This is the 6th lecture of [[Keith Campbell]]'s [[PA Intro to Psychology]] from [[Peterson Academy]]. This lecture is about romantic relationships. Much of this is highly relevant to [[Rob Henderson]]’s work. ## Introduction Romantic relationships is something natural to our perceptions. We operate on relational schemata, perceiving dyads and couples as single units. In relationships, Transactive Memory Systems (TMS) comes into play where partners rely on each other to remember information. Relationships carry the risk of our losing of individuality, and even losing of oneself in a relationship, or at the very least, there is a tension between individuality and connectedness. Freud talks about this. Social psychologists talk about optimal need for uniqueness or individuality. This tension can be seen in Schopenhauer's story of two porcupines huddling in the cold. Romantic relationships have been of interest to many fields of psychology, and there are many classic theories that have come from them. There are: - Classic theories of relationships - Evolutionary theorists - Attachment theorists - Personalities models of relationships - Social psychology of attraction >[!tldr] Lecture plan >Romantic relationships: Attraction → Love → Commitment ## Love as a (hero) story Joseph Campbell observed that in the Myth of the Holy Grail, all the knights go into different directions. This conveys the idea that everybody is just doing their own thing. The path to spiritual growth, at least in the West, is largely individualistic, and that affects how we look at love stories in the West too. Love can itself be a hero story. The classic love story is a display of the individual will driven by love, involves sacrifice, often overcoming their own cultural hurdles to get married to somebody that should not have been. One classic love story is overcoming your group to fall in love with somebody else. Examples: Tristan and Isolda the Celtic myth, Romeo and Juliet best made into the move Titanic by Leonardo Dicaprio.[^1] --- ## Attraction Walster’s Computer Dating Study (1966) showed that attraction, and not so much personality, was the deciding factor for whether somebody wanted a second date. Later speed dating studies show the same thing. Physical attractiveness was the highest predictor of getting second dates. ### Qualities that attract This question of ‘what qualities makes people attractive?’ is of large interest to [[Evolutionary Psychology|evolutionary psychology]] and [[Personality Psychology|personality psychology]]. People usually say they like kind and honest people, but it turns out attraction is way more complicated than that as behaviors generally don’t reflect self-assessments when it comes to attraction. Healthiness (and fertility), age, and facial symmetry seems to matter. Averageness also works, maybe a little better than average. There is a high correlation between similarity and attraction (controlled for physical attraction). Similarity-attraction theory finds that people are attracted to those with similar values, or those who matches their ideal self. Opposites do attract in the case of being reactant, thus using love as a way of establishing autonomy, independence or expressing rebellion. Women are more selective than men. Robert Trivers explains this with his [[Parental Investment Theory|Parental Investment Theory]] (1972), which states that the parent that is going to invest the most into bringing up the child will care the most about selecting a mate.[^2] ### Situations that attract The question [[Social Psychology|social psychology]] is interested in is whether there are situations or environments that make one attractive. There is the [[Arousal Attraction Effect|arousal attraction effect]] which shows that people who are in physical aroused tend to be more attracted to others generally. The first relevant study is the [[Datton and Aron Suspension Bridge Study|Datton and Aron Suspension Bridge Study]]. Another name for this is [[Excitation Transfer Theory|excitation transfer theory]] which both looks at how people could misattribute their arousal to the person they happen to see during their aroused state. In the 70s, Kenneth Gergen did a classic study known as the [[Dark Room Study|Dark Room Study]] aka Deviance in the Dark, where people in the dark room—as compared to the people in the light room—were more likely to engage in sexually leading activities like kissing and hugging. This can be explained with the idea of deindividuation, where people with their personal identities taken away act more impulsively and with less moral deliberations. There is also the [[Fear Affiliation Effect|fear affiliation effect]] which suggest that fearful situations make connecting with others more likely. We want to affiliate with others when we are scared. There is an evolutionary argument for this. [[Arthur Aron]] studied how most romantic scenarios people could think of are ones where the two are put in liminal states—which prompts the people to connect. >[!quote] It 's hard to fall in love under fluorescent lights. — Keith Campbell --- ## Love How does one go from attraction to love? ### Self-disclosure and expansion [[Arthur Aron]] has two models—one is reciprocal self-disclosure, and the other is self-expansion.[^3] Arthur Aron saw people get married after reciprocal self-disclosure. Another process Arthur Aron studied is called self-expansion, which involves integrating parts of the other person—skills, habits, knowledge—into myself. He argued how quickly we expand is how much we feel passion. Expansion towards the other person stops and gets boring after some time, and the way to continue expanding is to expand towards a common goal, which means to do new things together. ### Sternberg triangular model Robert Sternberg proposed a triangular theory of love, which is made up of three pieces: 1. Passion—sexual erotic energy 2. Intimacy—deep knowing of another person 3. Commitment—desire to stay in the relationship #### Types of love Complete or consummate love is where all three pieces are present, and other combinations are as follow: - Romantic love—Passion and intimacy - Companionate love—Intimate and commitment - Infatuation—Passion and commitment Typically passion is high early in the relationship before it dies down, and commitment plays a more important role later in the relationship. ### Color wheel theory of love John Alan Lee developed the color wheel theory of love that is comprised of six styles of love. Susan Hendrick and her husband Clyde Hendrick developed the [[Love Attitude Scale|love attitude scale]] which is a short questionnaire to measure this. #### Six styles of love ##### Primary styles 1. Eros - Passion. Much like passion in Sternberg 2. Ludus - Game-playing love. Manipulative (i.e. gives a hint of commitment, then takes it away). - [[Principal of Least Interest|Principal of least interest]] states that the person least interested in a relationship has the most power. 3. Storge - Friendship love, or close to Sternberg’s companionate love. ##### Secondary styles 1. Pragma - Pragmatic love. Relationships that happen because they fulfill your shopping list of what you want in a partner. 2. Mania - Possessive love. Can be very violent and dangerous. Linked to low self-esteem and insecure attachments. Yandere. 3. Agape - Selfless love. --- ## Commitment Caryle Rusbult et al’s idea of the three biggest predictors for commitment: 1. Satisfaction—How satisfied are you in your relationship? 2. Quality of alternatives 3. Investment - The sunk cost fallacy is a cognitive bias seen in people not willing to accept their loses because of all that they have invested. This applies not only to investing, but also to investments in relationships—like property, friendship network, kids, time and so on. ### Ways to stay committed - Cognitive interdependence—When two selves start identifying more as ‘we’ instead of ‘I.’ - Willingness to sacrifice - Weird partner enhancement and other partner derogation - Accommodation >[!note]- Four categories of responses to dissatisfaction >Exit, voice, loyalty, neglect --- ## Additional notes - Propinquity or proximity is an old model that states that people you spend the most time with are the people you most likely would end up with in a relationship. - Overcoming lust is part of the overcoming of conflict phase in a love-based hero journey >[!quote] The life of a hedonist is the best preparation for the life of a mystic. —Hermann Hesse --- Back to: [[PA Intro to Psychology]] Previous Lecture: [[The Self]] Next Lecture: [[Mental Health]] [^1]: There is echoes of this in that simple Bible verse in Genesis saying a man should leave his parents to join with the woman. [^2]: Maybe related to what I read from [[Rob Henderson]] about how wedding rituals, or the wedding itself has to incur cost to the male as a show of commitment ([[Costly Signaling|costly signaling]]) to make up for the woman’s imbalance in investment into the relationship ([[Parental Investment Theory|parental investment theory]]). [^3]: More on this in [[Self in Society]]