INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS NOTES
Interpersonal Relations notes
General Introduction & Building Blocks of Interpersonal Relations Chapter 1 and 2
(recording year 2018-2019)
Review questions help you to review the literature and are often used in the final exams, so they help
you prepare for the final exam.
Learning outcomes
- Define the nature of interpersonal relationship.
- Explain why interpersonal relationships are important.
- Describe and explain the building blocks of close/intimate relationship.
- Explain that relationship phenomena are a consequence of evolutionary, cultural, individual,
contextual and developmental factors.
- Describe and explain Need to Belong theory.
What is an interpersonal relationship?
Association between 2 or more people (close, casual, fleeting, enduring). You can have an
interpersonal relationships with complete stranger, for examples someone you played soccer
against.
Exert diverse effect on one another over a period of time. Casual relations are influential, but close
intimate relationships tend to be the most influential.
What is the nature of a close relationship?
- Knowledge: you have intimate knowledge about each other.
- Caring: you trust you partner, you care about your partner, you open to your partner.
- Interdepend: they depend on you and they depend on them. Your constantly interacting with
them.
- Mutuality: there is no I, there is only we and us.
- Trust.
- Commitment: you want this relationship to last. If you more committed, you are tended to
ignore the bad things, and want to put effort in the relationship.
Self-disclosure (you open up) responsiveness (your partner understands you and responds to
your needs).
A close intimate relationship is characterised by all these factors.
Types of close relationship
Friendship: voluntary interdependence between 2 persons over time, that is intended to facilitate
socio-emotional goals and may involve varying types/degrees of: companionship, intimacy, affection,
mutual support. In friendships there are fewer obligations than in a romantic relationship. There are
less rules involved. It’s less emotionally intense. And it’s less exclusive: you can have many friends.
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Attributes of friendship:
Responsiveness.
o Capitalization: when you tell them good news, they amplify it. They amplify your
positive emotions.
o Social support: can be emotional, physical.
o Trust.
Lifecycle, friendships change over the lifecycle.
o Childhood: the most friends. Attachment mostly parents, they are the save haven.
o Adolescence: less friends, but the quality of the friendships increases. Now you
attach more to your friends, you tell them everything, they are now your save haven.
This often causes frictions between parents and child.
o Midlife: you begin to focus more on your family, spend less time with your friends.
o Old age: focus on only a few friends. Enjoying life with close intimate others.
Self-disclosure responsiveness, you open up to your friends, and they respond to that.
Relationships are important!!!
The best equipped and most hygienic institutions, which succeeded in sterilizing child’s surroundings
… at the same sterilized the child’s psyche. They tried to keep everyone away from the child, which
sterilized the child’s psyche. So baby’s need someone to take care of them, if only by giving them
warmth, not just hygiene.
Loneliness: is a killer! Discrepancy between number/quality partnerships we want and actually have.
So how many partnerships you have and the difference between how many partnerships you actually
want, determines your loneliness.
Health risks:
- Loneliness is as bad for you as smoking 15 cigarettes a day.
- Loneliness is worse for you than obesity.
- Lonely people are more likely to suffer form dementia, heart disease and depression.
- Loneliness is likely to increase your risk of death by 29%.
- It heightens your cortisol levels; you think there is danger everywhere.
Toxic friendships
Co-rumination: extensive and frequent discussion, speculation, and focus on negative feelings
related to personal problems with a close friend or friends. Just talking, but not actually addressing
the problem at hand, which often makes the problem worse.
- Frequent self-disclosure: pushing people to share information, which may cause them to be
closer to each other, but could also make them more miserable, because it focusses on the
negativity.
- Promotes intimacy.
- Promotes depression and anxiety.
Fat-talk: self-disparaging commentary made to other people about one’s own body weight, size or
shape. For example saying your arms are fat, and then the other person’s says that their arms are
fatter. A circle of negative talk
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Shyness
Affective-behavioural syndrome:
- Social anxiety/worry
- Doubt about social competency
- Fear negative evaluation
When your shy you treat into yourself, you don’t want to say anything. It is about avoidance
behaviour. If you implement on that avoidance behaviour, other people often interpret it as negative
behaviour. They might even see shy people as arrogant. They even may feel rejected themselves. So,
it has negative interpersonal consequences.
Situations: ambiguous, high status interaction.
Sometimes shy behaviour may be even proper social behaviour. You don’t tell that joke, maybe that
was a good choice, because it was a very dirty joke, not appropriate for the occasion. So it is
functional to certain degree, because you avoid inappropriate behaviour.
Why does the quality of relationships have such consequences?
Need to Belong: “… human beings have a pervasive drive to form and maintain at leas a minimum
quantity of lasting, positive and significant interpersonal relationships.”
Why does loneliness lead to so many problems? Because the influence of the need to belong. Social
emotions function as a signal, especially the negative ones “I’m embarrassed, I did something
wrongs, this threatens my acceptance by others.” Guilt tells you that you’re responsible for
threatening that need to belong to others. Loneliness is a signal, that you’re not satisfying your need
to belong. You need to built relationships.
Self-esteem provides a signal for you much you are accepted by others. If you have high self-esteem:
I get accepted by others, if you have low self-esteem: I don’t get accepted by others.
We evolved this need to belong, at first it was just for survival: being in a group heightened your
chances of survival. To defend against attack, to provide resources, but it’s also about reproduction,
when you’re in a group it’s easy to reproduce.
We are best satisfied when we have frequent and pleasant interactions with few close others.
Our social nature
- People form social bonds quickly and easily.
- People are reluctant to break social bonds.
- Social attachments exert substantial influence on how people think.
- Social attachments are strongly associated with people’s emotional states.
- Breaking of social bonds has significant negative consequences.
Our evolves social nature
We have an evolved nature to manage our social environment. We want to rise in the groups, to get
more possible partners. We all have a capacity for close intimate relationships. Humans are social
animals. We are socially intelligent. We need relationships in our life, otherwise it will have negative
effects. But not only this, the quality of the relationship is also important. This is determined by
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several factors. For example, culture, this tells us about gender roles, these means have changed
over time.
Culture
Enduring values, beliefs, and behaviours shared by a large group of people.
Cultures provides meaning, for example masculine traits: dominant, feminine traits: warmth. Men:
instrumental traits, women: expressive traits. It tells us how to behave, what’s normal.
Cross cultural differences in love and marriage: love more important in western nations,
individualistic cultures, higher economic standards. A lot of countries find money and political
standards reasons to get married.
There are a lot more divorces these days. It tends to be lower with people who are highly educated,
compared to lower educated people. People get married later, it used to happen in the early
twenties, now it’s late twenties, or even thirties. And a lot more cohabitation: let’s live together first,
test it out, see how you get on, this used to be a sin. People who intend to get married and
cohabitate, tend to stay married. People who cohabitate without the intention to get married, but do
get married eventually, have a higher change at divorce. What is the reason for all these changes?
Some suggest cultural changes.
People have other resources than
marriage to satisfy the high demanding
needs. So they come to think of
marriage as a suffocation. If they got
the time to satisfy the personal growth
needs, they will have a happy
marriage. But for most people they
simply do not have the time, because
of work and taking care of the children.
They don’t get the satisfaction of the
high order needs. People enter
marriage because they want personal
growth, but this demands a lot of
effort.
Sources of cultural variation
- Economics and education:
previously a woman would be stuck at home, the man would be the provider of the family.
These days women get educated and can got good paying jobs themselves, so they don’t
necessarily need a man anymore to take care of them. Quite often, the wife earns even more
money than the man these days. That gives them a form of independence. If things don’t
work out, then day leave, because they can take care of themselves.
- Individualism: people focus more on themselves, they put their own happiness first. If you’re
not personal happy, you may leave the marriage.
- Technology: influence of the pill, gives women more choice. They decide when they want to
have children. Technology in the form of social media: it opens up your chances to find
potential lovers. You can easily have contact with someone else. But also women who work
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have also more chances to find potential lovers, simply because they meet more people than
they did with just staying at home.
- Sex ratio: men per 100 women.
o High sex ratio (more men): cultures tend to be more conservative, for example China.
They’re more traditional. Men keeping the wives controlled.
o Low sex ratio (less men): more permissive, most western countries.
Development/experience
Attachment Theory (Bowbly, 1969). The relationships between the baby and the caregiver gives a
certain attachment style.
- Secure: parenting style is aligned with the child; in tune with the child’s emotions. Resulting
adult characteristics: able to crease meaningful relationships; empathetic; able to set
appropriate boundaries.
- Avoidant: parenting style is unavailable or rejecting. Resulting adult characteristics avoids
closeness or emotional connection; distant; critical; rigid; intolerant.
- Ambivalent: parenting style is inconsistent and sometimes intrusive parent communication.
Resulting adult characteristics: anxious and insecure; controlling; blaming; erratic;
unpredictable; sometimes charming.
Eventually there became four attachment styles. People differ on the continuums of avoidance and
abandonment. Avoidance is about a fear of rejection: you want a relationship, but you are in fear of
rejection.
These attachment styles are a consequence of our caregiver. But researchers say this is not just
about children. In adult ship we choose a figure in our adult relationship that follows the same
sequence. 60% are secure, the rest are split up in the other categories. You can see these attachment
styles in adult relationships. Your attachment style influences your adult relationships. The important
part is they are learnt, so they can also be unlearnt. And you can learn other attachment styles.
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Does contemporary attachment theory contradict the Need to Belong theory?
If you look at de dismissing style, you might think that they don’t have a need to belong, that they’re
not concerned about others. They have built up a wall to being rejected, but what does influence
them is people saying positive things to them. They are interested in interpersonal relationships,
especially the positive parts, like being accepted.
Attachment styles have significant consequences for our close relationships
Preoccupied attachment associated with hostile and socially anxious peer relationships.
The secure attachment style: greater relationships interdependence, commitment, trust and
satisfaction.
The anxious and avoidant styles: less frequent positive emotions; more frequent negative emotions.
Individual differences
- Sex differences in aggression: males tend to be more physically aggression. The level of
aggression between men and women is equally high, but they have different forms of
expressing it. Women tend to use forms like gossip more.
- Sex differences in mating strategies: there is a discrepancy in the investment that a man or
woman has to put in sex. A woman has to carry the child for nine months, it makes them
choose to take a child. A guy doesn’t have this worry, so it doesn’t matter for him to have
sex.
- Friendship: there are sex differences in the from of friendships. Men relationships are more
side to side, for example: they all look at the tv with each other, and when they talk they only
talk to the person next to them. Women have more face-to-face relationships, discuss more
social and emotional topics. Guys talk about more superficial topics.
Personality
- Neuroticism: “stable tendency to respond with negative emotions to threat, frustration, or
loss.” People who are high in neuroticism have more negative relationships, and have more
unstable relationships. Often conflicted interpersonal relations.
o They have more negative interpersonal perceptions: for example, when a someone is
silent for a while, they see this as something negative, so they will respond negatively
to silence.
o More negative interpersonal behaviours: they react more negatively.
Self-esteem
How positively or negative we feel about ourselves. How we value ourselves. This influences our
relationship.
- Low self-esteem: they think they’re worthless, they think they’re not good enough for they
partner.
o Self-doubt.
o Thin skin.
o Avoidance oriented.
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It can be demanding for the partner, because they’re constantly looking for reassurance and
validation. This can become to much for the partner, and may cause the partner to push you away.
They also overreact to threat.
They are less responsive partners. This is because people with low self-esteem simply don’t
communicate their issues. They want to avoid discussion. Conflict is not perse a bad thing, because
conflict promotes self-disclosure: you have to talk about what is bothering you. This conflict people
with low self-esteem want to avoid, even though disclosure is a good thing. When you don’t
communicate, it causes problems. Communication is key.
Summary
- Relationships are important.
- Close relationships are very important.
- We have a capacity to form relationships.
- The quality of those relationships is multiply determined.
12-4-2021: General Introduction & Building Blocks of Interpersonal Relations Chapter 1
and 2 (Live Blackboard session)
Optional reads: move beyond the book, if your particularly interested in the topic you can read it.
After week 3 and after week 6 there will be formative tests, that will be available for one week (until
the next webinar). If you completed both formative tests, you will receive a Pass, if not you will
receive a Fail. There will be multiple choice questions and open-ended questions. Use the review
questions to look at what the teachers find important. The articles are recommended. You can re-
enter the test several times, you don’t have to make it all at ones. When you summit your final
answer, you can’t re-enter you questions anymore. Questions may be answered in Dutch. There is a
certain threshold of multiple choice questions you have to have answered correctly to pass.
m.van.zomeren@rug.nl teacher, e-mail if you have any questions. E-mail before Friday, so he can
answer them on Monday’s webinar.
Three perspectives on interpersonal
relationships
- Evolutionary perspective
- Cultural perspective
- Individualistic perspective
These perspectives may overlap.
The main thing that al these perspectives agree
on, is that it’s amazing how social human beings
are. You can look at people as individuals, but at
the same time you’re very busy to be accepted.
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We are happier and better when were close and connected to others. When we want to achieve
things and be motivated, we need other people. We have a Need to Belong. In social situations we’re
scanning how other people behave, just so we can know how we have to behave. So it’s not whether
people are social, but how social we are and why we’re so social?
People often talk to themselves when there alone. There is a motivation to be in an environment
where other people are around, that we can talk to. You can see did in children, they often have
imaginary friends. It’s a one-sided bond. Parasocial interaction.
Beckes & Coan: social baseline theory.
According to these researcher people have
a social baseline, which contains of the
expectation that our brains has that there
are always other people around. The
moment when people are alone, so the
baseline is not correct, then all sorts of
brain mechanisms sort of start to panic,
because they don’t know what to do.
You need the three perspectives, to better
understand how people navigate their
relationships.
Relational mobility: the idea your environment that
it’s okay to choose your own relationship. Not only
looking at for example arranged marriage, but also if
your allowed to have a lot of friends, if your really
close to your parents, etc. “Relational mobility is a
socio-ecological factor that represents how much
freedom and opportunity a society or social context
affords individuals to choose and dispose of
interpersonal relationships based on personal
preference.”
Is this good or bad for your relationship?
Well, more individual choice protects from loneliness
when emerging from higher RM (which allows to
establish new high-quality relationships), but puts
risk for loneliness when emerging from lower
Relational stability (which increases the risk of social
isolation by undermining the stability of established
relationships). For example, more and better friends,
but a worse relationship with your parents.
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“No man is an island, entire of itself…”
- Because of internal, evolutionary “drives” that gear us towards relationships.
- Because our brains expect the world to be full of other people.
- Because we are embedded in social relationships and conform to cultural rules about how to
relate with on another.
Self-Regulation and Relationship Regulation Perspectives chapter 4 (recording year
2018-2019)
Mind perception/mind reading
We human beings have a fundamental need to belong. Better for survival, better for reproduction. If
we don’t satisfy this need, there will be loneliness, with a lot of bad influences. But sometimes, we
simply look for solitude. Why do we do this?
Why do we sometimes prefer isolation despite being in close proximity to others?
Mind readers: inferring others’ mental states. We think we’re really good in it, but we’re not. We
often try to infer wat people are thinking, by looking at their behaviours. But, often how people
behave, is not how people are actually thinking (pluralistic ignorance). How we successfully interact
with others depends on mind reading.
We overestimate our mind reading ability. We are not good at mind reading because of the
strategies we have and the biases we have.
- Strategy
- Bias
Learning outcomes
Place mind reading within a self-regulation perspective of interpersonal relationships.
Describe and explain sociometer theory of interpersonal functioning.
Identify and explain the social cognitive processes underpinning close relationships.
Describe and explain how social cognitive processes can positively and negatively impact on a
close relationship.
Describe and explain impression management in a close relationship.
Self-Regulation Model
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Processes by which people pursue and attain goals/standards.
- Setting of possible state (goal).
- Monitoring (actual vs. goal). Tells us how we’re doing. How close we’re to achieving our goal.
How well we’re doing in our progress towards a particular goal.
o Social comparison.
o Mind reading: what is the other person thinking about me? Do they like me? Do they
think I’m smart?
- Behaviour (goal striving). If there’s to much of a discrepancy to our goal, we’ll change our
behaviour: for example, I’ll buy certain kind of clothes to fit in. I want to look a particular
way. And then there’s a feedback, that will constantly tell you how your behaviour is.
- Homeostasis.
Social comparison
How we use others to learn about ourselves and the world.
- Upward comparisons: with better-off others. What to do. An example: you look in beauty
magazines to know what you want to look like. And you also learn about what is valuable in
our culture. You get cultural awards for looking a particular way.
o Conform.
o Get ahead.
- Downward comparisons with worse-off others. What not to do. For example: in the western
culture when you’re obese, that is stigmatized. But also: ah I got a 5, but Steve got a 4, so
now I feel a bit better.
o Protects self-esteem.
We use social comparison to learn from others.
Self-regulation/self-control
Refers to bringing the self into line with a preferred state on regular basis. To get along with your
partner. To avoid arguments.
Self-control: capacity to self-regulate. Stay focused on that goal. Resist our impulses for saying the
wrong think at the wrong time.
- Delay gratification in the service of a long term goal.
- Control baser impulses over time and in different situations.
- State self-control is dependent upon a common, limited self-regulatory resource.
High self-control:
- Better family cohesion.
- Fewer family conflicts.
- Empathetic perspective taking. You can understand the others perspective.
- Responds better to partner’s missteps.
- Reduces self-serving bias in relationships.
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