Relationships

Inter-sexual selection

• Preferred strategy of the female
• Quality over quantity
• Trivers emphasises, the female makes a greater investment of time, commitment and other resources before, during and after the birth of her offspring
• Consequences of making a wrong choice of partner are much more serious for the female than for the male
• Pays for females to be choosy
• Female's optimum mating strategy is to select a genetically fit partner who is able and willing to provide resources. This leaves the males competing for the opportunity to mate with the fertile female
• It is this female preference for a fit male which determines which features are passed on to the offspring

Intra-sexual selection

• Preferred strategy of the males
• Quantity over quality
• Refers to the competition between males to be able to mate with a female
• The winner of the competition reproduces and gets to pass on to his offspring the characteristics that contributed to his victory
• Behavioural and psychological consequences

Sexual selection - AO3

• Research support for preferences related to anisogamy:
• Buss - 10,000 adults. 33 countries. Found that female respondents placed greater value on resource-related characteristics, such as good financial prospects, ambition and industriousness, than males did. Males valued reproductive capacity in terms of good looks and chastity, and preferred younger mates, more than females did
• These findings reflect sex differences in mate strategies due to anisogamy
• Research support for inter-sexual selection:
• Clark and Hatfield. Showed that female choosiness is a reality of heterosexual relationships. "I have been noticing you around campus. I find you to be very attractive. Would you go t bed with me tonight?" 0% females, 75% males agreed.
• Supports because shows that females are choosier than males

Self-disclosure

• Self-disclosure: revealing personal information about yourself. Romantic partners reveal more about their true selves as their relationship develops. These self-disclosures about one's deepest thoughts and feelings can strengthen a romantic bond when used appropriately
• In the early days of a relationship, we love to learn as much as we can about our new partner, and the more we learn about them the more we seem to like them
• By revealing ourselves to another person, we share our likes and dislikes, our hopes and fear, our interests and attitudes.

Social penetration theory

• Altman and Taylor
• Gradual process of revealing your inner self to someone else, of giving away your deepest thoughts and feelings
• Involves the reciprocal exchange of information between intimate partners
• When one partner reveals some personal information they display trust, to go further the other partner must also reveal sensitive information
• As they increasingly disclose more and more information to each other, romantic partners 'penetrate' more deeply into each other's lives, and gain a greater understanding of each other

Breadth and depth of self-disclosure

• As both breadth and depth increase, romantic partners become more commited to each other
• "Many layers of an onion"
• Disclose a lot about ourselves at the start of a relationship, but what we reveal is superficial, mostly ''on the surface,' like the outer layers of an onion
• Low-risk information - we would reveal to anyone
• Breadth of disclosure is narrow because many topics are off-limits in the early stage of a relationship
• If we were to reveal too much too soon, we might get the response too much information, possibly even threatening the relationship before it's had a chance to get going
• As a relationship develops, self-disclosure becomes deeper, progressively removing more and more layers to reveal our true selves and encompassing a wider range of topics

Reciprocity of self-disclosure

• Reis and Shaver
• For a relationship to develop, as well as an increase in breadth and depth there needs to be a reciprocal element to disclosure
• Once you have decided to disclose something that reveals your true self, hopefully your partner will respond in a way that is rewarding, with understanding, empathy and also their own intimate thoughts and feelings
• So there is a balance of self-disclosure between both partners in a successful romantic relationship, which increases feelings of intimacy and deepens the relationship

Self disclosure - AO3

• Support from research studies:
• Sprecher and Hendrick studied heterosexual dating couples and found strong correlations between several measures of satisfaction and self-disclosure
• Those who used self-disclose and also believed that their partners did likewise were more satisfied with and committed to their romantic relationship
• Real-life applications:
• Research into self-disclosure can help people who want to improve communication in their relationships
• Hass and Stafford found that 57% of gay men and women in their study said that open and honest self-disclosure was the main way they maintained and deepened their committed relationships
• Cultural differences:
• Prediction that increasing breadth and depth will lead to satisfying and intimate romantic relationships is not true for all cultures
• Tang reviewed the research literature regarding sexual self-disclosure
• Concluded that men and women in the USA self-disclose significantly more sexual thoughts and feelings than men and women in China

Physical attractiveness

• An important factor in the formation of romantic relationships
• The term usually applies specifically to how appealing we find a person's face. There is general agreement within and across cultures about what is considered physical attractive
• There exists an assumption that we seek to form relationships with the most attractive person available

Importance of physical attractiveness

• Shackelford and Larsen found that people with symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive. This is because it may be an honest signal of genetic fitness
• People are also attracted to faces with neotenous (baby-face) features such as widely separated and large eyes, a delicate chin, and a small nose because these trigger a protective or caring instinct, a valuable resource for females wanting to reproduce
• Physical attractiveness is not only important at the start of a relationship
• McNulty found evidence that the initial attractiveness that brought the partners together continued to be an important feature of the relationships after marriage, for at lest several years

Halo effect

• Physical attractiveness may also matter because we have preconceived ideas about the personality traits attractive people must have, and they are almost universally positive
• Psychologists use the term 'Halo effect' to describe how one distinguishing feature tends to have a disproportionate influence on our judgments of a person's other attributed, for example, their personality

The matching hypothesis

• The belief that we do not select the most attractive person as a prospective partner but, instead, are attracted to people who approximately match us in physical attractiveness
• This implies that we take into account our own attractiveness value to others wen seeking romantic partners
• Walster

Physical attractiveness - AO3

• Research support for the halo effect
• Palmer and Peterson found that physically attractive people ere rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent than unattractive people
• This halo effect was so powerful that it persisted even when participants knew that these 'knowledgeable' people had no particular expertise
• Individual differences:
• Towhey asked male and female participants to rate how much they would like a target individual based on their photograph and some biographical information. They also completed a questionnaire designed to measure sexist attitudes and behaviours
• Found that participants who scored highly on the scale were more influenced by the physical attractiveness of the target
• Research support for the matching hypothesis:
• Feingold carried out a meta-analysis of 17 studies and found a significant correlation I ratings of attractiveness between romantic partners

Filter theory

• An explanation of relationship formation
• It states that a series of different factors progressively limits the range of available romantic partners to a much smaller pool of possibilities
• The filters include social demography, similarity in attitude and omplementarity
• Kerckhoff and Davis

Social demography

• 1st level of filter
• Demographics are features that describe populations
• Include geographical location and social class, level of education, ethnic group, religion
• Key benefit of proximity is accessibility

Similarity in attitudes

• 2nd level of fllter
• We find partners who share our basic values attractive in the earlier stages of a relationship, so we tend to discount available individuals who differ markedly from us in their attitudes
• Kerckhoff and Davis found that similarity of attitudes was important to the development of romantic relationships, but only for short-term relationships
• There is a need for partners in the earlier stages of a relationship to agree over basic values, the things that really matter to them. This encourages greater and deeper communication, and promotes self-disclosure

Complementarity

• 3rd level of filter
• Similarity becomes less important as a relationship develops, and is replaced by a need for your partner to balance your traits with opposite ones of their own
• Concerns the ability of romantic partners to meet each other
• Two partners complement each other when they have traits that the other lacks
• Kerckhoff and Davis found that the need for complementarity was more important for the long-term couples

Filter theory - AO3

• Support from research evidence:
• Filter theory has face validity
• Winch found evidence that similarities of personality, interests and attitudes between partners are typical of the earliest stages of a relationship
• Failure to replicate:
• Levinger pointed out that many studies have failed to replicate the original findings that formed the basis of filter theory
• Kerckhoff and Davis chose an 18-month cut off point to distinguish between short-term and long-term relationships
• Direction of cause and effect:
• Anderson found in a longitudinal study that cohabiting partners became more similar in their emotional responses over time, a phenomenon they called emotional convergence
• These findings are not predicted by filter theory

Social exchange theory

• A theory of how relationships form and develop
• Assumes that romantic partners act out of self-interest in exchanging rewards and costs
• A satisfying and committed relationship is maintained when rewards costs and potential alternatives are less attractive than the current relationship

Rewards, costs and profits

• Thibault and Kelley contend that behaviour in relationships reflect the economic assumptions of exchange
• Try to minimise losses and maximise gains
• We judge our satisfaction with a relationship in terms of the profit it yields, defined as the rewards minus the costs
• Rewards include such beneficial things as companionship, sex and emotional support
• What one person considers a significant reward might be viewed by someone else as less valuable

Comparison level

• The amount of reward that you believe you deserve to get
• Develops out of our experiences of previous relationships which feed into our expectations of the current one
• Also influenced by social norms that determine what is widely considered, within a culture, to be a reasonable level of reward
• Link with self-esteem
• Low self-esteem will have low comparison level as they will be satisfied with gaining a small profit from a relationship
• High self-esteem will have high comparison level as they will believe they are worth a lot more

Comparison level for alternatives

• If the costs of our current relationship outweighs the rewards, then alternatives become more attractive
• Being in a satisfying relationship means that you may not even notice that alternatives could be available
• Do we believe we could gain greater rewards and fewer costs from another relationship or from being on our own?

Stages of relationship development

• Sampling stage: we explore the rewards and costs of social exchange by experimenting with them in our own relationships, or by observing others do so
• Bargaining stage: this marks the beginning of a relationship, when romantic partners start exchanging various rewards and costs, negotiating and identifying what is most profitable
• Commitment stage: as time goes on, the sources of costs and rewards become more predictable and the relationship becomes more stable as rewards increase and costs lessen
• Institutional stage: the partners are now settled down because the norms of the relationship, in terms of rewards and costs, are firmly established

Social exchange theory - AO3

• Inappropriate assumptions underlying SET:
• Clark and Mills argue that the theory fails to distinguish between two types of relationship
• Exchange relationships (work colleagues) do involve social exchange as SET predicts
• Communal relationships (romantic partners) are marked by the giving and receiving rewards without keeping score of who is ahead and who is behind
• Based on faulty assumptions and therefore cannot account for the majority of romantic relationships
• Direction of cause and effect:
• Research supports this view that dissatisfaction comes first
• Miller