend to feel better about their own relationship
- Buunk and Van de Eijnden (1997) showed that individuals who felt their own relationship was better than most others showed higher levels of relationship satisfaction and Murray and Holmes (1997) found that romantic couples with high levels of satisfaction perceived their partner more positively than the typical partner and were optimistic about the future of the relationship
Unhappy couples focus on the negative implications of social comparison
- Buunk et al (1990) found that those in unhappy marriages felt envious when they saw other couples in a better marriage and worried when they encountered couples with worse marital problems than themselves that their fate might be the same
Social networks in relationships
Cotton, Cunningham and Antill (1993) found that people reported greater satisfaction in their relationship when own and their spouse’s social networks were highly integrated
Attachment
Describes the emotional bond that forms between a young child and their caregiver (usually the mother)
Who proposed that human infants and their caregivers have a genetic disposition to form a close attachment with one another?
Bowlby
What did Ainsworth say about Bowlby’s idea of attachment?
That the nature of the relationship with the caregiver can lead to the child holding one of three different attachment styles
1. Secure
2. Avoidant
3. Anxious/ambivalent
Children who are securely attached are more socially competent and have higher self-esteem than children who are insecurely attached
What is the difference between child attachment and adult attachment?
Research has shown that attachment styles held by adults are similar to those held by children
What are the two main adult attachment styles and who developed them?
Bartholomew (1990)
1. Attachment-avoidance – discomfort with intimacy and dependency
2. Attachment-anxiety – fear of separation and abandonment
What do Bartholomew’s adult attachment styles depend on?
1. Whether people believe others to be trustworthy or not
2. Whether people have high self-esteem and believe they are worthy of love or not
People high in attachment-avoidance do what?
Try to maintain distance from others to preserve their independence and self-esteem
Tend to be less involved, engaged and support-seeking in relationships and are uncomfortable with self-disclosure
Show discomfort with closeness and strive for self-dependence
People high in attachment-anxiety do what?
Seek support, acceptance and closeness to others in response to their fear of rejection
Use intense efforts to ensure support and maintain proximity to others, showing excessive rumination about abandonment fears and threats to their relationship or self
How many adult attachment styles are possible?
People can be high or low on both attachment-avoidance and attachment-anxiety dimensions, resulting in four possible styles
1. Secure attachment – low on both styles
2. Preoccupied attachment – low on avoidance, but high on anxiety
3. Dismissing-avoidant attachment – high on avoidance, but low on anxiety
4. Fearful-avoidant attachment – high on both
Secure attachment style
People who have high self-esteem and are able to trust relationship partners; they tend to have the most successful relationships and are also seen as the most desirable partners
Preoccupied attachment style
Although these people are able to trust others, they have low self-esteem and do not believe they are worthy of love; tend to be obsessed with their relationship partners and fear their feelings will not be reciprocated
Dismissing-avoidant attachment style
Dismissing avoidants have high self-esteem but they do not trust other people; they rely on themselves while avoiding close relationships with others
Fearful-avoidant attachment style
Fearful avoidants have low self-esteem and cannot trust others; tend to have particularly poor interpersonal relations; likely to notice negativity in others
Rusbult and Van Lange (2003) argue what about relationships?
Interdependence theory
To understand relationships we need to consider the effect of situational factors on both individual factors (attachment style) and interpersonal processes
Provides a broad, overarching framework that explains
1. How people interact with one another in relationships
2. The outcomes of these interactions based on the theories in this chapter
Commitment
Desire or intention to continue an interpersonal relationship
Investment model of commitment
Rusbult (1983)
Argued that commitment is dependent on three factors
1. High satisfaction in a relationship
2. Quality of alternatives – low perception predicts relationship commitment
3. Investment size – time and effort invested into each other, making sacrifices, developing mutual friends, shared memories, activities, possessions
Adams and Jones (1997) proposed what three factors contributing to relationships?
1. Personal dedication – positive attraction to the relationship
2. Moral commitment – sense of obligation, religious duty or social responsibility
3. Constraint commitment – factors that make it costly to leave (lack of attractive alternatives, and personal social, financial or legal investments in the relationship)
The relationship dissolution model
Duck, 1992
1. Intrapsychic phase
2. Dyadic phase
3. Social phase
4. Grave dressing phase
Rusbult and Zembrodt (1983) said what about deterioration in relationships?
Once deterioration has been identified, a partner’s response may be positive, negative, active or passive
If a partner wants to save the relationship they may react with loyalty, passively waiting for the relationship to improve or voice behavior, by actively working at the relationship
If a partner thinks the relationship is truly over they may respond with neglect, passively letting the relationship deteriorate or with exit behavior, choosing to end the relationship
Intrapsychic phase
Partner thinks in detail about the sources of the relationship problems, conducing an internal cost-benefit analysis, and may either repress the problem or discuss it with friends
Dyadic phase
Difficult decision is made that something must be done, so the couple actively discuss the situation
At this stage, there may be negotiation and attempts at reconciliation or arguments that further highlight the problems faced
Social phase
When it is accepted that the relationship is ending, both partners turn to friends as a means of social support and find ways of presenting themselves to save face
Grave dressing phase
May involved the division of property and access to children, and a further working toward an assurance for one’s reputation
Also a phase of accepting and getting over the end of the relationship and letting others known one’s version of events
Determinants of break-up pain
1. Attachment style
2. Partner-initiated break
3. Reaction sensitivity
Ingroup
A group you belong to
Outgroup
A group you do not belong to
Intergroup bias
Preference for an ingroup over an outgroup
Umbrella term including different manifestations of bias in favor of one’s own social category
Prejudice
Negative attitude toward the members of specific social outgroups
Affective
Stereotypes
Cognitive
Intergroup discrimination
Behavioral manifestation of prejudice
Racism
Prejudice against someone based on their race
Sexism
Prejudice against someone based on their sex
Stigmatization
When a person’s social category puts them at a lower status than a dominant group and ascribes to them negative characteristics
Old-fashioned racism
Blatant negative attitudes on the basic of group membership
Aversive racism
Conflict between egalitarian attitudes and negative emotions toward outgroup members
What study was done on the effect of race on helping behavior?
Gaertner and Bickman
Methods:
Brooklyn, New York – 1100 people, ½ black, ½ white
Called by either a black or white confederate
Confederate used an accent typically associated with their ethnic group
If the participant agreed to help, the caller gave them the telephone number of the garace
Results:
White participants showed ingroup bias – they were more likely to help a white caller than a black caller
Black participants were actually more likely to help a white caller than a black caller, although this difference was not statistically significant
Egalitarianism
A belief in the equal treatment of all people
Institutional racism
Systematic racism that is thought to exist in both public and private organization which – sometimes inadvertently – disadvantages certain groups
Glass ceiling
Barriers, either real or perceived, that adversely affect women and minority group members from advancing to leadership positions in the workplace
Hostile sexism
View that women are inferior, irrational and weak
Benevolent sexism
Idealizing women in traditional female roles
Positive stereotypes that restrict women
Ambivalent sexism
Involves holding both hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes toward women simultaneously
Authoritarian personality
Adorno et al (1950)
Arises as a defense reaction against over-strict parenting methods
Strict-dominating parents who expect child to be obedient and submissive → no opportunity to express natural aggression toward parents → aggression displaced onto minority groups → minority groups perceived as inferior and threatening
Tendencies continue into adulthood
Based on Freudian theory
What are the criticisms of the authoritarian personality theory?
No unequivocal empirical support – F-scale failed to predict racism in a social setting where prejudice was self-evident
Difficulty explaining widespread and uniform prejudice based on personality
Social dominance orientation
Extent to which individuals accept ideologies that attenuate intergroup status hierarchies
Idea that our societies are defined in part by implicit ideologies that either promote or attenuate intergroup status hierarchies and that people can vary in the extent to which they either accept or reject these ideas that are ingrained in society
People high in social dominance orientation favor intergroup hierarchies – people in high or low status groups should favor the high status group
Self-regulation in prejudice
Devine and Monteith, 1999
People who detect a cognitive dissonance and are motivated to control their prejudices engage in self-regulation to change their attitude and become less prejudiced by consistently inhibiting prejudice-related thoughts and replacing them with a low prejudiced response
Does not answer why individuals decide that prejudice is wrong in the first place
Social categorization is central to explaining prejudice and discrimination because without it, there can be no prejudice or discrimination
How is prejudice regulated through socially interactive dialogue?
Condor and colleagues (2006)
Societal regulation of prejudice does not only happen at an individual level
Dialogic process = between two or more people
What are the two types of interactive prejudice suppression?
People defend absent others being accused of prejudice
We act on behalf of others who are not present to ensure they don’t come off as prejudice
What study was performed in a boys summer camp?
Sherif et al
Methods:
Boys summer camp
Three stages
1. Observation of immediate effects of group formation
2. Effects of introducing competition between the groups
3. Whether certain factors could reduce any conflict that had occurred in stages 1 and 2
Results:
Stage 1 – groups immediately started spontaneous suggestions for competition, social comparisons and development of group icons
Stage 2 – dramatic rise in derogation between the two groups culminating in the groups physically attacking the others’ icons; 93% of friendships were defined by ingroup affiliation (ethnocentrism)
Cooperation between groups lead to a reduction in intergroup conflict and considerable reduction in the observed derogation between the two groups
These findings supported the realistic group conflict theory
What study was influenced by Sherif’s summer camp study?
Wright, Aron, McLaughlin-Volpe and Ropp
Methods:
Stage 1 – ingroup solidarity
Stage 2 – intergroup competition
Stage 3 – extended contact – 1 person selected from each group to work together; returned to original group to discuss experience
At each stage of the experiment, participants were asked to divide $500 between the two teams
Results:
Intergroup bias after phase 1 and then it became greater following intro of competition in phase 2
After final phase – even participants not directly involved in the closeness-building task showed reduction in intergroup bias
Common ingroup identity model
Theory that cooperation between members of different groups reduces intergroup bias because it creates a common ingroup identity, whereby former outgroup members are now seen as ingroup members – stage 3 of Sheriff or Wright’s studies
Ethnocentrism
Hostile behavior against outgroups and strong ingroup commitment
Realistic group conflict theory
Conflict between groups results from competition for scarce resources
Spontaneous derogation
Derogation of another group that arises in the absence of competition
Minimal group paradigm
Tajfel
Classic experimental context in which groups are formed on an ad hoc basis, with no obvious reason to compete with one another
Minimal group paradigm experiment
Tajfel
Methods
School kids were allocated to two groups by showing the participants a number of slides of abstract paintings – the kids were separated into groups (completely random and with no relation to paintings)
Completed a task in which they required to allocate points to people in the two groups – they were told they’d receive the money represented by the points they were given by others doing the task
Results:
Persistent tendency to allocate more points to people in own group compared to people in other groups
Tendency to choose maximum differentiation between point allocation than maximizing overall profit
Mere categorization was enough to elicit intergroup bias
Mere categorization
Describes the differential allocation of points to two groups when this has no impact on the task objective to amass money for oneself, so suggesting there must be a psychological motivation for the differential allocation
Category differentiation model
Model outlining the cognitive effects of categorization on perceived similarities and differences
Describes how cognitive misers use social categories when there is an ingroup and a corresponding outgroup category
Social identity theory
Theory which proposed that that when our membership in a particular group is salient, it is our social self rather than our personal self that guides our self-concept, attitudes, and behavior; the theory explains how affiliation to groups influences behavior
Positive distinctiveness
Desire to be differentiation from outgroups in a way that favors the ingroup
Belief similarity
Criticism of minimal group paradigm experiment that people may show a preference for their ingroup because they inferred that, because they liked the same painting style they might share other beliefs with ingroup members
Subsequent studies have discounted this criticism
Self-categorization theory
Extension of social identity theory which proposes that when an individual’s social identity is salient they come to see themselves as a depersonalized group member rather than an idiosyncratic individual
They depersonalize, assimilate to group norms, and take on the characteristics associated with a typical group member (self-stereotyping)
Social categorization and intergroup discrimination are context dependent and involve a search for meaning
What changes did Billig and Tajfel make to the original minimal group paradigm experiment?
Participants clearly saw their grouping was entirely random – coin toss
There was not an elimination of bias with the coin toss condition – they still gave more points to ingroup members
Mere categorization is enough for people to favor their own group over others
Subjective uncertainty reduction hypothesis
People are motivated to maintain the distinctiveness of their group to reduce subjective uncertainty
Optimal distinctiveness theory
Theory stating that people seek out groups that provide a balance in satisfying two conflicting motives, the need for assimilation and the need for differentiation
Self-anchoring theory
Idea that for novel groups, we project our own positive attributes to create a positive norm, but we don’t do this for outgroups; this creates ingroup favoritism
Staats and Staats word pairings
Dutch and Swedish
Explicit attitudes in prejudice
Conscious, deliberative and controllable
Measured using self-reports
Influenced by social desirability
Implicit attitudes in prejudice
Unintentionally activated by the mere presence of an attitude object, whether actual or symbolic
Measured using the implicit association test
Less likely to be influenced by social desirability than are explicit measures
Implicit association test (IAT)
Test used to measure the degree to which an individual has an automatic preference for a group to which they belong over a group to which they do not belong
Who developed and performed a study with IAT?
Greenwald, McGee and Schwartz (1998)
Methods:
3 stages, 5 steps
Participants identified positive and negative words presented on computer
Masked primes of ingroup vs outgroup designated pronouns (us vs them)
Measured accessibility of positive vs negative affect via identification response times based on the pronouns they were given
Results:
People show an implicit intergroup bias
Easier to associate their own group with positive stimuli and the outgroup with negative stimuli
Contact hypothesis
Premise that under conditions of cooperation, common goals, equal status and institutional support, contact between members of two different groups should lead to an increase in mutual liking and respect toward the other group
Imagined contact
The mental simulation of social interaction with a member or members of an outgroup
Turner, Crisp and Lambert performed a study in imagined contact, what did they find?
Mentally simulating a positive contact experience activates concepts normally associated with successful interactions with members of other groups