Summary Interpersonal Relationships
Exam: 80% MC, 20% open-ended questions
L1 – Relationships and wellbeing
Studies about social relationships:
- Aristotle: Humans are social animals
- Coyne: Heart-failure study: relationship satisfaction; happily married males lived longer than
unhappy ones.
- Berkman & Syme: Level of social integration (married, relationships, friends, etc.) has huge
impact on mortality/dying in next 9 years.
- Cohen: Our social relationships are connected to our immune system. Injected people with
rhinovirus, after a couple of days the participants who were low in social integration were much
more likely to get ill, compared to people who were highly social integrated.
- Holt-Lunstad: Influencing factors (social relationships, smoking, alcohol, physical activity, obesity,
air pollution). Strongest predictor of mortality is smoking but it’s almost the same as the lack of
social relationships (loneliness, lacking social connections etc.).
- Haslam: People tend to rank lack of social relationships in mortality lowest factor, but it’s not.
Social integration social support physical and psychological health and well-being
- Social support:
o Emotional support & instrumental support: strongly correlated and often ‘confounded’ (go
shopping when ill)
o ‘Visible’ and ‘invisible’ support: invisible support sometimes works better, visible support can
have negative side-effects (victimization, loss of autonomy) – especially in case of relatively
low distress in support recipient.
Two pathways in which social support can affect health and well-being:
- Direct (main) effect-hypothesis Social support makes people take better care of themselves
(less smoking, more exercise, healthier diet, etc.). Social influence/norms when having
supportive social network. Experiencing more positive affect/emotions (Kawachi & Berkman).
- Stress-buffering hypothesis Social support affects health and reduces stress in potentially
stressful situations: stress (cortisol) directly related to health (cardio-vascular, immune system).
Study (Coan et al., 2016): fMRI measuring neurophysiological responses in 3 conditions: holding hand
of romantic partner/stranger/no hand holding, while anticipating a hurtful electric shock (pain).
Less stress-related brain activity when holding hands, especially by partner AND especially when
people are satisfied with relationship. Level of satisfaction modulates stress-buffering effect.
Strength and strain model of marriage and health
(Slatcher, 2010, 2016): Being in happy, well-
functioning marriage can buffer psychological
mechanisms that can positively affect our health.
But when in shitty, unhealthy relationship, this can
intensify the outside stressors. (See schema)
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,Study (Diamond & Amso, 2008): Years ago, hospital policy was that newborn twins were separated in
different incubators. When putting them together= better outcomes because it’s social support!
Intimate relationships= knowledge (personal, confidential), interdependence (intertwined lives),
caring (affection), trust, responsiveness (understand needs/wishes), mutuality (us), commitment
The need to belong (Baumeiser & Leary, 1995): Evolved need to initiate and maintain relationships;
critical for survival, like the need for food/water! Social experiment: 6 months alone in wild and the
thing the missed the most, was social human connection.
Support for the Need to Belong-hypothesis
1. Changes in ‘belongingness’ evoke strong effects:
o Social inclusion/social integration = healthy and happy
o Social exclusion/loneliness = unhealthy and unhappy (ignored in ball-tossing game, ignored in
conversation in the bus)
2. Initiating and maintaining social interactions seems innate + humans form social relationships
very easy. Innate focus on others: face perceptual system= newborns tend to prefer and gaze
longer at faces.
Need-threat model of ostracism: (social exclusion) threatens fundamental needs: Lower sense of
belonging, loss of control (can’t do anything about it), lower sense of meaningfulness, lower self-
esteem (sociometer theory= self-esteem is indicator for the extent to which we belong to others).
Study: Online ball-tossing game (Eisenberger et al., 2003): not receiving the ball evokes activation in
brain areas which are associated with actual physical pain= social pain hurts.
Pain overlap-theory= similar neural systems involved in both social and physical pain (common gene
OPRM-I); similar psychological responses (aggression, low self-esteem, loss control).
- Treat social pain with physical painkillers? Study: participant took paracetamol vs. placebo. Daily
report of social feelings + brain scan during social exclusion = taking paracetamol significantly
reduced social hurt-feelings over 3 weeks!
Participants had to think about time they experienced physical vs. social pain. When thinking about
social pain, it can be relived to much larger extend= it continues for lot longer than physical pain.
Social exclusion leads to aggression! Exclusion manipulations lead to several indices of aggression.
- In 12/15 school shootings= chronic ostracism/exclusion (bullying) or acute exclusion (break-up).
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, Last decades had dramatic changes in cultural context= fewer marriages, waiting longer to marry, live
together or get kids without married, working moms, half of marriages end in divorce. Reasons:
economics (independent), individualism (materialistic, personal gratification), technology (sperm
bank, FB= jealousy, phubbing), stable sex ratio (birth rates; high= more men, low= more women).
Attachment styles= secure (easy emotionally close), anxious-ambivalent (nervously for approval)
avoidant-fearful (avoid intimacy because fear of rejection), dismissing (no intimacy).
Big Five traits= Extraversion (outgoing, assertive, sociable), agreeableness (compassionate,
cooperative), conscientiousness (dependable, orderly, reliable), openness to experience (imaginative,
curious), neuroticism (fluctuating moods, negative emotion).
Validity: accurately measuring the events we’re trying to measure
Reliability: if events aren’t changing, we should get the same scores time after time
Studying intimate relationships with:
- Self-reports (interviews/questionnaires): people’s own reports about their thoughts, feelings,
behaviors. Easy to obtain, inexpensive, informative, efficient. Also, problems: participants’
(mis)interpretations of the questions; difficulties in recall or awareness (lack insight); bias in
participants’ reports (social desirability bias).
- Observations (accurate, reliable, detailed) of other’s behavior: experience-sampling
(=intermittent, short periods of observation to capture samples of behavior that occur over
longer periods of time), eye-tracking. But problem of reactivity: switch behavior when they know
they’re being observed. Avoid this= personal documents like diaries.
Social rejection reduces performance on challenging intellectual tasks and makes people attuned to
potential sources of social acceptance and threats. It increases aggression, undermines self-
regulation (impulse control), heart slows down, change in progesterone level, increase cortisol.
Socially rejected people recalled more positive childhood memories and made bias judgement to
include more positive emotion. They also express greater religious affiliation
L2 – Evolutionary perspectives on mating and relationships
Darwin: evolution theory has much to do with theory about love.
Sociobiology (new in 70s): Certain behaviors (A) have more survival and reproduction
(adaptive/fitness) value than other behaviors (Aalt). Result= genes associated with behavior A will –
over generations – increase in the population (Aalt will die out).
- Predisposed avoidance= fear for potentially deadly animals (cobra, black widow)
- Predisposed approach= preference for certain foods (oranges= healthy)
Interpersonal mate preferences (attraction) e.g., male preferences for certain characteristics in
women (youth, low WHR, smooth skin) have evolved.
- Sociobiology reason: Men are designed to be attracted to women with certain features that
correspond with fertility and health.
- Other: Humans are designed to form long-term relationships. Experience of love has adaptive
function; parents staying together, child is more likely to survive and reach age of reproduction.
Attraction for certain (bio or psych) traits evolved because it was adaptive in our evolutionary past:
1. Survival – Natural selection (sociobiology)
2. Reproduction – Sexual selection
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