Close Relationships Lecture Notes PDF

Close relationships week 1 Why are close relationships important? -​ Loved and being loved is one of the most basic needs -​ Maslow’s hierarchy of needs -​ Physiological -​ Safety -​ love/belonging -​ Esteem -​ Self-actualization -​ Close...

Close relationships week 1 Why are close relationships important? -​ Loved and being loved is one of the most basic needs -​ Maslow’s hierarchy of needs -​ Physiological -​ Safety -​ love/belonging -​ Esteem -​ Self-actualization -​ Close relationships are vital to meaning and purpose -​ More happiness and better subjective well-being -​ People in happy partnerships tend to live longer -​ Can contribute to larger communities -​ Social control theory: the view that intimate relationships regulate, and impose limits, on behaviour -​ Weaker relationships increase deviant behaviour -​ Relationships encourage people to conform to social norms -​ Intimate relationships determine the survival of our species -​ Evolutionary psychology assumes that the mind has evolved in response to whether an outcome was associated with more or less successful reproduction -​ Fitness is affected by humans’ attraction to, and selection of, mates, willingness and ability to reproduce, and attachments they form with their offspring Intimate relationships buffer threats -​ Can help put people at ease -​ When faced with possible shock, people who were able to hold hands with their partner were calmer What makes a relationship intimate? -​ Interdependence that is bidirectional -​ The partners’ behaviour affect each other -​ Personal -​ The partners treat each other as special -​ Whereas impersonal relationships are formal and task-oriented -​ The interdependence is longer lasting -​ The interdependence is affected by the unique individual involved -​ Closeness -​ The strength, frequency, and diversity of the partners’ mutual influence over each other -​ Potential to be sexual -​ Must have all three traits prior as well -​ Asexual relationships excluded Research methods -​ Psychological constructs are the intangible aspects of relationships, which can’t be measured directly -​ Researchers rely on operationalization, or translation of the construct into concrete, measurable terms -​ -​ Observational measures -​ Involve watching actual behaviours in relationships -​ Partners can be observers of each other -​ But they are subject to sentiment override, which occurs when partners’ general feelings about the relationships overwhelm their perceptions of specific aspects -​ Pros -​ Directly observe relationship behaviours -​ Relatively objective -​ Cons -​ Observer influence: acts of observing may change participants’ behaviour -​ Sentiment override -​ Interrater reliability: a measure of the extent to which observers agree on an observed behaviour -​ The multi-method approach is ideal -​ Correlational research -​ People are measured as they are. This approach examines the degree to which variables are related to each other -​ Pros -​ Can demonstrate positive/negative correlations -​ Cons -​ Cannot support causation -​ Longitudinal research -​ Daily diary approach -​ Experience sampling - gathers data throughout the day ​ ​ -​ Experimental research -​ Rather than measuring people as they are, the researchers first put them into different groups, using random assignment -​ Allows for causal conclusions -​ Involves: an independent and dependent variable Lecture 2: Early Attachment and Social Cognitive Development Experimental research -​ Rather than measuring people as they are, the researchers first out them into different groups, using random assignment -​ Allows for causal conclusions An infant’s social world -​ How can a child make sure parents and the community will take care of it? -​ Signals from the child -​ Cute -​ Social response -​ Attachment -​ Social cognition -​ Interpretation of social information, allowing the individual to understand others, and behave appropriately in a social environment -​ Babies will look longer at shapes that resemble faces -​ As they grow older, they will fine-tune recognition to those available in their environment -​ Infants as young as 4-6 months can distinguish between happy, sad, and neutral emotions -​ Child’s awareness that he or she exists; achieved around 15-18 months old -​ Self-conscious emotions -​ Feelings of success when expectations are met, and feelings of failure when they are not -​ Emerge around 18-24 months old -​ Pride, shame, guilt, embarrassment -​ Egocentrism: difficulty seeing the world from another person’s point of view -​ Perspective talking: ability to understand how a situation appears to another person -​ Mirror neuron system - we have an innate ability to take on others’ perspectives -​ Older children act as amateur psychologists - explain others’ actions by examining their desires and goals Understanding others -​ Theory of mind: understanding of the relations between mind and behaviour; ability to attribute the thoughts and feelings of others -​ Refines as we get older -​ Babies as young as 14 months will infer the adut’s intentions -​ Unexpected contents task (around 3) -​ You probably have theory of mind -​ Smarties box -​ First order fasle belief task (around 4) -​ You definitely have theory of mind if you pass -​ Sally and the ball/box -​ Recursive thinking: “he thinks that she thinks” reasoning Prosocial behaviour -​ Instrumental helpingInstrumetal helping: doing a task that needs to be done -​ empathetic response -​ Emotion contagion -​ People around us, we feel their emotions (empathy) -​ First signal of prosocial behaviour -​ Sharing -​ Look more favourable to others  -​ Emotion contagion - modelling - more complex mechanisms Attachment -​ Eduring social-emotional relationship -​ Bowlby - children who form an attachment are more likely to survive -​ Usually baby/mother -​ Stages of attachment -​ Pre-attachment (birth to 6 weeks): caregiving-eliciting behaviours such as crying, smiling -​ Attachment in the making (6 weeks too 8 months): behave differently with familiar and unfamiliar adults -​ True attachment (8-18 months): attachment figure is singled out as a special individual, trusts that this figure will be there to meet the child’s needs -​ Reciprocal relationship (18+ months): act as true partners in relationship, take initiative and negotiate with attachment figure -​ The strange situation -​ How to assess attachment -​ Stages -​ Stage 1: mother and child attending lab (playroom) introduced to the room -​ Stage 2: child is encouraged to play for 3 minutes, mother sits in corner and watches -​ Stage 3: stranger enters the room, silent for 1 minute, talks to baby for one minute -​ Stage 4: mother leaves the room, stranger stays in room for 3 minutes -​ Stage 5: mother returns, if baby is distressed mother will go to it, if baby is fine mother will simply let her presence be known -​ Stage 6+7: baby continues to play, mother leaves and says bye (stranger is still there) -​ Stage 8: stranger leaves, mother returns (if baby needs consoling she goes to it) -​ How does the baby react when the mother leaves and returns -​ Stranger is always female -​ Types of attachment -​ Secure attachment (60-65%): baby may or may not cry when mother leaves; when she returns, baby wants to be with her -​ Supports early emotion regulation -​ Leads to higher quality friendships, fewer problems with peers, more stable and higher quality romantic relationships in adolescence and adulthood -​ Relationships in adulthood more affected by parental support in middle childhood? -​ Avoidant attachment (20%): baby not visibly upset when mother leaves; wen she returns, may ignore her -​ Resistant attachment (10-15%): baby upset when mother leaves; when she returns is difficult to console  -​ Disorganized attachment (5-10%): baby seems confused when mother leaves; when she returns, does not seem to understand what is happening -​ Insecure attachments lead to higher anxiety, aggression, anger -​ Only if lacking sensitive and supportive parenting? -​ Emotion regulation: ability to exert control over one’s own emotional state Lecture 3: Growing Up with Family Types of attachment -​ Internal working model -​ Set of expectations about caregivers’ ability and responsiveness generally and in times of stress -​ Secure adults: describe childhood objectively; value their caregiver-child relationship -​ Dismissive adults: deny value of childhood experience, sometimes unable to recall childhood experiences; often idealize caregivers -​ Preoccupied adults: describe childhood experiences emotionally; express anger or confusion regarding their caregivers -​ See caregivers as having done something wrong, unhappy with their childhood -​ Insecure adults often have insecure relationships with their own children Caregiver-dependent skills -​ Joint attachment: state in which both partners are actively engaged around a particular object, task, or event and are aware of each other’s active involvement -​ Emerges around 5 -​ Higher joint attention: higher social competence, emotion regulation, internalizing/externalizing -​ Joint attachment behaviours -​ Initiation acts -​ Response acts -​ Examples: nodding, gaze, pointing, smiling -​ Partner 1 initiates - partner 2 responds - partner 1 responds - partner 2 sustains focus on subject -​ This four-step routine is very good for development of social skills -​ Social referencing: infants will attend to caregiver cues to interpret the situation when in an unfamiliar or ambiguous environment -​ Around 12 months -​ The mother shows off a toy child has never seen -​ The mother shows negative emotions toward a different toy -​ Let the child interact with each toy -​ The child tends to avoid the negative toy -​ A stranger can also be used for experiments however the mother is trusted best