Chapter 11: 11.1

A survey in relationships

1,529 people across the United States were surveyed to better understand the connections among love, personality, and creativity. - they found that as the length of the relationship increases, intimacy and passion decrease but intimacy and commitment increase

Love relationships and one way to understand love is to think about what components are essential Love had three basic components:

1. passion: an intense physiological desire for someone 2. intimacy: the feeling that you can share all your thoughts and actions with another 3. commitment: the willingness to stay with a person through good and bad times - ideally a true love relationship has all three components; when a true love relationship has all three components; when couples have equivalent amounts and types of love, they tend to be happier, even as the balance among these components shifts over time

Three broad themes characterize both traditional of adult friendships

1. the affective or emotional basis of friendship refer to self-disclosure and expressions of intimacy, appreciation, affection, and support, and all are based on trust, loyalty, and commitment 2. the shared or communal nature of friendship reflects how friends participate in or support activities of mutual interest 3. the sociability and compatibility dimension represents how our friends keep us entertained and are sources of amusement, fun, and recreation

Seeking information and emotional regulation

Carstensen and colleagues believe information seeking is the predominant goal for young adults, emotional regulation is the major goal for older people, and both goals are in balance in midlife - their research supports this view; people become increasingly selective in whom they choose to have contact with. Additionally, evidence suggests that there is an increase with age in emotional competency - other adults appear to orient more towards emotional aspects of life and personal relationships as they grow older

Does how people meet influence the likelihood they will "click" on particular dimensions and form a couple?

Kalmijm and Flap found that is does 0 using data from more than 1,500 couples, they found meeting at school, for example, was most likely to result in homogany- the degree to which people are similar

What range of aggressive behaviors occurs in abusive relationships?

O'Leary proposed a continuum of aggressive behaviors towards a partner, and progresses as follows: verbally aggressive behaviors, physically aggressive behaviors, severe physically aggressive behaviors, and murder

Sibling friendships

a special type of friendship exists who one's siblings who are the friends people typically have the longest and that share the closest bonds; the importance of these relationships varies with age - the centrality of siblings in later life depends on several things, such as proximity, health, prior relationship and degree of relatedness

Longitudinal research on how friendships change show

across adulthood, some in ways that are predictable and others not - as you probably have experience, life transitions (e.g. going away to college, getting married) usually result in fewer friends and less contact with the friends you keep. - people tend to have more friends and acquaintances during young adulthood than at any subsequent period

Loves styles within European cultures

also predicts relationship satisfaction - loyalty of the individual to the family is an important value in India, so despite many changes in mate selection, about 95% of marriages in India are carefully arranged to ensure an appropriate mate is selected

The characteristics of victims

being female, Latina, African Americans, having an atypical family structure, having more romantic partners, early onset of sexual activity, and being a victim of child abuse predicts victimization - college women are more likely to be the victim of sexual assault than are women in other age groups - heterosexual men and members of the LGBTQ community are also the victims of violence from intimate partner, though at a reporting rate lower that of women

The variety of goals in the socio-emotional selectivity

each of these goals is differentially salient at different points of the adult life pan and results in different social behaviors - when information seeking is the goal, such as when a person is exploring the world trying to figure out how he or she fits, what others are like, and so forth, meeting many new people is an essential part of the process - however, when emotional regulation is the goal, people become highly selective in their choice of social partners and nearly always prefer people who are familiar to them

Two points of the continuum should be noted

first, there may be fundamental differences in the types of aggression independent of level of severity - overall, each year about 5 million women and 3 million men experience partner-related physical assaults and rape in the United States; worldwide, between 10 and 69% of women report being physically assaulted or raped, making it one of the priority areas for the World Health Organization - the second point, depicted in the table, is the suspected underlying causes of aggressive behaviors differ as the type of aggressive behaviors change

Friendships vs relationships

friendships are different from love relationships mainly because friendships are less emotionally intense and usually do not involve sex - having good friendships boosts self-esteem, especially early in emerging adulthood and happiness across adulthood

Friendships in adulthood

from a developmental perspective, adult friendships can be viewed as having identifiable stages - acquaintanceship, Buildup, Continuation, Deterioration, and Ending. This ABCDE model describes the stages of friendships and how they change - how people go from acquaintanceship to buildup is dependent on the basis of attraction, what each person knows about the other, how good the communications is between the partners, the perceived importance of friendship, and so on.

What are the benefits of having friends?

having friends provides a buffer against the losses of roles and status that accompany old age, such as retirement or the death of a loved one, and can increase people's happiness and self-esteem

Cross-sex friendships

help men have lower levels of dating anxiety and higher capacity for intimacy. - these patterns hold across ethnic groups too - cross-sex friendships can also prove troublesome because of misperceptions

Culture and contactual factor in understanding partner abuse

in particular, violence against women worldwide reflects cultural traditions, beliefs, and values of patriarchal societies; this can be seen in the commonplace violent practices against women that include sexual slavery, female genital cutting, intimate partner violence, and honor killing - international data indicates rates of abuse are higher in cultures that emphasize female purity, virginity, male status, and family honor. A common cause of women's murders in Arab countries is brothers or other male relatives performing so-called honor killings, murdering the victim because she violated the family's honor

Online friendships

in the case of online friendships (through social media), trust develops on the basis of four sources: - reputations, performance or what users do online, pre-commitment, through personal self-disclosure; and situational factors, especially the premium placed on intimacy and relationship - online environments are more conducive to people who are lonely which makes them potentially important for older adults

Emotional or psychological abuse

infliction of anguish pain, or distress

Sexual abuse

nonconsensual sexual contact of any kind

Online meeting

surveys indicate nearly 1 in every 5 couple in the United States meet online - over a third of couples who marry first met online, often via online dating sites

Battered women syndrome

occurs when a women believe she cannot leave the abusive situation and may even go so far as to kill her abuser

The amount of friends older adults have:

older adults tend to have fewer relationships with people in general and develop fewer new relationships than people do in midlife and particularly in young adulthood

Older women's friendships

older women have more numerous and intimate friendships than older men do. - Men's important sources of support in late life

Hookup culture

one increasing trend among emerging adults is the hookup culture of casual sex, often without even knowing the name of one's sexual partner - research indicates both men and women are interested in having hookup sex, but also prefer a more romantic relationship over the long run

Carstensen's theory

provides a complete explanation of why older adults tend not to replace, to any great extent, the relationships they lose: older adults are more selective and have fewer opportunities to make new friends, especially in view of the emotional bonds involved in friendships

Neglect

refusal or failure to fulfill any part of a person's obligation or duties to an older adult

The rates of adults abuse

research estimate perhaps 1 in 10 older adults is at risk for some type of abuse, neglect, or exploitation - unfortunately, only a small proportion of these cases are actually reported to authorities; of the ones that re, neglect is the most common type - financial exploitation, particularly through electronic means, costs older adults billions of dollars annually

The development of romantic relationships

research shows the development of romantic relationships in emerging adulthood is a complex process influenced by relationships in childhood and adolescence - early in a romantic relationship, passion is usually high whereas intimacy and commitment tend to be low. This is infatuation: an intense, physically based relationship when the two people have a high risk of misunderstanding and jealousy

Friendship

researchers define friendship as a mutual relationship in which those involved influence one another's behaviors and beliefs, and define friendship quality as the satisfaction derived from the relationship - friends are a source of support throughout adulthood

Why are friends important to older adults?

some researchers believe one reason may be older adults' not wanting to become burdens to their families - as a result, friends help each other remain independent by providing transportation, checking on neighbors, and doing errands

Abusive relationships

sometimes relationships become violet; one person becomes aggressive towards the partner - such relationships have received increasing attention since the early 1980s when the U.S. criminal justice system ruled that, under some circumstances, abusive relationships can be used as an explanation for one's behavior

Speed dating

speed dating provides a way to meet several people in a short period of time. Speed dating is practiced most by young adults - the rule governing partner selection during a speed-dating session seem quite similar to traditional dating; physical attractive people, outgoing and self-assured people, and moderately self-focused people are selected more often and their dates are rated as smoother

Assortative mating

that states people find partners based on their similarity to each other - assortative mating occur along many dimensions, including education, religious beliefs, physical traits, age, socio-economic status, intelligence, and political ideology, among others - common activities are one basis for identifying potential mates but in speed dating it comes down to physical attractiveness

Self-neglect

the behaviors of an older person that threaten his or her own health or safety, excluding those conscious and voluntary decisions by a mentally competent and healthy adults

Abandonment

the desertion of an older adult by an individual who had physical custody or otherwise assumed responsibility for providing care for the older adult

Financial or material exploitation

the illegal or improper use of an older adult's fund, property or assets

The importance of maintaining contacts

the importance of maintaining contacts with friends cuts across ethnic lines as well - people who have friendships that cross ethnic groups have more positive attitudes towards people with different backgrounds, including facebook networks

Why does friendship have such positive benefits for us?

the social baseline theory, a perspective that integrates the study of social relationships with principles of attachment, behavioral ecology, cognitive neuroscience, and perception science - social baseline theory suggests the human brain expects access to social relationships that mitigate risk and diminish the level of effort needed to meet a variety of goals by incorporating relational partners into neural representations of the self

physical abuse

the use of physical force that may result in bodily injury, physical pain, or impairment

When people are faced with threatening situations

their brains process the situation differently when faced alone compared to with a close friend - specifically, neuroimaging definitively shows the parts of the brain that respond to threat operate when facing threat alone but do not operate when facing the same threat with a close friend

Four-characteristics of same-sex friends

they do not appear to differ between men and women and are similar across cultures and age groups; geographic proximity, similarity of interest and values, inclusion, and symmetrical reciprocity - three characteristics that distinguish female same-sex friendship from males same-sex friendships are communion and self-disclosure, greater effort and expectations from friends in general, and a greater risk of coruminatlon - in contrast men base friendships on shared activities or interests

Socioemotional selectivity

they propose a lifespan theory - that argues social contact is motivated by a variety of goals, including information seeking, self-concept, and emotional regulation

How does couple-forming behavior compare cross-culturally?

they showed secure romantic attachment was the norm in nearly 80% of cultures and "preoccupied" romantic attachment was particularly common in East Asian culture - specifically, across 48 different cultures globally, people from cultures that have good health care, education, and resources, and permit young adults to choose their own mates tend to develop more secure romantic attachments than do people from cultures without these characteristics

What builds a good relationship?

trust, honest, openness, and acceptance must be a part of any strong relationship; when they are present, romantic love develops - research shows people who select a partner for a more permanent relationship (e.g. marriage) during the height of infatuation are more likely to divorce - if the couple spends more time and works at their relationship, they may become committed to each other