Relationship Formation

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

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Relationship Formation

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	Created by jessclarke over 9 years ago