About interpersonal relationships, a favourable topic in Social Psychology

1. BY
STANLEY MAPANDA
TRIUMPHANT COLLEGE

2. - According to Berscheid and Ammazzalorso (2004), the concept of a
relationship: refers to two people whose behaviour is interdependent in that a
change in behaviour in one is likely to produce a change in behaviour of the
other
- Affiliation - is the basic human need for the company of other human beings.
The need to belong and to be accepted by others is one of Maslow’s basic
survival needs, and is also a major motive underlying conformity (Gross,
2012).

3. - Close relationships are relationships between people that are
characterized by loving, caring, commitment, and intimacy—such as those
between adult friends, dating partners, lovers, and married couples
- Interpersonal attraction —the strength of our liking or loving for another
person.

4. Relationships: definitions and varieties
a) Voluntary/involuntary relationships – interpersonal relationships in
western cultures tend to be individualistic, voluntary and temporary; those in
non-western cultures are more collectivist, involuntary and permanent.
- For example – relationships of blended families, cross-sex non-romantic
friendships, romantic or friendly relationships in the workplace, relationships
between cooperative neighbours, relationships between prisoners and guards,
sibling relationships, and adults’ relationships with their parents.

5. Marriage is found in all known cultures and is usually taken to be a voluntary
relationship.
- Duck (1999), the choice to marry is voluntary, presumably. But once the
marriage is a few years old, it’s much less voluntary than it was, since getting
out of it is accompanied by a great deal of ‘social and legal baggage’.
Marriages :
Monogamy - marriage to one spouse at any one time.
Polygamy - having two or more spouses at once.
• polygyny (one man having two or more wives) or (less commonly)
• polyandry (one woman with two or more husbands).

6. b) Arranged marriages - Kerckhoff and Davis’s (1962) filter model our
choice of potential (realistic) marriage partners is limited by demographic
variables (age, education, ethnic and religious background, and so on). To
this extent, most relationships are ‘arranged’.
- Parentally arranged marriages in some cultures are gladly entered into, and
are considered perfectly normal, natural relationships that are anticipated
with pleasure (Duck, 1999).
- According to research by Gupta and Sigh, (1998), Couples in Jaipur, India,
who married for love, reported diminished feelings of love if they’d been
married for more than five years. By contrast, those who’d undertaken
arranged marriages reported more love if they weren’t newlyweds. These
findings reveal that passionate love ‘cools’ over time, and that there’s scope
for love to flourish within an arranged marriage.

7. c) Electronic’ friendships - online relationships (or cyber affairs:
Griffiths, 2000).
For example, Social medias, dating sites, singles blogs and so on.
d) Gay and lesbian relationships - many central patterns of sexual attitudes
and behaviour are more closely linked to gender than to sexual orientation. If
one wants to understand gays and lesbians, a good place to start is by looking
at heterosexual men and women respectively (Fletcher, 2002).

8. INTERPERSONAL ATTRACTION: HOW RELATIONSHIPS GET
STARTED
A general theoretical framework for explaining initial attraction is reward
theory (Clore and Byrne, 1974).
a. Proximity - Proximity (physical closeness or propinquity) represents a
minimum requirement for attraction: the further apart two people live,
the lower the probability they’ll ever meet, let alone become friends or
marry.
• Proximity breeds liking partly because of the mere exposure effect.
Repeated exposure to original stimuli increases our liking for them,
(Steinberg, 1993).

9. b. Exposure and familiarity - Proximity increases the opportunity for
interaction (exposure), which, in turn, increases familiarity. There’s
considerable evidence that, far from breeding contempt, familiarity breeds
fondness .
• According to Argyle (1983), the more two people interact, the more
polarised their attitudes towards each other become – usually in the
direction of greater liking. For instance, people form friendships with
those they encounter frequently (as the mere exposure effect would
predict).

10. c. Similarity - Those with similar attitudes and opinions tend to like each
other most than others, particularly if they agreed on highly noticeable/
salient issues.
• We prefer and infer affective, cognitive and behavioural consistency in
ourselves and others: we like to agree with our friends and to befriend
those who agree with us.
• For instance, compared with randomly paired people, friends and
couples are far more likely to share common attitudes, beliefs, and
interests (and, for that matter, age, religion, race, education,
intelligence, smoking behavior, and economic status). Dissimilarity
often fosters disfavour.

11. d. Physical Attractiveness (FACIAL, Body symmetry and waist-to-hip ratio
(WHR))
- Attractive people are seen as more sociable, altruistic, and intelligent than
their unattractive counterparts and variety of positive characteristics, and these
traits are activated quickly and spontaneously/ impulsively when we see their
faces (Griffin & Langlois, 2006).
- Zebrowitz has found that individuals who have youthful-looking faces are
more liked, are judged as warmer and more honest, and also receive other
positive outcomes. Parents give baby-faced children fewer chores and
punishments, and people with young-looking faces are also required to pay
lower monetary awards in courtroom trials.

12. Styles of Love
According to Plato and Aristotle in Lee, (1973) there are 7 types of love
• Eros: Romantic love. Love at first site. “We are perfect for each other.”
“I am turned on by you!”
• Philia: Friendship-love. It is loving attachment, deep friendship, or
nonsexual affection.
• Storge: Familial love, is a kind of philia pertaining to the love between
parents and their children.

13. • Agape: Selfless love or universal (altruism) love such as love for
strangers, nature or God. It does not depend on filiation or familiarity.
• Ludus: Playful or uncommitted love. It involves activities such as
teasing and dancing or more overt flirting. (friends with benefit)
• Pragma: Pragmatic, or practical love founded on reason or duty and
one’s long-term interests. Favours personal qualities and compatibilities,
shared goals than sexual attraction.

14. • Philautia: Self love, which can be healthy or unhealthy. Healthy is
akin to self-esteem, which is our cognitive and emotional appraisal.
Unhealthy leads to injustice too much self-appraisal.
• Mania: Possessive, excited love. “I get so excited about my love that I
cannot sleep.”
Maniacs are A mental state characterized by abnormally high energy, low
need for sleep, excessive uncoordinated motor activity and an elevated,
extensive, or irritable mood, often with impressiveness, talkativeness,
distractibility, excessive sexuality, drug use, or impulsive behavior.

15. Theoretical Approach of love.
a) Companionate love (‘True love’or ‘conjugal love’),
- The affection we feel for those with whom our lives are deeply entwined’,
including very close friends and marriage partners;
b) Passionate love (Romantic love, obsessive love, infatuation, ‘being in love’).
- Romantic love is ‘A state of intense absorption in another.
A state of intense physiological arousal.’ These are qualitatively different,
but companionate love is only a more extreme form of liking (‘the affection
we feel for casual acquaintances’).

16. c) Consummate love
- Sternberg (1988b), propounded that intimacy, passion and
decision/commitment) can be combined to produce consummate love.
- When only two are combined, the resulting love is romantic,
companionate or fatuous/ childish.

17. The Triangular Theory of Love
(Sternberg)

18. The combination of these three components leads to eight different types
of love
1) Non - love (absence of all three) - casual interactions
2) Liking (intimacy only) - in absence, miss, but not dwell
3) Infatuated love (passion only) - love at first sight; easy for others to
spot
4) Empty love (decision/commitment only) - found in stagnant
relationships

19. 5) Romantic love (Intimacy & passion) - liking and being ‘turned-on” by
the other
6) Companionate love (Intimacy & Decision/Commitment) long-term
committed friendship after passion fades
7) Fatuous love (Passion & Decision/Commitment)- “Hollywood”
romance; burns out quickly
8) Consummate love (all three) - difficult to maintain, must work at it

20. - What predicts a “successful relationship?”
• Doesn’t have to be consummate love
• Both people don’t have to “match” on what they belief love to mean
to them
• But, what does predict success, is that the partner’s conception of
love matches what s/he thinks is the other partner’s conception of
love
• This is nice--it’s an “other-oriented” factor of love, rather than a
“self-oriented” factor.

21. An evolutionary theory of love: love as attachment
- An evolutionary account of love focuses on the functions that love evolved
to meet. Compared with other primates, humans are dependent on their parents
for
an exceptionally long period of time.
- Bowlby (1969) identified three basic behavioural systems that bond male–
female pairs together: attachment, caregiving and sex.
*So, when we say ‘I love you’, we can mean any or all of the following.

22. 1) Love as attachment: ‘I am emotionally dependent on you for happiness,
safety and security; I feel anxious and lonely when you’re gone, relieved
and stronger when you’re near. I want to be comforted, supported
emotionally, and taken care of by you…’
2) Love as caregiving: ‘I get great pleasure from supporting, caring for and
taking care of you; from facilitating your progress, health, growth and
happiness…’
3) Love as sexual attraction: ‘I am sexually attracted to you and can’t get
you out of my mind. You excite me, “turn me on”, make me feel alive …
(Gross, 2012 Chapter 29 page 433)

23. Bowlby’s phases of infant attachment vs Four stages of adult attachment
Pre-attachment Attraction and flirting
(0–3/4 months)
Attachment-in-the-making Falling in Love
(3/4–6/7 months)
Clear-cut attachment Loving
(6/7–12/18 months)
Goal-directed partnership Life as Usual
(12–18 months onwards)

24. Why do we Fall for Relationships?
Social exchange and equity theories are based on the notion that relationships
operate on an economic model of costs and benefits.
 Social exchange theory states that how people feel about their relationships
will depend on,
i)their perception of the rewards they receive from the relationship,
ii)their perception of the costs they sustain or experience,
iii)their perception of what kind of relationship they deserve, and
iv)the probability that they could have a better relationship with someone
else.

25. • The basic concepts of social exchange theory, therefore, are reward, cost,
outcome, comparison level, and comparison level for alternatives (Thibaut &
Kelly, 1959). (self - interest)
• The outcome of the relationship is based on a calculation of the reward/cost
ratio. If this is negative, the relationship is not in good shape.
• Reward/cost ratio in social exchange theory is the concept that there is a
balance between the rewards that come from a relationship and the personal
cost of maintaining the relationship.
• Comparison level: people’s expectations about the level of rewards and
punishments they deserve in a relationship.

26. • How satisfied you are with your relationship also depends on your
comparison level for alternatives.
• Comparison level for alternatives: People’s expectations about the level of
rewards and punishments they would receive in a substitute relationship.
• Social exchange theory has received a great deal of empirical support. People
do pay attention to the costs and rewards in their relationships, and these
affect how people feel about a relationship, .
• There is also evidence that people are more likely to end a relationship when
they perceive that attractive alternatives are available.

27. Equity Theory – it argues that people are not just out to get the most rewards
for the least cost; they are also concerned about equity (justice or fairness)
in their relationships.
- Equity theory holds that people are happiest with relationships in which
the rewards and costs a person experiences and the contributions he/she
makes to the relationship are roughly equal to the rewards, costs, and
contributions of the other person.
- According to equity theory both under-benefited and over-benefited
partners should feel badly about an inequity and be motivated to restore
equity in the relationship.

28. • Research, however, suggests that this is not entirely true. Under-benefit in a
relationship is seen as more of a problem by the under-benefited individual,
than is over-benefit seen by the over-benefited individual.

29. Maintaining Close Relationships
Social Exchange in Long-Term Relationships
- The investment model of relationships holds that people’s commitment to a
relationship depends on their satisfaction with the relationship in terms of
i) the rewards, costs, and comparison level
ii) their comparison level for alternatives
iii) how much they have invested in the relationship that would be lost by
leaving it.

30. - In a test of this model, Rusbult (1983) asked students involved in
heterosexual dating relationships to complete questionnaires for seven
months.
- He found that people’s satisfaction, alternatives, and investments all
predicted how committed they were to the relationships and whether it lasted.

31. Exchange & Equity in Long-Term Relationships
Does equity theory operate in long-term relationships in the same way it does in
new or less intimate relationships? Not exactly.
In casual relationships we trade ‘in kind’, eg, you lend someone your class
notes and he buys you kapana.
In intimate relationships we trade very different resources and it can be
difficult to determine if equity has been achieved
-eg, Does a ‘dinner out at an expensive restaurant balance out three nights of
neglect due to a heavy workload?’

32. According to Clark and Mills, interactions between new acquaintances are
governed by equity concerns and are called exchange relationships.
Exchange relationships are relationships governed by the need for equity, ie,
for a comparable ratio of rewards and costs.
On the other hand, interactions between close friends, family members, and
romantic partners are governed less by equity and more by a desire to help
each other in times of need (see Clark & Mills). These are called communal
relationships.
Communal relationships are relationships in which people’s primary
concern is being responsive to the other person’s needs.

33. Research supports social exchange theory.
Studies show that people in exchange relationships operate according to
the equity norm (see Fig. 10.7), and,
That people in communal relationships are concerned with the needs of
others.
In general, close relationships can have either exchange or communal
properties;
family relationships are typically communal;
acquaintanceships are based on exchange, although they can become
communal if they grow into friendships.

35. The Role of Positive Illusions
When conflicts appear, and relationships are challenged, there is an
attempt to maintain the relationship by indulging in positive illusions.
Positive illusions are the idealization of our romantic relationships and
partners in order to maintain the relationship.
Research has found that the more people idealized their partners (and
their partners them) the greater their satisfaction with the relationship,
and the more likely the relationship was to endure.
More recently, researchers have identified another way in which we
maintain our relationships, namely,

36. By finding redeeming features in our partner’s faults.
Do we actually hold idealistic, rather than realistic, views of our partner? Yes.
Is it actually beneficial to see our partners in idealistic ways? Yes.
Research shows that the more that people idealize their partners (and the
more that their partner idealizes them), the greater the satisfaction with the
relationships.
In a year long study Murray et al (1996) found that couples who idealized
each other at the outset experienced the greatest increases in satisfaction and
the greatest decreases in conflicts and doubts, and were more likely to be
together one year later.

37. Ending Close Relationships
Why Relationships End
In Canada, one-third of marriages end in divorce. Why?
Different kinds of relationships end for different reasons.
Reasons for marriage dissolution include financial difficulties, unemployment,
alcoholism, sexual infidelity, etc.

38. Reasons for relationship breakups in general include:
•becoming dissimilar (growing apart)
•low rewards and high costs (social exchange theory)
•inequitable relationship (equity theory)
•boredom

39. The Process of Breaking Up
Baxter (1982) identified four strategies for dissolution of a relationship:
i) withdrawal/avoidance (passive: most people use this strategy)
ii) positive tone (trying to prevent hard feelings)
iii)manipulative strategies (getting a third party to communicate the bad
news)
iv) open confrontation

40. The Experience of Breaking Up
While the experience of breaking up is never pleasant, a powerful variable
that predicts how a person will weather the breakup is the role he or she plays
in the decision to terminate the relationship.
Those who play an active role suffer less.
In Aker’s (1990) study breakees were most upset, breakers least, and mutuals
in the middle.