Download How Do We Form Our Impressions of Others?

Psychological Science, 3rd Edition
Michael Gazzaniga
Todd Heatherton
Diane Halpern
Social
Psychology
12
Questions to Consider:
How Do Attitudes Guide Behavior?
How Do We Form Our Impressions of Others?
How Do Others Influence Us?
When Do We Harm or Help Others?
What Determines the Quality of Relationships?
How Do Attitudes Guide
Behavior?
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We Form Attitudes through Experience and
Socialization
Behaviors Are Consistent with Strong
Attitudes
Discrepancies Lead to Dissonance
Attitudes Can Be Changed through
Persuasion
Critical Thinking Skill: Making Sound
Arguments
Learning Objectives
Identify the processes by which
attitudes are formed and changed.
Recognize situations in which people
will most likely behave in ways
consistent with their attitudes.
We Form Attitudes through
Experience and Socialization
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Opinions, beliefs, and feelings are called
attitudes
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Shaped by social context
Play an important role in how we evaluate and
interact with other people
Direct experience of, or exposure to, things
shapes attitudes
We Form Attitudes Through
Experience and Socialization
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The mere exposure effect
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Attitudes can be conditioned
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The more we are exposed to something, the more
likely we are to like it
Advertisers take advantage of this
Attitudes are shaped through socialization —
parents, teachers, peers, and others
Behaviors Are Consistent with
Strong Attitudes
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An attitude is more likely to predict behavior,
to be consistent over time, and to be resistant
to change:
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The stronger it is
The more personally relevant it is
The more specific it is
If it is formed through direct experience
Behaviors Are Consistent with
Strong Attitudes
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Attitude accessibility predicts behavior
consistent with the attitude
Explicit attitudes:
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Those you are aware of and can report
Implicit attitudes
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Those you are not aware of
May be associated with the brain areas involved
with implicit memories
Implicit Association Test
Discrepancies Lead to
Disonance
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Leon Festinger proposed that cognitive
dissonance occurs when there is a
contradiction between two attitudes or
between an attitude and a behavior
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Dissonance causes anxiety and tension;
motivates people to reduce the dissonance
People reduce dissonance by changing their
attitudes or behaviors
Or they rationalize or trivialize the discrepancy
Discrepancies Lead to
Disonance
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Postdecisional dissonance:
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Occurs when forced to choose between two or
three attractive options
Once the choice is made, negative qualities of the
nonchosen options are emphasized
Discrepancies Lead to
Disonance
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Attitude change:
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Researchers have found that people are likely to
change their attitudes as a result of dissonance and
to provide justifications
In Festinger’s dissonance studies, participants performed an extremely boring task and then reported
to other participants how enjoyable it was. Some participants were paid $20 to lie, and some were
paid $1.
ZAPS: The Norton Psychology Labs
Cognitive
Dissonance
Attitudes Can Be Changed
through Persuasion
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In the elaboration likelihood model
persuasion leads to attitude change in two
ways:
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The central route
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People pay attention to arguments, consider all the
information, and use rational cognitive processes
Leads to strong attitudes that last over time and are
resistant to change
Attitudes Can Be Changed
through Persuasion
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The peripheral route
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People minimally process the message
Leads to more impulsive action
Three critical factors influence the extent
to which a message is persuasive:
Source
Content
Receiver
The Elaboration Likelihood Model Exercise
When people are motivated to consider information carefully, they process it via the central route, and their attitude
changes reflect cognitive elaboration (left). When they are not motivated, they process information via the peripheral
route, and their attitude changes reflect the presence or absence of shallow peripheral cues (right).
Critical Thinking Skill
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Making sound arguments
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An argument must have a conclusion and
reasons
Person strengthens his or her argument by
acknowledging alternative opinions
Arguments may include a qualifier, constraint, or
restrictions
It is important to weigh both strengths and
weaknesses or argument
How Do We Form Our
Impressions of Others?
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Nonverbal Actions and Expressions Affect
Our Impressions
We Make Attributions about Others
Critical Thinking Skill: Identifying and
Avoiding the Actor/Observer Discrepancy
Stereotypes Are Based on Automatic
Categorization
Stereotypes Can Lead to Prejudice
Cooperation Can Reduce Prejudice
Learning Objectives
Differentiate among stereotypes,
prejudice, and discrimination.
Anticipate attributional biases
likely to emerge in social
situations.
Nonverbal Actions and Expressions
Affect Our Impressions
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First impressions are greatly influenced by
nonverbal cues
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Facial expression, especially eye contact, is
one of the first things people notice
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Interpreting facial expression may vary by culture
Nonverbal Actions and Expressions
Affect Our Impressions
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Thin slices of behavior
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Accurate judgments can be made based on only
a few seconds of observation; this is referred to
as impression formation
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Happiness, hostility, anger, and sexual orientation
have been accurately predicted by observing a
few seconds of how a person walks
After watching a 10-second clip of a figural outline such as this one, participants correctly guessed
the figure’s sexual orientation at a better-than-chance rate.
We Make Attributions about
Others
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Attributions are people’s causal explanations
for events or actions, including other people’s
behavior
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People are motivated to draw inferences in
part by a basic need for order and
predictability in their lives
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Just world hypothesis
We Make Attributions about
Others
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Personal (internal) attributions:
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Situational (external) attributions:
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Within a person, such as abilities, traits, moods,
or effort
Outside events, accidents, or the actions of other
people
Attributions can also be stable over time
versus variable, or controllable versus
uncontrollable.
We Make Attributions about
Others
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Fundamental attribution error:
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We tend to overemphasize the importance of
personality traits and underestimate the
importance of situation
Actor-observer discrepancy
Differences in Eastern vs. Western societies
Critical Thinking Skill
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Identifying and Avoiding the Actor/Observer
Discrepancy
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People believe that individual attributes underlie
other people’s actions but see their own actions
as caused by circumstance
It is important to be aware of this tendency in
order to judge more fairly and take sufficient
responsibility
Stereotypes Are Based on
Automatic Categorization
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Attitudes and beliefs about groups are
stereotypes
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Cognitive schemas that help us organize
information about people on the basis of their
membership in certain groups
Stereotypes Are Based on
Automatic Categorization
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Stereotypes are maintained by a number of
processes:
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We focus on information that confirms the
stereotypes
We remember information that matches our
stereotypes leading to an illusory correlation in
which people believe that a relationship exists
when it does not
Subtyping
Stereotypes Are Based on
Automatic Categorization
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Self-fulfilling effects:
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Self-fulfilling prophecy
Rosenthal’s study of “academic blooming”
Stereotype threat
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Decreased performance due to (1) physiological
stress affecting prefrontal functioning; (2) a tendency
for people to think about their performance, which can
distract them from the task; and (3) attempts to
suppress negative thoughts and emotions, which
require a great deal of effort
Stereotypes Can Lead to
Prejudice
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Negative stereotypes of groups lead to:
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Prejudice
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Affective or attitudinal responses associated with
stereotypes, usually involving negative judgments
about people on the basis of their group membership
Discrimination
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Unjustified and inappropriate treatment of people as a
result of prejudice
Stereotypes Can Lead to
Prejudice
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Ingroup/outgroup bias:
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Some people are more likely to develop
associations between aversive events and
members of an outgroup
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Those people appear to be more likely to be racially
biased.
The formation of ingroup and outgroup
distinctions appear to occur early in life
Stereotypes Can Lead to
Prejudice
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Outgroup homogeneity effect
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Ingroup favoritism
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Women are quicker than men to form ingroup bias
perhaps as a result of evolution
The killing of Amadou Diallo by New York City
police officers is used as an example of how
implicit biases may impact behavior and how
extensive training can reduce this implicit bias
Stereotypes Can Lead to
Prejudice
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Inhibiting stereotypes:
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Research suggests that negative stereotypes can
be countered through learning and self-regulation
ZAPS: The Norton Psychology Labs
Stereotypes
Cooperation Can Reduce
Prejudice
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Working together for a greater purpose may
help people overcome group hostilities
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Muzafer Sherif
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Demonstrated that competition created hostility,
prejudice, and discrimination
Cooperation among groups to achieve a superordinate
goal eliminated these problems
Eliot Aronson
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Jigsaw classroom
How Do Others Influence Us?
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Groups Influence Individual Behavior
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We Conform to Social Norms
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We Are Compliant
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We Are Obedient to Authority
Learning Objectives
Differentiate among conformity,
compliance, and obedience.
Apply principles of social
influence to common
educational situations.
Groups Influence Individual
Behavior
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Social facilitation involves three basic steps:
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Organisms are genetically predisposed to become
aroused by the presence of others of their own
species
Arousal leads to increased performance of the
dominant response in that environment
Simple dominant responses are improved but
more complex responses are impaired because
the presence of others may interfere with
cognition
Social Facilitation Exercise
The mere presence of other people leads to increased arousal, which in turn favors the dominant
response. If this is the correct response, performance is enhanced, but if it is the incorrect response,
performance suffers.
Groups Influence Individual
Behavior
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Social loafing:
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People work less hard in a groups when no one
person’s efforts are identified
Deindividuation:
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People sometimes lose their individuality when
they become part of a group.
Occurs when people are not self-aware or when
there is diffusion of responsibility
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Stanford Prison Study
Groups Influence Individual
Behavior
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Group decision making:
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Risky shift effect
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Group polarization
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Groupthink has been implicated in such disasters as
the Challenger explosion and the George W. Bush
administration’s decision to go to war in Iraq
We Conform to Social Norms
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Conforming, or adhering, to social norms or
expectations is necessary in a civilized
society
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Autokinetic effect
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Solomon Asch’s objective line length test
We Conform to Social Norms
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Several factors have been identified that
increase conformity
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Larger group sizes
Unanimity of group opinion
Universities have attempted to use group
norms on drinking to decrease binge drinking
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A backfire effect can occur when reporting group
norms, leading to light drinkers drinking more
We Are Compliant
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Compliance, or going along with a request, is
increased when:
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a person is in a good mood
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a reason is provided for complying
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a variety of strategies are used
 the foot-in-the-door effect
 the door-in-the-face effect
 the low-balling strategy
We Are Obedient to Authority
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In the 1960s, Stanley Milgram conducted one
of the most controversial studies in social
psychology on obedience
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Nearly two-thirds of participants in Milgram’s
study completely obeyed the directives of the
experimenter, providing what they believed was a
shock that was sufficient to kill the supposed
learner
Psychiatrists, college sophomores, middle-class adults, and both graduate students and
professors in the behavioral sciences offered predictions about the results of Milgram’s
experiments. Their predictions were incorrect.
We Are Obedient to Authority
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Later studies have replicated Milgram’s
findings suggesting that ordinary people can
be coerced into obedience by insistent
authorities, even when what they are coerced
into goes against the way they would usually
behave.
When Do We Harm or Help
Others?
Aggression Can Be Adaptive
 Aggression Has Social and Cultural
Aspects
 Many Factors May Influence Helping
Behavior
 Some Situations Lead to Bystander
Apathy
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Learning Objectives
Classify the evidence as supporting
biological, individual-differences, or
sociocultural explanations for
aggression.
Recognize situations in which people are
most likely to evidence bystander
apathy.
Aggression Can Be Adaptive
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Aggression involves intentional harm to
another
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Biological factors
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Stimulating or damaging the septum, amygdala,
or hypothalamus regions in the brain leads to
corresponding changes in the level of aggression
that animals display
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Kluver-Bucy syndrome
Aggression Can Be Adaptive
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Drugs that enhance the activity of serotonin lower
aggression, whereas those that interfere with
serotonin increase aggressive behaviors
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Decreased serotonin levels may interfere with
good decision making in the face of danger or
social threat
Male vervet monkeys were given either serotonin enhancers or serotonin blockers. The results
suggest serotonin is important in the control of aggressive behavior.
Aggression Can Be Adaptive
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Dollard proposed the frustration-aggression
hypothesis:
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The extent to which people feel frustrated predicts
the likelihood that they will be aggressive
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The cognitive-neoassociationistic model
proposes that frustration leads to
aggression because it elicits negative
emotions
Aggression Has Social and
Cultural Aspects
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Violence varies dramatically across cultures
and even within cultures at different times
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Higher levels of violence in the southern United
States, for example, may be explained by a
culture of honor
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The culture-of-honor theory of violence supports
Bandura’s social-learning theory that much
aggressive behavior is learned through social
observation of vicarious reward and punishment
Many Factors May Influence
Helping Behavior
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Prosocial behaviors provide benefits to those
around us and promote positive interpersonal
relationships
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Such behaviors may ensure the survival of
the human species as such behaviors
improve group functioning and strong groups
are more likely to function in an effective
manner
Many Factors May Influence
Helping Behavior
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Altruism is defined as the providing of help in
the absence of apparent rewards for doing so
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Inclusive fitness
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Kin selection
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Reciprocal helping
Some Situations Lead to
Bystander Apathy
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Four major reasons have been identified
explaining the bystander intervention effect
(failure to offer help to someone observed to
be in need):
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First, a diffusion of responsibility occurs, such that
people expect other bystanders to help.
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The greater the number of people who witness
someone in need of help, the less likely it is that any of
them will step forward.
Some Situations Lead to
Bystander Apathy
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Second, people fear making social blunders in an
ambiguous situation
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Third, people are less likely to help when they are
anonymous and can remain so
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Fourth, a cost-benefit trade-off involves how much
harm people risk by helping, or what benefits they
would have to forgo if they stopped to help
Participants waited with two apathetic confederates, with two other naive participants, or alone.
This chart records their reactions to smoke filling the room.
What Determines the Quality of
Relationships?
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Situational and Personal Factors Influence
Friendships
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Love Is an Important Component of
Romantic Relationships
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Making Love Last Is Difficult
Learning Objectives
Describe passionate and
companionate love.
Distinguish between relationships
that are likely to last and
relationships that are not.
Situational and Personal
Factors Influence Friendships
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Proximity, or how often people come into
contact, is a prime factor in the development
of friendships
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Birds of a feather:
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Similarity increases liking
Matching principle
Situational and Personal
Factors Influence Friendships
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Personal characteristics:
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Admirable personal characteristics and physical
attractiveness increase how much we like another
person
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However, people who seem too perfect make
others feel uncomfortable or inadequate
Situational and Personal
Factors Influence Friendships
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Physical attractiveness
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Symmetry of facial features appears to be a prime
determinate of what we consider attractive
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The “What is beautiful is good” stereotype
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Despite beliefs about physically attractive individuals,
objective data is mixed on whether attractive people
actually reap benefits of stereotypes
Attractive people are similar to less attractive people in
intelligence, life satisfaction, and self-esteem
Love Is an Important Component
of Romantic Relationships
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Hatfield and Berscheid developed more
objective definitions of passionate love (a
state of intense longing and sexual desire)
and compassionate love (strong commitment
to care for and support a partner that
develops slowly over time)
Love Is an Important Component
of Romantic Relationships
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Passionate love is associated with activity in
dopamine reward systems, the same ones
involved in drug addiction
Compassionate love is based on trust,
respect, friendship, and intimacy
Attachment style:
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60% of adults defined as securely attached, 25%
as avoidant, and 11% as anxious-ambivalent
Making Love Last Is Difficult
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In North America, about 50% of marriages
end in divorce or separation, often within the
first few years
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In addition, many couples who do not get
divorced are unhappy and live together in a
constant state of tension or as strangers
sharing a house
Making Love Last Is Difficult
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Passionate love declines by 50% from the
first to second year of marriage
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Without the development of compassionate
love, many marriages will fail
Making Love Last Is Difficult
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Jealousy and possessiveness:
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Some degree is found in all cultures, although
with variation as to what makes people jealous
and how they express it
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Current estimates suggest that 25% of husbands
and 10% of wives have had extramarital sex,
figures much less than were reported during the
1960s and 1970s
Making Love Last Is Difficult
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Dealing with conflict:
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The way a couple deals with conflict often
determines whether the relationship will last
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Gottman describes four interpersonal styles that
typically lead to discord and dissolution among
couples:
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Being overly critical, holding the partner in contempt,
being defensive, and mentally withdrawing from the
relationship
Making Love Last Is Difficult
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Attributional style and accomodation:
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Happy couples attribute good outcomes to one
another and bad outcomes to situations, whereas
distressed couples do the opposite
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Validating couples are happiest
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Each partner considers the other partner’s opinions
and emotions valid, even if they disagree
Making Love Last Is Difficult
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Gottman believes that as long as there are
about five positive interactions for every
negative one in a marriage, chances are
good that the marriage will be stable
Strategies for maintaining a positive
relationship include: show interest in your
partner, be affectionate, show you care,
spend quality time together, maintain loyalty
and fidelity, handle conflict
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