Psych exam 4

• Altman and Taylor, 1973
• Proposal that the way in which friendships initially develop – and break down – is dependent upon reciprocal self disclosure

Imparting of personal information about oneself to another person

Greater intimacy – superficial to more in-depth and personal

Self-disclosure reciprocity

Matching each other’s level of self-disclosure

Threatened and may evaluate the disclosure negatively – Kaplan, 1974

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

Increasing the intimacy of information disclosed, but directing negative and personally hurtful information at their former friend

More intimate and emotionally involved than men’s

Duck and Wright, 1993

• 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

• 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
• Cultural for UK and America

• 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

• 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

• 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

Love can be classified in several different ways depending on the degree of passion, intimacy and commitment

• Passionate
• Companionate

• State of intense longing for another person that is experienced during the early stages of a romantic relationship
• Relatively short lived

• Associated with some qualitatively distinct neurophysiological and psychological states
• - Increase in dopamine
• - Activation of caudate nucleus – associated with reward and pleasure

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

Excitation transfer

• 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

• It cannot be produced in lab setting
• Other factors are involved

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 1. Moderation in love
• 2. Suppression of feelings toward attached others
• 3. Monogamy continuous love

• 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

• 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

• Reis and Patrick (1996) argued that intimate relationships are those that are
• 1. Caring
• 2. Understanding
• 3. Involve validation

Feeling that our partner loves us and cares about us – central component in intimacy

When a partner is perceived to have an accurate perception of how we see ourselves – they understand our feelings, needs, beliefs and life circumstances

Reflects whether our partner is able to communicate their acknowledgement and support for our point of view

• 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

• 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

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

Describes the emotional bond that forms between a young child and their caregiver (usually the mother)

Bowlby

• 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

Research has shown that attachment styles held by adults are similar to those held by children

• Bartholomew (1990)
• 1. Attachment-avoidance – discomfort with intimacy and dependency
• 2. Attachment-anxiety – fear of separation and abandonment

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

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 avoidants have high self-esteem but they do not trust other people; they rely on themselves while avoiding close relationships with others

Fearful avoidants have low self-esteem and cannot trust others; tend to have particularly poor interpersonal relations; likely to notice negativity in others

• 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

Desire or intention to continue an interpersonal relationship

• 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

• 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)

• Duck, 1992
• 1. Intrapsychic phase
• 2. Dyadic phase
• 3. Social phase
• 4. Grave dressing phase

• 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

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

• 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

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

• 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

• 1. Attachment style
• 2. Partner-initiated break
• 3. Reaction sensitivity

A group you belong to

A group you do not belong to

• Preference for an ingroup over an outgroup
• Umbrella term including different manifestations of bias in favor of one’s own social category

• Negative attitude toward the members of specific social outgroups
• Affective

Cognitive

Behavioral manifestation of prejudice

Prejudice against someone based on their race

Prejudice against someone based on their sex

When a person’s social category puts them at a lower status than a dominant group and ascribes to them negative characteristics

Blatant negative attitudes on the basic of group membership

Conflict between egalitarian attitudes and negative emotions toward outgroup members

• 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

A belief in the equal treatment of all people

Systematic racism that is thought to exist in both public and private organization which – sometimes inadvertently – disadvantages certain groups

Barriers, either real or perceived, that adversely affect women and minority group members from advancing to leadership positions in the workplace

View that women are inferior, irrational and weak

• Idealizing women in traditional female roles
• Positive stereotypes that restrict women

Involves holding both hostile and benevolent sexist attitudes toward women simultaneously

• 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

• 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

• 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

• 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

• Condor and colleagues (2006)
• Societal regulation of prejudice does not only happen at an individual level
• Dialogic process = between two or more people

• 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

• 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

• 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

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

Hostile behavior against outgroups and strong ingroup commitment

• Realistic group conflict theory
• Conflict between groups results from competition for scarce resources

Derogation of another group that arises in the absence of competition

• Tajfel
• Classic experimental context in which groups are formed on an ad hoc basis, with no obvious reason to compete with one another

• 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

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

• 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

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

Desire to be differentiation from outgroups in a way that favors the ingroup

• 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

• 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

• 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

People are motivated to maintain the distinctiveness of their group to reduce subjective uncertainty

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

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

Dutch and Swedish

• Conscious, deliberative and controllable
• Measured using self-reports
• Influenced by social desirability

• 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

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

• 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

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

The mental simulation of social interaction with a member or members of an outgroup

• Mentally simulating a positive contact experience activates concepts normally associated with successful interactions with members of other groups
• Reducing anxiety, reduces negative outgroup attitudes
• If you imagine and interaction with an elderly person, you are already more positive

• Indirect forms of contact are more versatile and can be used to improve attitudes even in segregated settings
• Attitudes based on direct experience are longer-lasting and more powerful

• High segregation = imagined contact may be the only viable intervention
• Permeable boundaries = extended contact will work well to reinforce the impact of isolated contact encounters
• Leads to a cascade of positive direct interactions