Interpersonal Relations-Mandatory Reading
Assignments
Readings Week 1: General introduction & building blocks of interpersonal
relations
Chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships
- Humans have a strong need for intimate relationships
- People suffer when they are deprived of close contact with others
- relationships with others are central aspects of our lives
The Nature of Intimacy
- Intimacy: multifaceted concept with several different components
- intimate relationships differ from more casual associations in at least seven specific
ways: knowledge, interdependence, caring, trust, responsiveness, mutuality, and
commitment
→ Knowledge: intimate partners have extensive personal, often confidential
knowledge about each other (share information about their histories, preferences,
feelings and desires that they don’t reveal to most other people)
→ Interdependence: lives are intertwined; what one person does affects the other
(extent to which they need and influence each other)
- Frequent (often affect each other), strong (have meaningful impact on
each other), diverse (influence each other in many ways) and enduring
(influence each other over long periods of time)
→ Caring: feeling more affection for one another than for most others
→ Trust: expecting to be treated fairly and honorably, expecting that no harm will
come from the intimate relationship
, → Responsiveness: perception that our partners recognize, understand and support
our needs and wishes
→ Mutuality: recognize their close connection and think of themselves as “us”
instead of “me” and “him”
→ Commitment: expect partnerships to continue indefinitely and invest time, effort +
resources
- Intimacy decreases when harm comes from intimate relationships, intimacy increases
when people believe that their partners understand, respect, and appreciate them, being
attentively and effectively responsive to their needs and concerned for their welfare
- Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale: measure of mutuality that distinguishes between
intimate and more casual relationships
- Intimate partners are ordinarily committed to their relationships
- None of these components is absolutely required for intimacy to occur, and each may
exist when the others are absent (but in general the most satisfying and meaningful
intimate relationships include all 7 defining characteristics)
The Need to Belong
- Powerful and persuasive drive to establish intimacy with others may be a basic part of
human nature
→ Human need to belong in close relationships; if not met variety of problems
- To fulfill need to belong we are driven to establish and maintain close relationships; we
require interaction and communication
- We only need few close relationships: when need to belong is satiated, drive to form
additional relationships is reduced
- Doesn’t matter who partners are as long as they provide stable affection and acceptance
- Potency of need to belong may be the reason for why being alone for long time is
stressful and anything that threatens our sense of connection to others can be hard to
take
- Strong evidence supporting need to belong comes from studies of biological benefits of
intimate relationships
→ Ppl live happier, healthier and longer lives; reduces stress and pain sensation
- Mental and physical health also affected by quality of connections to others
→ Pleasant interactions correlated with more satisfaction with life
- Lack of intimate relationships can cause psychological problems and make them worse
, → Well-being depends on how well need to belong is satisfied
- Why is intimacy so important? Need to belong gradually evolved over eons, becoming a
natural tendency; adaptive benefits of belonging to a social group (evolutionary
perspective)
The Influence of Culture
- Dramatic changes in cultural context in the last several decades
→ Fewer people are getting married, people are waiting longer to marry and live
together before marriage + get babies when not married, divorce is more likely
- Cultural standards provide foundation for relationships; they shape expectations that
define what be believe is “normal”
- casual cohabitation that is intended to test the partners’ compatibility seems to
undermine the positive attitudes toward marriage, and the determination to make a
marriage work, that support marital success
Sources of Change
- Economics: Societies tend to harbor more single people, tolerate more divorces, and
support a later age of marriage the more industrialized and affluent they become
- Individualism: e support of self-expression and the emphasis on personal fulfillment; has
become more pronounced
→ focus on our own happiness has led us to expect more personal gratification from
our intimate partnerships
- Technology: communication technologies are transforming the ways in which we conduct
our relationships
- Sex ratio: relative numbers of young men and women in a given culture
→ High sex ratio: more men; Cultures with high sex ratios tend to support
traditional, old-fashioned roles for men and women; cultures with low sex ratios
tend to be less traditional and more permissive
- To a substantial degree, what we expect and what we accept in our dealings with others
can spring from the standards of the time and place in which we live
The Influence of Experience
- Relationships are affected by histories and experiences we bring to them
, - Attachment styles: global orientations toward relationships (Bowlby, 1969)
- Secure style of attachment: bonding with others, relying on others comfortably,
developing relationships characterized by relaxed trust
- Anxious-ambivalent attachment: nervous and clingy, needy in relationships with others
- Avoidant attachment: suspicious and angry at others, don’t easily form trusting, close
relationships
- Researchers believed that early interpersonal experiences shaped the course of one’s
subsequent relationships; attachment process became popular topic in research
- Similar orientations toward close relationships can also be observed in adults
- Four attachment styles in adults:
→ Secure: same as in kids
→ Preoccupied: anxious-ambivalent in kids; depending nervously on others’
approval to feel good about themselves leads to worries about and preoccupation
with the status of the relationship
→ Fearful: avoidant in kids; avoiding intimacy because of fears of rejection, wanting
others to like oneself but worrying about risks of relying on others
→ Dismissing: feeling that intimacy with others is not worth the trouble, rejecting
intimacy because they feel self-sufficient and don’t care much about whether
others like them
- Two broad themes that underlie and distinguish attachment styles (continuous
dimensions):
→ avoidance of intimacy: ease and trust with which interdependent intimacy with
others is accepted
→ anxiety about abandonment: dread that others will find you untrustworthy and
leave you
- Attachment styles are shaped by parenting style and continue to be shaped by
experiences encountered as adults (i.e. they can be unlearned and change over time)
- Our global beliefs about nature and worth of close relationships appear to be shaped by
our experiences within them
