Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Relationship Formation
- Reward/Need Satisfaction Theory - Byrne + Clore
- We are attracted
to people who we
find satisfying or
gratifying.
- Most stimuli
can be seen as
rewarding or
punishing
- We find
people
who meet
our needs
rewarding
- Mutual
attraction
accurs
when each
person
meets the
others
needs
- Rewards + Punishments
- Rewarding stimuli
produce positive
feelings and punishing
stimuli produce
negative feelings.
- People are
stimuli so that
is why some
make us happy
and some do
not
- Operant
conditioning
means we
repeat
rewarding
behaviour.
- We enter
relationships as
the other person
creates positive
feelings so we find
them attractive
- Attraction Through Assosication
- We like people
assosiated with
pleasent events.
- We are more
likley to like
someone if we
meet them
when we are
happy
- Positive and
negative
feelings are
crucial to
relationship
formation
- Relationships are
more likely to
succeed if positives
outweigh the
negatives
- Evaluation
- Griffitt + Guay
- Evaluated PPs
on a creative
task by an
experimenter.
- Asked to rate
experimenter
- Higher rating was
given when
experimenter had
positviley evaluated
them
- Sheldon et al
- Greater Facebook satisfaction
showed positive and negative
indicators of relationship
satisfaction
- Connected people use FB to satisfy relational needs.
Disconnected people may lack satisfaction through
face-to-face relations - FB may be a coping strategy
- Aron et al
- PPs on self
report
questionnaire
showed
strong brain
activity in
certain brain
areas
- Early romance
associated with
elevated brain
activity - rich in
dopamine.
- Rewards Important?
- Cate et al.
- Asked 337 PPs to assess current
relationships and found reward
levels superior than others in
others in relationship
satisfaction
- Hays
- Gain satisfaction
from giving as well
as recieving.
Reward/Need only
explores recieving
of rewards
- Similarity - Byrne, Clore + Smeaton
- Similarity
promotes
liking. Two
stages in
relationship
formation.
- Eliminate dissimilar people
as potential partners. Choose
some similar to themselves
from those remaining
- Emphasis on
personality and
attitude
- Personality
- People are likely
to be attracted to
similar
personality traits
to themselves
- Not always
the case but
research
suggests
similarity is
often the rule
in long term
relationships
- Caspi + Herbener
- Married
couples
happier
when
similar than
disimilar
couples
- Attitudes
- Partners may
discover
different
attitudes
towards things
e.g holidays
- Research suggests
"attitude alignment"
where partners modify
their attitudes so they
become more similar in
order for the relationship
to develop
- Evaluation - Similarity or dissimilarity
- Rosenbaum
- Dissimilarity more
important in
development-dissimilarity
Repulsion hypothesis
tested on different
cultures e.g USA
+Singapore.
- Showed different PPs first attracted
because similarity but when they got to
know each other they became less
attracted as they discovered more
dissimilarity than similarity
- Limitations
- Only dealt with attitude and personality.
- Yoshida
- Only represents
a narrow view of
important
factors.
Self-contempt,
economic level +
body fat also
important
- Speakman - found
people with similar
body fat often
chose each other
- Why is Similarity Important?
- 1) We
assume
people
similar will
like us. We
lessen
chances of
rejection
by ruling
out
dissimilar
people
- 2) When other
people share our
attitudes and
beliefs it
validates them
which is found to
be rewarding
(Link to
Reward/Need
Satisfaction)