Psychology of Intimate Relationships

Intimate Relationships

NINTH EDITION

Rowland S. Miller Sam Houston State University

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INTIMATE RELATIONSHIPS

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iii

Contents

PREFACE  ix ABOUT THE AUTHOR  xii

1. The Building Blocks of Relationships 1

the nature and importance of intimacy 2

the influence of culture 6

the influence of experience 14

the influence of individual differences 20

the influence of human nature 37

the influence of interaction 41

the dark side of relationships 42

for your consideration 42

key terms 43

chapter summary 43

suggestions for satisfaction 45

references 45

2. Research Methods 59

the short history of relationship science 60

developing a question 64

obtaining participants 64

choosing a design 68

the nature of our data 70

the ethics of such endeavors 76

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iv Contents

interpreting and integrating results 78

a final note 80

for your consideration 80

key terms 81

chapter summary 81

suggestions for satisfaction 82

references 82

3. Attraction 87

the fundamental basis of attraction 87

proximity: liking those near us 88

physical attractiveness: liking those who are lovely 94

reciprocity: liking those who like us 105

similarity: liking those who are like us 107

so, what do men and women want? 116

for your consideration 119

key terms 119

chapter summary 119

suggestions for satisfaction 121

references 121

4. Social Cognition 133

first impressions (and beyond) 133

the power of perceptions 140

impression management 156

so, just how well do we know our partners? 161

for your consideration 166

key terms 166

chapter summary 167

suggestions for satisfaction 168

references 169

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Contents v

5. Communication 179

nonverbal communication 181

verbal communication 193

dysfunctional communication and what to do about it 203

for your consideration 209

key terms 209

chapter summary 209

suggestions for satisfaction 211

references 211

6. Interdependency 221

social exchange 221

the economies of relationships 229

are we really this greedy? 241

the nature of commitment 249

for your consideration 254

key terms 255

chapter summary 255

suggestions for satisfaction 257

references 257

7. Friendship 266

the nature of friendship 266

friendship across the life cycle 275

differences in friendship 279

friendship difficulties 285

for your consideration 295

key terms 296

chapter summary 296

suggestions for satisfaction 297

references 298

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vi Contents

8. Love 308

a brief history of love 308

types of love 310

individual and cultural differences in love 327

does love last? 331

for your consideration 335

key terms 336

chapter summary 336

suggestions for satisfaction 337

references 337

9. Sexuality 343

sexual attitudes 343

sexual behavior 348

sexual satisfaction 366

sexual coercion 374

for your consideration 377

key terms 377

chapter summary 377

suggestions for satisfaction 379

references 379

10. Stresses and Strains 395

perceived relational value 395

hurt feelings 397

ostracism 400

jealousy 402

deception and lying 413

betrayal 417

forgiveness 421

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Contents vii

for your consideration 423

key terms 424

chapter summary 424

suggestions for satisfaction 426

references 426

11. Conflict 436

the nature of conflict 436

the course of conflict 440

the outcomes of conflict 454

for your consideration 459

key terms 460

chapter summary 460

suggestions for satisfaction 461

references 462

12. Power and Violence 468

power and interdependence 468

violence in relationships 482

for your consideration 493

key terms 493

chapter summary 493

suggestions for satisfaction 495

references 495

13. The Dissolution and Loss of Relationships 503

the changing rate of divorce 503

the predictors of divorce 509

breaking up 519

the aftermath of breakups 523

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viii Contents

for your consideration 533

key terms 533

chapter summary 533

suggestions for satisfaction 535

references 535

14. Maintaining and Repairing Relationships 544

maintaining and enhancing relationships 546

repairing relationships 554

in conclusion 563

for your consideration 564

key terms 564

chapter summary 565

suggestions for satisfaction 566

references 566

AUTHOR INDEX  I-1 SUBJECT INDEX  I-26

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ix

Preface to the Ninth Edition

Welcome to Intimate Relationships! I’m very pleased that you’re here. I’ve been deeply honored by the high regard this book has enjoyed, and I’m privileged to offer you another very thorough update on the remarkable work being done in relationship science. The field is busier, broader, and more innovative than ever, so a new edition is warranted—and this one contains almost 800 citations of brand-new work published in the last 3 years. No other survey of relationship science is as current, comprehen- sive, and complete.

Readers report that you won’t find another textbook that’s as much fun to read, either. I’m more delighted by that than I can easily express. This is a scholarly work primarily intended to provide college audiences with broad coverage of an entire field of inquiry, but it’s written in a friendly, accessible style that gets students to read chapters they haven’t been assigned—and that’s a real mark of success! But really, that’s also not surprising because so much of relationship science is so fascinating. No other science strikes closer to home. For that reason, and given its welcoming, reader-friendly style, this book has proven to be of interest to the general public, too. (As my father said, “Everybody should read this book.”)

So, here’s a new edition. It contains whole chapters on key topics that other books barely mention and has a much wider reach, citing hundreds more studies, than other books do. It draws on social psychology, communication studies, family studies, sociology, clinical psychology, neuroscience, demography, economics, and more. It’s much more current and comprehensive and more fun to read than any other overview of the modern science of close relationships. Welcome!

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x Preface to the Ninth Edition

What’s New in This Edition

Two new features have enhanced the pedagogy and increased the lasting value of the book. Key Terms that are introduced are now listed at the end of each chapter alongside the page numbers that provide their definitions. And more importantly, the insights of each chapter are now synthesized into applied Suggestions for Satisfaction from relationship science that offer readers helpful recommendations that can improve their chances for contentment in their own relationships. (The Suggestions also provide instructors with starting points for enlightening discussions!)

In addition, as usual, after thorough, substantive revision, this new edition is remark- ably up-to-date and cutting-edge. It contains 796 (!) new references that support new or expanded treatment of a variety of intriguing and noteworthy topics that include:

Tinder Sexual rejections Humility Implicit attitudes Flooding Facial expressions Savoring Life History Theory Stealthing Friends with benefits Selfishness Commitment readiness Remarriage Traditional masculinity Foodie calls Back burner relationships Social media Satisficers and maximizers Transference Transgenders’ relationships Open science Consensual non-monogamy The Dark Triad Evolutionary perspective on attraction

Further, in substantially expanded discussions of gender and sexual orientation, the book now quietly but explicitly rejects any assumptions that there are just two genders or that heterosexual relationships are in some fashion more genuine than same-sex partnerships. Both assumptions, of course, are simply untrue. I’ll also note in particular the book’s brand-new consideration of transgenders’ relationships and consensual non-monogamy; both topics have been of interest to relationship scientists since my last edition, and there’s now news to share with you.

What Hasn’t Changed

If you’re familiar with the eighth edition of this book, you’ll find things in the same places. Vital influences on intimate relationships are introduced in chapter 1, and when they are mentioned in later chapters, footnotes remind readers where to find definitions that will refresh their memories.

Thought-provoking Points to Ponder appear in each chapter, too. They invite read- ers to think more deeply about intriguing phenomena, and they can serve equally well as touchstones for class discussion, topics for individual essays, and personal reflections regarding one’s own behavior in close relationships.

The book’s singular style also remains intact. There’s someone here behind these pages. I occasionally break the third wall, speaking directly to the reader, both to be

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Preface to the Ninth Edition xi

friendly and to make some key points (and because I can’t help myself). I relish the opportunity to introduce this dynamic, exciting science to a newcomer—what a remark- able privilege!—and readers report that it shows.

Finally, this new edition is again available as a digital SmartBook that offers a personalized and adaptive reading experience. Students do better when their text tells them which concepts are giving them trouble, so if you haven’t examined the Smart- Book for Intimate Relationships, I encourage you to do so.

Kudos and fond remembrance are due to Sharon Stephens Brehm, the original creator of this book, who was the first person to write a text that offered a compre- hensive introduction to relationship science. Her contributions to our field endure. And despite the passage of some years, I remain deeply grateful to Dan Perlman, the co- author who offered me the opportunity to join him in crafting a prior edition. No colleague could be more generous. I’ve also been grateful during this edition for the wonderful support and assistance of editorial and production professionals, Elisa Odoardi, Susan Raley, Carrie Burger, Beth Blech, Danielle Clement, Maria McGreal, and Jitendra Uniyal. Thanks, y’all!

And I’m glad you’re here! I hope you enjoy the book.

The 9th edition of Intimate Relationships is now available online with Connect, McGraw-Hill Education’s integrated assignment and assessment platform. Connect also offers SmartBook® 2.0 for the new edition, which is the first adaptive reading experi- ence proven to improve grades and help students study more effectively. All of the title’s website and ancillary content is also available through Connect, including:

• A full Test Bank of multiple choice questions that test students on central concepts and ideas in each chapter.

• An Instructor’s Manual for each chapter with full chapter outlines, sample test questions, and discussion topics.

• Lecture Slides for instructor use in class.

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xii

About the Author

Rowland S. Miller is Distinguished Regents Professor Emeritus of Psychology at Sam Houston State Univer- sity in Huntsville, Texas. He has been teaching a course in Close Relationships for over 35 years, and he won the 2008 Teaching Award from the Interna- tional Association for Relationship Research (primar- ily as a result of this book). He’s also been recognized as one of the most outstanding college teachers in Texas by the Minnie Stevens Piper Foundation, which named him a Piper Professor of 2016. He is a Fellow of the Association for Psychological Science and the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, and he won the Edwin Newman Award for Excellence in Research from Psi Chi and the American Psychological Association. His parents were happily married for 73 years, and he’d like to have as long with his wonder- ful wife, Carolyn, to whom this book is dedicated; she was a huge help behind the scenes, talking the author out of (nearly) all of his bad ideas.

Courtesy of Carolyn A. Miller

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About the Author xiii

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xiv Contents

Tools to enhance your unique voice Want to build your own course? No problem. Prefer to use our turnkey, prebuilt course? Easy. Want to make changes throughout the semester? Sure. And you’ll save time with Connect’s auto-grading too.

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Contents xv

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1

C H A P T E R 1

The Building Blocks of Relationships

The Nature and Importance of Intimacy ♦ The Influence of Culture ♦ The Influence of Experience ♦ The Influence of Individual

Differences ♦ The Influence of Human Nature ♦ The Influence of Interaction ♦ The Dark Side of Relationships ♦ For Your

Consideration ♦ key terms ♦ chapter summary ♦ suggestions for satisfaction ♦ references

How’s this for a vacation? Imagine yourself in a nicely appointed suite with a pastoral view. You’ve got high-speed access to Netflix and Hulu, video games, plenty of books and magazines, and all the supplies for your favorite hobby. Delightful food and drink are provided, and you have your favorite entertainments at hand. But there’s a catch: No one else is around, and you have no phone and no access to the Web. You’re completely alone. You have almost everything you want except for other people. Texts, tweets, Instagram, and Snapchat are unavailable. No one else is even in sight, and you cannot interact with anyone else in any way.

How’s that for a vacation? A few of us would enjoy the solitude for a while, but most of us would quickly find it surprisingly stressful to be completely detached from other people (Schachter, 1959). Most of us need others even more than we realize. Day by day, we tend to prefer the time we spend with others to the time we spend alone (Bernstein et al., 2018), and there’s a reason prisons sometimes use solitary confinement as a form of punishment: Human beings are a very social species. People suffer when they are deprived of close contact with others, and at the core of our social nature is our need for intimate relationships.

Our relationships with others are central aspects of our lives. They’re indispensable and vital, so it’s useful to understand how they start, how they operate, how they thrive, and how, sometimes, they end in a haze of anger and pain.

This book will promote your own understanding of close relationships. It draws on psychology, sociology, communication studies, family studies, and neuroscience to offer a comprehensive survey of what behavioral scientists have learned about relationships through careful research. It offers a different, more scientific view of relationships than you’ll find in magazines or the movies; it’s more reasoned, more cautious, and often less romantic. You’ll also find that this is not a how-to manual. Insights abound in the pages ahead, and there’ll be plenty of news you can use, but you’ll need to bring your own values and personal experiences to bear on the information presented here.

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2 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

To set the stage for the discoveries to come, we’ll first define our subject matter. What are intimate relationships? Why do they matter so much? Then, we’ll consider the fundamental building blocks of close relationships: the cultures we inhabit, the experiences we encounter, the personalities we possess, the human origins we all share, and the interactions we conduct. In order to understand relationships, we need to consider who we are, where we are, and how we got there.

THE NATURE AND IMPORTANCE OF INTIMACY

Relationships come in all shapes and sizes. We can have consequential contact with almost anyone—cashiers, classmates, fellow commuters, and kin (Epley & Schroeder, 2014)—but we’ll focus here on our relationships with friends and lovers because they exemplify intimate relationships. Our primary focus is on intimate relationships between adults.

The Nature of Intimacy

What, then, is intimacy? That’s actually a complex question because intimacy is a multifaceted concept with several different components. It’s generally held (Ben-Ari & Lavee, 2007) that intimate relationships differ from more casual associations in at least seven specific ways: knowledge, interdependence, caring, trust, responsiveness, mutual- ity, and commitment.

First, intimate partners have extensive personal, often confidential, knowledge about each other. They share information about their histories, preferences, feelings, and desires that they do not reveal to most of the other people they know.

The lives of intimate partners are also intertwined: What each partner does affects what the other partner wants to do and can do (Fitzsimons et al., 2015). Interdependence between intimates—the extent to which they need and influence each other—is frequent (they often affect each other), strong (they have meaningful impact on each other), diverse (they inf luence each other in many different ways), and enduring (they influence each other over long periods of time). When relationships are interdependent, one’s behavior affects one’s partner as well as oneself ( Berscheid et al., 2004).

The qualities that make these close ties tolerable are caring, trust, and responsive- ness. Intimate partners care about each other; they feel more affection for one another than they do for most others. They also trust one another, expecting to be treated fairly and honorably (Thielmann & Hilbig, 2015). People expect that no undue harm will result from their intimate relationships, and if it does, they often become wary and reduce the openness and interdependence that characterize closeness (Jones et al., 1997). In contrast, intimacy increases when people believe that their partners under- stand, respect, and appreciate them, being attentively and effectively responsive to their needs and concerned for their welfare (Reis & Gable, 2015). Responsiveness is power- fully rewarding, and the perception that our partners recognize, understand, and sup- port our needs and wishes is a core ingredient of our very best relationships (Reis et al., 2017).

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chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships 3

As a result of these close ties, people who are intimate also consider themselves to be a couple instead of two entirely separate individuals. They exhibit a high degree of mutuality, which means that they recognize their close connection and think of themselves as “us” instead of “me” and “him” (or “her”) (Davis & Weigel, 2020). In fact, that change in outlook—from “I” to “us”—often signals the subtle but significant moment in a developing relationship when new partners first acknowledge their attach- ment to each other (Agnew et al., 1998). Indeed, researchers can assess the amount of intimacy in a close relationship by simply asking partners to rate the extent to which they “overlap.” The Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale (see Figure 1.1) is a straight- forward measure of mutuality that does a remarkably good job of distinguishing between intimate and more casual relationships (Aron et al., 2013).

Finally, intimate partners are ordinarily committed to their relationships. That is, they expect their partnerships to continue indefinitely, and they invest the time, effort, and resources that are needed to realize that goal. Without such commitment, people who were once very close may find themselves less and less interdependent and knowl- edgeable about each other as time goes by.

None of these components is absolutely required for intimacy to occur, and each may exist when the others are absent. For instance, spouses in a stale, unhappy mar- riage may be very interdependent, closely coordinating the practical details of their daily lives, but living in a psychological vacuum devoid of much affection or respon- siveness. Such partners would certainly be more intimate than mere acquaintances are, but they would undoubtedly feel less close to one another than they used to (perhaps, for instance, when they decided to marry), when more of the components were present. In general, our most satisfying and meaningful intimate relationships include all seven of these defining characteristics (Fletcher et al., 2000), but intimacy can exist to a lesser degree when only some of them are in place. And as unhappy marriages demonstrate, intimacy can also vary enormously over the course of a long relationship.

FIGURE 1.1. The Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale. How intimate is a relationship? Just asking people to pick the picture that portrays a particu- lar partnership does a remarkably good job of assessing the closeness they feel.

Please circle the picture below that best describes your current relationship with your partner.

Self Other Self Other Self Other

Self Other Self Other Self Other Self Other

Source: Aron, A., Aron, E. N., & Smollan, D. (1992). “Inclusion of Other in the Self Scale and the structure of interpersonal closeness,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 596–612.

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4 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

So, there’s no one kind of intimate relationship. Indeed, a fundamental lesson about relationships is a very simple one: They come in all shapes and sizes. This variety is a source of great complexity, but it’s also endlessly fascinating. (And that’s why I wrote this book!)

The Need to Belong

Our focus on intimate relationships means that we’ll not consider the wide variety of interactions that you have each day with casual friends and acquaintances. Should we be so particular? Is such a focus justified? The answers, of course, are yes. Although our casual interactions can be very influential (Sandstrom & Dunn, 2014), there’s something special about intimate relationships (Venaglia & Lemay, 2017). In fact, a powerful and pervasive drive to establish intimacy with others may be a basic part of our human nature. According to theorists Roy Baumeister and Mark Leary (1995), we need frequent, pleasant interactions with intimate partners in lasting, caring relation- ships if we’re to function normally. There is a human need to belong in close relation- ships, and if the need is not met, a variety of problems follows.

Our need to belong is presumed to necessitate “regular social contact with those to whom one feels connected” (Baumeister & Leary, 1995, p. 501). In order to fulfill the need, we are driven to establish and maintain close relationships with other people; we require interaction and communion with those who know and care for us. But we only need a few close relationships; when the need to belong is satiated, our drive to form additional relationships is reduced. (Thus, when it comes to relationships, quality is more important than quantity.) It also doesn’t matter much who our partners are; as long as they provide us stable affection and acceptance, our need can be satisfied. Thus, when an important relationship ends, we are often able to find replacement partners who—though they may be quite different from our previous partners—are none- theless able to satisfy our need to belong (Hirsch & Clark, 2019).

Some of the support for this theory comes from the ease with which we form relationships with others and from the tenacity with which we then resist the dissolu- tion of our existing social ties. Indeed, when a valued relationship is in peril, we may find it hard to think about anything else. The potency of the need to belong may also be why being entirely alone for a long period of time is so stressful (Schachter, 1959); anything that threatens our sense of connection to other people can be hard to take (Leary & Miller, 2012).

In fact, some of the strongest evidence supporting a need to belong comes from studies of the biological benefits we accrue from satisfying close ties to others. In gen- eral, people live happier, healthier, longer lives when they’re closely connected to others than they do when they’re on their own (Loving & Sbarra, 2015). Holding a lover’s hand reduces the brain’s alarm in response to threatening situations (Coan et al., 2006), and pain seems less potent when one simply looks at a photograph of a loving partner (Master et al., 2009). Wounds even heal faster when others accept and support us (Gouin et al., 2010). In contrast, people with insufficient intimacy in their lives are at risk for a wide variety of health problems (Valtorta et al., 2016). When they’re lonely, young adults have weaker immune responses, leaving them more likely to catch a cold or flu (Pressman et al., 2005). Across the life span, people who have few friends or

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chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships 5

lovers—and even those who simply live alone—have much higher mortality rates than do those who are closely connected to caring partners (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015); in one extensive study, people who lacked close ties to others were 2 to 3 times more likely to die over a 9-year span (Berkman & Glass, 2000). Married people in the United States are less likely to die from any of the 10 leading causes of cancer-related death than unmarried people are (Aizer et al., 2013). And losing one’s existing ties to others is damaging, too: Elderly widows and wid- owers are much more likely to die in the first few months after the loss of their spouses than they would have been had their marriages continued (Elwert & Christakis, 2008), and a divorce also increases one’s risk of an early death (Zhang et al., 2016).

Our mental and physical health is also affected by the quality of our connections to others (Robles et al., 2014) (see Figure 1.2). Day by day, people who have pleas- ant interactions with others who care for them are more satisfied with their lives

A Point to Ponder

Why are married people less likely to die from cancer than unmarried people are? Are unhealthy people simply less likely to get married, or is marriage advantageous to our health? How might marriage be beneficial?

FIGURE 1.2. Satisfying intimacy and life and death. Here’s a remarkable example of the manner in which satisfying intimacy is associated with bet- ter health. In this investigation, middle-aged patients with congestive heart failure were tracked for several years after their diseases were diagnosed. Forty-eight months later, most of the patients with less satisfying marriages had died, whereas most of the people who were more happily married were still alive. This pattern occurred both when the initial illnesses were rela- tively mild and more severe, so it’s a powerful example of the link between happy intimacy and better health. In another study, patients who were satisfied with their marriages when they had heart surgery were over 3 times more likely to still be alive 15 years later than were those who were unhappily married (King & Reis, 2012). Evidently, fulfilling our needs to belong can be a matter of life or death.

Source: Coyne, J. C., Rohrbaugh, M. J., Shoham, V., Sonnega, J. S., Nicklas, J. M., & Cranford, J. A. (2001). “Prognostic importance of marital quality for survival of congestive heart failure,” American Journal of Cardiology, 88, 526–529.

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6 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

than are those who lack such social contact (Sun et al., 2020), and this is true around the world (Galínha et al., 2013). In contrast, psychiatric problems, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, inflammation, obesity, and sleep problems all tend to afflict those with troubled ties to others (Gouin et al., 2020; Kiecolt-Glaser & Wilson, 2017). On the surface (as I’ll explain in detail in chapter 2), such patterns do not necessarily mean that shallow, superficial relationships cause psychological problems; after all, people who are prone to such problems may find it difficult to form loving relation- ships in the first place. Nevertheless, it does appear that a lack of intimacy can both cause such problems and make them worse (Braithwaite & Holt-Lunstad, 2017). In general, whether we’re young or old (Allen et al., 2015), gay or straight (Wight et al., 2013), or married or just cohabiting (Kohn & Averett, 2014), our well-being seems to depend on how well we satisfy the need to belong. Evidently, “we are wired for close connection with others and this connection is vital to our survival” (Johnson, 2019).

Why should we need intimacy so much? Why are we such a social species? One possibility is that the need to belong evolved over eons, gradually becoming a natural tendency in all human beings (Baumeister & Leary, 1995). That argument goes this way: Because early humans lived in small groups surrounded by a difficult environ- ment full of saber-toothed tigers, people who were loners were less likely than gre- garious humans to have children who would grow to maturity and reproduce. In such a setting, a tendency to form stable, affectionate connections to others would have been evolutionarily adaptive, making it more likely that one’s children would survive and thrive (Hare, 2017). As a result, our species slowly came to be characterized by people who cared deeply about what others thought of them and who sought accep- tance and closeness from others. Admittedly, this view—which represents a provoca- tive way of thinking about our modern behavior (and about which I’ll have more to say later in this chapter)—is speculative. Nevertheless, whether or not this evolution- ary account is entirely correct, there is little doubt that almost all of us now care deeply about the quality of our attachments to others. We are also at a loss, prone to illness and maladjustment, when we have insufficient intimacy in our lives. We know that food and shelter are essential for life, but the need to belong suggests that intimacy with others is essential for a good, long life as well (Sbarra & Coan, 2018). “Human beings need social connections just like we need oxygen, food, and water” (Gabriel, 2020).

Now, let’s examine the major influences that determine what sort of relationships we construct when we seek to satisfy the need to belong. We’ll start with a counterpoint to our innate need for intimacy: the changing cultures that provide the norms that govern our intimate relationships.

THE INFLUENCE OF CULTURE

I know it seems like ancient history—smart phones and Snapchat and AIDS didn’t exist—but let’s look back at 1965, which may have been around the time that your grandparents were deciding to marry. If they were a typical couple, they would have

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married in their early twenties, before she was 21 and before he was 23.1 They prob- ably would not have lived together, or “c ohabited,” without being married because almost no one did at that time. And it’s also unlikely that they would have had a baby without being married; 95 percent of the children born in the United States in 1965 had parents who were married to each other. Once they settled in, your grandmother probably did not work outside the home—most women didn’t—and when her kids were preschoolers, it’s quite likely that she stayed home with them all day; most women did. It’s also likely that their children—in particular, your mom or dad—grew up in a household in which both of their parents were present at the end of the day.

Things these days are very different (Smock & Schwartz, 2020). The last several decades have seen dramatic changes in the cultural context in which we conduct our close relationships. Indeed, you shouldn’t be surprised if your grandparents are aston- ished by the cultural landscape that you face today. In the United States,

• Fewer people are marrying than ever before. Back in 1965, almost everyone (94 percent) married at some point in their lives, but more people remain unmar- ried today. Demographers now predict that fewer than 80 percent of young adults will ever marry (and that proportion is even lower in Europe [Perelli-Harris & Lyons-Amos, 2015]). Include everyone who is divorced, widowed, or never mar- ried, and slightly less than half (49 percent) of the adult population of the United States is presently married. That’s an all-time low.

• People are waiting longer to marry. On average, a woman is 28 years old when she marries for the first time, and a man is almost 30, and these are the oldest such ages in American history. That’s much older than your grandparents prob- ably were when they got married (see Figure 1.3). A great many Americans (43 percent) reach their mid-30s without marrying. Do you feel sorry for people who are 35 and single? Read the “Are You Prejudiced Against Singles?” box2 on page 9.

• People routinely live together even when they’re not married. Cohabitation was very rare in 1965—only 5 percent of all adults ever did it—but it is now ordinary. More Americans under the age of 44 have cohabited than have ever been married (Horowitz et al., 2019).

• People often have babies even when they’re not married. This was an uncommon event in 1965; only 5 percent of the babies born in the United States that year had unmarried mothers. Some children were conceived out of wedlock, but their parents usually got married before they were born. Not these days. In 2018, 40 percent of the babies born in the United States had unmarried mothers (Martin et al., 2019). On average, an American mother now has her first child (at age 26.9) before she gets married (at 28.0), and about one-third (32 percent) of children in the United States presently live with an unmarried parent (Livingston, 2018a).

1These and the following statistics were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau at www.census.gov, the U.S. National Center for Health Statistics at www.cdc.gov/nchs, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics at bls.gov /data, the Pew Research Center at pewsocialtrends.org, and the National Center for Family and Marriage Research at www.bgsu.edu/ncfmr.html. 2Please try to overcome your usual temptation to skip past the boxes. Many of them will be worth your time. Trust me.

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• About one-half of all marriages end in divorce, a failure rate that’s 2-and-a-half times higher than it was when your grandparents married. In recent years, the divorce rate has been slowly decreasing for couples with college degrees—which is probably good news if you’re reading this book!—but it remains high and unchanged for people with less education. In 2018, in the United States, there were just under half as many divorces as marriages (Schweizer, 2019). So because not all lasting marriages are happy ones, an American couple getting married this year is more likely to divorce sometime down the road than to live happily ever after.3

• Most preschool children have parents who work outside the home. In 1965, three- quarters of U.S. mothers stayed home all day when their children were too young to go to school, but only one-quarter of them (and 7 percent of fathers) do so now (Livingston, 2018b).

These remarkable changes suggest that our shared assumptions about the role that marriage and parenthood will play in our lives have changed substantially in recent years. Once upon a time, everybody got married within a few years of leaving high school and, happy or sad, they tended to stay with their original partners. Pregnant

3This is sobering, but your chances for a happy marriage (should you choose to marry) are likely to be better than those of most other people. You’re reading this book, and your interest in relationship science is likely to improve your chances considerably.

FIGURE 1.3. Average age of first marriage in the United States. American men and women are waiting longer to get married than ever before.

A ge

27

28

29

30

26

25

24

23

22

2 1

20

1960 Year

0 1970 1980 1990 2005 2010 2015 20192000

Men Women

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people felt they had to get married, and co habitation was known as “living in sin.” But not so anymore. Marriage is now a choice, even if a baby is on the way, and increasing numbers of us are putting it off or not getting married at all. If we do marry, we’re less likely to consider it a solemn, life-long commitment (Cherlin, 2009). In general, recent years have seen enormous change in the cultural norms that used to encourage people to get, and stay, married.

Do these changes matter? Indeed, they do. Cultural standards provide a foundation for our relationships (Kretz, 2019); they shape our expectations and define the patterns we think to be normal. Let’s consider, in particular, the huge rise in the prevalence of cohabitation that has occurred in recent years. Most young adults now believe that it is desirable for a couple to live together before they get married so that they can spend more time together, share expenses, and test their compatibility (Horowitz et al., 2019). Such attitudes make cohabitation a reasonable choice—and indeed, most people now cohabit before they ever marry. However, when people do not already have firm plans

Are You Prejudiced Against Singles?

Here’s a term you probably haven’t seen be- fore: singlism. It refers to prejudice and dis- crimination against those who choose to remain single and opt not to devote them- selves to a primary romantic relationship. Many of us assume that normal people want to be a part of a romantic couple, so we find it odd when anyone chooses instead to stay single (Fisher & Sakaluk, 2020). The result is a culture that offers benefits to married cou- ples and puts singles at a disadvantage with regard to such things as Social Security bene- fits, insurance rates, and service in restau- rants (DePaulo, 2014).

Intimacy is good for us, and married people live longer than unmarried people do. Middle-aged Americans who have never mar- ried are 2½ times more likely than those who are married to die an early death (Siegler et al., 2013). Patterns like these lead some re- searchers to straightforwardly recommend happy romances as desirable goals in life. And most single people do want to have romantic partners; few singles (12 percent) prefer being unattached to being in a steady romantic relationship (Poortman & Liefbroer, 2010), and a fear of being single can lead people to lower their standards and “settle for

less” with lousy lovers (Spielmann et al., 2020).

Still, we make an obvious mistake if we casually assume that singles are unhealthy, lonely loners. Yes, some singles remain unat- tached because they lack self-confidence and social skill (Apostolou, 2019), but many oth- ers are single by choice because they like it that way (Pepping et al., 2018). They have an active social life and close, supportive friendships that provide them all the intimacy they desire, and they remain uncoupled because they cel- ebrate their freedom and self-sufficiency. They have closer relationships with their parents, siblings, neighbors, and friends than married people do (Sarkisian & Gerstel, 2016), and as one woman wrote to Dear Abby (2016), “I do what I want when I want and how I want. I control the remote, the thermostat and my money. I have no desire for male companion- ship and can honestly say I have never felt hap- pier or more content in my life.”

So, what do you think? Is there some- thing wrong or missing in people who are con- tent to remain single? If you think there is, you may profit by reading Bella DePaulo’s blog defending singles at www.psychologytoday .com/blog/living-single.

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to marry, cohabitation does not make it more likely that a subsequent marriage (if one occurs) will be successful; instead, such cohabitation increases a couple’s risk that they will later divorce (Rosenfeld & Roesler, 2019). There are probably several reasons for this. First, on average, those who cohabit begin living together at younger ages than their older—and possibly wiser—peers who get married (Kuperberg, 2014). But more importantly, couples who choose to cohabit are usually less committed to each other than are those who marry—they are, after all, keeping their options open (Wagner, 2019)—so they encounter more problems and uncertainties than married people do. They’re less satisfied and they trust each other less (Horowitz et al., 2019) because they experience more conflict (Stanley et al., 2010), jealousy (Gatzeva & Paik, 2011), infidelity (Wagner, 2019), and physical aggression (Manning et al., 2018) than spouses do. Clearly, cohabitation is more tumultuous and volatile than marriage usually is. As a result, the longer people cohabit, the less enthusiastic about marriage—and the more accepting of divorce—they become. Take a look at Figure 1.4: As time passes, cohabitat- ing couples gradually become less likely to ever marry but no less likely to split up; 5 years down the road, cohabitating couples are just as likely to break up as they were when they moved in together. (Marriage is fundamentally different. The longer a cou- ple is married, the less likely they are to ever divorce [Wolfinger, 2005]). Overall, then, casual cohabitation that is intended to test the partners’ compatibility seems to

FIGURE 1.4. The outcomes of cohabitation over time. Here’s what became of 2,746 cohabiting couples in the United States over a span of 5 years. As time passed, couples were less likely to marry, but no less likely to break up. After living together for 5 years, cohabiting couples were just as likely to break up as they were when they moved in together. (The transition rate describes the percentage of couples who either broke up or got married each month. The numbers seem low, but they reflect the proportion of cou- ples who quit cohabiting each month, so the proportions add up and become sizable as months go by.)

Source: Wolfinger, N. H. (2005). Understanding the divorce cycle: The children of divorce in their own marriages. Cambridge University Press.

0 0 5 10 15 20 25 30

Months 35 40 45 50 55 60

.005

.01

.015

.02

.025

Tr an

si tio

n R

at e

.03

.035

Marriage Dissolution

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undermine the positive attitudes toward marriage, and the determination to make a marriage work, that support marital success (Busby et al., 2019). Couples who are engaged to marry when they move in together typically fare better than those who cohabit without plans to marry (Willoughby & Belt, 2016), but even they tend to be less happy with their relationships than those who marry without cohabiting first (Brown et al., 2017). So casual cohabitation is corrosive, and these days, cohabiting partners are actually less likely to ever marry than in the past (Sassler & Lichter, 2020). Widespread acceptance of cohabitation as a “trial run” is probably one reason why, compared to 1965, fewer people get married and fewer marriages last.4

Sources of Change

So, the norms that currently govern our intimate relationships differ from those that guided prior generations, and there are several reasons why. One set of influences involves 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 (South et al., 2001), and levels of socioeconomic development have increased around the world. Education and financial resources allow people to be more independent, so that women in particular are less likely to marry than they used to be (Dooley, 2010). And in American marriages, close to one of every three wives earns more than her husband (Parker & Stepler, 2017), so “the traditional male breadwinner model has given way to one where women routinely support households and outearn the men they are married to, and nobody cares or thinks it’s odd” (Mundy, 2012, p. 5).5

Over the years, the individualism—that is, the support of self-expression and the emphasis on personal fulfillment—that characterizes Western cultures has also become more pronounced (Santos et al., 2017). This isn’t good news, but most of us are more materialistic (Twenge & Kasser, 2013) and less concerned with others (Twenge, 2013) than our grandparents were. And arguably, this focus on our own happiness has led us to expect more personal gratification from our intimate p artnerships—more pleasure and delight, and fewer hassles and sacrifices—than our grandparents did (Finkel, 2017). Unlike prior generations (who often stayed together for the “sake of the kids”), we feel justified in ending our partnerships to seek contentment elsewhere if we become dis- satisfied (Cherlin, 2009). Eastern cultures promote a more collective sense of self in which people feel more closely tied to their families and social groups (Markus, 2017), and the divorce rates in such cultures (such as Japan) are much lower than they are in the United States (Cherlin, 2009).

New technology matters, too. Modern reproductive technologies allow single women to bear children fathered by men picked from a catalog at a sperm bank whom

4Most people don’t know this, so here’s an example of an important pattern we’ll encounter often: Popular opinion assumes one thing, but relationship science finds another. Instances such as these demonstrate the value of careful scientific studies of close relationships. Ignorance isn’t bliss. Intimate partnerships are complex, and accurate information is especially beneficial when common sense and folk wisdom would lead us astray. 5Well, actually, some men, particularly those with traditional views of what it means to be a man (Coughlin & Wade, 2012), are troubled when they earn less than their wives. Their self-esteem suffers (Ratliff & Oishi, 2013), and they are more likely than other men to use drugs to treat erectile dysfunction (Pierce et al., 2013). Traditional masculinity can be costly in close relationships, a point to which we’ll return on page 28.

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the women have never met! Women can also control their fertility, having children only when they choose, and American women are having fewer children than they used to. The American birth rate is at an all-time low (Hamilton et al., 2019), and one in every four young American women has used emergency contraception—a “morning-after” pill—to help keep it that way (Haeger et al., 2018).

Modern communication technologies are also transforming the ways in which we conduct our relationships (Okdie & Ewoldsen, 2018). Your grandparents didn’t have mobile phones, so they didn’t expect to be able to reach each other anywhere at any time of day. They certainly didn’t do any sexting—that is, sending sexually explicit images of themselves to others with a smartphone—as more than 20 percent of young adults now have (Garcia et al., 2016, who also found that 23 percent of the time, those who receive a sext share it with two or three others). And they did not have to develop rules about how frequently they could text each other, how long they could take to respond, and whether or not they could read the messages and examine the call histories on the other’s phone; these days, couples are happier if they do (Halpern & Katz, 2017).

In addition, most of the people you know are on Facebook (Gramlich, 2019), connected to hundreds of “friends,”6 and that can complicate our more intimate part- nerships. Facebook provides an entertaining and efficient way to (help to) satisfy our needs for social contact (Waytz & Gray, 2018), but it can also create dilemmas for lovers, who have to decide when to go “Facebook official” and announce that they’re now “in a relationship” (Seidman et al., 2019). (They also have to decide what that means: Women tend to think that this change in status signals more intensity and commitment than men do [Fox & Warber, 2013].) Thereafter, a partner’s heavy use of Facebook (McDaniel & Drouin, 2019) and pictures of one’s partner partying with others (Utz et al., 2015) can incite conflict and jealousy, and a breakup can be embar- rassingly public (Haimson et al., 2018). Clearly, social media such as Facebook and Snapchat can be mixed blessings in close relationships.

Moreover, many of us are permanently connected to our social networks, with our smartphones always by our sides (Lapierre, 2020), and we are too often tempted to “give precedence to people we are not with over people we are with” (Price, 2011, p. 27). Modern couples have to put up with a lot of technoference, the frequent interruptions of their interactions that are caused by their various technological devices (McDan- iel & Drouin, 2019), and phubbing—which occurs when one partner snubs another by focusing on a phone—is particularly obnoxious (Roberts & David, 2016). No one much likes to be ignored while you text or talk with someone else (Chotpitayasunondh & Douglas, 2018), but it hap- pens most of the time when two friends are eating together (Vanden Abeele et al., 2019). In fact—and this is troubling—our devices can be so alluring and distracting

6Psychology students at Sam Houston State University (n = 298) do have hundreds of Facebook “friends”—562 each, on average—but that number doesn’t mean much because most of them aren’t real friends; 45 percent of them are mere acquaintances, and others (7 percent) are strangers they have never met (Miller et al., 2014). We’ll return to this point in chapter 7, but for now, let me ask: How many people on your Facebook list are really your friends?

A Point to Ponder

Which of the remarkable changes in technology over the last 50 years has had the most profound effect on our relationships? Birth control pills? Smartphones? Online dating sites? Something else?

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(Kushlev et al., 2019) that simply having your smartphone lying on the table is likely to reduce the quality of the conversation you share at dinner with a friend (Dwyer et al., 2018). Here’s a suggestion: When you next go out to dinner with your lover, why don’t you leave your phone in the car? ”When technology diminishes our relationships with loved ones and distracts us from the things that truly matter, it’s no longer a tool; it’s a toxin” (Lane, 2017).

Finally, an important—but more subtle—influence on the norms that govern rela- tionships is the relative numbers of young men and women in a given culture (Sng & Ackerman, 2020). Societies and regions of the world in which men are more numerous than women tend to have very different standards than those in which women outnum- ber men. I’m describing a region’s sex ratio, a simple count of the number of men for every 100 women in a specific population. When the sex ratio is high, there are more men than women; when it is low, there are fewer men than women.

The baby boom that followed World War II caused the U.S. sex ratio, which had been very high, to plummet to low levels at the end of the 1960s. For a time after the war, more babies were born each year than in the preceding year; this meant that when the “boomers” entered adulthood, there were fewer older men than younger women, and the sex ratio dropped. However, when birthrates began to slow and fewer children entered the demographic pipeline, each new flock of women was smaller than the preceding flock of men, and the U.S. sex ratio crept higher in the 1990s. Since then, reasonably stable birthrates have resulted in fairly equal numbers of marriageable men and women today.

These changes may have been more important than most people realize. Cultures with high sex ratios (in which there aren’t enough women) tend to support traditional,

Phubbing is obnoxious and is best avoided.

Steve Kelley Editorial Cartoon used with the permission of Steve Kelley and Creators Syndicate. All rights reserved.

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old-fashioned roles for men and women (Secord, 1983). After the men buy expensive engagement rings (Griskevicius et al., 2012), women stay home raising children while the men work outside the home. Such cultures also tend to be sexually conservative. The ideal newlywed is a virgin bride, unwed pregnancy is shameful, open cohabitation is rare, and divorce is discouraged. In contrast, cultures with low sex ratios (in which there are too few men) tend to be less traditional and more permissive. Women seek high-paying careers (Durante et al., 2012), and they are allowed (if not encouraged) to have sexual relationships outside of marriage (Moss & Maner, 2016). The specifics vary with each historical period, but this general pattern has occurred throughout his- tory (Guttentag & Secord, 1983). Ancient Rome, which was renowned for its sybaritic behavior? A low sex ratio. Victorian England, famous for its prim and proper ways? A high sex ratio. The Roaring Twenties, a footloose and playful decade? A low sex ratio. And in more recent memory, the “sexual revolution” and the advent of “women’s lib- eration” in the late 1960s? A very low sex ratio.

Thus, the remarkable changes in the norms for U.S. relationships since 1965 may be due, in part, to dramatic fluctuations in U.S. sex ratios. Indeed, another test of this pattern is presently unfolding in China, where limitations on family size and a prefer- ence for male children have produced a dramatic scarcity of young women. Prospective grooms will outnumber prospective brides in China by more than 50 percent for the next 25 years (Huang, 2014). What changes in China’s norms should we expect? The rough but real link between a culture’s proportions of men and women and its relational norms serves as a compelling example of the manner in which culture can affect our relationships. To a substantial degree, what we expect and what we accept in our deal- ings with others can spring from the standards of the time and place in which we live.

THE INFLUENCE OF EXPERIENCE

Our relationships are also affected by the histories and experiences we bring to them, and there is no better example of this than the global orientations toward relationships known as attachment styles. Years ago, developmental researchers (e.g., Bowlby, 1969) realized that infants displayed various patterns of attachment to their major caregivers (usually their mothers). The prevailing assumption was that whenever they were hungry, wet, or scared, some children found responsive care and protection to be reliably avail- able, and they learned that other people were trustworthy sources of security and kindness. As a result, such children developed a secure style of attachment: They hap- pily bonded with others and relied on them comfortably, and they readily developed relationships characterized by relaxed trust.

Other children encountered different situations. For some, attentive care was unpredictable and inconsistent. Their caregivers were warm and interested on some occasions but distracted, anxious, or unavailable on others. These children thus devel- oped fretful, mixed feelings about others known as anxious- ambivalent attachments. Being uncertain of when (or if) a departing caregiver would return, such children became nervous, clingy, and needy in their relationships with others.

Finally, for a third group of children, care was provided reluctantly by rejecting or hostile adults. Such children learned that little good came from depending on others,

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and they withdrew from others with an avoidant style of attachment. Avoidant children were often suspicious of others, and they did not easily form trusting, close relationships.

The important point, then, is that researchers believed that early interpersonal experiences shaped the course of one’s subsequent relationships. Indeed, attachment processes became a popular topic of research because the different styles were so obvi- ous in many children. When they faced a strange, intimidating environment, for instance, secure children ran to their mothers, calmed down, and then set out to bravely explore the unfamiliar new setting (Ainsworth et al., 1978). Anxious-ambivalent chil- dren cried and clung to their mothers, ignoring the parents’ reassurances that all was well.

These patterns were impressive, but relationship researchers really began to take notice of attachment styles when Cindy Hazan and Phillip Shaver (1987) demonstrated that similar orientations toward close relationships could also be observed among adults. Their surveys found that most people said that they were relaxed and comfort- able depending on others; that is, they sounded secure in their intimate relationships. However, a substantial minority (about 40 percent) said they were insecure; they either found it difficult to trust and to depend on their partners, or they nervously worried that their relationships wouldn’t last. In addition, respondents reported childhood memories and current attitudes that fit their styles of attachment. Secure people gener- ally held positive images of themselves and others, and remembered their parents as

Children’s relationships with their major caregivers teach them trust or fear that sets the stage for their subsequent relationships with others. How responsive, reliable, and effective was the care that you received?

Tom Merton/Corbis

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loving and supportive. In contrast, insecure people viewed others with uncertainty or distrust, and remembered their parents as inconsistent or cold.

With provocative results like these, attachment research quickly became one of the hottest fields in relationship science (e.g., Mikulincer & Shaver, 2018). And researchers promptly realized that there seemed to be four, rather than three, patterns of attachment in adults. In particular, theorist Kim Bartholomew (1990) suggested that there were two different reasons why people might wish to avoid being too close to others. In one case, people could want relationships with others but be wary of them, fearing rejection and mistrusting them. In the other case, people could be independent and self-reliant, genu- inely preferring autonomy and freedom rather than close attachments to others.

Thus, Bartholomew (1990) proposed four general categories of attachment style (see Table 1.1). The first, a secure style, remained the same as the secure style identi- fied in children. The second, a preoccupied style, was a new name for anxious ambiva- lence. Bartholomew renamed the category to reflect the fact that, because they nervously depended on others’ approval to feel good about themselves, such people worried about, and were preoccupied with, the status of their relationships.

The third and fourth styles reflected two different ways to be “avoidant.” Fearful people avoided intimacy with others because of their fears of rejection. Although they wanted others to like them, they worried about the risks of relying on others. In con- trast, people with a dismissing style felt that intimacy with others just wasn’t worth the trouble. Dismissing people rejected interdependency with others because they felt self- sufficient, and they didn’t care much whether others liked them or not.

It’s also now generally accepted that two broad themes underlie and distinguish these four styles of attachment (Gillath et al., 2016). First, people differ in their avoid- ance of intimacy, which affects the ease and trust with which they accept interdependent intimacy with others. People who are comfortable and relaxed in close relationships are

TABLE 1.1.  Four Types of Attachment Style

Which of these paragraphs describes you best?

Secure It is easy for me to become emotionally close to others. I am comfort- able depending on others and having others depend on me. I don’t worry about being alone or having others not accept me.

Preoccupied I want to be completely emotionally intimate with others, but I often find that others are reluctant to get as close as I would like. I am uncomfortable being without close relationships, but I sometimes worry that others don’t value me as much as I value them.

Fearful I am uncomfortable getting close to others. I want emotionally close relationships, but I find it difficult to trust others completely or to depend on them. I worry that I will be hurt if I allow myself to become too close to others.

Dismissing I am comfortable without close emotional relationships. It is very important to me to feel independent and self-sufficient, and I prefer not to depend on others or have others depend on me.

Source: Bartholomew, K. (1990). “Avoidance of intimacy: An attachment perspective,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 7, 147–178.

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low in avoidance, whereas those who distrust others, value their independence, and keep their emotional distance are high in avoidance (Ren et al., 2017). People also differ in their anxiety about abandonment, the dread that others will find them unworthy and leave them. Secure people take great comfort in closeness with others and do not worry that others will mistreat them; as a result, they gladly seek intimate interdependency with others. In contrast, with all three of the other styles, people are burdened with anxiety or discomfort that leaves them less at ease in close relationships. Preoccupied people want closeness but anxiously fear rejection. Dismissing people don’t worry about rejection but don’t like closeness. And fearful people get it from both sides, being uncomfortable with intimacy and worrying it won’t last. (See Figure 1.5.)

Importantly, the two themes of avoidance of intimacy and anxiety about abandonment are continuous dimensions that range from low to high. This means that, although it’s convenient to talk about attachment styles as if they were discrete, pure categories that do not overlap, it’s not really accurate to do so (Lubiewska & Van de Vijver, 2020). When they are simply asked to pick which one of the four paragraphs in Table 1.1 fits them best, most people in the United States—usually around 60 percent— describe themselves as being securely attached (Mickelson et al., 1997).7 However, if

7This isn’t true of American college students; only about 40 percent of them are secure. And that proportion has been declining over the last 30 years; more collegians are insecure than in years past (Konrath et al., 2014). [Here’s a Point to Ponder in a footnote! Why do you think that is?] Also, in many other countries, secure styles are more common than any of the other three styles but secure people are outnumbered by the other three groups combined. Thus, in most regions of the world, more people are insecure than secure (Schmitt, 2008). Nevertheless, there is some good news here: Around the world, people tend to become less anxious and avoidant as they age (e.g., Chopik et al., 2019). So, even if you’re insecure now, time and experi- ence may teach you to be more secure 30 years from now.

FIGURE 1.5. The dimensions underlying attachment.

Low Avoidance of Intimacy

High Avoidance of Intimacy

High Anxiety about

Abandonment

Low Anxiety about

Abandonment

SECURE Comfortable with intimacy

and interdependence; optimistic and sociable

DISMISSING Self-reliant and uninterested

in intimacy; indi�erent and independent

FEARFUL Fearful of rejection and

mistrustful of others; suspicious and shy

PREOCCUPIED Uneasy and vigilant toward

any threat to the relationship; needy and jealous

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18 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

someone has moderate anxiety about abandonment and middling avoidance of inti- macy, which category fits him or her best? The use of any of the four categories is rather arbitrary in the middle ranges of anxiety and avoidance where the boundaries of the categories meet.

So don’t treat the neat classifications in Figure 1.5 too seriously. The more sophis- ticated way to think about attachment is that there seem to be two important themes that shape people’s global orientations toward relationships with others. (You can see where you stand on the items that are often used to measure anxiety and avoidance on page 74 in chapter 2.) Both are important, and if you compare high scorers on either dimension to low scorers on that dimension, you’re likely to see meaningful differences in the manner in which those people conduct their relationships. Indeed, current studies of attachment (e.g., Hudson et al., 2020) routinely describe people with regard to their relative standing on the two dimensions of anxiety and avoidance instead of labeling them as secure, preoccupied, fearful, or dismissing.

Nevertheless, the four labels are so concise that they are still widely used, so stay sharp. Developmental researchers used to speak of only three attachment styles: secure, avoidant, and anxious-ambivalent. Now theorists routinely speak of four styles, but they treat them as convenient labels for sets of anxiety and avoidance scores, not as dis- tinctly different categories that have nothing in common. The biggest distinction is between people who are “secure” and those who are not (being those who have high anxiety about abandonment or high avoidance of intimacy, or both) (Arriaga & Kumashiro, 2019). And for now, the important point is that attachment styles appear to be orientations toward relationships that are largely learned from our experiences with others. They are prime examples of the manner in which the proclivities and perspectives we bring to a new relationship emerge in part from our experiences in prior partnerships.

Let’s examine this idea more closely. Any relationship is shaped by many different influences—that’s the point of this chapter—and both babies and adults affect through their own behavior the treatment they receive from others. As any parent knows, for instance, babies are born with various temperaments and arousal levels. Some new- borns have an easy, pleasant temperament, whereas others are fussy and excitable, and inborn differences in personality and emotionality make some children easier to parent than others. Thus, the quality of parenting a baby receives can depend, in part, on the child’s own personality and behavior; in this way, people’s attachment styles are influ- enced by the traits with which they were born, and our genes shape our styles (Masarik et al., 2014).

However, our experiences play much larger roles in shaping the styles we bring to subsequent relationships (Fraley & Roisman, 2019). The levels of acceptance or rejec- tion we receive from our parents are huge influences early on (Woodhouse et al., 2020). Expectant mothers who are glad to be pregnant are more likely to have secure toddlers a year later than are mothers-to-be whose pregnancies were unwanted or unplanned (Gillath et al., 2019). Once their babies are born, mothers who enjoy intimacy and who are comfortable with closeness tend to be more attentive and sensitive caregivers (Jones et al., 2015), so secure moms tend to have secure children, whereas insecure mothers tend to have insecure children (Verhage et al., 2016). Indeed, when mothers with dif- ficult, irritable babies are trained to be sensitive and responsive parents, their toddlers

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chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships 19

are much more likely to end up securely attached to them than they would have been in the absence of such training (van den Boom, 1994). And a mother’s influence on the attachment styles of her children does not end in preschool: The parenting adoles- cents receive as seventh graders predicts how they will behave in their own romances and friendships when they become adults (Hadiwijaya et al., 2020), and remarkably, teens who have nurturing and supportive relationships with their parents will be likely to have richer relationships with their lovers and friends 60 years later (Waldinger & Schulz, 2016). There’s no doubt that youngsters import the lessons they learn at home into their subsequent relationships with others (Fraley & Roisman, 2019).

We’re not prisoners of our experiences as children, however, because our attach- ment styles continue to be shaped by the experiences we encounter as adults (Haak et al., 2017). Being learned, attachment styles can be unlearned, and over time, attach- ment styles can change (Fraley, 2019). A devoted, fun, and supportive partner may gradually make an avoidant person less wary of intimacy (Arriaga & Kumashiro, 2019), but a bad breakup can make a formerly secure person insecure. Our attachment to a particular partner can even fluctuate some from day to day (Girme et al., 2018), but the good news is that those who want to become less anxious or avoidant usually suceed in doing so (Hudson et al., 2020).

Nevertheless, once they have been established, attachment styles can also be stable and long-lasting as they lead people to create new relationships that reinforce their existing tendencies (Hadden et al., 2014). By remaining aloof and avoiding interdepen- dency, for instance, fearful people may never learn that some people can be trusted and closeness can be comforting—and that perpetuates their fearful style. In the absence

Was Your Childhood Calm or Chaotic?

Some of us experienced childhoods that were comfortable and full of familiar routines; our families didn’t struggle financially, we didn’t move often, and our parents didn’t keep changing partners. Others of us, though, had childhoods that were comparatively harsh and/or unpredictable. Perhaps we were poor, so that life was austere and inhospitable, or perhaps upheaval was common, so that we never knew what to expect. Notably, these different past environments may be having more influence on our current relationships than we realize.

According to a perspective known as life history theory, harsh or unpredictable environ- ments lead young adults to pursue “fast” strat- egies of mating in which they mature faster, have sex sooner (and with more people), and have more children (and at a younger age)

(Simpson, 2019). If life is hard and uncertain, one needs to act fast! In contrast, comfortable and reliable environments support “slow” strategies; people reach puberty later, start having sex when they’re older and have fewer partners and fewer children. Their relation- ships also tend to be more stable and lasting (Bae & Wickrama, 2019).

Remarkably, recent discoveries gener- ally support life history predictions, with cha- otic childhoods seeming to set people on paths in which secure attachments to others are relatively hard to attain (Szepsenwol & Simpson, 2019). We’re not prisoners of our pasts (Hudson et al., 2020), but studies of life histories offer striking examples of the man- ner in which, consciously or not, we may im- port our past experiences into our present partnerships.

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20 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

of dramatic new experiences, people’s styles of attachment can persist for decades (Fraley, 2002), with great effect: Marriages are happier when both spouses have secure styles (Siegel et al., 2019), and insecure people are more likely than those who are secure to be divorced and single (McNelis & Segrin, 2019).

Thus, our global beliefs about the nature and worth of close relationships appear to be shaped by our experiences within them. By good luck or bad, our earliest notions about our own interpersonal worth and the trustworthiness of others emerge from our interactions with our major caregivers and start us down a path of either trust or fear. But that journey never stops, and later obstacles or aid from fellow travelers may divert us and change our routes. Our learned styles of attachment to others may either change with time or persist indefinitely, depending on our interpersonal experiences.

THE INFLUENCE OF INDIVIDUAL DIFFERENCES

Once they are formed, attachment styles also exemplify the idiosyncratic personal characteristics that people bring to their partnerships with others. We’re all individuals with singular combinations of experiences and traits, and the differences among us influence our relationships. In this section of the chapter, we’ll consider five influential types of individual variation: sex differences, gender differences, sexual orientations, personalities, and self-esteem.

Sex Differences

At this moment, you’re doing something rare. You’re reading an academic textbook about relationship science, and that’s something most people will never do. This is probably the first serious text you’ve ever read about relationships, too, and that means that we need to confront—and hopefully correct—some of the stereotypes you may hold about the differences between men and women in intimate relationships.

This may not be easy. Many of us are used to thinking that men and women have very different approaches to intimacy—that, for instance, “men are from Mars, women are from Venus.” A well-known book with that title asserted that

men and women differ in all areas of their lives. Not only do men and women com- municate differently but they think, feel, perceive, react, respond, love, need, and appre- ciate differently. They almost seem to be from different planets, speaking different languages and needing different nourishment. (Gray, 1992, p. 5)

Wow! Men and women sound like they’re members of different species. No wonder heterosexual relationships are sometimes problematic!

But the truth is more subtle. Human traits obviously vary across a wide range, and (in most cases) if we graph the number of people who possess a certain talent or abil- ity, we’ll get a distinctive chart known as a normal curve. Such curves describe the frequencies with which particular levels of some trait can be found in people, and they demonstrate that (a) most people have talents or abilities that are only slightly better or worse than average and (b) extreme levels of most traits, high or low, are very rare. Consider height, for example: A few people are very short or very tall, but most of us are only two or three inches shorter or taller than the average for our sex.

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chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships 21

Why should we care about this? Because many lay stereotypes about men and women portray the sexes as having very different ranges of interests, styles, and abilities. As one example, men are often portrayed as being more interested in sex than women are (see the “Combating Simplistic Stereotypes” box on page 23), and the images of the sexes that people hold often seem to resemble the situation pictured in Figure 1.6. The difference between the average man and the average woman is presumed to be large, and there is almost no overlap between the sexes at all. But, despite the “Mars” and “Venus” stereo- types, this is not the way things really are. As we’ll see in chapter 9, men do tend to have higher sex drives, on average, than women do. Nevertheless, actual sex differences take the form of the graphs shown in Figure 1.7, which depict ranges of interests and talents that overlap to a substantial extent (Hyde et al., 2019).

The three graphs in Figure 1.7 illustrate sex differences that are considered by researchers to be small, medium, and large, respectively. Formally, they differ with respect to a d statistic that specifies the size of a difference between two groups.8 In

8To get a d score in these cases, you compute the difference between the average man and the average woman, and divide it by the average differences among the scores within each sex (which is the standard deviation of those scores). The resulting d value tells you how large the sex difference is compared to the usual amount by which men and women differ among themselves.

FIGURE 1.6. An imaginary sex difference. Popular stereotypes portray the sexes as being very different, with almost no overlap between the styles and preferences of the two sexes. This is not the way things really are.

Some Ability or Trait

The Other Sex

N um

be r o

f P eo

pl e One Sex

Less More

FIGURE 1.7. Actual sex differences take the form of overlapping normal curves. The three graphs depict small, medium, and large sex differences, respectively. (To keep them simple, they portray the ranges of attitudes or behavior as being the same for both sexes. This isn’t always the case in real life.)

d = .5 (a medium sex di�erence)

Score

BA d = .2 (a small sex di�erence)

Score

N um

be r o

f P eo

pl e

Score

d = .8 (a large sex di�erence)

C

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22 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

the realm of sexual attitudes and behavior, graph A depicts the different ages of men and women when they first have intercourse (men tend to be slightly younger), graph B illustrates the relative frequencies with which they masturbate (men masturbate more often), and graph C depicts a hypothetical difference that is larger than any that is known to actually exist. That’s right. A sprawling analysis of modern studies of human sexuality involving 1,419,807 participants from 87 different countries failed to find any difference in the sexual attitudes and behavior of men and women that was as large as that pictured in graph C (Petersen & Hyde, 2010). Obviously, the real-life examples that do exist look nothing like the silly stereotype pictured in Figure 1.6. More specifically, these examples make three vital points about psychological sex differences:

• Some differences are real but quite small. (Don’t be confused by researchers’ terminology; when they talk about a “significant” sex difference, they’re usually referring to a “statistically significant”—that is, numerically reliable— difference, and it may actually be quite modest in size.) Almost all of the differences between men and women that you will encounter in this book fall in the small to medium range.

• The range of behavior and opinions among members of a given sex is always huge compared to the average difference between the sexes. Men are more accepting of casual, uncommitted sex than women are (Petersen & Hyde, 2010), but that cer- tainly doesn’t mean that all men like casual sex. Some men like to have sex with strangers, but other men don’t like that at all, and the sexual preferences of the two groups of men have less in common than those of the average man and the average woman do. Another way to put this is that despite this sex difference in sexual permissiveness, a highly permissive man has more in common with the average woman on this trait than he does with a low-scoring man.

• The overlap in behavior and opinions is so large that many members of one sex will always score higher than the average member of the other sex. With a sex difference of medium size (with men higher and a d value of .5), one-third of all women will still score higher than the average man. What this means is that if you’re looking for folks who like casual sex, you shouldn’t just look for men because you heard that “men are more accepting of casual sex than women are”; you should look for permissive people, many of whom will be women despite the difference between the sexes.

The bottom line is that men and women usually overlap so thoroughly that they are much more similar than different on most of the dimensions and topics of interest to relationship science (Zell et al., 2015). It’s completely misguided to suggest that men and women come from different planets and are distinctly different because it simply isn’t true (Hyde et al., 2019). “Research does not support the view that men and women come from different cultures, let alone separate worlds” (Canary & Emmers-Sommer, 1997, p. vi). According to the careful science of relationships you’ll study in this book, it’s more accurate to say that “men are from North Dakota, and women are from South Dakota” (Dindia, 2006, p. 18). (Or, as a bumper sticker I saw one day suggests: “Men are from Earth. Women are from Earth. Deal with it.”)

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chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships 23

Thus, sex differences in intimate relationships tend to be much less noteworthy and influential than laypeople often think. Now that you’re reading a serious text on intimate relationships, you need to think more carefully about sex differences and interpret them more reasonably.9 There are interesting differences between the sexes that are meaningful parts of the fabric of relationships, and we’ll encounter several of them in the chapters that follow. But they occur in the context of even broader simi- larities between the sexes, and the differences are always modest when they are com- pared to the full range of human variation. It’s more work, but also more sophisticated and accurate, to think of individual differences, not sex differences, as the more impor- tant influences on interpersonal interaction. People differ among themselves whether they are male or female (as in the case of attachment styles), and these variations are usually much more consequential than sex differences are.

9Has this discussion led you to think that men and women are perhaps not as different as you had thought they were? If so, you may be better off. Reading about the similarities of the sexes tends to reduce people’s sexist beliefs that one sex is better than the other (Zell et al., 2016), and that’s a good thing. Such beliefs have corrosive effects on relationships (Cross et al., 2017), and they’re best avoided. We’ll return to this point in chapter 11.

Combating Simplistic Stereotypes

Here’s a joke that showed up in my inbox one day:

How to Impress a Woman: Compliment her. Cuddle her. Kiss her. Caress her. Love her. Comfort her. Protect her. Hug her. Hold her. Spend money on her. Wine and dine her. Listen to her. Care for her. Stand by her. Support her. Go to the ends of the earth for her.

How to Impress a Man: Show up naked. Bring beer.

It’s a cute joke. But it may not be harmless. It reinforces the stereotypes that women seek warmth and tenderness in their relation- ships, whereas men simply seek unemotional sex. In truth, men and women differ little in their desires in close relationships; they’re not “opposite” sexes at all (Hyde, 2014). Al- though individuals of both sexes may differ substantially from each other, the differences between the average man and the average woman are usually rather small and often

quite trivial. Both women and men generally want their intimate partners to provide them with lots of affection and warmth (Brum- baugh & Wood, 2013).

But so what? What are the conse- quences of wrongly believing that men are all alike, having little in common with women? Pessimism and hopelessness, for two (Metts & Cupach, 1990). People who really believe that the sexes are very different are less likely to try to repair their heterosexual relation- ships when conflicts occur (as they inevita- bly do). Thinking of the other sex as a bunch of aliens from another world is not just inaccurate—it can also be damaging, forestall- ing efforts to understand a partner’s point of view and preventing collaborative problem solving. For that reason, I’ll try to do my part to avoid perpetuating wrongful impressions by comparing men and women to the other sex, not the opposite sex, for the remainder of this book. Words matter (MacArthur et al., 2020), so I invite you to use similar language when you think and talk about the sexes.

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24 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

Gender Differences

I need to complicate things further by distinguishing between sex differences and gender differences in close relationships. When people use the terms c arefully, the term sex differences refers to biological distinctions between men and women that spring naturally from their physical natures. In contrast, gender differences refer to social and psycho- logical distinctions that are created by our cultures and upbringing (Hyde et al., 2019). For instance, when they are parents, women are mothers and men are fathers—that’s a sex difference—but the common belief that women are more loving, more nurturant parents than men reflects a gender difference. Many men are capable of just as much tenderness and compassion toward the young as any woman is, but if we expect and encourage women to be the primary caregivers of our children, we can create cultural gender differences in parenting styles that are not natural or inborn at all.

Distinguishing sex and gender differences is often tricky because the social expec- tations and training we apply to men and women are often confounded with their biological sex (Eagly & Wood, 2012). For instance, because women lactate and men do not, people often assume that predawn feedings of a newborn baby are the mother’s job—even when the baby is being fed formula from a bottle that was warmed in a microwave! It’s not always easy to disentangle the effects of biology and culture in shaping our interests and abilities.

Moreover, our individual experiences of gender are much more complex than most people think. Superficially, gender may seem to be a straightforward dichotomy—people are either male or female—but in fact, our genders are constructed from a variety of dif- ferent influences (see Figure 1.8) that can create a variety of different outcomes (Hammack et al., 2019). Large surveys in the United States, for instance, find that between four (Watson et al., 2020) and six percent (Goldberg et al., 2020) of LGBTQ10 people identify as gender queer; that is, they reject the notion that people must be either male or female, and they’re often attracted to transgendered or other gender nonconforming people (Goldberg et al., 2020; see the “Transgenders’ Relationships” box on page 26). Most of us are cisgender, which means that our current identities align with the sex we were assigned at birth—but only 26 percent of us assert that we never feel a little like the other sex, wish to some extent that we were the other sex, or wish now and then that we had the body of the other sex (Jacobson & Joel, 2018). Gender is so complex and can be so diverse that it’s more sensible to think of gender not as a binary classification with two simple categories but as a spectrum that allows a range of possibilities (Reilly, 2019). Conceivably, “there are as many genders as there are people” (Bergner, 2019, p. 44).

So, the distinction between one’s biological sex and one’s gender is meaningful, particularly because some inf luential differences between men and women in relationships—g ender differences—are largely taught to us as we grow up.

The best examples of this are our gender roles, the patterns of behavior that are culturally expected of “normal” men and women. Men, of course, are supposed to be “masculine,” which means that they are expected to be assertive, self-reliant, decisive, and competitive. Women are expected to be “feminine,” or warm, sensitive, emotionally expressive, and kind. You and I aren’t so unsophisticated, but they’re the opposite sexes

10This familiar abbreviation refers to lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered, or queer people.

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chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships 25

to most people, and to varying degrees men and women are expected to specialize in different kinds of social behavior all over the world (Löckenhoff et al., 2014). However, people inherit only about a quarter to a third of their tendencies to be assertive or kind; most of these behaviors are learned (Lippa & Hershberger, 1999). In thoroughgo- ing and pervasive ways, cultural processes of socialization and modeling (rather than biological sex differences) lead us to expect that all men should be tough and all women should be tender (Levant & Rankin, 2014).

Nevertheless, those stereotypes don’t describe real people as well as you might think; only half of us have attributes that fit these gender role expectations cleanly (Donnelly & Twenge, 2017). Instead of being just “masculine” or “feminine,” a sizable minority of people—about 35 percent—are both assertive and warm, sensitive and self- reliant. Such people possess both sets of the competencies that are stereotypically associated with being male and with being female, and are said to be androgynous. If androgyny sounds odd to you, you’re probably just using a stereotyped vocabulary: On the surface, being “masculine” sounds incompatible with also being “feminine.” In fact, because those terms can be confusing, relationship researchers often use alternatives, referring to the “masculine” task-oriented talents as instrumental traits and to the “fem- inine” social and emotional skills as expressive traits. And it’s not all that remarkable

FIGURE 1.8. Components of your gender. Gender is multifaceted and complex. It emerges from a combination of (a) the sex to which you were assigned when you were born, (b) your sense of the gender category that now describes you best, (c) the social norms and expectations that you judge to apply to you, (d) the ways in which you communicate—through your clothing, personal pronouns, and other public acts—your gender to others, and (e) your preferences and judgments regarding your own and others’ genders (including, for instance, sexism). These facets are presented with different shapes to emphasize the fact that each of them is a distinct aspect of the person you consider yourself to be.

Source: Tate, C. C., Youssef, C., & Bettergarcia, J. (2014). “Integrating the study of transgender spectrum and cisgender experiences of self-categorization from a personality perspective,” Review of General Psychology, 18, 302–312.

Birth assigned gender

category

Current gender identity

a b c

d e

Gender roles and

expectations

Gender social

presentation

Gender evaluations

Gender

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26 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

Transgenders’ Relationships

Fewer than one-half of 1 percent of Ameri- cans are transgenders—being people whose gender identities do not match the sex they were assigned at birth—but they are not un- common, numbering about 1,250,000 peo- ple (Meerwijk & Sevelius, 2017). Gender is complex (and frequently misunderstood by laypeople [Doan et al., 2019]) and those who were raised as one sex but who now seek to live as the other sex face a great number of challenges. When they decide to transition, their existing partnerships may undergo con- siderable change as their lovers adjust to their new identities (Platt, 2020). Loving partners may wish to support a transgender’s well-being and growth but be uncertain about their romantic desire for their sweethearts after their transition (Dierckx et al., 2019). And once a transition is public, both trans- genders and their partners may encounter disapproval and disregard from others that cause them distress (Gamarel et al., 2019).

If transgenders seek new romantic part- ners, their challenges continue. When cisgen- der, heterosexual men and women rate photos of the other sex, the images are judged to be much less attractive when the others are said to be transgender than when they’re said to be cisgender (Mao et al., 2018). Indeed, when they’re asked, 98 percent of heterosexual

women and 97 percent of heterosexual men say that they would not consider dating a trans man or a trans woman. Gay men and lesbian women are more accepting, but not all that much—transgenders were written off by 88 and 71 percent of them, respectively—and just half (48 percent) of bisexual and gender queer men and women consider transgenders to be viable dating partners. These data “do not paint an uplifting picture” of the dating opportunities available to transgenders (Blair & Hoskin, 2019, p. 2091).

Nevertheless, when they do find part- ners, transgenders enjoy high levels of support (particularly when their partners are other transgenders) and are satisfied, on average, with their relationships (Fuller & Riggs, 2020). And the more commitment they experience, the easier it’s for them to withstand the disap- proval they may face from others (Gamarel et al., 2019). On the whole then, although it may be relatively hard for them to find loving partners, it appears that the intimate relation- ships of transgenders operate just the same as anyone else’s. As we’ll see on page 35 when we discuss sexual orientation, it doesn’t much matter who we are or whom we love; people are happier when others they find attractive embrace them with responsive acceptance and affection in a committed relationship.

to find both sets of traits in the same individual. An androgynous person would be one who could effectively, assertively stand up for himself or herself in a heated salary negotiation but who could then go home and sensitively, c ompassionately comfort a preschool child whose pet hamster had died. A lot of people, those who specialize in either instrumental or expressive skills, would feel at home in one of those situations but not both. Androgynous people would be comfortable and capable in both domains (Martin et al., 2017).

In fact, the best way to think of instrumentality and expressiveness is to consider them to be two separate sets of skills that can range from low to high in either women or men (Choi et al., 2007). Take a look at Table 1.2. Traditional women are high in expressiveness but low in instrumentality; they’re warm and kind but not assertive

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chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships 27

or dominant. Men who fulfill our traditional expectations are high in instrumentality but low in expressiveness and are stoic, “macho” men. Androgynous people are both instrumental and expressive. The rest of us—about 15 percent—are either high in the skills typically associated with the other sex (and are said to be “cross-typed”) or low in both sets of skills (and are said to be “undifferentiated”). Equal proportions of men and women fall into the androgynous, cross-typed, and undifferentiated cat- egories, so, as with sex differences, it’s simplistic and inaccurate to think of men and women as wholly distinct groups of people with separate, different traits (Donnelly & Twenge, 2017).

In any case, gender differences are of particular interest to relationship researchers because, instead of making men and women more compatible, they “may actually be responsible for much of the incompatibility” that causes relationships to fail (Ickes, 1985, p. 188). From the moment they meet, for instance, traditional men and women enjoy and like each other less than androgynous people do. In a classic experiment, Ickes and Barnes (1978) paired men and women in couples in which (a) both partners fit the traditional gender roles, or (b) one or both partners were androgynous. The two people were introduced to each other and then simply left alone for 5 minutes sitting on a couch while the researchers covertly videotaped their interaction. The results were striking. The traditional couples talked less, looked at each other less, laughed and smiled less, and afterward reported that they liked each other less than did the other couples. (Should this surprise us? Think about it: Stylistically, what do a masculine man and a feminine woman have in common?) When an androgynous man met a traditional woman, an androgynous woman met a traditional man, or two androgynous people got together, they got along much better than traditional men and women did.

More importantly, the disadvantage faced by traditional couples does not disappear as time goes by. Surveys of marital satisfaction demonstrate that marriages in which both spouses adhere to stereotyped gender roles are generally less happy than those enjoyed by nontraditional couples (Helms et al., 2006). With their different styles and different domains of expertise, masculine men and feminine women simply do not find as much pleasure in each other as less traditional, less stereotyped people do (Marshall, 2010).

Perhaps this should be no surprise. When human beings devote themselves to intimate partnerships, they want affection, warmth, and understanding (Thomas et al., 2020). People who are low in expressiveness—who are not very warm, tender, sensitive

TABLE 1.2. Gender Roles

Instrumental Traits Expressive Traits

Assertiveness Warmth Self-Reliance Tenderness

Ambition Compassion Leadership Kindness

Decisiveness Sensitivity to Others

Our culture encourages men to be highly instrumental and women to be highly expressive, but which of these talents do you not want in an intimate companion?

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people—do not readily provide such warmth and tenderness; they are not very affection- ate (Miller et al., 2003). As a result, men or women who have spouses who are low in expressiveness are chronically less satisfied than are those whose partners are more sensitive, understanding, and kind. Around the world (Cao et al., 2019; Lease et al., 2013), across different ethnicities (Helms et al., 2019; Stanik & Bryant, 2012), and in both straight and gay partnerships (Wade & Donis, 2007), traditional men have roman- tic relationships of lower quality than more expressive men do. Thus, traditional gender roles do men a disservice, depriving them of skills that would make them more reward- ing husbands. Arguably, “when you rob people of the ability to feel and express the whole range of human emotions in an appropriate way, you also undermine their ability to connect and have the kinds of relationships we want our boys to have” (Chotiner, 2020). In addition, the stoicism that is a hallmark of traditional masculinity can actually be disadvantageous to men’s health; macho men are less likely than others to engage in preventive health care and to seek mental health care services when they need them (Pappas, 2019). Overall, it appears that no good “can come of teaching boys that they can’t express emotion openly; that they have to be ‘tough all the time’; that anything other than that makes them ‘feminine’ or weak” (Salam, 2019).

On the other hand, people who are low in instrumentality—who are low in asser- tiveness and personal strength—tend to have low self-esteem and to be less well adjusted than those who have better task-oriented skills (Stake & Eisele, 2010). People feel better about themselves when they are competent and effective at “taking care of

Stoic, traditional masculinity can be disadvantageous in intimate relationships. People are happier when they’re partnered with others who are higher in expressivity.

Sidney Harris/ScienceCartoonsPlus

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chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships 29

business” (Reis et al., 2000), so traditional gender roles also do women a disservice, depriving them of skills that would facilitate more accomplishments and achievements. Such roles also seem to cost women money; around the world, traditional women earn less on the job than their nontraditional co-workers do (Stickney & Konrad, 2007).

The upshot of all this is that both instrumentality and expressiveness are valuable traits, and the happiest, best-adjusted, most effective, mentally healthy people possess both sets of skills (Stake & Eisele, 2010). In particular, the most desirable spouses, those who are most likely to have contented, satisfied partners, are people who are both instrumental and expressive (Marshall, 2010). And in fact, when they ponder the partners they’d like to have, most people say that they’d prefer androgynous partners to those who are merely masculine or feminine (Thomae & Houston, 2016). So, sure enough, boys in high school who are sensitive to others’ feelings have close to twice as many friendships with girls as their more traditional peers do (Ciarrochi et al., 2017).

So, it’s ironic that we still tend to put pressure on those who do not rigidly adhere to their “proper” gender roles. Women who display as much competitiveness and asser- tiveness as men risk being perceived as pushy, impolite, and uppity (Williams & Tiedens, 2016). If anything, however, gender expectations are stricter for men than for women (Steinberg & Diekman, 2016); girls can be tomboys and nobody frets too much, but if a boy is too feminine, people worry (Miller, 2018). U.S. gender roles are changing slowly but surely; in particular, U.S. women are becoming more instru- mental (Eagly et al., 2020), and young adults of both sexes are gradually becoming more egalitarian and less traditional in their views of men and women (Donnelly et al., 2016). Nonetheless, even if they limit our indi- vidual potentials and are right only half the time, gen- der stereotypes persist (Haines et al., 2016). We still expect and too often encourage men to be instrumental and women to be expressive (Ellemers, 2018), and such expectations are important complications for many of our close relationships.

Personality

Shaped by our experiences, some consequential differences among people (such as attachment styles and gender differences) may change over a few years’ time, but other individual differences are more stable and lasting. Personality traits influence people’s behavior in their relationships across their entire lifetimes (Costa et al., 2019) with only gradual change over long periods of time (Damian et al., 2019).

The central traits known as the Big Five traits characterize people all over the world (Baranski et al., 2017), and they all affect the quality of the relationships people have. On the positive side, extraverted, agreeable, and conscientious people who are open to new experiences have happier relationships than do those who score lower on those traits (Schaffhuser et al., 2014). Extraverted people are outgoing and agreeable people are compassionate and trusting, so they tend to be likable. Conscientious peo- ple work hard and tend to follow the rules, so they weren’t very popular in high school (van der Linden et al., 2010), but once they grow up, they make dependable, trustworthy,

A Point to Ponder

If you saw a YouTube video of a new father crying when he holds his newborn baby for the first time, would you ad- mire him or disrespect him? Why?

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desirable partners (Nickel et al., 2019). “People who are less conscientious exceed their credit limit . . . cancel plans, curse, oversleep, and break promises” (J ackson et al., 2010, p. 507), so they tend to be unreliable companions.

The most influential Big Five trait, however, is the one that has a negative impact: negative emotionality (Malouff et al., 2010). High scorers are prone to anxiety and anger, and those unhappy tendencies tend to result in touchy, pessimistic, and argu- mentative interactions with others. In fact, a remarkable study that tracked 300 couples over a span of 45 years found that a full 10 percent of the satisfaction and contentment spouses would experience in their marriages could be predicted from measures of their negative emotionality when they were still engaged (Kelly & Conley, 1987). The more optimistic, positive, and emotionally stable the partners were, the happier their mar- riages turned out to be, and that’s a result that has stood the test of time (van Scheppingen et al., 2019). Everyone has good days and bad days, but some of us chronically have more bad days (and fewer good ones) than other people (Borghuis et al., 2020)—and those unlucky folks are especially likely to have unhappy, disappoint- ing relationships. (Do take note of this when you’re shopping for a mate! And assess your own Big Five traits, if you like, with the scale in Table 1.3.)

The Big Five are famous, but other notable traits influence our relationships, too. Consider selfishness. Unselfish people are attentive to others’ needs and are generally

The Big Five Personality Traits

A small cluster of fundamental traits does a good job of describing the broad themes in behavior, thoughts, and emotions that distinguish one person from another (Costa et al., 2019). These key characteris- tics are called the Big Five traits by person- ality researchers, and they differ in their inf luence on our intimate relationships. Which of these traits do you think matter most?

Open-mindedness—the degree to which peo- ple are imaginative, curious, unconventional, and artistic versus conforming, uncreative, and stodgy.

Extraversion—the extent to which people are gregarious, assertive, and sociable versus cau- tious, reclusive, and shy.

Conscientiousness—the extent to which peo- ple are dutiful, dependable, responsible, and orderly versus unreliable, disorganized, and careless.

Agreeableness—the degree to which people are compassionate, cooperative, good-natured, and trusting versus suspicious, selfish, and hostile.

Negative Emotionality—the degree to which people are prone to fluctuating moods and high levels of negative emotion such as worry, anxiety, and anger.

The five traits are listed in order from the least important to the most influential (Malouff et al., 2010). People are happier when they have imaginative, adventurous, so- ciable partners, but what you really want is a lover who is responsible and reliable, gener- ous and thoughtful, and optimistic and emo- tionally stable. And after you’ve been together for 30 years or so, you may find that conscien- tiousness becomes particularly important (Claxton et al., 2012); dependable partners who keep all their promises are satisfying companions (Williams et al., 2019).

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TABLE 1.3 The Big Five Inventory–2 Extra-Short Form

These 15 items provide a very efficient way to reliably assess our Big Five traits (Soto & John, 2017). To which trait does each item pertain? Which of the Five characterize you best?

Here are a number of characteristics that may or may not apply to you. For example, do you agree that you are someone who likes to spend time with others? Please write a number next to each statement to indicate the extent to which you agree or disagree with that statement.

1 Disagree strongly

2 Disagree a little

3 Neutral;

no opinion

4 Agree a little

5 Agree

strongly

I am someone who...

1. ____ Tends to be quiet. 2. ____ Is compassionate, has a soft heart. 3. ____ Tends to be disorganized. 4. ____ Worries a lot. 5. ____ Is fascinated by art, music, or literature. 6. ____ Is dominant, acts as a leader. 7. ____ Is sometimes rude to others. 8. ____ Has difficulty getting started on tasks. 9. ____ Tends to feel depressed, blue. 10. ____ Has little interest in abstract ideas. 11. ____ Is full of energy. 12. ____ Assumes the best about people. 13. ____ Is reliable, can always be counted on. 14. ____ Is emotionally stable, not easily upset. 15. ____ Is original, comes up with new ideas.

Before you add up your scores for each of the traits, reverse the rating you gave yourself on items 1, 3, 7, 8, 10, and 14. That is, if you gave yourself a 1, change it to 5; 2 becomes 4, 4 becomes 2, and a 5 should be changed to 1. Then, compile your total score for each trait this way:

Extraversion: items 1, 6, 11   Agreeableness: 2, 7, 12   Conscientiousness: 3, 8, 13     Negative Emotionality: 4, 9, 14     Open-Mindedness: 5, 10, 15

How do your scores compare to those of American college students? Average scores for Extra- version range from 2.2 to 4; for Agreeableness, 3 to 4.4; for Conscientiousness, 2.6 to 4.2; for Negative Emotionality, 2.1 to 3.9; and for Open-Mindedness, 2.7 to 4.3. Above or below those scores, you’re noticeably higher or lower on that trait than most collegians in the United States (Soto & John, 2017).

considerate and charitable (Diebels et al., 2018), and their selflessness is attractive (Arnocky et al., 2017), in part because they seem trustworthy to others (Mogilski et al., 2019). Their generosity also seems to pay off down the road; unselfish people have more children and higher incomes during their lives than greedy, selfish people do (Eriksson et al., 2020).

The BFI-2 items are copyright 2015 by Oliver P. John and Christopher J. Soto and are reprinted with the generous permission of Dr. Soto and Dr. John.

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32 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

Negatively related to (but distinct from) selfishness is humility. Humble people think that “no matter how extraordinary one’s accomplishments or characteristics may be, one is not entitled” to special treatment from others (Banker & Leary, 2020, p. 738). They not only lack arrogance, but they also recognize and accept their limita- tions and don’t take offense when others disagree with them (Porter & Schumann, 2018)—and they’re more forgiving than most, too (Antonucci et al., 2019). So, they’re easy to live with (Van Tongeren et al., 2019), and indeed, potential dating partners who are humble are preferred to those who are more egotistical or self-important (Van Tongeren et al., 2014). Selfishness and humility may well be other characteristics you’ll wish to consider when you’re evaluating potential partners!

There are other more specific personal characteristics that regulate our relation- ships, and I’ll mention several in later chapters. (Check out, for instance, whether or not we like casual sex [on page 356] and whether or not we can control ourselves [on page 549].) For now, let’s note that although our personalities clearly have a genetic basis (Vukasović & Bratko, 2015), they can be shaped to a degree by our connections to others. For instance, the agreeableness of husbands and wives drops during the first 18 months of their marriages as they adjust to their new roles and greater interdepen- dence (Lavner et al., 2018). Overall, however, our personalities affect our relationships more than our relationships, good or bad, change our personalities (Deventer et al., 2019). People do mature and change as they age: On average, we become more con- scientious, more agreeable, and more emotionally stable over time. But our standing relative to our peers tends not to change, so that those of us who worry more than most tend to remain more prone than others to negative emotions throughout our lives (Damian et al., 2019). Whatever traits distinguish and characterize a potential partner in his or her twenties are likely to still define him or her 50 years from now.

Self-Esteem

Most of us like ourselves, but some of us do not. Our evaluations of ourselves consti- tute our self-esteem, and when we hold favorable judgments of our skills and traits, our self-esteem is high; when we doubt ourselves, self-esteem is low. Because people with high self-esteem are generally happier and more successful than those with low self- regard (Orth & Robins, 2014), it’s widely assumed that it’s good to feel good about yourself (Leary, 2019).

But how do people come to like themselves? A leading theory argues that self- esteem is a subjective gauge, a sociometer, that measures the quality of our relationships with others (Leary, 2012). When others like us, we like ourselves; when other people regard us positively and value their relationships with us, self-esteem is high. However, if we don’t interest others—if others seem not to care whether or not we are part of their lives—self-esteem is low (Leary & Acosta, 2018). So, “self-esteem helps us keep track of how well we are doing socially” (Leary, 2019, p. 2). It operates in this manner, according to sociometer theory, because it is an evolved mechanism that serves our need to belong. This argument s uggests that, because their reproductive success depended on s taying in the tribe and being accepted by others, early humans became sensitive to any signs of exclusion that might precede rejection by others. Self-esteem became a psychological gauge that alerted people to declining acceptance by others,

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and dislike or disinterest from others gradually caused people to dislike themselves (Kavanagh & Scrutton, 2015).

This perspective nicely fits most of what we know about the origins and operation of self-esteem. There’s no question, for instance, that people feel better about them- selves when they think they’re attractive to the other sex (Bale & Archer, 2013). And the regard we receive from others clearly affects our subsequent self- evaluations (Jayamaha & Overall, 2019). In particular, events that involve interpersonal rejection damage our self-esteem in a way that other disappointments do not. Leary and his colleagues (1995) demonstrated this point in a clever study in which research partici- pants were led to believe that they would be excluded from an attractive group either through bad luck—they had been randomly selected to be sent home—or because they had been voted out by the other members of the group. Even though the same desir- able opportunity was lost in both situations, the people who had been personally rejected felt much worse about themselves than did those whose loss was impersonal. It’s also interesting to note that public events that others witness affect our self-esteem more than do private events that are otherwise identical but are known only to us. In this and several other respects, whether we realize it or not, our self-evaluations seem to be much affected by what others think of us (Cameron & Granger, 2019), and this is true around the world (Denissen et al., 2008).

Here is further evidence, then, that we humans are a very social species: It’s hard to like ourselves (and, indeed, it would be unrealistic to do so) if others don’t like us, too. In most cases, people with chronically low self-esteem have developed their nega- tive self-evaluations through an unhappy history of failing to receive sufficient accep- tance and appreciation from other people (Orth, 2018).

And sometimes, this is very unfair. Some people are victimized by abusive relation- ships through no fault of their own, and, despite being likable people with fine social skills, they develop low self-esteem as a result of mistreatment from others. What hap- pens when those people enter new relationships with kinder, more appreciative part- ners? Does the new feedback they receive slowly improve their self-esteem?

Not necessarily. A compelling program of research by Sandra Murray, John Holmes, Joanne Wood, and Justin Cavallo has demonstrated that people with low self- esteem sometimes sabotage their relationships by underestimating their partners’ love for them (Murray et al., 2001) and perceiving disregard when none exists (Murray et al., 2002). Take a look at Table 1.4. People with low self-regard find it hard to believe that they are well and truly loved by their partners and, as a result, they tend not to be optimistic that their loves will last. “Even in their closest relationships,” people with low self-esteem “typically harbor serious (but unwarranted) insecurities about their partners’ feelings for them” (Holmes & Wood, 2009, p. 250). This leads them to over- react to their partners’ occasional bad moods (B ellavia & Murray, 2003); they feel more rejected, experience more hurt, and get more angry than do those with higher self-esteem. And these painful feelings make it harder for them to behave constructively in response to their imagined peril. Whereas people with high self-regard draw closer to their partners and seek to repair the relationship when frustrations arise, people with low self-esteem defensively distance themselves, stay surly, and behave badly (Murray, B ellavia et al., 2003). They also feel even worse about themselves (Murray, Griffin et al., 2003).

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34 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

All of this occurs, say Murray and her colleagues (Cavallo et al., 2014), because we take large risks when we come to depend on others. Close ties to an intimate partner allow us to enjoy rich rewards of support and care, but they also leave us vulnerable to devastating betrayal and rejection if our partners prove to be untrust- worthy. Because they are confident about their partners’ love and regard for them, p eople with high self-esteem draw closer to their partners when difficulties arise. In contrast, people with low self-esteem have lasting doubts about their partners’ regard and reliability, so when times get tough, they withdraw from their partners in an effort to protect themselves. We all need to balance connectedness with self-protection, Mur- ray’s team suggests, but people with low self-esteem put their fragile egos before their relationships, and that’s self-defeating when they have loving, devoted partners and there is nothing to fear (Murray et al., 2013).

TABLE 1.4. How My Partner Sees Me

Sandra Murray and her colleagues use this scale in their studies of self-esteem in close rela- tionships. People with high self-esteem believe that their partners hold them in high regard, but people with low self-esteem worry that their partners do not like or respect them as much. What do you think your partner thinks of you?

 In many ways, your partner may see you in roughly the same way you see yourself. Yet in other ways, your partner may see you differently than you see yourself. For example, you may feel quite shy at parties, but your partner might tell you that you really seem quite relaxed and outgoing on these occasions. On the other hand, you and your partner may both agree that you are quite intelligent and patient.

 For each trait or attribute that follows, please indicate how you think that your partner sees you. For example, if you think that your partner sees the attribute “self-assured” as moderately characteristic of you, you would choose “5.”

 Respond using the scale below. Please enter your response in the blank to the left of each trait or attribute listed.

1 Not at All

Characteristic

2 3 Somewhat

Characteristic

4 5 Moderately

Characteristic

6 7 Very

Characteristic

8 9 Completely

Characteristic

My partner sees me as . . .

____ Kind and Affectionate ____ Tolerant and Accepting

____ Critical and Judgmental ____ Thoughtless

____ Self-Assured ____ Patient

____ Sociable/Extraverted ____ Rational

____ Intelligent ____ Understanding

____ Lazy ____ Distant

____ Open and Disclosing ____ Complaining

____ Controlling and Dominant ____ Responsive

____ Witty and Humorous ____ Immature

____ Moody ____ Warm

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As a result, the self-doubts and thin skins of people with low self-esteem lead them to make mountains out of molehills. They stay on alert for signs of rejection (H. Li et al., 2012), and they wrongly perceive small bumps in the road as worrisome signs of declining commitment in their partners. Then, if they seek reassurance, they do so timidly and receive less understanding and support from their partners as a result (Cortes & Wood, 2018). Even their Facebook updates tend to be pessimistic and self- critical, and they receive fewer “likes” and comments than others do (Forest & Wood, 2012). By comparison, people with high self-esteem correctly shrug off the same small bumps and remain confident of their partners’ acceptance and positive regard. The unfortunate net result is that once it is formed, low self-esteem may be hard to over- come (Kuster & Orth, 2013); even after 10 years of marriage, people with low self- esteem still tend to believe that their spouses love and accept them less than those faithful spouses really do (Murray et al., 2000), and that regrettable state of affairs undermines their—and their spouse’s—satisfaction (Erol & Orth, 2013).

There is some good news in all of this: When they notice their lover’s insecurity, devoted partners may increase their expressions of regard and affection (Lemay & Ryan, 2018), intentionally offering compliments and encouragement that can boost their lover’s self-esteem (Jayamaha & Overall, 2019). And overall, our self-esteem tends to increase over the decades from young adulthood through middle age (Orth et al., 2018). That’s fortunate because low self-esteem undermines relationships, making them more fragile (Luciano & Orth, 2017), and relationships are clearly more fulfilling for both partners when they both have high self-esteem (Robinson & Cameron, 2012).

Thus, our self-esteem appears to both result from and then subsequently steer our interpersonal relationships (Harris & Orth, 2020). What we think of ourselves seems to depend, at least in part, on the quality of our connections to others. And those self-evaluations affect our ensuing interactions with new partners, who provide us fur- ther evidence of our interpersonal worth. In fundamental ways, what we know of ourselves emerges from our partnerships with others and then matters thereafter (Mund et al., 2015).

Sexual Orientation

The last individual difference we’ll consider actually doesn’t make much of a difference. Like gender, our sexual orientations are complex, being comprised of our identities (that is, our self-definitions and self-presentations as heterosexual, bisexual, homosexual, or asexual11), our sexual attractions, and our actual sexual behaviors—and these components do not always cohere as well as you might expect (Fu et al., 2019). Lots of people who consider themselves to be heterosexual have experienced infatuations with, and fantasies involving, others of the same sex (Savin-Williams, 2014). And in fact, in a large U.S. sample, 15 percent of those who judged themselves to be “exclusively heterosexual” were nevertheless strongly attracted to the other sex, and 6 percent of them had had sex with someone of the same sex in the past year (Legate & Rogge, 2019). Like attachment styles, sexual orientation is better understood as a continuum that takes various forms than as a set of simple categories that don’t overlap at all (see Table 1.5).

11Asexuals don’t feel much sexual desire and aren’t sexually attracted to anyone.

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36 chapter 1: The Building Blocks of Relationships

TABLE 1.5. Sexual Orientation is a Spectrum

0 1 2 3 4 5 6

Completely, Mostly Mildly Bisexual Mildly Mostly Completely, exclusively,

heterosexual heterosexual equally

attracted to men and women

homosexual exclusively, homosexual

Scales like this one that allow people to report levels of other-sex and same-sex attractions and behavior instead of simple categories of “heterosexual,” “bisexual,” or “homosexual” are now routinely used in studies of sexuality. In 2019, using a similar scale, 24 percent of a large sample of adults in Great Britain said they weren’t exclusively heterosexual or homosex- ual (Waldersee, 2019).

Around the world, most people (90 percent of men and 91 percent of women) say they’re heterosexual. Women (7 percent) are more likely to report a bisexual identity than men (5 percent) are, whereas men (5 percent) are more likely than women (2 percent) to report a homosexual identity (Rahman et al., 2020). Being minorities, and despite dramatic recent shifts in public attitudes about same-sex relationships (see page 345), lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) couples still often face a variety of burden- some stressors—disregard, disapproval, and discrimination (Diamond & Blair, 2018)— that don’t distress heterosexual couples (Rostosky & Riggle, 2017).

So, the social environments that LGB couples inhabit can still differ from those of their heterosexual brothers and sisters (Ecker et al., 2019)—but the intimacy they share inside their relationships does not (Frost et al., 2015). The nature and workings of fulfilling connections between partners are not affected much by sexual orientation at all. Other than their relative numbers, LGBs and heterosexuals are resoundingly similar on most of the topics we’ll encounter in this book. For instance, gays and lesbians exhibit the same attachment styles in the same proportions as heterosexual men and women do (Roisman et al., 2008), and they, too, are happier with romantic partners of high (rather than low) expressivity (Wade & Donis, 2007). They fall in love the same way (Kurdek, 2006), benefit from marriage to the same extent (Chen & van Ours, 2018), and feel the same passions, experience the same doubts, and feel the same commitments as heterosexuals do (Joyner et al., 2019). (Why would you expect any- thing different?)

Now, there are some potentially important differences between same-sex and other- sex relationships. Gay men tend to be more expressive than heterosexual men, on aver- age, and lesbians tend to be more instrumental than other women, so gays and lesbians are less likely than heterosexuals to adhere to traditional gender roles (Lippa, 2005). Gays and lesbians also tend to be better educated and to be more liberal (Grollman, 2017). But the big difference between same-sex and other-sex relationships is that a gay couple is composed of two people who identify as men and a lesbian couple is composed of two people who identify as women. To some degree, same-sex couples may behave differently than heterosexual couples do, not because of their sexual orientations but because of the sexes of the people involved. For instance, when their relationships are

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new, gay men have sex more often than heterosexual couples do, and lesbian couples have sex less often than heterosexual couples do (Diamond, 2015). The more men there are in a partnership, the more often the cou- ple has sex—but that’s probably because men have higher sex drives than women do (see page 360), not because there’s anything special about gay men (Regan, 2015).

Notably, where differences in relationship function- ing do exist, gays and lesbians are the clear winners. They have better, more satisfying relationships than heterosexuals do, on average (Coontz, 2020). They divide up household chores more fairly, communicate openly and honestly, and respect and appreciate individual differences, so that they experience less conflict than other-sex couples do (Rostosky & Riggle, 2017). Any notion that there’s anything basically wrong with same-sex relationships is clearly absurd.

Bisexuals, however, tend not to fare as well. On average, they’re less satisfied with their romantic relationships than lesbian, gay, or heterosexual couples are (Perales & Baxter, 2018), and there may be several reasons why. Most of them (88 percent) are partnered with someone of the other sex (Brown, 2019) who may or may not share their orientation (Mark et al., 2020). In being attracted to both sexes, they elicit suspicion from both heterosexuals and gays and lesbians (Feinstein & Dyar, 2018), and in many cases, “their lesbian or gay counterparts are their harshest crit- ics” (Matsick & Rubin, 2018, p. 150). As a result, bisexuals are much less likely than gays or lesbians to disclose their sexual orientation to others; whereas 75 percent of gays and lesbians have “come out” to all or most of the important people in their lives, only 19 percent of bisexuals have done so—and 26 percent of them haven’t come out to anyone (Brown, 2019).

Note, however, that the difficulties bisexuals face result from misunderstanding and disapproval from others. When they attain it, comfortable intimacy is satisfying to bisex- uals just as it is everyone else (Mark et al., 2020), and the bottom line is that there’s no reason to write two different books on Intimate Relationships12: Intimacy operates the same way in both same-sex and other-sex partnerships, regardless of sexual orientation.

THE INFLUENCE OF HUMAN NATURE

Now that we have surveyed some key characteristics that distinguish people from one another, we can address the possibility that our relationships display some underlying themes that reflect the animal nature shared by all humankind. Our concern here is with evolutionary influences that have shaped close relationships over countless gen- erations, instilling in us certain tendencies that are found in everyone (Buss, 2019).

Evolutionary psychology starts with three fundamental assumptions. First, sexual selection has helped make us the species we are today (Puts, 2016). You’ve probably heard of natural selection, which refers to the advantages conferred on animals that cope more effectively than others with predators and physical challenges such as food

A Point to Ponder

Obviously, in same-sex part- nerships, people have part- ners of the same sex. How much do you think that con- tributes to the success of their relationships? Why?

12Thank goodness.

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shortages. Sexual selection involves advantages that result in greater success at repro- duction. And importantly:

Contrary to what many people have been taught, evolution has nothing to do with the survival of the fittest. It is not a question of whether you live or die. The key to evolu- tion is reproduction. Whereas all organisms eventually die, not all organisms repro- duce. Further, among those that do reproduce, some leave more descendants than others. (Ash & Gallup, 2008, p. 313)

This point of view holds that motives such as the need to belong have presumably come to characterize human beings because they were adaptive, conferring some sort of reproductive advantage to those who possessed them. As I suggested earlier, the early humans who sought cooperative closeness with others were probably more likely than asocial loners to have children who grew up to have children of their own. Over time, then, to the extent that the desire to affiliate with others is heritable (and it is; Tellegen et al., 1988), sexual selection would have made the need to belong more prevalent, with fewer and fewer people being born without it. In keeping with this example, evolutionary prin- ciples assert that any universal psychological mechanism exists in its present form because it consistently solved some problem of survival or reproduction in the past (Buss, 2019).

Second, evolutionary psychology suggests that men and women should differ from one another only to the extent that they have historically faced different reproductive dilemmas (Geary, 2010). Thus, men and women should behave similarly in close rela- tionships except in those instances in which different, specialized styles of behavior would allow better access to mates or promote superior survival of one’s offspring. Are there such situations? Let’s address that question by posing two hypothetical queries:

If, during one year, a man has sex with 100 different women, how many children can he father? (The answer, of course, is “lots, perhaps as many as 100.”)

If, during one year, a woman has sex with 100 different men, how many children can she have? (Probably just one.)

Obviously, there’s a big difference in the minimum time and effort that men and women have to invest in each child they produce. For a man, the minimum requirement is a single ejaculation; given access to receptive mates, a man might father hundreds of children during his lifetime. But a woman can have children only until her menopause, and each child she has requires an enormous investment of time and energy. These biological differences in men’s and women’s obligatory parental investment—the time, energy, and resources one must provide to one’s offspring in order to reproduce—may have supported the evolution of different strategies for selecting mates (Geary, 2000). Conceivably, given their more limited reproductive potential, women in our ancestral past who chose their mates carefully reproduced more successfully (with more of their children surviving to have children of their own) than did women who were less thoughtful and deliberate in their choices of partners. In contrast, men who promiscu- ously pursued every available sexual opportunity may have reproduced more success- fully. If they flitted from partner to partner, their children may have been less likely to survive, but what they didn’t offer in quality (of parenting) they could make up for in quantity (of children). Thus, today—as this evolutionary account predicts—women do

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choose their sexual partners more carefully than men do. They insist on smarter, friendlier, more prestigious, and more emotionally stable partners than men will accept, and they are less interested in casual, uncommitted sex than men are (N. Li et al., 2012). Perhaps this sex difference evolved over time.

Another reproductive difference between the sexes is that a woman always knows for sure whether or not a particular child is hers. By comparison, a man suffers pater- nity uncertainty; unless he is completely confident that his mate has been faithful to him, he cannot be absolutely certain that her child is his (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Perhaps because of that, even though women cheat less than men do (Tsapelas et al., 2011), men are more preoccupied with worries about their partners’ infidelity than women are (Schützwohl, 2006). This difference, too, may have evolved over time.

An evolutionary perspective also makes a distinction between short-term and long-term mating strategies (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Men and women both seem to pursue different sorts of attributes in the other sex when they’re having a brief fling than when they’re entering a longer, more committed relationship. In particular, men have a greater desire than women do for sexual liaisons of short duration; they are more interested in brief affairs with a variety of partners, and when they enter new relationships, they’re ready to have sex sooner than women are (Schmitt, 2016). As a result, when they’re on the prowl, men are attracted to women who seem to be sexually available and “easy” (Schmitt et al., 2001). However, if they think about settling down, the same men who consider promiscuous women to be desirable partners in casual relationships often prefer chaste women as pro- spective spouses (Buss, 2000). When they’re thinking long-term, men also value physical attractiveness more than women do; they seek wives who are young and pretty, and as they age, they marry women increasingly younger than themselves (Conway et al., 2015).

Women exhibit different patterns. When women select short-term mates—particu- larly when they have extramarital affairs (Greiling & Buss, 2000)—they seek sexy, char- ismatic, dominant men with lots of masculine appeal. But when they evaluate potential husbands, they look for good financial prospects; they seek men with incomes and resources who presumably can provide a safe environment for their children, even when those men aren’t the sexiest guys in the pack (Gangestad & Simpson, 2000). In general, women care more than men do about the financial prospects and status of their long- term partners (Conroy-Beam et al., 2015).

The effort to delineate human nature by identifying patterns of behavior that are found in all of humanity is one of the compelling aspects of the evolutionary perspec- tive. In fact, the different preferences I just mentioned—with men valuing good looks and women valuing good incomes—have been found in dozens of cultures, everywhere they have been studied around the world (Buss, 2019).13 However, an evolutionary perspective does not imply that culture is unimportant.

13Here’s a chance for you to rehearse what you learned earlier in this chapter about sex differences. On aver- age, men and women differ in the importance they attach to physical attractiveness and income, but that doesn’t mean that women don’t care about looks and men don’t care about money. And overall, as we’ll see in chapter 3, men and women mostly want the same things, such as warmth, emotional stability, and generous affection, from their romantic partners. Despite the sex differences I just described, people do not want looks or money at the expense of other valuable characteristics that men and women both want (Li, 2008). Finally, before I finish this footnote, do you see how differences in parental investment may underlie men’s interest in looks and women’s interest in money? Think about it, and we’ll return to this point in chapter 3.

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Indeed, a third basic assumption of evolutionary psychology is that cultural influ- ences determine whether evolved patterns of behavior are adaptive—and cultural change occurs faster than evolution does. Our ancient forebears were walking around on two legs millions of years ago,14 facing challenges we can only imagine. A best guess is that more than one in every four infants failed to survive their first year of life, and about half didn’t live long enough to reach puberty (Volk & Atkinson, 2013). Things are different now. Our species displays patterns of behavior that were adaptive eons ago, but not all of those inherited tendencies may fit the modern environments we inhabit today (Li et al., 2018). For instance, cavemen may have reproduced successfully if they tried to mate with every possible partner, but modern men may not: In just the last two generations, we have seen (a) the creation of reproductive technologies—such as birth control pills—that allow women complete control of their fertility, and (b) the spread of a lethal virus that is transmitted through sexual contact (the human immu- nodeficiency virus that causes AIDS). These days, a desire for multiple partners is probably less adaptive for men than it was millions of years ago. Conceivably, modern men may reproduce more successfully if they display a capacity for commitment and monogamy that encourages their partners to allow a pregnancy to occur. But the human race is still evolving. Sexual selection will ultimately favor styles of behavior that fit our new environment, but it will take several thousand generations for such adaptations to occur. (And how will our cultures have changed by then?)

Thus, an evolutionary perspective provides a fascinating explanation for common patterns in modern relationships (Eastwick, 2016): Certain themes and some sex dif- ferences exist because they spring from evolved psychological mechanisms that were useful long ago. We are not robots who are mindlessly enacting genetic directives, and we are not all alike (Boutwell & Boisvert, 2014), but we may all have inherited habits that are triggered by the situations we encounter. Moreover, our habits may fit our modern situations to varying degrees. Behavior results from the interplay of both per- sonal and situational influences, but some common reactions in people result from evolved human nature itself:

The pressures to which we have been exposed over millennia have left a mental and emotional legacy. Some of these emotions and reactions, derived from the species who were our ancestors, are unnecessary in a modern age, but these vestiges of a former existence are indelibly printed in our make-up. (Winston, 2002, p. 3)

This is a provocative point of view that has attracted both acclaim and criticism. On the one hand, the evolutionary perspective has prompted intriguing new discov- eries (Buss, 2019). On the other hand, assumptions about the primeval social envi- ronments from which human nature emerged are necessarily speculative. And importantly, critics assert, an evolutionary model is not the only reasonable explanation for many of the patterns at issue (Eagly & Wood, 2013). Women may have to pick their mates more carefully than men do, for instance, not because of

14I don’t know about you, but this blows my mind. The bones of Lucy, the famous female Australopithecus afarensis, are estimated to be 3.2 million years old, a span of time I find to be incomprehensible. That’s how long our predecessors have been adjusting, adapting, and reproducing. Is it so unlikely that, even in the midst of huge individual idiosyncrasy, some behavioral patterns became commonplace?

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the pressures of parental investment but because cultures routinely allow women less control over financial resources (Wood & Eagly, 2007); arguably, women have to be concerned about their spouses’ incomes when it’s hard for them to earn as much money themselves. If women routinely filled similar roles and had social status as high as men’s, women’s greater interest in a mate’s money might be much reduced (Zentner & Mitura, 2012).

Thus, critics of an evolutionary perspective emphasize the role of culture in shaping male and female behavior (Eagly & Wood, 2012), and they contend that patterns of behavior that are presumed to be evolved tendencies are both less notice- able and more variable across cultures than an evolutionary model would suggest (Eagly & Wood, 2013). Proponents respond that, of course, cultures are hugely inf luential—after all, they determine which behaviors are adaptive and which are not—but there are differences in the mating strategies and behavior of men and women that can’t be explained by social roles and processes (Buss & Schmitt, 2019). The contest between these camps isn’t finished (Buss & von Hippel, 2018), and we’ll encounter it again later on. For now, one thing is certain: Right or wrong, evolution- ary models have generated fascinating research that has been good for relationship science. And take note of the bottom line: Whether it evolved or was a social creation (or both), there may well be a human nature that shapes our intimate relationships.

THE INFLUENCE OF INTERACTION

The final building block of relationships is the interaction that the two partners share. So far, we’ve focused on the idiosyncratic experiences and personalities that individuals bring to a relationship, but it’s time to acknowledge that relationships are much more than the sum of their parts. Relationships emerge from the combination of their participants’ his- tories and talents (Mund et al., 2016), and those amalgamations may be quite different from the simple sum of the individuals who create them. Chemists are used to thinking this way; when they mix two elements (such as hydrogen and oxygen), they often get a compound (such as water) that doesn’t resemble either of its constituent parts. In a similar fashion, the relationship two people create results from contributions from each of them but may only faintly resemble the relationships they share with other people.

Consider the levels of trust you feel toward others. Even if you’re a secure and trusting person, you undoubtedly trust some people more than others because trust is a two-way street that is influenced both by your dispositions and those of your partners (Simpson, 2007). Moreover, it emerges from the dynamic give-and-take you and your partners share each day; trust is a fluid process rather than a static, changeless thing, and it ebbs and flows in all of your relationships.

Every intimate relationship is like this. Individually, two partners inevitably encoun- ter fluctuating moods and variable health and energy; then, when they interact, their mutual influence on one another may produce a constantly changing variety of out- comes (Totenhagen et al., 2016). Over time, of course, unmistakable patterns of inter- action will often distinguish one relationship from another (Finkel et al., 2017). Still, at any given moment, a relationship may be an inconstant entity, the product of shift- ing transactions of complex people.

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Overall, then, relationships are constructed of diverse influences that may range from the fads and fashions of current culture to the basic nature of the human race. Working alongside those generic influences are various idiosyncratic factors such as personality and experience, some of them learned and some of them inherited. And ultimately, two people who hail from the same planet—but who may otherwise be somewhat different in every other respect—begin to interact. The result may be frustrating or fulfilling, but the possibilities are always fascinating—and that’s what relationships are made of.

THE DARK SIDE OF RELATIONSHIPS

I began this chapter by asserting the value of intimacy to human beings, so, to be fair, I should finish it by admitting that intimacy has potential costs as well. We need inti- macy—we suffer without it—but distress and displeasure sometimes result from our dealings with others. Indeed, relationships can be disappointing in so many ways that whole books can, and have been, written about their drawbacks (Spitzberg & Cupach, 2014)! When they’re close to others, people may fear that their sensitive secrets will be revealed or turned against them. They may dread the loss of autonomy and personal control that comes with interdependency (Baxter, 2004), and they may worry about being abandoned by those on whom they rely. They recognize that there is dishonesty in relationships and that people sometimes confuse lust with love (Diamond, 2014). And in fact, most of us (56 percent) have had a troublesome relationship in the last 5 years (Levitt et al., 1996), so these are not empty fears.

Some of us fear intimacy (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2018). Indeed, some of us anx- iously expect that others will reject us, and we live on edge waiting for the relational axe to fall (Kawamoto et al., 2015). But whether our fears are overstated or merely realistic, we’re all likely to experience unexpected, frustrating costs in our relationships on occasion (Miller, 1997). And the deleterious consequences for our physical health of disappointment and distress in our close relationships can be substantial (Gouin et al., 2020).

So why take the risk? Because we are a social species. We need each other. We prematurely wither and die without close connections to other people. Relationships can be complex, but they are essential parts of our lives, so they are worth understand- ing as thoroughly as possible. I’m glad you’re reading this book, and I’ll try to facilitate your understanding in the chapters that follow.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Mark and Wendy met during their junior years in college, and they instantly found a lot to like in each other. Wendy was pretty and very feminine and rather meek, and Mark liked the fact that he was able to entice her to have sex with him on their second date. Wendy was susceptible to his charms because she unjustly doubted her desirability, and she was excited that a dominant, charismatic man found her attrac- tive. They started cohabitating during their senior years and married 6 months after graduation. They developed a traditional partnership, with Wendy staying home when

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their children were young and Mark applying himself to his career. He succeeded in his profession, winning several lucrative promotions, but Wendy began to feel that he was married more to his work than to her. She wanted him to talk to her more, and he began to wish that she was eating less and taking better care of herself.

Having read this chapter, what do you think the future holds for Mark and Wendy? How happy will they be with each other in another 10 years? Why?

KEY TERMS

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The Nature and Importance of Intimacy

This book focuses on adult friendships and romantic relationships.

The Nature of Intimacy. Intimate relationships differ from more casual associa- tions in at least seven specific ways: knowledge, interdependence, caring, trust, responsive- ness, mutuality, and commitment.

The Need to Belong. Humans display a need to belong, a drive to maintain regular interaction with affectionate, intimate partners. Adverse consequences may follow if the need remains unfulfilled over time.

The Influence of Culture

Cultural norms regarding relationships in the United States have changed dra- matically over the last 50 years. Fewer people are marrying than ever before, and those

knowledge ......................................... p. 2 interdependence .............................. p. 2 caring ................................................ p. 2 trust ................................................... p. 2 responsiveness ................................. p. 2 mutuality .......................................... p. 2 commitment ..................................... p. 2 need to belong ................................. p. 4 singlism............................................. p. 9 technoference ................................. p. 12 phubbing......................................... p. 12 sex ratio .......................................... p. 13 attachment styles........................... p. 14 secure .............................................. p. 14 anxious-ambivalent ........................ p. 14 avoidant .......................................... p. 15 secure attachment ......................... p. 16 preoccupied attachment ............... p. 16 fearful attachment ......................... p. 16

dismissing attachment .................. p. 16 avoidance of intimacy .................. p. 16 anxiety about abandonment ........ p. 17 gender roles ................................... p. 24 androgynous ................................... p. 25 instrumental traits ......................... p. 25 expressive traits ............................. p. 25 open-mindedness ........................... p. 30 extraversion .................................... p. 30 conscientiousness .......................... p. 30 agreeableness ................................. p. 30 negative emotionality .................... p. 30 selfishness ...................................... p. 30 humility .......................................... p. 32 self-esteem ...................................... p. 32 sociometer ...................................... p. 32 parental investment ....................... p. 38 paternity uncertainty .................... p. 39

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who do marry wait longer to do so. People routinely cohabit, and that often makes a future divorce more, not less, likely.

Sources of Change. Economic changes, increasing individualism, and new technol- ogy contribute to cultural change. So does the sex ratio; cultures with high sex ratios are characterized by traditional roles for men and women, whereas low sex ratios are correlated with more permissive behavior.

The Influence of Experience

Children’s interactions with their caregivers produce different styles of attachment. Four styles—secure, preoccupied, fearful, and dismissing—which differ in avoidance of intimacy and anxiety about abandonment, are now recognized.

These orientations are mostly learned. Thus, our beliefs about the nature and worth of close relationships are shaped by our experiences within them.

The Influence of Individual Differences

There’s wide variation in people’s abilities and preferences, but individual differ- ences are usually gradual and subtle instead of abrupt.

Sex Differences. Despite lay beliefs that men and women are quite different, most sex differences are quite small. The range of variation among members of a given sex is always large compared to the average difference between the sexes, and the overlap of the sexes is so substantial that many members of one sex will always score higher than the average member of the other sex. Thus, the sexes are much more similar than different on most of the topics of interest to relationship science.

Gender Differences. Gender differences refer to social and psychological distinctions that are taught to people by their cultures. Men are expected to be dominant and assertive, women to be warm and emotionally expressive—but a third of us are androgynous and pos- sess both instrumental, task-oriented skills and expressive, social and emotional talents. Men and women who adhere to traditional gender roles do not like each other, either at first meeting or later during a marriage, as much as less stereotyped, androgynous people do.

Personality. Personality traits are stable tendencies that characterize people’s thoughts, feelings, and behavior across their whole lives. Open-mindedness, extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness help produce pleasant relationships, but negative emotionality undermines one’s contentment.

Self-Esteem. What we think of ourselves emerges from our interactions with oth- ers. The sociometer theory argues that if others regard us positively, self-esteem is high, but if others don’t want to associate with us, self-esteem is low. People who have low self-esteem undermine and sabotage their close relationships by underestimating their partners’ love for them and overreacting to imagined threats.

Sexual Orientation. Lesbians and gays experience intimacy in the same ways that heterosexuals do, but often enjoy relationships that are more satisfying; there may be advantages—greater equality, better communication, more respect—in having a partner

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of the same sex. Bisexuals elicit more suspicion, but they, too, prosper in loving relationships.

The Influence of Human Nature

An evolutionary perspective assumes that sexual selection shapes humankind, influenced, in part, by sex differences in parental investment and paternity uncertainty. The sexes pursue different mates when they’re interested in a long, committed relation- ship than they do when they’re interested in a short-term affair. The evolutionary perspective also assumes that cultural influences determine whether inherited habits are still adaptive—and some of them may not be.

The Influence of Interaction

Relationships result from the combinations of their participants’ histories and talents, and thus are often more than the sum of their parts. Relationships are fluid processes rather than static entities.

The Dark Side of Relationships

There are potential costs, as well as rewards, to intimacy. So why take the risk? Because we are a social species, and we need each other.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

Here is some news you can use from this chapter that may improve your chances for contentment in close relationships.

• Enter casual cohabitation cautiously. It tends to be less satisfying than marriage usually is.

• Put away your phone when it’s time to pay attention to your partner. • Strive to be trusting, relaxed, and comfortable with interdependent intimacy—and seek partners who are, as well.

• Seek partners with both instrumental and expressive skills who are competent and self-reliant and warm, compassionate, and tender.

• Given a choice, choose an optimistic partner over one who is pessimistic, anxious, and fretful.

• Seek partners who deserve to like themselves and do.

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59

C H A P T E R 2

Research Methods

The Short History of Relationship Science ♦ Developing a Question  ♦ Obtaining Participants ♦ Choosing a Design ♦ The Nature of Our

Data ♦ The Ethics of Such Endeavors ♦ Interpreting and Integrating Results ♦ A Final Note ♦ For Your Consideration ♦ Key terms ♦ chapter

summary ♦ suggestions for satisfaction ♦ references

I bet you dread a chapter on research methods. You probably regard it as a distraction to be endured before getting to “the good stuff.” Love, sex, and jealousy probably appeal to you, for instance, but research methodology isn’t at the top of your list.

Nevertheless, for several reasons, some basic knowledge of the methods used by researchers is especially valuable for consumers of relationship science. For one thing, more charlatans and imposters compete for your attention in this field than in most others. Bookstores and websites are full of ideas offered by people who don’t really study relationships at all but who (a) base suggestions and advice on their own idiosyncratic experiences, or (b) even worse, simply make them up (MacGeorge & Hall, 2014). Appreciating the difference between trustworthy, reliable information and simple gossip can save you money and disappointment. Moreover, misinforma- tion about relationships is more likely to cause people real inconvenience than are misunderstandings in other sciences. People who misunderstand the nature of the solar system, for instance, are much less likely to take action that will be disadvanta- geous to them than are people who are misinformed about the effects of divorce on children. Studies of relationships often have real human impact in everyday life (Karney et al., 2018).

Indeed, this book speaks more directly to topics that affect you personally than most other texts you’ll ever read. Because of this, you have a special responsibility to be an informed consumer who can distinguish flimsy whimsy from solid truths.

This isn’t always easy. As we’ll see in this chapter, there may be various ways to address a specific research question, and each may have its own particular advantages and disadvantages. Reputable scientists gather and evaluate information systematically and carefully, but no single technique may provide the indisputable answers they seek. A thoughtful understanding of relationships often requires us to combine information from many studies, evaluating diverse facts with judicious discernment. This chapter provides the overview of the techniques of relationship science that you need to make such judgments.

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Only basic principles are described here—this is one of the shortest chapters in the book—but they should help you decide what evidence to accept and what to ques- tion. And trust me. There’s a lot here that’s worth thinking about even if you’ve read a Methods chapter before. Hopefully, when we’re finished you’ll be better equipped to distinguish useful research evidence from useless anecdotes or mere speculation. For even more information, don’t hesitate to consult other sources such as Mehl and Conner (2012) and Leary (2017).

THE SHORT HISTORY OF RELATIONSHIP SCIENCE

Isaac Newton identified some of the basic laws of physics over 300 years ago (back in 1687). Biology and chemistry have been around for just as long. The systematic study of human relationships, on the other hand, is a recent invention that is so new and so recent that you can actually talk, if you want, with most of the scientists who have ever studied human intimacy! This is no small matter. Because relationship science has a short history, it is less well known than most other sciences, and for that reason, it is less well understood. Very few people outside of colleges and uni- versities appreciate the extraordinary strides this new discipline has made in the last 55 years.

Until the mid-twentieth century, relationships were pondered mainly by philosophers and poets. They had lots of opinions—doesn’t everybody?—but those views were only opinions, and many of them were wrong. So, the first efforts of behavioral scientists to conduct empirical observations of real relationships were momentous developments. Relationship science can be said to have begun in the 1930s with a trickle of histori- cally important studies of children’s friendships (e.g., Moreno, 1934) and courtship and marriage (e.g., Waller, 1937). However, relatively few relationship studies were done before World War II. After the war, several important field studies, such as Whyte’s (1955) Street Corner Society and Festinger, Schachter, and Back’s (1950) study of student friendships in campus housing, attracted attention and respect. Still, as the 1950s drew to a close, a coherent science of relationships had yet to begin. The pres- ident of the American Psychological Association even complained that “psychologists, at least psychologists who write textbooks, not only show no interest in the origin and development of love and affection, but they seem to be unaware of its very existence” (Harlow, 1958, p. 673)!

That began to change, thank goodness, when an explosion of studies put the field on the scientific map in the 1960s and 1970s. Pioneering scientists Ellen Ber- scheid and Elaine Hatfield began systematic studies of attraction and love that were fueled by a new emphasis on laboratory experiments in social psychology (Reis et al., 2013). In a quest for precision that yielded unambiguous results, researchers began studying specific inf luences on relationships that they were able to control and manipulate. For instance, in a prominent line of research on the role of attitude similarity in liking, Donn Byrne and his colleagues (e.g., Byrne & Nelson, 1965) asked people to inspect an attitude survey that had supposedly been completed by a stranger in another room. Then, they asked the participants how much they liked the stranger. What the participants didn’t know was that the researchers had

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prepared the survey either to agree or disagree with the participants’ own attitudes (which had been assessed earlier). This manipulation of attitude similarity had clear effects: Apparent agreement caused people to like the stranger more than disagree- ment did.

The methodological rigor of procedures like these satisfied researchers’ desires for clarity and concision. They legitimized and popularized the study of interpersonal attrac- tion, making it an indispensable part of psychology textbooks for the first time. In retro- spect, however, these investigations often did a poor job of representing the natural complexity of real relationships. The participants in many of Byrne’s experiments never actually met that other person or interacted with him or her in any way. Indeed, in the procedure I’ve been describing, a meeting couldn’t occur because the stranger didn’t actu- ally exist! In this “phantom stranger” technique, people were merely reacting to check marks on a piece of paper and were the only real participants in the study. The research- ers were measuring attraction to someone who wasn’t even there. Byrne and his colleagues chose this method, limiting their investigation to one carefully controlled aspect of relation- ship development, to study it conclusively. However, they also created a rather sterile situ- ation that lacked the immediacy and drama of chatting with someone face-to-face on a first date.

But don’t underestimate the importance of studies like these. They demon- strated that relationships could be studied scientifically and that such investigations had enormous promise, and they brought relationship science to the attention of fellow scholars for the first time (Reis, 2012). And in the decades since, through the combined efforts of family scholars, psychologists, sociologists, communication researchers, and neuroscientists, relationship science has grown and evolved to encompass new methods of considerable complexity and sophistication. Today, rela- tionship science

• often uses diverse samples of people drawn from all walks of life and from around the world,

• examines varied types of family, friendship, and romantic relationships, • frequently studies those relationships over long periods of time, • studies both the pleasant and unpleasant aspects of relationships, • often follows relationships in their natural settings, and • uses sophisticated technology.

Here are some examples of how the field currently operates:

• At Northwestern University, Eli Finkel and his colleagues have conducted “speed- dating” studies in which singles rotate through short conversations with 10 different potential romantic partners. Participants spend 4 minutes chatting with someone, record their reactions to the interaction, and then move on to someone new. The dating prospects are real; if both members of a couple indicate that they would like to see each other again, the researchers give them access to a website where they can exchange messages. But the researchers have also been able to inspect the building blocks of real romantic chemistry as people pursue new mates (Vacharkulksemsuk et al., 2016). (Watch http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4hOKtyQMZeE for further detail.)

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• At the University of Texas at Arlington, William Ickes and his colleagues have studied spontaneous, unscripted interactions between people who have just met by leaving them alone on a comfortable couch for a few minutes while their conversation is covertly recorded. A camera is actually hidden in another room across the hall and can’t be seen even if you’re looking directly at it, so there’s no clue that anyone is watching. Afterward, if the participants give their permis- sion for their recordings to be used, they can review the tapes of their interaction in private cubicles where they are invited to report what they were thinking—and what they thought their partners were thinking—at each point in the interaction. The method thus provides an objective recording of the interaction (Babcock et al., 2014), and participants’ thoughts and feelings and perceptions of one another can be obtained, too.

• In the Virtual Human Interaction Lab at Stanford University, two people play a game of 20 Questions—trying to guess someone’s secret word (such as “ocean”) by asking 20 yes or no questions—while their facial expressions are tracked and mapped onto avatars in a virtual environment. Each player can only see the other’s avatar, and that allows Jeremy Bailenson and his colleagues to subtly manipulate the expressions each person sees (Oh et al., 2016). People enjoy their interaction more when they see smiles on the simulated faces of their partners that are slightly bigger and broader than the real smiles their partners are display- ing (see Figure 2.1). Immersive virtual realities are allowing researchers to home in on the individual influences that underlie enjoyable interactions. (See what the Lab is doing at https://vhil.stanford.edu/.)

Normal Smile Condition

Accurate representation of smiling behavior

Enhanced Smile Condition

Enhanced representation of smiling behavior

Mouth Open-Close Condition

Slight smile regardless of smiling behavior

FIGURE 2.1. Real versus “enhanced” facial expressions in virtual reality. Gesture tracking systems and modern modeling techniques allow researchers to manage and manipulate the expressions people see on the faces of their partners during interactions in vir- tual environments. Here, “enhanced” smiles that were augmented by the researchers made an interaction more enjoyable than the participants’ real smiles did. (An avatar’s mouth in an “open-close” face moved as the person talked, but the avatar never smiled even when its owner really did.)

Source: Oh, S. Y., Bailenson, J., Krämer, N., & Li, B. (2016). “Let the avatar brighten your smile: Effects of enhancing facial expressions in virtual environments.” PloS One, 11, e0161794. Copyright ©2016 by Oh et al. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

©Indeed/Getty Images

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• At the University of Arizona, Matthias Mehl and his colleagues capture brief slices of social life by equipping people with small recorders that they carry with them during the day (MacArthur et al., 2020). The tiny devices record all the sounds in the immediate vicinity for 30-second intervals about 70 times a day. The resulting soundtrack indicates how often people are alone, how frequently they interact with others, and whether their conversations are pleasant or argumentative. This tech- nique allows researchers to listen in on real life as it naturally unfolds.

• For years in Seattle (http://www.gottman.com/research/family/), John Gottman and his colleagues (Gottman et al., 2015) invited married couples to revisit the disagreement that caused their last argument. They knew that their discussions were being recorded, but after a while they typically became so absorbed in the interaction that they forgot the cameras. The researchers often also took physio- logical measurements such as heart rate and electrodermal responses from the participants. Painstaking second-by-second analysis of the biological, emotional, and behavioral reactions they observed allowed the researchers to predict with 93 percent accuracy which of the couples would, and which would not, divorce years later (Gottman, 2011).

• At Stony Brook University, Art Aron and his colleagues (Acevedo & Aron, 2014) have asked people who have been married for more than 20 years to look at pictures of their beloved spouse or an old friend while the activity in their brains is monitored with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The structures in the brain that regulate love, and the physical differences between love and friendship (Acevedo, 2015), are being mapped for the first time. (Watch http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=lDazasy68aU to get a feel for this work.)

• In Germany, as part of a Panel Analysis of Intimate Relationships and Family Dynamics (or “pairfam”), a team of researchers (e.g., Mund & Johnson, 2020) are conducting extensive interviews each year with over 12,400 people, their lovers, their parents, and their children (if any). The project began in 2008 and is designed to continue until at least 2023! (See for yourself at http://www.pairfam.de/en.)

• In the Early Years of Marriage Project run by Terri Orbuch and her colleagues (Manalel et al., 2019), 199 white couples and 174 Black couples from the area sur- rounding Detroit, Michigan, have been interviewed every few years since they were married in 1986. The project is taking specific note of the influences of social and economic conditions on marital satisfaction, and it allows comparisons of the out- comes encountered by white and Black Americans. In 2002, 16 years after the project began, 36 percent of the white couples and 55 percent of the Black couples had already divorced (Birditt et al., 2012). Entire marriages are being tracked from start to finish as time goes by. (Visit the project at http://projects.isr.umich.edu/eym/.)

I hope that you’re impressed by the creativity and resourcefulness embodied in these methods of research. (I am!) But as notable as they are, they barely scratch the surface in illustrating the current state of relationship science. It’s still young, but the field is now supported by hundreds of scholars around the world who hail from diverse scientific disciplines and whose work appears in several different professional journals devoted entirely to personal relationships. If you’re a student, you probably have access to the Journal of Marriage and Family, the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships,

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and the journal simply entitled Personal Relationships. You can visit the International Association for Relationship Research, the world’s largest organization of relationship scientists, at http://www.iarr.org, and if you’re enjoying this book, you have to check out the wonderful site, http://www.luvze.com.

DEVELOPING A QUESTION

How do these scholars study relationships? The first step in any scientific endeavor is to ask a question, and in a field like this one, some questions emerge from personal experience. Relationship researchers have an advantage over many other scientists because their own experiences in close relationships can alert them to important pro- cesses. Indeed, they may be hip deep in the very swamps they are trying to drain (Miller, 2008)! Broader social problems also suggest questions for careful study. For instance, the huge increase in the U.S. divorce rate from 1965 to 1985 resulted in a considerable amount of research on divorce as social scientists took note of the culture’s changes.

Questions also come from previous research: Studies that answer one question may raise new ones. And still other questions are suggested by theories that strive to offer explanations for relational events. Useful theories both account for existing facts and make new predictions, and studies often seek to test those hypotheses. Relationship science involves questions that spring from all of these sources; scientists will put together their personal observations, their recognition of social problems, their knowl- edge of previous research, and their theoretical perspectives to create the questions they ask (Fiske, 2004).

The questions themselves are usually of two broad types. First, researchers may seek to describe events as they naturally occur, delineating the patterns they observe as fully and accurately as they can. Alternatively, researchers can seek to establish the causal connections between events to determine which events have meaningful effects on subsequent outcomes and which do not. This distinction is important: Different studies have different goals, and discerning consumers judge investigations with respect to their intended purposes. If an exploratory study seeks mainly to describe a newly noticed phenomenon, we shouldn’t criticize it for leaving us uncertain about the causes and the effects of that phenomenon; those are different questions to be addressed later, after we specify what we’re talking about. And more importantly, thoughtful consumers resist the temptation to draw causal connections from studies with descriptive goals. Only certain research designs allow any insight into the causal connections between events, and clever consumers do not jump to unwarranted conclusions that the research results do not support. This is a very key point, and I’ll return to it later on.

OBTAINING PARTICIPANTS

So, whose relationships are studied? Relationship researchers usually recruit partici- pants in one of two ways. The first approach is to use anyone who is readily available and who consents to participate; this is a convenience sample because it is (compara- tively) convenient for the researcher to obtain. University professors often work with

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college students who are required to be research participants as part of their course work. Although some specific characteristics must sometimes be met (so that a study may focus, for instance, only on dating partners who have been together for only a few weeks), researchers who use convenience samples are usually glad to get the help of everyone they can (McCormack, 2014).

In contrast, projects that use a representative sample strive to ensure that, collec- tively, their participants resemble the entire population of people who are of interest. A truly representative study of marriage, for example, would need to include married people of all sorts—all ages, all nationalities, and all socioeconomic levels. That’s a tall order because, if nothing else, the people who voluntarily consent to participate in a research study may be somewhat different from those who refuse to participate (see the “The Challenge of Volunteer Bias in Relationship Research” box on page 67). Still, some studies have obtained samples that are representative of (volunteers in) the adult population of individual countries or other delimited groups. And studies that are straightforward enough to be conducted online can attract very large samples that are much more diverse than those found on any one campus or even in any one country (Buhrmester et al., 2018).

On the one hand, there is no question that if we seek general principles that apply to most people, representative samples are better than convenience samples. A convenience sample always allows the unhappy possibility that the results we obtain are idiosyncratic, applying only to people who are just like our participants— students at a certain university, or people from a particular area of the country (Corker et al., 2015). And although relationship science is now conducted around the world, most of the studies we’ll encounter in this book have come from cultures that are Western, well-educated, industrialized, relatively rich, and democratic—so their participants are a little weird. (Get it?) In fact, people from “weird” cultures do sometimes behave differently than those who live in less developed nations (Medin, 2017). On the other hand, many processes studied by relationship research- ers are basic enough that they don’t differ substantially across demographic groups; people all over the world, for instance, share similar standards about the nature of physical beauty (see chapter 3). To the extent that research examines fundamental aspects of the ways humans react to each other, convenience samples may not be disadvantageous.

Let’s consider a specific example. Back in 1978, Russell Clark sent men and women out across the campus of Florida State University to proposition members of the other sex. Individually, they approached unsuspecting people and randomly assigned them to one of three invitations (see Table 2.1); some people were simply asked out on a date, whereas others were asked to have sex! The notable results were that no woman accepted the offer of sex from a stranger, but 75 percent of the men did—and that was more men than accepted the date!

This was a striking result, but so what? The study involved a small convenience sample on just one campus. Perhaps the results told us more about the men at FSU than they did about men and women in general. In fact, Clark had trouble getting the study published because of reviewers’ concerns about the generality of the results. So, in 1982, he and Elaine Hatfield tried again; they repeated the study at FSU and got the same results (Clark & Hatfield, 1989).

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Well, still so what? It was 4 years later, but the procedure had still been tried only in Tallahassee. If you give this example some thought, you’ll be able to generate several reasons why the results might apply only to one particular time and one particular place.

I’d like to suggest a different perspective. Let’s not fuss too much about the exact percentage of college men in Florida or elsewhere who would consent to sex with a stranger. That’s the kind of specific attitude that you’d expect to vary some from one demographic group to another. Instead of endlessly criticizing—or, even worse, dismiss- ing—the results of the Clark and Hatfield (1989) studies, let’s recognize their limitations but not miss their point: Men were generally more accepting of casual sex than women were. When somebody actually asked, men were much more likely to accept a sexual invitation from a stranger than women were. Stated generally, that’s exactly the conclu- sion that has now been drawn from subsequent investigations involving more than 20,000 participants from every major region of the world (Schmitt & the International Sexuality Description Project, 2003), and Clark and Hatfield were among the very first to docu- ment this sex difference. Their method was simple, and their sample was limited, but they were onto something, and their procedure detected a basic pattern that really does seem to exist.1

So, it’s absolutely true that the Clark and Hatfield (1989) studies were not perfect. That’s a judgment with which Clark and Hatfield (2003) themselves agree! But as long as their results are considered thoughtfully and judiciously, even small studies using convenience samples like these can make important contributions to relationship sci- ence. Our confidence in our collective understanding of relationships relies on knowl- edge obtained with diverse methods. Any single study may have some imperfections,

In Clark and Hatfield’s (1989) studies, college students walking across campus encountered a stranger of the other sex who said, “Hi, I’ve noticed you around campus, and I find you very attractive,” and then offered one of the following three invitations. What percentage of the stu- dents accepted the various offers?

Invitations

Percentages Saying “Yes”

Men Women

“Would you go out with me tonight?” 50 56 “Would you come over to my apartment tonight?” 69 6 “Would you go to bed with me tonight?” 75 0

TABLE 2.1. “Would You Go to Bed with Me Tonight?”

1For instance, in a study in May 2006 along the west coast of France, 57 percent of the men but only 3 percent of the women accepted invitations to have sex with an attractive stranger (Guéguen, 2011). In June 2009, 38 percent of the men but only 2 percent of the women in urban areas of Denmark did so (Hald & Høgh-Olesen, 2010). And in June 2013, 50 percent of the men and 4 percent of the women approached in a student nightclub in southwest Germany did so (Baranowski & Hecht, 2015). I detect a pattern here. These glaring differences are smaller, however, when men and women are asked to imagine offers for sex from celebrities such as Jennifer Lopez and Brad Pitt (Conley, 2011)!

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The Challenge of Volunteer Bias in Relationship Research

Regardless of whether investigators use conve- nience or representative sampling, they still face the problem of volunteer bias: Of the people invited to participate, those who do may differ from those who don’t. In one illus- tration of this problem, Karney et al. (1995) simply asked 3,606 couples who had applied for marriage licenses in Los Angeles County whether they would participate in a longitudi- nal study of their relationships. Only 18 per- cent of the couples said that they would, and that’s a typical rate in procedures of this sort. But their marriage licenses, which were open to the public, provided several bits of informa- tion about them (e.g., their addresses, their ages, and their jobs). The volunteers differed from those who refused to participate in sev- eral ways; they were better educated, employed in higher-status jobs, and more likely to have cohabited. If the researchers had carried out a complete study with these people, would these characteristics have affected their results?

The answer may depend on what ques- tions are asked, but volunteer bias can color

the images that emerge from relationship re- search. People who agree to participate in stud- ies dealing with sexual behavior, for instance, tend to be more sexually experienced and to have more positive attitudes about sex than nonvolunteers do (Dawson et al., 2019). Subtle bias can occur even when people are required to be research participants, as college students often are. Conscientious students participate earlier in the semester than slackers do, and students who select face-to-face lab studies are more extraverted than those who stay home and participate online (Witt et al., 2011).

Volunteer bias can also occur when re- searchers seek to get both members of a couple to participate in their studies. When people ask their partners to join them in a study and those partners do, the relationships that get assessed are happier and more satisfying on average than is the case in relationships in which the partners refuse to participate (Barton et al., 2020). Clearly, volunteer bias can limit the ex- tent to which research results apply to those who did not participate in a particular study.

The people in a representative sample reflect the demographic characteristics (sex, age, race, etc.) of the entire population of people that the researchers wish to study. ©Image Source/Digital Vision/Getty Images

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but those weaknesses may be answered by another study’s strengths. With a series of investigations, each approaching a problem from a different angle, we gradually delineate the truth. To be a thoughtful consumer of relationship science, you should think the way the scientists do: No one study is perfect. Be cautious. Various methods are valu- able. Wisdom takes time. But the truth is out there, and we’re getting closer all the time.

CHOOSING A DESIGN

Okay, we’ve formulated a research question and obtained some participants. Now, we need to arrange our observations in a way that will answer our question. How do we do that?

Correlational Designs

Correlations describe patterns in which change in one event is accompanied to some degree by change in another. The patterns can be of two types. If the two events are positively correlated, they go up and down together—that is, as one goes up, so does the other, and as the other goes down, so does the one. In speed-dating studies, for instance, the more two strangers think they have in common after a brief interaction, the more they tend to like each other (Tidwell et al., 2013). Higher levels of perceived similarity are associated with greater liking.

In contrast, if two events are negatively correlated, they change in opposite direc- tions: as one goes up, the other goes down, and as the one goes down, the other goes up. For example, people who are high in negative emotionality2 tend to be less satisfied with their marriages than others are; higher negative emotionality is associated with lower marital satisfaction (Malouff et al., 2010). Positive and negative correlations are portrayed in Figure 2.2, which also includes an example of what we see when two events are uncorrelated: If events are unrelated, one of them doesn’t change in any predictable way when the other goes up or down.

Patterns like these are often intriguing, and they can be very important, but they are routinely misunderstood by unsophisticated consumers. Please, always remember that correlations tell us that two events change together in some recognizable way, but, all by themselves, they do not tell us why that occurs. Correlational designs typically study naturally occurring behavior without trying to influence or control the situations in which it unfolds—and the correlations that are observed do not tell us about the causal connections between events. Be careful not to assume too much when you encounter a correlation; many different plausible causal connections may all be pos- sible when a correlation exists. Consider the fact that perceived similarity is positively related to liking; here are three straightforward possibilities:

• one of these two may cause the other—perceived similarity might lead to greater liking. Or,

• the other of these two could cause the one—so that liking others leads us to assume that we have a lot in common with them. Or,

2Take a look back at page 30 if you’d like to refresh your memory of what negative emotionality is.

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• something else, a third variable, may explain why similarity and liking are related. Similarity may not lead to liking, and liking may not lead to perceived similarity; instead, something else, like really good looks, may cause us to like others and to assume (or hope?) that we’re compatible with them.

Any of these three, along with many other more complex chains of events, may be possible when two events are correlated. If all we have is a correlation, all we know is that a predictable pattern exists. We don’t know what causal connections are involved.3

Experimental Designs

When it’s possible, the way to investigate causal connections is to use an experimental design. Experiments provide straightforward information about causes and their effects because experimenters create and control the conditions they study. In a true experi- ment, researchers intentionally manipulate one or more variables and randomly assign participants to the different conditions they have created to see how those changes affect people. Thus, instead of just asking “Do two things change together?” experi- menters ask “If we change one, what happens to the other?”

Let’s illustrate the difference between an experiment and a correlational study by reconsidering Donn Byrne’s classic work on attitude similarity and attraction (e.g., Byrne & Nelson, 1965). Had Byrne simply measured partners’ perceptions of each

Liking for Another

High

Low Low

Perceived Similarity of Other

A Strong Positive Correlation

High

Liking for Another

High

Low Low

Disagreements with Other

A Strong Negative Correlation

High

Liking for Another

High

Low Low

Number of Letters in Other’s Middle Name

No Correlation

High

FIGURE 2.2. Correlational patterns.

3I should note, however, that if we have lots of correlations involving a number of variables, or if we have taken our measurements on several occasions over a span of time, sophisticated statistical analyses can usually rule out some of the possible causal connections that make correlational findings ambiguous. We should be careful not to assume that simple correlations involve causal connections, but advanced statistical techniques can make it possible to draw some defensible conclusions about cause and effect within correla- tional designs.

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other’s attitudes and their liking for each other, he would have obtained a positive correlation between perceived similarity and liking, but he would not have been sure why they were related.

What Byrne did instead was an experiment. Once his participants arrived at his lab, he flipped a coin to determine randomly who would encounter a similar stranger and who would encounter one who didn’t agree with them at all. He controlled that apparent agreement or disagreement, and it was the only difference between the two situations in which participants found themselves. With this procedure, when Byrne observed higher liking for the similar stranger, he could reasonably conclude that the greater agreement had caused the higher liking. How? Because the participants were randomly assigned to the two situations, the different degrees of liking could not be due to differences in the people who encountered each situation; on average, the two groups of participants were identical. Moreover, they all had identical experiences in the experiment except for the apparent similarity of the stranger. The only reasonable explanation for the different behavior Byrne observed was that similarity leads to liking. His experiment clearly showed that the manipulated cause, attitude similarity, had a noticeable effect, higher liking.

Experiments provide clearer, more definitive tests of causal connections than other designs do. Done well, they clearly delineate cause and effect. Why, then, do research- ers ever do anything else? The key is that experimenters have to be able to control and manipulate the events they wish to study. Byrne could control the information that his participants received about someone they had never met, but he couldn’t manipulate other important influences on intimate relationships. We still can’t. (How do you cre- ate full-fledged experiences of romantic love in a laboratory?) You can’t do experiments on events you cannot control.

So, correlational and experimental designs each have their own advantages. With correlational designs, we can study compelling events in the real world—commitment to a relationship, passionate love, unsafe sex—and examine the links among them. But cor- relational designs are limited in what they can tell us about the causal relationships among events. With experimental designs, we can examine causal connections, but we are limited in what we can study. Hopefully, you can see why different researchers may study the same topic in different ways, with different research designs—and why that’s a good thing.

THE NATURE OF OUR DATA

Now, just what type of information will we actually be collecting? Are we recording others’ judgments and perceptions of a relationship, or are we inspecting specific inter- actions ourselves? Two major types of research measures are described here: (a) peo- ple’s own reports about their thoughts, feelings, and behaviors, and (b) careful observations of others’ behavior. We’ll also examine some variations on these themes.

Self-Reports

The most common means of studying intimate relationships is to ask people about their experiences. Their responses are self-reports, and they can be obtained in a variety of formats: through written questionnaires, verbal interviews, or even diaries in which

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participants record the events of their day (Repetti et al., 2015). The common theme linking such techniques is that people are telling us about their experiences—we’re not watching them ourselves.

Self-report data have important benefits. For one thing, they allow us to “get inside people’s heads” and understand personal points of view that may not be apparent to outside observers. Self-report data are also inexpensive and easy to obtain. Consider, for instance, the short self-report measure provided in Table 2.2: Those 12 questions do a remarkably good job of assessing the extent to which a relationship is flourishing, being healthy, close, and rewarding. For most purposes, there’s no reason to ask more elaborate questions or use other means to distinguish fulfilling partnerships from those

Is your current relationship rich and rewarding? Does it offer you meaningful opportunities for self-expression, personal growth, and fulfillment both as an individual and as a supportive partner? This scale addresses those issues.

For the first four items, choose the response that best captures your agreement with the fol- lowing statements about your relationship with your partner, using this scale:

1 2 3 4 5 strongly disagree disagree neutral agree strongly agree

_____  1. I have more success in my important goals because of my partner’s help. _____  2. We look for activities that help us grow as a couple. _____  3.  My partner has helped me grow in ways that I could not have done on my own. _____  4.  It is worth it to share my most personal thoughts with my partner.

Now, choose the response that best captures aspects of your relationship with your partner, using this scale:

1 2 3 4 5 never rarely sometimes often always

_____  5.  When making important decisions, I think about whether it will be good for our relationship.

_____  6. It is natural and easy for me to do things that keep our relationship going. _____  7. Talking with my partner helps me to see things in new ways. _____  8. I make a point to celebrate my partner’s successes. _____  9. I really work to improve our relationship. _____ 10. My partner shows interest in things that are important to me. _____ 11. We do things that are deeply meaningful to us as a couple. _____ 12. I make time when my partner needs to talk.

Source: Fowers, B. J., Laurenceau, J., Penfield, R. D., Cohen, L. M., Lang, S. F., Owenz, M. B., & Pasipandoya, E. (2016). “Enhancing relationship quality measurement: The development of the Relationship Flourishing Scale,” Journal of Family Psychology, 30, 997–1007.

The average sum of all these ratings for both men and women is 46.4, and the standard devia- tion is 7.6. So, scores between 39 and 53 are average. But if your sum is 54 or higher, your relationship is richer and closer than most, and if it’s 38 or lower, your partnership is less rich than most.

TABLE 2.2. The Relationship Flourishing Scale

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that are less rich because this handful of straightforward questions works just fine (Fowers et al., 2016). Self-report measures can be both very efficient and very informa- tive. Still (and by now, this probably isn’t a surprise!), self-reports may also present potential problems. Here are three things to worry about.

Participants’ Interpretations of the Questions

Self-reports always occur in response to a researcher’s instructions or questions. If the participants misinterpret what the researcher means or intends, their subsequent self-reports can be misleading. For instance, consider this question: “With how many people have you had sex?” It sounds straightforward, but about half of us consider oral-genital contact that brings us to orgasm to be “having sex,” and the other half of us do not (Barnett et al., 2017). There are complexities here, and undetected problems with people’s comprehension of terms describing sexual behavior—including what it means to be a “virgin” (Barnett et al., 2017)—add difficulty to sexuality research (Sewell et al., 2017).

Difficulties in Recall or Awareness

Even when people understand our questions, they may not be able to answer them correctly. For one thing, they may lack insight into their actions, so that what they think is going on isn’t entirely accurate. For instance, women say the physical attrac- tiveness of a mate is less important to them than men do. However, when they encoun- ter and evaluate several potential partners at once in speed-dating studies, looks do matter just as much to women as they do to men (Eastwick & Finkel, 2008), and looks are the most important influence on who likes whom for both sexes (Luo & Zhang, 2009). On occasion, what people can tell us about their preferences and behavior doesn’t accurately reflect what they actually say and do.

Faulty memories can also be a problem. Self-reports are most accurate when peo- ple describe specific, objective events that have occurred recently. They are more likely to be inaccurate when we ask them about things that happened long ago. Specific details may be forgotten—in one study ( Mitchell, 2010), 50 percent of a large sample of divorced people did not correctly report in which month they were divorced—and past feelings are especially likely to be misremembered. In particular, if a romance ends in pain and discontent, the disappointed lovers are likely to have a very hard time remembering how happy and enthusiastic they felt months earlier when they were still in love (Smyth et al., 2020).

Bias in Participants’ Reports

A final worry—a big one—involves the possibility of systematic bias or distortion in people’s reports. In particular, people may be reluctant to tell researchers anything that makes them look bad or that portrays them in an undesirable light. This can cause a social desirability bias, or distortion that results from people’s wishes to make good impressions on others. For instance, studies that simply ask people how often they’ve cheated on (Schick et al., 2014), or beaten (Follingstad & Rogers, 2013), their partners are likely to get answers that underestimate the prevalence of both events. In one case, 4 percent of those who had been divorced a few years earlier—the researchers

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knew this because they had seen the divorce decrees on file at county courthouses— claimed that they had never been divorced (Mitchell, 2010)! In another instance, women reported having more sex partners and losing their virginity at younger ages when they were hooked up to lie detectors than when they were not (Fisher, 2013). Procedures that guarantee participants’ anonymity—such as allowing them to take sur- veys online instead of face-to-face (Robertson et al., 2018)—help reduce social desir- ability problems such as these, but bias is always a concern when studies address sensitive issues.

Observations

Another way to collect information about relationships is to observe behavior directly. Scientific observations are rarely casual undertakings: Researchers either measure behavior with sophisticated tools or carefully train their colleagues to make observa- tions that are accurate, reliable, and often quite detailed.

Some studies involve direct observations of ongoing behavior, whereas others use recordings that are inspected at a later time. Ecological momentary assessment uses inter- mittent, short periods of observation to capture samples of behavior—slices of life—in real time as they actually occur; investigators may randomly sample short spans of time when a target behavior is likely to occur, scattering periods of observation through different times on different days (Bernstein et al., 2018). The work being done by Matthias Mehl (2017) with a smartphone app that turns a mobile device into a recorder is a fine exam- ple of this technique. The app makes a phone an electronically activated recorder, or EAR (get it?), that switches on for brief periods at regular intervals during the day to capture the sounds of whatever interactions participants are having at the time. And if you give your permission, smartphones can not only capture your conversations, they can also record your location, your texts, and your use of social media (Harari et al., 2020). The natural, real-life interactions that you share with others can then be examined quite carefully.

Other technologies provide additional measures of behavior. In an eye- tracking study, for instance, participants don headgear that focuses tiny video cameras on their eyes. Then, when they inspect various images, their eye movements indicate what they’re looking at, and for how long (Garza et al., 2016). We’d be able to tell, for instance, whether you prefer blondes or brunettes by presenting two images differing only in hair color side-by-side: You’d spend more time scrutinizing the image you find more alluring.

Observations such as these generally avoid the disadvantages of self-reports. On the other hand, we need self-reports if we’re to understand people’s personal percep- tions of their experiences (and indeed, studies may add self-reports to observations, asking participants to provide brief ratings of the events that are being recorded [Sun & Vazire, 2019]). Observational studies can also be expensive, sometimes requiring costly equipment and consuming hours and hours of observers’ time. One remarkable study filmed every waking moment experienced by the members of 32 different families over the course of four days, and the 1,540 hours of resulting video required thousands of hours of careful inspection to code and categorize (Ochs & Kremer-Sadlik, 2013).

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Assessing Attachment Styles

Studies of attachment have become a major theme in relationship science, and I’ll men- tion attachment in every chapter to come. Where do all these findings come from? In most cases, research participants have de- scribed their feelings about close relation- ships on a questionnaire. Now that we’ve considered some of the nuances of self-report data, let’s inspect the tool that’s most often used to assess attachment.

The 12 items presented here are drawn from a longer questionnaire created by Kelly Brennan and her colleagues (1998), and they obtain results that are very similar to those obtained with the longer scale (Wei et al., 2007). I’ve labeled the two dimensions of at- tachment to which the items pertain, but

those labels do not appear on the actual survey, and the items are mixed together. Re- spondents are asked to rate the extent of their agreement or disagreement with each item on a seven-point scale r anging from 1 (disagree strongly) to 7 (agree strongly). Note that you’d report high levels of anxiety or avoidance by agreeing with some items and disagreeing with others; this is a common tactic that is used to encourage thoughtful answers and to help researchers detect careless responses.

Researchers typically derive two scores, an anxiety score and an avoidance score, and then determine how they predict different rela- tional outcomes. People with a secure style of attachment, as you may recall (from page 17), would have low scores on both dimensions.

Items measuring Anxiety about Abandonment:

1. I worry that romantic partners won’t care about me as much as I care about them.

2. My desire to be close sometimes scares people away.

3. I need a lot of reassurance that I am loved by my partner.

4. I find that my partner(s) don’t want to get as close as I would like.

5. I get frustrated when romantic partners are not available when I need them.

6. I do not often worry about being abandoned.

Items measuring Avoidance of Intimacy:

1. I want to get close to my partner, but I keep pulling back.

2. I am nervous when partners get too close to me.

3. I try to avoid getting too close to my partner.

4. I usually discuss my problems and con- cerns with my partner.

5. It helps to turn to my romantic partner in times of need.

6. I turn to my partner for many things, including comfort and reassurance.

To get your own score on these items, reverse your score on the sixth Anxiety item and on numbers 4, 5, and 6 of the Avoidance items. A score of 1 becomes a 7, a 3 becomes a 5, a 6 becomes a 2, and so on. An average score on the Anxiety items is 22; a score below 15 is pretty low, and a score above 29 is pretty high. Average Avoidance is 15, with 9 being noticeably low and 21 being notably high (Wei et al., 2007).

Do the answers that people give to ques- tions such as these really matter? Yes, they

do. There are other means of assessing attach- ment that involve extensive interviews, but they are not used as often because these items do such a fine job of identifying meaningful individual differences (Gillath et al., 2016). Despite possible biases, vocabulary prob- lems, and all the other potential problems with self- reports, these items delineate differ- ent global orientations to intimate relation- ships that are very influential, as we’ll see throughout this book.

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Observational research can also suffer from the problem of reactivity: People may change their behavior when they know they are being observed. (A camera in your living room would probably change some of your behavior—at least until you got used to it.) For that reason, researchers are always glad to conduct observations that cannot possibly alter the behaviors they’re studying—and in one such investigation, relationship scientists monitored the Facebook profiles of 1,640 people—almost the entire freshman class at a particular university—as their college years went by (Wimmer & Lewis, 2010). They tracked the public information in the profiles to determine how the users’ tastes and values influenced the friendships they formed. The researchers had specific, seri- ous aims—this was not informal browsing—and they couldn’t have unwanted influence on the behavior they were studying because the participants did not know that they were being watched! (There’s actually some controversy over this tactic [Kosinski et al., 2015], but studies continue to mine public information from profile pages, Twitter feeds, blog posts, and other digital activity [Rafaeli et al., 2019] without people’s knowl- edge. Do you find this troubling? Why?)

Physiological Measures

We can also avoid any problems with reactivity if we observe behavior that people cannot consciously control, and physiological measures of people’s autonomic and biochemical reactions often do just that. Physiological measures assess such responses as heart rate, muscle tension, genital arousal, brain activity, and hormone levels to determine how our physical states are associated with our social behavior.

Some investigations examine the manner in which physiology shapes our interac- tions with others. For instance, compared to those who are less content, satisfied spouses have higher levels of the neuropeptide oxytocin in their blood (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015). This may be, in part, because inhaling a dose of oxytocin leads people who avoid intimacy to feel warmer and kinder toward others (Bartz et al., 2015). It also leads people who are low in extraversion to feel closer and more trusting toward others (Human et al., 2016). Our biochemistry evidently shapes our affiliative motives.

Other studies seek to map the physiological foundations of social behavior (Shamay-Tsoory & Mendelsohn, 2019). For example, fMRI has identified the structures in our brains that seem to regulate love and lust (Tomlinson & Aron, 2012). fMRI images show which parts of the brain are consuming more oxygen and are therefore more active than others when certain states occur—and as it turns out, warm romantic affection and yearning sexual desire appear to be controlled by different parts of our brains. (Are you surprised?)

Physiological measures are often expensive, but their use is increasing because they allow researchers to explore the physical foundations of our relationships. They are a good example of the manner in which relationship science is becoming more complex and sophisticated all the time.

Archival Materials

Researchers can also use stores of data collected by others, known as data archives, to avoid the problem of reactivity. Personal documents such as photographs and diaries,

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public media such as newspapers and websites, governmental records such as marriage licenses and census data, and social media of all sorts can all be valuable sources of “archival” information about relationships (Heng et al., 2018). In one study, researchers examined old university yearbook photos to determine if people’s expressions as young adults could predict their chances of a future divorce (Hertenstein et al., 2009). (What did they find? See chapter 5!) Archival materials are “nonreactive” because inspection of existing data does not change the behaviors being studied. They can be limited, however, because they may not contain all the information a researcher would really like to have.

THE ETHICS OF SUCH ENDEAVORS

Studies using archival materials often run no risk at all of embarrassing anyone, but research on relationships does occasionally require investigators to ask questions about sensitive topics or to observe private behavior. Should we pry into people’s personal affairs?

This is not an issue I pose lightly. Although it’s enormously valuable and sorely needed, relationship science presents important ethical dilemmas. Just asking people to fill out questionnaires describing their relationships may have unintended effects on those partnerships. When we ask people to specify what they get out of a relationship or to rate their love for their partners, for instance, we focus their attention on delicate matters they may not have thought much about. We stimulate their thinking and encourage them to evaluate their relationships. Moreover, we arouse their natural curi- osity about what their partners may be saying in response to the same questions. Researchers’ innocent inquiries may alert people to relationship problems or frustra- tions they didn’t know they had.

Some procedures may have even more impact. Consider John Gottman’s (2011) method of asking spouses to revisit the issue that caused their last argument: He didn’t encourage people to quarrel and bicker, but some of them did. Spouses who disagree sourly and bitterly are at much greater risk for divorce than are spouses who disagree with grace and humor, and Gottman’s work illuminated the specific behaviors that forecast trouble ahead. This work was extremely important. But did it do damage? Is it ethical to actually invite couples to return to a disagreement that may erode their satisfaction even further?

The answer to that question isn’t simple. Relationship scientists ordinarily are very careful to safeguard the welfare of their participants. Detailed information is provided to potential participants before a study begins so that they can make an informed deci- sion about whether or not to participate. Their consent to participate is voluntary and can be withdrawn at any time. After the data are collected, the researchers provide prompt feedback that explains any experimental manipulations and describes the larger purposes of the investigation. Final reports regarding the outcomes of the study are often made available when the study is complete. In addition, when ticklish matters are being investigated, researchers may provide information about where participants can obtain couples’ counseling should they wish to do so; psychological services may even be offered for free.

A Point to Ponder

Relationship science studies sensitive issues and private be- havior such as infidelity and partner abuse. Should it? Do you support such studies? Are you willing to participate in them?

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public media such as newspapers and websites, governmental records such as marriage licenses and census data, and social media of all sorts can all be valuable sources of “archival” information about relationships (Heng et al., 2018). In one study, researchers examined old university yearbook photos to determine if people’s expressions as young adults could predict their chances of a future divorce (Hertenstein et al., 2009). (What did they find? See chapter 5!) Archival materials are “nonreactive” because inspection of existing data does not change the behaviors being studied. They can be limited, however, because they may not contain all the information a researcher would really like to have.

THE ETHICS OF SUCH ENDEAVORS

Studies using archival materials often run no risk at all of embarrassing anyone, but research on relationships does occasionally require investigators to ask questions about sensitive topics or to observe private behavior. Should we pry into people’s personal affairs?

This is not an issue I pose lightly. Although it’s enormously valuable and sorely needed, relationship science presents important ethical dilemmas. Just asking people to fill out questionnaires describing their relationships may have unintended effects on those partnerships. When we ask people to specify what they get out of a relationship or to rate their love for their partners, for instance, we focus their attention on delicate matters they may not have thought much about. We stimulate their thinking and encourage them to evaluate their relationships. Moreover, we arouse their natural curi- osity about what their partners may be saying in response to the same questions. Researchers’ innocent inquiries may alert people to relationship problems or frustra- tions they didn’t know they had.

Some procedures may have even more impact. Consider John Gottman’s (2011) method of asking spouses to revisit the issue that caused their last argument: He didn’t encourage people to quarrel and bicker, but some of them did. Spouses who disagree sourly and bitterly are at much greater risk for divorce than are spouses who disagree with grace and humor, and Gottman’s work illuminated the specific behaviors that forecast trouble ahead. This work was extremely important. But did it do damage? Is it ethical to actually invite couples to return to a disagreement that may erode their satisfaction even further?

The answer to that question isn’t simple. Relationship scientists ordinarily are very careful to safeguard the welfare of their participants. Detailed information is provided to potential participants before a study begins so that they can make an informed deci- sion about whether or not to participate. Their consent to participate is voluntary and can be withdrawn at any time. After the data are collected, the researchers provide prompt feedback that explains any experimental manipulations and describes the larger purposes of the investigation. Final reports regarding the outcomes of the study are often made available when the study is complete. In addition, when ticklish matters are being investigated, researchers may provide information about where participants can obtain couples’ counseling should they wish to do so; psychological services may even be offered for free.

A Point to Ponder

Relationship science studies sensitive issues and private be- havior such as infidelity and partner abuse. Should it? Do you support such studies? Are you willing to participate in them?

As you can see, relationship science begins with compassionate concern for the well-being of its partici- pants. People are treated with respect, thanked warmly for their efforts, and may even be paid for their time. They may also find their experiences to be interesting and enlightening. People who participate in studies of sexual behavior (Kuyper et al., 2014) and intimate part- ner violence (Hamberger et al., 2020), for instance, routinely have positive reactions and are distressed very rarely. And being asked to reflect and report on their experiences may even help people adjust to and recover from difficult situations. In one study, compared to those who were asked fewer questions, people bounced back from a breakup more quickly when they provided extensive self-reports about their feelings on several occasions (Larson & Sbarra, 2015); the introspection prompted by their participation was evidently good for them. In another investigation, most survivors of sexual assault (58 percent) felt they had gained insight into their experiences and most (55 percent) had sought additional services as a result of their participation (Kirkner et al., 2019). All of this is reassuring. Still, should we be trying to study such private and intimate matters?

The answer from here is absolutely yes. There’s another side to the issue of ethics I haven’t yet mentioned: science’s ethical imperative to gain knowledge that can ben- efit humanity. Ignorance can be wasteful. Since 2002, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has spent more than $800 million on a variety of marriage and relationship education programs that are intended to teach low-income families skills that will help them sustain their marriages. Families of modest means are targets of these marriage-enrichment programs because, compared to families with more resources, they are less likely to marry and more likely to divorce (Johnson, 2012). The programs all have good intentions, but on the whole, it’s hard to say that they have done much, if any, good (Arnold & Beelmann, 2019); even their proponents admit that their out- comes have been “mixed” and “modest,” sometimes actually making things worse (Hawkins, 2014). An enduring problem is that too many of these programs miss the point: They seek to teach low-income couples to value marriage more, but such couples already want to get married (Trail & Karney, 2012). They don’t marry—and their mar- riages are more fragile if they do—because of their financial worries, which put enor- mous stress and strain on their relationships (Wickrama & Walker O’Neal, 2019). The relative fragility of low-income marriages seems to have more to do with social class than with the attitudes and skills of the spouses themselves (Karney et al., 2018).

So it’s pretty silly to expect that values education will change anything. A govern- ment program that seeks to improve relationships would probably do better to increase the minimum wage and to fund child care and effective training for better jobs than to try to teach people to respect marriage. And clearly, if we seek to promote human well-being, we need good information as well as good intentions. In a culture that offers us bizarre examples of “love” on TV shows such as The Bachelor and The Bachelorette— and in which real marriages are more likely to be failures than to be successes (Cherlin, 2009)—it would be unethical not to try to understand how relationships work. Intimate relationships can be a source of the grandest, most glorious pleasure human

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beings experience, but they can also be a source of terrible suffering and appalling destructiveness. It is inherently ethical, relationship scientists assert, to try to learn how the joy might be increased and the misery reduced.

INTERPRETING AND INTEGRATING RESULTS

This isn’t a statistics text (and I know you’re pleased by that), but there are a few more aspects of the way relationship scientists do business that the thoughtful con- sumer of the field should understand. Most relationship studies subject the data they obtain to statistical analysis to determine whether their results are statistically “sig- nificant.” This is a calculation of how likely it is that the results (e.g., the observed correlations or the effects of the manipulated variables in an experiment) could have occurred by chance. If it’s quite unlikely that the results could be due to chance, we have a “significant” result. All of the research results reported in this book are sig- nificant results. You can also be confident that the studies that have obtained these results have passed critical inspection by other scientists. This does not mean, how- ever, that every single specific result I may mention is unequivocally, absolutely, positively true: Some of them might have occurred by chance, reflecting the influence of odd samples of people or unwanted mistakes of various sorts. In particular, pat- terns that are obvious in results obtained from college students routinely still exist but are sometimes more muted when more diverse adult populations are studied (Yeager et al., 2019).

Indeed, and importantly, when other researchers try to replicate some result of interest—repeating the procedures used by a prior investigator to see if the same out- comes are obtained—similar findings usually, but don’t always, result (e.g., Soto, 2019). A failure to replicate is always a cause for concern (Fineberg et al., 2019), but the fact that occasional errors get detected actually demonstrates “the fundamental soundness of our field” (Wood & Wilson, 2019, p. 8). First, good science is public and repeatable, so that we put our full faith only in findings that are consistently obtained. Toward that end, relationship researchers routinely follow the practices of open science—in which research materials and data are shared with other scientists who wish to replicate one’s work—making it easier for any fluke results to be identified and corrected. And second, in pursuit of (even) greater reliability of our results, relationship scientists are studying more people and detailing their procedural and analytic decisions more fully than ever before (Shrout & Rodgers, 2018). Never before have our scientific procedures and practices been better (Chopik et al., 2020).

As you interpret our results, you should also remember that the results we’ll encounter always describe patterns that are evident in the behavior of groups of people— and because of differences among individuals (see chapter 1), those patterns will apply to particular individuals to varying degrees. Please do not be so naïve as to think that research results that do, in fact, apply to most people must be wrong because you know someone to whom those results do not seem to apply. I’ll need you to be more sophis- ticated and reasonable than that.

With those cautions in place, let’s note that the data obtained in relationship stud- ies can also present unique challenges and complexities. Here are two examples:

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Paired, interdependent data. Most statistical procedures assume that the scores of different participants are independent of each other—that is, one person’s responses are not influenced by anyone else’s—but that’s not true when both members of a couple are involved. Wilma’s satisfaction with her relationship with Fred is very likely to be influenced by whether or not Fred is happy too, so her satisfaction is not inde- pendent of his. Responses obtained from relationship partners are often interdepen- dent, and special statistical procedures are advisable for analyzing such data (e.g., Kenny, 2020).

Three sources of influence. Furthermore, relationships emerge from the individual contributions of the separate partners and from the unique effects of how they combine as a pair. For example, imagine that Betty and Barney have a happy marriage. One reason for this may be the fact that Barney is an especially pleasant fellow who gets along well with everyone, including Betty. Alternatively (or, perhaps, in addition), Betty may be the one who’s easy to live with. However, Betty and Barney may also have a better relationship with each other than they could have with anyone else because of the unique way their individual traits combine; the whole may be more than the sum of its parts. Relationship researchers often encounter phenomena that result from the combination of all three of these influences, the two individual partners and the idio- syncratic partnership they share. Sophisticated statistical analyses are required to study all of these components at once (Kenny, 2020), another indication of the complexity of relationship science.

So what’s my point here? I’ve noted that studies of close relationships tackle intricate matters and that sta- tistical significance testing involves probabilities, not certainties. Should you take everything I say with a grain of salt, doubting me at every turn? Well, yes and no. I want you to be more thoughtful and less gullible, and I want you to appreciate the complexities underly- ing the things you’re about to learn. Remember to think like a scientist: No study is perfect, but the truth is out there. We put more faith in patterns of results that are obtained by different investigators working with differ- ent samples of participants. We are also more confident when results are replicated with diverse methods.

For these reasons, scientists now do frequent meta-analyses, which are studies that statistically combine the results from several prior studies (e.g., Robles et al., 2014). In a meta-analysis, an investigator compiles all existing studies of a particular phenomenon and combines their results to identify the themes they contain. If the prior studies all produce basically the same result, the meta- analysis makes that plain; if there are dis- crepancies, the meta-analysis may reveal why.

With tools like this at its disposal, relationship science has made enormous strides despite its short history and the complexity of its subject matter. And despite my ear- lier cautions, (nearly all of) the things I’ll share with you in this text are dependable facts, reliable results you can see for yourself if you do what the researchers did. Even more impressively, most of them are facts that had not been discovered when your parents were born.

A Point to Ponder

What’s your first thought when you encounter a fact in this book that you find sur- prising? Is it, “Wow, I didn’t know that,” or something more like, “This is wrong”? Where does your reaction come from?

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A FINAL NOTE

In my desire to help you be more discerning, I’ve spent a lot of this chapter noting various pros and cons of diverse procedures, usually concluding that no single option is the best one in all cases. I hoped to encourage you to be more thoughtful about the complexities of good research. But in closing, let me reassure you that relationship science is in better shape than all of these uncertainties may make it seem. When relationship science began, the typical study obtained self-reports from a convenience sample of college students, and many studies are still of that sort. However, researchers are now routinely studying more diverse samples with sophisticated designs that employ more complex measures, and the variety of methods with which researchers now study relationships is a strength, not a weakness (Mashek et al., 2018). Furthermore, the field’s judicious ability to differentiate what it does and does not yet know is a mark of its honesty and its developing maturity and wisdom.

People like easy answers. They like their information cut-and-dried. Many people actually prefer simple nonsense—such as the idea that men come from Mars and women come from Venus—to the scientific truth, if the truth is harder to grasp. However, as a new consumer of the science of relationships, you have an obligation to prefer facts to gossip, even if you have to work a little harder to make sense of their complexities. Don’t mistake scientific caution for a lack of quality. To the contrary, I want to leave you with the thought that it demonstrates scientific respectability to be forthright about the strengths and weaknesses of one’s discipline. It’s more often the frauds and impos- ters who claim they are always correct than the cautious scientists, who are really trying to get it right.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Chris and Jamie had to participate in research studies if they wanted to pass the Introductory Psychology course they were taking together, so they signed up for a study of “Relationship Processes.” They had been dating for 2 months, and the study was seeking “premarital romantic couples,” and they liked the fact that they would be paid $5 if they both participated. So, they attended a session with a dozen other couples in which they were separated and seated on opposite sides of a large room. They read and signed a permission form that noted they could quit anytime they wanted and then started to work on a long questionnaire.

Some of the questions were provocative. They were asked how many different people they had had sex with in the last year and how many people they wanted to have sex with in the next 5 years. Then, they were asked to answer the same questions again, this time as they believed the other would. Chris had never pon- dered such questions before, and he realized, once he thought about it, that he actually knew very little about Jamie’s sexual history and future intentions. That night, he was a little anxious, wondering and worrying about Jamie’s answers to those questions.

Having read this chapter, do you think this research procedure was ethical? Why?

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CHAPTER SUMMARY

The Short History of Relationship Science

The scientific study of relationships is a recent endeavor that has come of age only in the last 40 years. The field has now grown to include the study of all types of rela- tionships in their natural settings around the world.

Developing a Question

Research questions come from a number of sources, including personal experience, recognition of social problems, the results of prior research, and theoretical predictions. The questions usually seek either to describe events or to delineate causal connections among variables.

Obtaining Participants

Convenience samples are composed of participants who are easily available. Repre- sentative samples are more costly, but they better reflect the population of interest. Both types of samples can suffer from volunteer bias.

Choosing a Design

Correlational Designs. A correlation describes the strength and direction of an association between two variables. Correlations are inherently ambiguous because events can be related for a variety of reasons.

Experimental Designs. Experiments control and manipulate situations to delineate cause and effect. Experiments are very informative, but some events cannot be studied experimentally for practical or ethical reasons.

The Nature of Our Data

Self-Reports. With self-reports, participants describe their own thoughts, feelings, and behavior, but they may misunderstand the researchers’ questions, have faulty mem- ories, and be subject to social desirability biases.

Observations. In ecological momentary assessment, brief observations are made intermittently. Observations avoid the problems of self-reports, but they are expensive to conduct, and reactivity can be a problem.

convenience sample ..................... p. 64 representative sample .................. p. 65 volunteer bias ............................... p. 67 correlations ................................... p. 68 experiments ................................... p. 69 self-reports ..................................... p. 70 social desirability bias ................. p. 72

ecological momentary assessment ..................................... p. 73 reactivity ........................................ p. 75 archives .......................................... p. 75 open science ................................. p. 78 meta-analyses ................................ p. 79

KEY TERMS

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Physiological Measures. Measurements of people’s biological changes indicate how our physical states are associated with our social interactions.

Archival Materials. Existing stores of public data records are nonreactive and often allow researchers to compare the present with the past.

The Ethics of Such Endeavors

Participation in relationship research may change people’s relationships by encour- aging them to think carefully about the situations they face. As a result, researchers take pains to protect the welfare of their participants.

Interpreting and Integrating Results

Statistical analysis determines the likelihood that results could have occurred by chance. When this likelihood is very low, the results are said to be significant. Some such results may still be due to chance, however, so the thoughtful consumer does not put undue faith in any one study. Meta-analysis lends confidence to conclusions by statistically combining results from several studies.

A Final Note

Scientific caution is appropriate, but it should not be mistaken for weakness or imprecision. Relationship science is in great shape.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Don’t fall for fraudulent advice. Use your understanding of the methods of relation- ship science to judge the credibility of the things you see and hear about relationships.

• Remember that correlations are ambiguous; there may be several possible reasons why two events appear to be connected.

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Acevedo, B. P., & Aron, A. P. (2014). Romantic love, pair-bonding, and the dopaminergic reward system. In M. Mikulincer & P. R. Shaver (Eds.), Mechanisms of social connection: From brain to group (pp. 55–69). American Psychological Association.

Arnold, L. S., & Beelmann, A. (2019). The effects of relationship education in low-income couples: A meta- analysis of randomized-controlled evaluation studies. Family Relations, 68, 22–38.

Babcock, M. J., Ta, V. P., & Ickes, W. (2014). Latent semantic similarity and language style matching in initial dyadic interactions. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 33, 78–88.

Baranowski, A. M., & Hecht, H. (2015). Gender differences and similarities in receptivity to sexual invita- tions: Effects of location and risk perception. Archives of Sex Behavior, 44, 2257–2265.

Barnett, M. D., Fleck, L. K., Marsden, A. D., & Martin, K. J. (2017). Sexual semantics: The meanings of sex, virginity, and abstinence for university students. Personality and Individual Differences, 106, 203–208

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Barton, A. W., Lavner, J. A., Stanley, S. M., Johnson, M. S., & Rhoades, G. K. (2020). “Will you complete this survey too?” Differences between individual versus dyadic samples in relationship research. Journal of Family Psychology, 34, 196–203.

Bartz, J. A., Lydon, J. E., Kolevzon, A., & . . . Bolger, N. (2015). Differential effects of oxytocin on agency and communion for anxiously and avoidantly attached individuals. Psychological Science, 26, 1177–1186.

Bernstein, M. J., Zawadzki, M. J., Juth, V., Benfield, J. A., & Smyth, J. M. (2018). Social interactions in daily life: Within-person associations between momentary social experiences and psychological and physical health indicators. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 35, 372–394.

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87

C H A P T E R 3

Attraction

The FundamenTal Basis oF aTTracTion ♦ ProximiTy: liking Those near us ♦ Physical aTTracTiveness: liking Those Who are lovely ♦ reciProciTy:

liking Those Who like us ♦ similariTy: liking Those Who are like us ♦ So, WhaT Do Men and Women WanT? ♦ For your consideraTion ♦ key

Terms ♦ chaPTer summary ♦ SuggesTions For saTisFacTion ♦ reFerences

You’re alone in a classroom, beginning to read this chapter, when the door opens and a stranger walks in. Is this someone who appeals to you? Might you have just encountered a potential friend or lover? Remarkably, you probably developed a tenta tive answer to those questions much more quickly than you were able to read this sentence (Palomares & Young, 2018). What’s going on? Where did your judgment come from? This chapter considers these issues. Psychologically, the first step toward a relationship is always the same: interpersonal attraction, the desire to approach someone. Feelings of attraction don’t guarantee that a relationship will develop, but they do open the door to the possibility. I’ll examine several major influences that shape our attraction to others, starting with a basic principle about how attraction works.

THE FUNDAMENTAL BASIS OF ATTRACTION

A longstanding assumption about interpersonal attraction is that we are attracted to oth- ers whose presence is rewarding to us (Clore & Byrne, 1974). And two different types of rewards influence attraction: noticeable direct rewards we obviously receive from our interaction with others, and more subtle indirect benefits of which we’re not always aware and that are merely associated with someone else. Direct rewards refer to all the evident pleasures people provide us. When they shower us with interest and approval, we’re usu- ally gratified by the attention and acceptance. When they are witty and beautiful, we enjoy their pleasing characteristics. And when they give us money or good advice, we are clearly better off. Most of the time, the more direct rewards that people provide us, the more attracted we are to them.

But attraction also results from a variety of subtle influences that are only indirectly related to the obvious kindness, good looks, or pleasing personalities of those we meet (McNulty et al., 2017). For instance, anything about new acquaintances that resembles us, however tangentially, may make them seem more likable. Consider a fellow named Dennis who is fond of his name; because of the shared first letter, “it might not be too

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far-fetched [for] Dennis to gravitate toward cities such as Denver, careers such as dentistry, and romantic partners such as Denise” (Pelham et al., 2005, p. 106). In fact, that’s what happens: People are disproportionately likely to fall in love with someone who has a name that resembles their own (Jones et al., 2004). Rewards like these are indirect and mild, and we sometimes don’t even consciously notice them—but they do illustrate just how diverse and varied the rewards that attract us to others can be.

Indeed, most of us simply think that we’re attracted to someone if he or she is an appealing person, but it’s really more complex than that. Attraction does involve the perceived characteristics of the person who appeals to us, but it also depends on our current needs, goals, and desires, all of which can fluctuate over time and from one situation to the next. Given that, theorists Eli Finkel and Paul Eastwick (2015) asserted that the fundamental basis of attraction is instrumentality, the extent to which someone is able to help us achieve our present goals.1 Simply put, we’re attracted to others who can help us get what we currently want. An instrumentality perspective acknowledges that attraction can be idiosyncratic, differing from person to person according to one’s present goals, and changing over time as needs are fulfilled. But we’re most attracted, as you’d expect, to others whose company is consistently rewarding, those who routinely fulfill several chronic and important desires—such as those whose company is pleasurable and helpful and who fulfill our need to belong (Orehek et al., 2018).2 And as those desires are pervasive, some specific influences on attraction are rather ubiquitous, clearly influencing most people most of the time. We’ll consider them in this chapter, beginning our survey with one that’s more important than most of us think.

PROXIMITY: LIKING THOSE NEAR US

We might get to know someone online, but isn’t interaction more rewarding when we can hear others’ voices, see their smiles, and actually hold their hands? Most of the time, relationships are more rewarding when they involve people who are near one another (who are physically, as well as psychologically, close). Indeed, our physical proximity to others often determines whether or not we ever meet them in the first place. More often than not, our friendships and romances grow out of interactions with those who are nearby.

In fact, there is a clear connection between physical proximity and interpersonal attraction, and a few feet can make a big difference. Think about your Relationships classroom: Who have you gotten to know since the semester started? Who is a new friend? It’s likely that the people you know and like best sit near you in class. When they are assigned seats in a classroom, college students are much more likely to become friends with those sitting near them than with those sitting across the room, even when the room is fairly small (Back et al., 2008). Indeed, when single men have a brief

1This is the second time I’ve introduced the term “instrumentality,” which we used to describe traits such as assertiveness and self-reliance back on page 26. The idea remains the same. Our “instrumental” traits promote our own accomplishments and achievements, and as Finkel and Eastwick use the term, “instrumen- tality” describes the extent to which someone else can offer us help in accomplishing our present goals. 2Remember? A really fundamental goal that characterizes the human race. See page 4.

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interaction with a moderately attractive woman, they like her better when she sits two- and-a-half feet away from them than when she sits five feet away (Shin et al., 2019).

A similar phenomenon occurs in student housing complexes. In a classic study, Festinger, Schachter, and Back (1950) examined the friendships among students living in campus housing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Residents were ran- domly assigned to rooms in 17 different buildings that were all like the one in Figure 3.1. People who lived close to each other were much more likely to become friends than were those whose rooms were further apart. Indeed, the chances that residents would become friends were closely related to the distances between their rooms (see Table 3.1). And the same result was also obtained from one building to the next: People were more likely to know and like residents of other buildings that were close to their own.

Off campus, similar effects occur, and with real consequence. In another classic study, examination of 5,000 marriage licenses in Philadelphia revealed that almost half (48 percent) of the new spouses had lived within a mile of each other before they mar- ried, and, even more remarkably, in one of every eight marriages, they had lived in the same building (Bossard, 1932)! Obviously, even small distances have a much larger influ- ence on our relationships than most people realize. Whenever we choose the exact place

TABLE 3.1. Friendship Choices in Campus Housing at MIT

Two hundred seventy people living in buildings like the one pictured in Figure 3.1 were asked to list their three closest companions. Among those living on the same floor of a given building, here’s how often the residents named someone living:

1 door away 41% of the time 2 doors away 22% 3 doors away 16% 4 doors away 10%

Only 88 feet separated residents living four doors apart, at opposite ends of the same floor, but they were only one-quarter as likely to become friends as were people living in adjacent rooms. Similar patterns were obtained from one floor to the next, and from building to building in the housing complex, so it was clear that small distances played a large part in determining who would and who would not be friends.

FIGURE 3.1. A student apartment building at MIT. In the study by Festinger et al. (1950), residents were randomly assigned to rooms in buildings like these.

1

6

2 3

7 8

5 4

109

Source: Myers, D. G. (2008). Social psychology (9th ed.). McGraw-Hill.

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where we will live or work or go to school, we also take a major step toward determining who the significant others in our lives are likely to be.

Familiarity: Repeated Contact

Why does proximity have such influence? For one thing, it increases the chances that two people will cross paths often and become more familiar with each other. Folk wisdom suggests that “familiarity breeds contempt,” but research evidence generally disagrees. Instead of being irritating, repeated contact with—or mere exposure to— someone usually increases our liking for him or her (Mrkva & Van Boven, 2020). Even if we have never talked to them, we tend to like people whose faces we recognize more than those whose faces are unfamiliar to us.

Moreland and Beach (1992) provided an interesting example of the mere exposure effect when they had college women attend certain classes either 15 times, 10 times, or 5 times during a semester. These women never talked to anyone and simply sat there, but they were present in the room frequently, sometimes, or rarely. Then at the end of the semester, the real students were given pictures of the women and asked for their reactions. The results were very clear: The more familiar the women were, the more the students were attracted to them. And they were all liked better than women the students had never seen at all. (See Figure 3.2.)

The proximity that occurs in college classrooms influences real relationships, too. An intriguing analysis of a whole year’s worth of the millions of e-mail messages passed among the tens of thousands of students at a large university—back before texting became commonplace—demonstrated that, among students who did not already share an acquaintance, taking a class together made it 140 times more likely that they would message each other (Kossinets & Watts, 2006). And as we’ve seen, small distances matter; students who are assigned seats next to each other are much

FIGURE 3.2. The mere exposure effect in college classrooms. Even though they never interacted with anyone, other students liked women more the more often they visited a class.

Li ki

ng fo

r t he

W om

en

Number of Visits to Class 0 5 10 15

5.0

4.5

4.0

3.5

3.0

Source: Data from Moreland, R. L., & Beach, S. R. (1992). “Exposure effects in the classroom: The development of affinity among students,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 28, 255–276.

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more likely to become friends than are those who are given seats a couple of rows apart (Segal, 1974).3

Of course, familiarity has it limits. As we gain information about others, we may find that they are obnoxious, disagreeable, or inept, and increasing exposure to such people may lead us to like them less, not more (Norton et al., 2013). Indeed, a study in a condominium complex in California (Ebbesen et al., 1976) found that although most of the residents’ friends lived nearby, most of their enemies did, too! Only rarely did people report that they really disliked someone who lived several buildings away from them. Instead, they despised fellow residents who were close enough to annoy them often—by playing music too loudly, letting their dogs bark, and so on.

Proximity can also be disadvantageous when people who have come to know each other online—see the “Digital Distance” box on page 92—meet in person for the first time. People put their best foot (and face) forward when they’re writing personal pro- files and posting pictures, so what you see on the Web is not necessarily what you get when you finally meet someone face-to-face (Hall et al., 2010). In particular, men often claim that they’re taller and richer, and women claim that they’re lighter and younger, than they really are (“Online Dating Statistics,” 2017). They’ve also typically been careful and selective in describing their attitudes and tastes, so there’s still a lot to learn about them. Thus, on average, when people who have met online get together in person for the first time, they’re mildly disappointed; the knowledge they have about each other goes up, but their liking for each other goes down (Sharabi & Caughlin, 2017). When we find out who our online partners actually are—as opposed to who we thought they were—our attraction to them often declines (Ramirez et al., 2015).

Proximity can also be surprisingly problematic when partners in long-distance rela- tionships are reunited after some time apart. When partners have to separate—for instance, when one of them is called to military service—“out of sight” does not inevitably lead to “out of mind.” A separation can destroy a relationship, particularly if the partners start dating other people who are close at hand (Sahlstein, 2006). But the more committed partners are to their relationship, the more they miss each other, and the more they miss each other, the harder they work to express their continued love and regard for each other across the miles (Le et al., 2011). Their conversations tend to be longer and more personal than those they would ordinarily have face-to-face, and they also tend to stay positive and steer clear of touchy topics (Rossetto, 2013). As a result, they’re likely to construct idealized images of their partnership that portray it as one that’s worth waiting for (Kelmer et al., 2013), and absence can indeed (at least temporarily) make the heart grow fonder (Jiang & Hancock, 2013). Unfortunately, reunions are often more stressful than people expect. When soldiers return home, for instance, the reunited lovers lose some of their autonomy and have to relearn how to comfortably depend on one another; they have to renegotiate their roles and rhythms, and confront the things (which they have often forgotten) that they didn’t like about each other (Knobloch & Wehrman, 2014). So perhaps it isn’t surprising that one-third of the long-distance dating partners— and remember, commitment is a key influence on all of this—who get back together break up within 3 months of their reunion (Stafford et al., 2006). 3This effect is so striking, I keep thinking that I should insist that my own students change seats halfway through the semester and sit next to a whole new bunch of potential friends. They would probably leave the course knowing—and liking—more people. But, because they’d probably also be annoyed to move, I’ve never done it.

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Digital Distance Where Almost Everybody Is Just a Click or Two Away

Proximity matters, but we also have astound- ing reach to others online, where we can en- counter potential mates that we’d never meet any other way. “Today, if you own a smart- phone, you’re carrying a 24-7 singles bar in your pocket” (Ansari, 2015, p. 31), and it’s now commonplace for romances to begin on- line on dating apps or websites, or on social media, in chat rooms, online communities, multiplayer games, and other online locales. Indeed, online encounters are now the most common way couples get started. These days, more heterosexual couples meet online than through introductions by friends, family, or coworkers (which used to be the way most couples met; Rosenfeld et al., 2019), and this pattern is even more pronounced among LGBTQ folks, who are twice as likely as het- erosexuals to be in a committed relationship with someone they met on a dating app or site (Vogels, 2020). And when it comes to those sites, there’s something for everyone. Do you have a passion for pets? Download Dig, the “Dog Person’s Dating App.”4 Are you looking for another vegetarian? VeggieDate.org. A sugar daddy? SugarDaddie.com. A hookup? OnlineBootyCall.com, which used to feature the “Booty Call® Commandment” “Thou shalt kiss anything except my mouth.” An ex- tramarital affair? AshleyMadison.com in the United States, and IllicitEncounters.com in the United Kingdom. And of course, apps can show you interested others who just happen to be nearby; Tinder is for you if you’re hetero- sexual, Grindr if you’re a gay man, and HER if you’re a lesbian, bisexual, or queer.

So, there’s amazing access to others online, and when we’re actively seeking oth- ers, expectations are often high. But the outcomes people experience with dating apps and on dating sites can be disappoint- ing, for several reasons. For one thing, most users encounter a lot of ambiguous rejec- tion. They “swipe right” to like others but

don’t get any interest in return. What does that mean? Have potential partners consid- ered you closely and found you unworthy? Or are they simply otherwise engaged and unaware of your interest? Either way, users can begin to doubt themselves, and Tinder users tend to have lower levels of satisfac- tion with their faces and bodies than non- users do (Strubel & Petrie, 2017). For another thing, there are fewer partners out there than it may seem; in order to make their pages more impressive, dating web- sites may be slow to remove inactive pro- files of ex- subscribers who have left the service. By one estimate in 2010, only 7 percent of the profiles that were visible on Match.com belonged to people who were still seeking partners (Slater, 2013). And even when two people are in the same gen- eral area, they get a match on Tinder (with both of them swiping right to express inter- est in the other) less than 2 percent of the time (Julian, 2018). Then, only 2 percent of those who match ever actually meet each other face-to-face. (And then, a one-night stand of casual sex ensues in only one-third of 1 percent of the matches people make [Grøntvedt et al., 2020], or about once for every 15,000 swipes to the right. Hookups do occur on Tinder, but not all that often.) Successful connections with others are scarcer than you might expect.

Moreover, the (apparent) abundance of choices isn’t necessarily conducive to re- lationship success. Overwhelmed by hun- dreds of profiles, people can become sloppy and less exacting in their choices, homing in, for instance, on particularly attractive people with whom they have little in com- mon (Bruch & Newman, 2018). Faced with so many options, they may also become more picky and choosy (Pronk & Denissen, 2020) and less likely to commit to any one partner (Pronk & Denissen, 2020); most

4I am not recommending any of these sites! Buyer beware. They’re just examples, and there are plenty more where they came from.

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So, the effects of familiarity depend both on what we learn about someone else and on the amount of interdependence we are forced to share. It is certainly possible to reach a point of saturation at which additional time with, and more information about, other people begins to reduce our liking for them (Montoya et al., 2017). But in general, when people first meet, we prefer others we recognize to those who are total strangers (Van Dessel et al., 2019)—and one reason proximity is usually profitable is that it increases the chances that others will be recognizable to us.

Convenience: Proximity Is Rewarding and Distance Is Costly

Another reason why proximity promotes most partnerships is that when others are nearby, it’s easy to enjoy whatever rewards they offer. Everything else being equal, a partner who is nearby has a big advantage over one who is far away: The expense and effort of getting to a distant partner—such as expensive airfares or hours on the road— make a distant relationship more costly overall than one that is closer to home. Distant relationships are less rewarding, too; an expression of love over a video feed is less delightful than an actual soft kiss on the lips.

The only notable thing about this is that anyone should find it surprising. However, lovers who have to endure a period of separation may blithely believe, because their relationship has been so rewarding up to that point, that some time apart will not adversely affect their romance. If so, they may be surprised by the difference distance makes. When a relationship that enjoys the convenience of proximity becomes incon- venient due to distance, it may suffer more than either partner expects. Lovers who are deeply committed to their relationship often survive a separation (Kelmer et al., 2013), but other partnerships may ultimately be doomed by distance (Sahlstein, 2006).

The Power of Proximity

The bottom line is that proximity makes it more likely that two people will meet and interact. What follows depends on the people involved, of course, but the good news is that most of the time, when two strangers begin chatting, they like each other more the more they chat (Reis et al., 2011). This does not occur with everyone we meet (Norton et al., 2013), and over time, constant contact with someone also carries the possibility that unre- warding monotony will set in (Montoya et al., 2017). Nevertheless, when we come to know others and our goal is simply to get along and to have a good time, familiarity and conve- nience increase our attraction to them. And that’s the power of proximity.

users (53 percent) have dated more than one person simultaneously (“Online Dating Statistics,” 2017). And finally, it’s unlikely that a dating site that offers to identify peo- ple who will be particularly perfect partners for their subscribers will be able to actually fulfill that promise; unique compatibility is so complex, it’s almost impossible to predict before two people have actually met (Joel et al., 2017).

In any case, one thing is certain: Tech- nology influences relationships, and there’s no more dramatic example than the advent of online dating and mating. It introduces us to a much larger variety of people than we would ever meet otherwise (Potarca, 2017), and it’s now common for us to encounter people on- line, research their backgrounds, and then chat from a distance, often for some time, before we actually meet (LeFebvre, 2018).

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PHYSICAL ATTRACTIVENESS: LIKING THOSE WHO ARE LOVELY

After proximity brings people together, what’s the first thing we’re likely to notice about those we meet? Their looks, of course. And, although we all know that we shouldn’t “judge books by their covers,” looks count. Physical attractiveness greatly influences the first impressions that people form of one another. In general, right or wrong, we tend to assume that good-looking people are more likable, better people than those who are unattractive.

Our Bias for Beauty: “What Is Beautiful Is Good”

Imagine that you’re given a photograph of a stranger’s face and, using only the photo, are asked to guess at the personality and prospects the person possesses. Studies of judgments such as these routinely find that physically attractive people are presumed to be interesting, sociable people who are likely to encounter personal and professional success in love and life (see Table 3.2). In general, we seem to think that what is beautiful is good; we assume that attractive people—especially those who share our own ethnic background (Agthe et al., 2016)—have desirable traits such as agreeableness, extraversion, and conscientiousness that complement their desirable appearances (Segal-Caspi et al., 2012). And we seem to make these judgments automatically, with- out any conscious thought; a beautiful face triggers a positive evaluation the instant we see it (Olson & Marshuetz, 2005).

We don’t expect good-looking strangers to be wonderful in every respect; the more attractive they are, the more promiscuous we think them to be (Brewer & Archer, 2007). (Is this just wishful thinking? It may be. One reason that we like to think that pretty people are outgoing and kind is because we’re attracted to them, and we want them to like us in return [Lemay et al., 2010]. Hope springs eternal.) Still, there’s no

TABLE 3.2. What Is Beautiful Is Good

Both male and female research participants judged that physically attractive people were more likely than unattractive people to be:

Kind Interesting Strong Poised Outgoing Sociable Nurturant Exciting date Sensitive Good character Sexually warm and responsive

These same judges also believed that, compared to those who were unattractive, physically attractive people would have futures that involved

More prestige Happier marriages More social and professional success More fulfilling lives

Source: Dion, K. K., Berscheid, E., & Walster, E. (1972). “What is beautiful is good.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 24, 285–290.

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question that attractive people make better overall impressions on us than less attractive people do, and this tends to be true all over the world (Wheeler & Kim, 1997).

The bias for beauty may also lead us to confuse beauty with talent. In the work- place, physically attractive people make more money and are promoted more often than are those with average looks. On average, good-looking folks earn $230,000 more during their lifetimes than less lovely people do (Hamermesh, 2013). On campus, attractive professors get better teaching evaluations than unattractive instructors do, and students attend their classes more frequently (Wolbring & Riordan, 2016). The more attractive U.S. politicians are, the more competent they are judged to be (Olivola & Todorov, 2010). Attractive people even make better impressions in court; good-looking culprits convicted of misdemeanors in Texas get lower fines than they would have received had they been less attractive (Downs & Lyons, 1991).

But are the interactions and relationships of beautiful people really any different from those of people who are less pretty? I’ll address that question shortly. First, though, we need to assess whether we all tend to agree on who is pretty and who is not.

Who’s Pretty?

Consider this: On the first day of a college class, researchers invite you to join a circle that, including you, contains four men and four women. All of the others are strangers. Your task is to take a close look at each person and to rate (secretly!) his or her physical attractiveness while they all judge you in return. What would you expect? Would all four members of the other sex in your group agree about how attractive you are? Would you and the other three people of the same sex give each of the four oth- ers exactly the same rating? David Marcus and I did a study just like this to determine the extent to which beauty is in the “eye of the beholder” (Marcus & Miller, 2003). We did find some mild disagreement among the observers that presumably resulted from individual tastes. Judgments of beauty were somewhat idiosyncratic—but not much. The take-home story of our study was the overwhelming consensus among people about the physical beauty of the strangers they encountered. Our participants clearly shared the same notions of who is and who isn’t pretty.

Moreover, this consensus exists across ethnic groups: Asians, Hispanics, and Black and white Americans all tend to agree with each other about the attractive- ness of women from all four groups (Cunningham et al., 1995). Even more striking is the finding that newborn infants exhibit preferences for faces like those that adults find attractive, too (Slater et al., 2000); when they are much too young to be affected by social norms, babies spend more time gazing at attractive than unat- tractive faces.

What faces are those? There’s little doubt that women are more attractive if they have “baby-faced” features such as large eyes, a small nose, a small chin, and full lips (Jones, 1995). The point is not to look childish, however, but to appear feminine and youthful; beautiful women combine those baby-faced features with signs of maturity such as prominent cheekbones, narrow cheeks, and a broad smile (Cunningham et al., 2002). Long eyelashes are lovely, too (Adam, 2021), and women who present all these features are thought to be attractive all over the world (Jones, 1995).

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Male attractiveness is more complex. Men who have strong jaws and broad foreheads—who look strong and dominant—are usually thought to be handsome (Rhodes, 2006). (Envision George Clooney.) On the other hand, when average male faces are made slightly more feminine and baby-faced through computer imaging, the “feminized” faces—which look warm and friendly—are attractive, too. ( Envision Tobey Maguire.) Remarkably, which facial style is more attractive to women seems to be influenced both by their average levels of the sex hormone progesterone during their menstrual cycles and whether or not they currently have romantic partners: If they’re single, they find rugged, manly features to be more attractive, the more progesterone they have—but if they’re already partnered, higher levels of progesterone are associated with lower prefer- ence for the masculine features (DeBruine et al., 2019).

In any case, good-looking faces in both sexes have features that are neither too large nor too small. Indeed, they are quite average. If you use computer imaging soft- ware to create composite images that combine the features of individual faces, the average faces that result are more attractive than nearly all of the faces that make up the composite (Little, 2015). This is true not only in the United States but also in China, Nigeria, India, and Japan (Rhodes et al., 2002). (For a delightful set of exam- ples from Germany, go to “‘BeautyCheck’ homepage!” with your search engine.)

However, this doesn’t mean that gorgeous people have bland, ordinary looks. The images that result from this averaging process are actually rather unusual. Their features are all proportional to one another; no nose is too big, and no eyes are too small, and there is nothing about such faces that is exaggerated, underdeveloped, or odd. Averaged faces are also symmetrical with the two sides of the face being mirror images of one another; the eyes are the same size, the cheeks are the same width, and so on. Facial symmetry is attractive in its own right, whether or not a face is “average” (Fink et al.,

Which of these two faces is more appealing to you? They are composite images of the same face that have been altered to include feminine or masculine facial features, and if you’re a woman, your answer may depend on your average levels of progesterone and whether or not you’re in a romantic relationship. Single women with lots of progesterone tend to find the more masculine face on the right to be more attractive, but when women have partners, higher levels of progester- one predict higher interest in the more feminine face on the left. I’ll have more to say about phe- nomena like this a few pages from now. Picture A is a 50 percent feminized male composite; B is a 50 percent masculinized male composite.

BA

Anthony Little

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2006). In fact, if you take a close look at identical twins, whose faces are very similar, you’ll probably think that the twin with the more symmetric face is the more attractive of the two (Lee et al., 2016). Both symmetry and “averageness” make their own contribution to facial beauty, so beautiful faces combine the best features of individual faces in a bal- anced, well-proportioned whole.

Of course, some bodies are more attractive than others, too. Men find women’s shapes most alluring when they are of normal weight, neither too heavy nor too thin, and their waists are noticeably narrower than their hips (Lassek & Gaulin, 2016). The most attractive waist-to-hip ratio, or WHR, is a curvy 0.7 in which the waist is 30 percent smaller than the hips (see Figure 3.3); this “hourglass” shape appeals to men around the world (Valentova et al., 2017).5 In the Czech Republic, for instance, the slimmer a woman’s waist is, the more often she and her man have sex and the better his erectile function is (Brody & Weiss, 2013). This appears to be a fundamental preference, too; even men who have been blind from birth prefer a low WHR in women’s bodies when they assess their shapes by touch (Karremans et al., 2010). (And if you’re still not convinced, this should do it: The princesses in animated Disney movies have lower WHRs than the female villains do [Aung & Williams, 2019].) Women who are over- weight are usually judged to be less attractive than slender and normal-weight women are (Faries & Bartholomew, 2012), and marriages are more satisfying to both spouses, on average, when wives are thinner than their husbands (Meltzer et al., 2011); neverthe- less, thin women are not more attractive to men than women of normal weight are

Look what happens when 2, 8, or 32 real faces are morphed together into composite images. When more faces are combined, the resulting image portrays a face that is not odd or idiosyn- cratic in any way and that has features and dimensions that are more and more typical of the human race. The result is a more attractive image. Averaged faces are attractive faces.

a. 2-Face Composite b. 8-Face Composite c. 32-Face Composite

5If you want to measure your own WHR, find the circumference of your waist at its narrowest point and divide that figure by the circumference of your hips at their broadest point, including your buttocks. Your butt is included in your “waist-to-hip” ratio.

Judith Langlois/Langlois Social Development Lab

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(Swami et al., 2007). Around the world, men like medium-sized breasts more than small breasts (Havlíček et al., 2017), but even larger breasts do not make a woman any more attractive (Kościński et al., 2020). In any case, breast size is less important than their proportion to the rest of a woman’s body; a curvy 0.75 waist-to-bust ratio is very appeal- ing ( Voracek & Fisher, 2006). In addition, a woman’s WHR has more influence on men’s judgments of her attractiveness than her breast size does (Dixson et al., 2011).6

Once again, male attractiveness is more complex. Men’s bodies are most attractive when their waists are only slightly narrower than their hips, with a WHR of 0.9. Broad shoulders and muscles are also attractive; men with higher shoulder-to-hip ratios (around 1.2) and bigger muscles have sex with more women and at earlier ages than do men who have narrower shoulders (Hughes & Gallup, 2003) or smaller muscles (Lassek & Gaulin, 2009)—and this, too, is true around the world (Frederick et al., 2011). However, a nice shape doesn’t attract a woman to a man unless he has other resources as well; a man’s WHR affects women’s evaluations of him only when he earns a healthy salary (Singh, 1995). A man is not all that attractive to women if he is handsome but poor.

Judgments of physical attractiveness are evidently multifaceted, and several other characteristics also inf luence those perceptions. Both men and women tend to prefer heterosexual partnerships in which he is taller than she is (Stulp et al., 2013), but height matters more to women than to men (Yancey & Emerson, 2016). So, tall men get more responses from women to their online profiles than short men do. A guy who’s short—say, 5’ 4”—can get as many responses on a dating web- site as a fellow who’s much taller—say, 6’ 1”—but only if he earns more money. A lot more. In this particular case, the shorter man would have to earn $221,000 more each year to be as interesting to women (Hitsch et al., 2010).

FIGURE 3.3. Waist-to-hip ratios. These figures portray the range of different waist-to-hip ratios that are typically found in young women. When men study a variety of images that present all of the possible WHRs from 0.6 to 0.85, they find an average WHR of 0.7 to be most attractive.

6I can also report that when men get 5 seconds to inspect full-body frontal images of naked women, the first things they look at are the breasts and waist (Garza et al., 2016). The face comes later. (But if you’re a woman, you already knew that.)

Krzysztof Kościński

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A potential partner’s smell also matters more to women than to men (Herz & Inzlicht, 2002), and remarkably, they prefer the smells of guys who have been eating a healthy diet full of fruits and vegetables to the smells of guys who’ve been consuming a lot of carbohydrates (Zuniga et al., 2017). But men are sensitive to smell, too, prefer- ring the natural scents of pretty women to those of women who are less attractive (Thornhill et al., 2003). In a typical study of this sort, people shower using unscented soap before they go to bed and then sleep in the same T-shirt for several nights. Then, research participants who have never met those people take a big whiff of those shirts and select the scents that are most appealing to them. Symmetrical, attractive people evidently smell better than asymmetrical, less attractive people do, because strangers prefer the aromas of attractive people to the smells of those who are more plain (Thornhill et al., 2003). What’s more, heterosexual men don’t much like the smell of gay men, who have aromas that are more attractive to other gay guys than to straight men (Martins et al., 2005). I am not making this up, so there are evidently subtle influences at work here.

Finally, women also like smart guys (which should be good news for most of the men reading this book) (Karbowski et al., 2016). In one intriguing study, researchers gave men intelligence tests and then filmed them throwing a Frisbee, reading news headlines aloud, and pondering the possibility of life on Mars. When women watched the videos, the smarter the men were, the more appealing they were (Prokosch et al., 2009). This may be one reason that, when they are trying to impress a woman, men use a more elaborate vocabulary—that is, bigger words—than they do in ordinary dis- course (Rosenberg & Tunney, 2008).

An Evolutionary Perspective on Physical Attractiveness

I’ve just mentioned a lot of details, so you may not have noticed, but people’s prefer- ences for prettiness generally fit the assumptions of an evolutionary perspective. Con- sider these patterns:

• Cultures differ in several respects, but people all over the world still tend to agree on who is and who is not attractive (Cunningham et al., 1995; Jones, 1995). That’s one reason why the winners of international beauty pageants are usually gorgeous no matter where they’re from.

• Babies are born with preferences for the same faces that adults find attractive (Slater et al., 2000). Some reactions to good looks may be inherited.

• People with attractive symmetrical faces also tend to have symmetrical bodies and to enjoy better mental and physical health—and therefore make better mates—than do people with asymmetrical faces (Nedelec & Beaver, 2014; Perilloux et al., 2010). Sym- metric people of both sexes are smarter (Luxen & Buunk, 2006) and get sick less often (Van Dongen & Gangestad, 2011) than do those whose faces and bodies have odd proportions.

• Women with WHRs near the attractive norm of 0.7 are usually young and are not already pregnant (Lassek & Gaulin, 2019), so they look like they’d be good mates (Bovet, 2019). They also tend to enjoy better physical health than do women with fewer curves (Jasieńska et al., 2004). A man with an attractive WHR of 0.9 is also likely to be in better health than another man with a plump belly (Payne, 2006).

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So, both sexes are most attracted to the physical shapes that signal the highest likelihood of good health in the other sex (Singh & Singh, 2011).

• Everybody likes good looks, but physical attractiveness matters most to people who live in equatorial regions of the world where there are many parasites and pathogens that can endanger good health (Gangestad & Buss, 1993). In such areas, unblemished beauty may be an especially good sign that someone is in better health—and will make a better mate—than someone whose face is in some way imperfect.

• Ultimately, all things considered, attractive people in the United States reproduce more successfully—they have more children—than do those who are less attractive (Jokela, 2009).

• There are subtle but provocative changes in women’s desires that accompany their monthly menstrual cycles. Women are only fertile for the few days that precede their ovulation each month (see Figure 3.4), and during that period, they experi- ence increases in sexual desire both for their current partners and for other men (Arslan et al., 2020). They generally find men’s bodies to be more attractive (Jünger et al., 2018), and they are better able to judge whether a guy is gay or straight (Rule et al., 2011). These cyclic changes do not occur if women are taking birth control pills (and therefore are not ovulating) (Alvergne & Lummaa, 2010).

FIGURE 3.4. Women’s probability of conception during the menstrual cycle. Women are fertile during the few days just before they ovulate at the end of the follicular phase of their menstrual cycles. During that period, they experience more sexual desire, for both their partners and for others, than they do during the rest of the month.

1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29

Day in Cycle

Pr ob

ab ili

ty o

f C on

ce pt

io n

(x 10

0 )

50

40

30

20

10

0

Follicular Phase Luteal Phase

Source: Jöchle, W. (1973). “Coitus-induced ovulation,” Contraception, 7, 523–564.

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• For their part, men think women smell better when they’re about to ovulate than at other times of the month (Gildersleeve et al., 2012). Smelling the T-shirts of such women causes men to experi- ence a surge of testosterone (Miller & Maner, 2010) and to start thinking sexy thoughts (Miller & Maner, 2011). When women are fertile, their voices (Ostrander et al., 2018) and bodies (Grillot et al., 2014) are more attractive to men, too. All in all, it seems pretty clear that in subtle but real ways—and without necessarily being aware of it—men can tell there’s something slightly different and desirable about a woman when she’s about to ovulate (Haselton & Gildersleeve, 2016).7

These patterns convince some theorists that our standards of physical beauty have an evolutionary basis (Eastwick & Tidwell, 2013). Presumably, early humans who successfully sought fertile, robust, and healthy mates were more likely to reproduce successfully than were those who simply mated at random. As a result, the common preferences of modern men for symmetrical, low-WHR partners and of modern (fertile) women for symmetrical, masculine men may be evolved incli- nations that are rooted more in their human natures than in their particular cultural heritage.

Culture Counts, Too

Nevertheless, there’s no doubt that standards of attractiveness are also affected by changing economic and cultural conditions. Have you seen those Renaissance paintings of women who look fat by modern standards? During hard times, when a culture’s food supply is unreliable and people are hungry, slender women are actually less desirable than heavy women are (Nelson & Morrison, 2005). Around the world, only during times of plenty are slender women considered to be attrac- tive (Swami et al., 2010). Indeed, as economic prosperity spread through the United States during the twentieth century, women were expected to be slimmer and slimmer so that, back when they were popular, the average Playboy Playmate was so slender she met the weight criterion for having an eating disorder (Owen & Laurel-Seller, 2000).

Norms can differ across ethnic groups as well (influenced in part, perhaps, by different patterns of economic well-being). Black and Latina women in the United States are more accepting of some extra weight than white women are, and indeed,

7Once again, and as always, I am not making any of this up. More importantly, aren’t these findings remark- able? Keep in mind that if a woman is changing the normal ebb and flow of her hormones by taking birth control pills, none of this happens (Alvergne & Lummaa, 2010). But when women are cycling normally, these patterns support the possibility that estrous cycles exist in humans just as they do in other animals. The actual frequency with which heterosexual women have sex with their men does not fluctuate with ovula- tion (Grebe et al., 2013), so such cycles are more subtle in humans, to be sure—but they may exist nonetheless (Gangestad & Haselton, 2015).

A Point to Ponder

Are you intrigued or are you annoyed by an evolutionary perspective on physical attrac- tiveness? Why?

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Black and Latino men like heavier women than white men do (Glasser et al., 2009). (But watch out: They still prefer the same curvaceous 0.7 WHR that is universally appealing to men [Singh & Luis, 1995]. In fact, even those Renaissance paintings depicted women with 0.7 WHRs.)

Collectively, these findings suggest that human nature and environmental condi- tions work together to shape our judgments of who is and who isn’t pretty (Eastwick, 2013). We’re usually attracted to people who appear to be good mates, but what looks good depends somewhat on the conditions we inhabit. Still, beauty is not just in the eye of the beholder. There is remarkable agreement about who’s gorgeous and who’s ugly around the world.

Looks Matter

When a stranger walks into the room, you’ll know with a glance how attractive he or she is (Palomares & Young, 2018). Does that matter? Indeed, it does. During speed dates—in which people meet a variety of potential partners and get a chance to exchange any information they want—the biggest inf luence on their liking for others is outward appearance. “Participants are given 3 minutes in which to make their judgments, but they could mostly be made in 3 seconds” ( Kurzban & Weeden, 2005, p. 240). Men are attracted to women who are slender, young, and physically attractive, and women are attracted to men who are tall, young, and physically attractive. Of all the things people could learn about each other in a few minutes of conversation, the one that matters most is physical attractiveness (Li et al., 2013). Take someone’s Big 5 personality traits, attachment style, political attitudes, and other values and interests into account, and the best predictor of interest in him or her after a brief first meeting remains physical attractiveness. As you’d expect, friendly, outgoing people tend to be well liked, and nobody much likes people who are shy or high in anxiety about abandonment (McClure & Lydon, 2014), but noth- ing else about someone is as important at first meeting as his or her looks (Olderbak et al., 2017).

Of course, speed-dating events can be a bit hectic—have you ever introduced yourself to 25 different potential partners in a busy hour and a half?—and when they ponder the question, men all over the world report higher interest in having a phys- ically attractive romantic partner than women do (Walter et al., 2020; see

Figure 3.5). This is true of gays and lesbians, too (Ha et al., 2012). And indeed, 4 years into a marriage, a man’s satisfaction is correlated with his spouse’s attrac- tiveness, but a woman’s contentment is unrelated to her partner’s looks (Meltzer et al., 2014). Women know that men are judging them by their looks, which may be why 87 percent of the cosmetic surgery performed in the United States in 2018 was done on women (American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2019).

But remember, despite the different emphasis men and women (say they) put on good looks, physical

A Point to Ponder

Modern culture is full of im- ages of tall, slender, shapely women and tall, muscular, handsome men. How are these idealized images of the two sexes subtly inf lu- encing your real-life relationships?

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attractiveness influences both sexes when people get together (Eastwick et al., 2014), and on online dating sites, women are just as likely as men to want to see a photo of a potential partner (Vogels, 2020). Looks matter. They’re the most potent influence on how much any two people will initially like each other.

The Interactive Costs and Benefits of Beauty

So, what effects do our looks have on our interactions with others? Notably, despite men’s interest in women’s looks, there is actually no correlation overall between a woman’s beauty and the amount of time she spends interacting with men (Reis et al., 1982). Attractive women get more dates, but plain women spend plenty of time inter- acting with men in group settings where others are present. In contrast, men’s looks are correlated with the number and length of the interactions they have with women. Unattractive men have fewer interactions of any sort with fewer women than good- looking guys do. In this sense, then, physical attractiveness has a bigger effect on the social lives of men than it does on women.

Being more popular, attractive people tend to be less lonely, more socially skilled, and a little happier than the rest of us (Feingold, 1992), and they’re able to have sex with a wider variety of people if they want (Weeden & Sabini, 2007). Physical attractiveness may even account for as much as 10 percent of the variability in people’s adjustment and well-being over their lifetimes (Burns & Farina, 1992). But being attractive has disadvan- tages, too. For one thing, perhaps because they’re so highly sought (even when they’re already in a relationship), the marriages of gorgeous people are less stable than those of the rest of us; they divorce more often than plain people do (Ma-Kellams et al., 2017). Others lie to pretty people more often, too. People are more willing to misrepresent their interests, personalities, and incomes to get close to an attractive person than they are to fabricate an image for a plain partner (Rowatt et al., 1999). As a result, realizing that others are often “brown-nosing,” or trying to ingratiate themselves, gorgeous people may cautiously begin mistrusting or discounting some of the praise they receive from others.

FIGURE 3.5. Desire for physical attractiveness in a romantic partner. Around the world, according to their self-reports, men care about a partner’s looks more than women do.

.5

0

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0Indispensable Men

Unimportant Bulgaria Nigeria Indonesia West

Germany USA

Women

Source: Data from Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. P. (1993). “Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating,” Psychological Review, 100, 204–232.

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Consider this clever study: Attractive or unattractive people receive a written eval- uation of their work from a person of the other sex who either does or does not know what they look like (Major et al., 1984). In every case, each participant receives a flattering, complimentary evaluation. (Indeed, everyone gets exactly the same praise.) How did the recipients react to this good news? Attractive men and women trusted the praise more and assumed that it was more sincere when it came from someone who didn’t know they were good-looking. They were evidently used to getting insincere compliments from people who were impressed by their looks. On the other hand, unat- tractive people found the praise more compelling when the evaluator did know they were plain; sadly, they probably weren’t used to compliments from people who were aware of their unappealing appearances.

So, gorgeous people are used to pleasant interactions with others, but they tend not to trust other people as much as less attractive people do (Reis et al., 1982). In particular, others’ praise may be ambiguous. If you’re very attractive, you may never be sure whether people are complimenting you because they respect your abilities or because they like your looks.

Matching in Physical Attractiveness

I’ve spent several pages discussing physical attractiveness—which is an indication of its importance—but there is one last point to make about its influence at the begin- ning of a relationship. We all may want gorgeous partners, but we’re likely to end up paired off with others who are only about as attractive as we are (Hitsch et al., 2010). Partners in established romantic relationships tend to have similar levels of physical attractiveness; that is, their looks are well matched, and this pattern is known as matching.

The more serious and committed a relationship becomes, the more obvious match- ing usually is. People may pursue others who are better-looking than they—on dating sites, they’ll often pursue others who are about 25 percent more desirable than they are (Bruch & Newman, 2018)—but they are unlikely to go steady with, or become engaged to, someone who is “out of their league” (Taylor et al., 2011). What this means is that, even if everybody wants a physically attractive partner, only those who are also good-looking are likely to get them. None of the really good-looking people want to pair off with us folks of average looks, and we, in turn, don’t want partners who are “beneath us,” either (Lee et al., 2008).

Thus, it’s not very romantic, but similarity in physical attractiveness seems to operate as a screening device. If people generally value good looks, matching will occur as they settle for the best-looking partner who will have them in return (Montoya, 2008). There is, however, a heartwarming exception to this rule: Matching is less obvious—and mismatches in attractiveness are more likely to occur—in partners who were platonic friends before a romance developed between them (Hunt et al., 2015). Evidently, matching matters less if people grow close before the issue of relative attrac- tiveness rears its ugly head (so to speak). Husbands and wives do tend to be noticeably similar in physical attractiveness (Little et al., 2006), and some relationships never get started because the two people don’t look enough alike (van Straaten et al., 2009)—but that needn’t always be the case.

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RECIPROCITY: LIKING THOSE WHO LIKE US

The matching phenomenon suggests that, to enjoy the most success in the relationship marketplace, we should pursue partners who are likely to return our interest—and in fact, most people do just that. When we ponder possible partners, most of us rate our realistic interest in others—and the likelihood that we will approach them and try to start a relationship—using a formula like this (Shanteau & Nagy, 1979):

A Potential Partner’s Desirability

= His/Her

Physical Attractiveness ×

His/Her Probability of Accepting You

Everything else being equal, the better-looking people are, the more desirable they are. However, this formula suggests that people’s physical attractiveness is mul- tiplied by our judgments of how likely it is that they will like us in return to determine their overall appeal. Do the math. If someone likes us a lot but is rather ugly, that person probably won’t be our first choice for a date. If someone else is gorgeous but doesn’t like us back, we won’t waste our time. The most appealing potential partner is often someone who is moderately attractive and who seems to offer a reasonably good chance of accepting us (perhaps because he or she isn’t gorgeous) (Montoya & Horton, 2014).

Our expectations regarding the probability of others’ acceptance have much to do with our mate value, or overall attractiveness as a reproductive partner. People with high mate values are highly sought by others, and as a result, they’re able to insist on partners of high quality. And they do (Arnocky, 2018). For instance, women who are very good-looking have very high standards in men; they don’t just want a kind man who would be a good father, or a sexy man who has good economic prospects; they want all of those desirable characteristics in their partners (Buss & Shackelford, 2008). If their mate values are high enough, they might be able to attract such perfect partners (Conroy-Beam & Buss, 2016)—but if they’re overestimating their desirability and over- reaching, they’re likely to remain frustrated (Bredow, 2015).

In general, our histories of acceptance and rejection from others have taught us what to expect when we approach new potential partners (Charlot et al., 2020). Com- pared to the rest of us, for instance, people who are shy (Wenzel & Emerson, 2009) or who have low self-esteem (Bale & Archer, 2013) nervously expect more rejection from others, so they pursue less desirable partners. But it’s common to be cautious when we are unsure of others’ acceptance. A clever demonstration of this point emerged from a study in which college men had to choose where to sit to watch a movie (Bernstein et al., 1983). They had two choices: squeeze into a small cubicle next to a very attractive woman, or sit in an adjacent cubicle—alone—where there was plenty of room. The key point is that some of the men believed that the same movie was playing on both monitors, whereas other men believed that different movies were show- ing on the two screens. Let’s consider the guys’ dilemma. Presumably, most of them wanted to become acquainted with the beautiful woman. However, when only one movie was available, squeezing in next to her entailed some risk of rejection; their intentions would be obvious, and there was some chance that the woman would tell them to “back off.” However, when two different movies were available, they were on

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safer ground. Sitting next to the woman could mean that they just wanted to see that particular movie, and a rebuff from her would be rude. In fact, only 25 percent of the men dared to sit next to the woman when the same movie was on both monitors, but 75 percent did so when two movies were available and their intentions were more ambiguous. Moreover, we can be sure that the men were taking advantage of the uncertain situation to move in on the woman—instead of really wanting to see that particular movie—because the experimenters kept changing which movie played on which screen. Three-fourths of the men squeezed in with the gorgeous woman no mat- ter which movie was playing there!

In general, then, people seem to take heed of the likelihood that they will be accepted and liked by others, and they are more likely to approach those who offer acceptance than rejection. Our judgments of our mate values can vary from one rela- tionship to another, as we assess our compatibility—and appeal—to particular partners (Eastwick & Hunt, 2014). But the best acceptance usually comes from potential part- ners who are selective and choosy and who don’t offer acceptance to everyone. In speed-dating situations, for example, people who are eager to go out with everyone they meet are liked less by others—and make fewer matches—than those who are more

What’s a Good Opening Line?

You’re shopping for groceries, and you keep crossing paths with an attractive person who smiles at you warmly when your eyes meet. You’d like to meet him or her. What should you say? You need to do more than just say, “Hi,” and wait for a response, don’t you? Per- haps some clever food-related witticism is the way to go: “Is your dad a baker? You’ve sure got a nice set of buns.”

Common sense suggests that such at- tempts at humor are good opening lines. In- deed, the Web is full of sites with lists of funny pickup lines that are supposed to make a good impression. Be careful, though; seri- ous research has compared the effectiveness of various types of opening lines, and a cute or flippant remark may be among the worst things to say.

Let’s distinguish cute lines from innocu- ous openers (such as just saying, “Hi” or “How’re you doing?”) and direct lines that honestly communicate your interest (such as “Hi, I’d like to get to know you”). When women e valuate lines like these by watching tapes of men who use them, they like the cute

lines much less than the other two types (Kleinke & Dean, 1990). More importantly, when a guy actually uses one of these lines on a woman in a singles bar, the innocuous and direct openers get a favorable response 70 per- cent of the time compared to a success rate of only 24 percent for the cute lines (Cunning- ham, 1989). A line that is sexually forward (such as “I may not be Fred Flintstone, but I bet I can make your bed rock”) usually does even worse (Cooper et al., 2007). There’s no comparison: Simply saying hello is a much smarter strategy than trying to be cute or for- ward (Weber et al., 2010).

Why, then, do people create long lists of flippant pickup lines? Because they’re men. When a woman uses a cute line on a man in a singles bar, it usually works—but that’s because any opening line from a woman works well with a man. But the approach men like best is for a woman to honestly announce her interest with a direct approach (such as “Want to have a drink together?”) (Fisher et al., 2020). Whether you’re a man or woman, if you’d like to get to know someone, the best thing to do is to say so.

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discriminating; people who say “yes” to everybody get few “yesses” in return, whereas those who record interest in only a select few are more enticing to those they pick (Eastwick et al., 2007). These results jive nicely, by the way, with classic studies of what happens when people play “hard to get.” Because people like to be liked, pretend- ing to be aloof and only mildly interested in someone is a dumb way to try to attract him or her. Playing hard to get doesn’t work. What does work is being selectively hard to get—that is, being a difficult catch for everyone but the person you’re trying to attract (Walster et al., 1973). Those who can afford to say “no” to most people but who are happy to say “yes” to us are the most alluring potential partners of all.

Still, everything else being equal, it’s hard not to like those who like us (Birnbaum et al., 2018). Imagine that the first thing you hear about a new transfer student is that he or she has noticed you and really likes you; don’t you feel positively toward him or her in return? Liking and acceptance from others is powerfully rewarding, and we’re attracted to those who provide it.

SIMILARITY: LIKING THOSE WHO ARE LIKE US

So, it’s rewarding to meet people who like us. It’s also enjoyable to find others who are just like us and who share the same background, interests, and tastes. Indeed, when it comes to our attitudes, age, race (and, to some degree, our personalities), the old cliché that “birds of a feather flock together” is absolutely correct (Bahns et al., 2017; Hampton et al., 2019). Like attracts like. Consider these classic examples:

• At the University of Michigan, previously unacquainted men were given free rooms in a boardinghouse in exchange for their participation in a study of developing friendships (Newcomb, 1961). At the end of the semester, the men’s closest friend- ships were with those housemates with whom they had the most in common.

• At the University of Texas, researchers intentionally created blind dates between men and women who held either similar social and political attitudes or dissimilar views (Byrne et al., 1970). Each couple spent 30 minutes at the student union getting to know each other over soft drinks. After the “dates,” similar couples liked each other more than dissimilar couples did.

• At Kansas State University, 13 men spent 10 days jammed together in a simulated fallout shelter, and their feelings about each other were assessed along the way (Griffitt & Veitch, 1974). The men got along fine with those with whom they had a lot in common, but would have thrown out of the shelter, if they could, those who were the least similar to themselves.

As these examples suggest, similarity is attractive.

What Kind of Similarity?

But what kinds of similarities are we talking about? Well, lots. Whether they are lovers or friends, happy relationship partners resemble each other more than random strang- ers do in several ways. First, there’s demographic similarity in age, sex, race, education, religion, and social class (Hitsch et al., 2010). Most of your best friends in high school

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were probably of the same age, sex, and race (Hartl et al., 2015), and if you marry, you and your spouse are likely to have similar levels of education (Jonason & Antoon, 2019). People are even more likely than you’d expect to marry someone whose last name begins with the same last letter as their own (Jones et al., 2004)!

Then there’s similarity in attitudes and values. There is a straightforward link between the proportion of the attitudes two people think they share and their attraction to each other: the more agreement, the more liking. Take note of the pattern in Figure 3.6. When people were told that they agreed on a lot of issues, attraction didn’t level off after a certain amount of similarity was reached, and there was no danger in having “too much in common.” Instead, where attitudes are concerned, the more similar two people are, the more they like each other (Sprecher, 2019). For whom did you vote in the last elec- tion? It’s likely you and your sweetheart cast similar ballots (and if you didn’t, there may be trouble ahead [Afifi et al., 2020]).

Finally, to a lesser degree, partners may have similar personalities—but this pattern is a bit complex. When it comes to me being happy with you, it’s not vital that you and I have similar personalities (van Scheppingen et al., 2019); what matters is that you are agreeable, conscientious, and emotionally stable, and so are easy and pleasant to live with (Watson et al., 2014). My contentment will have more to do with your desirable qualities than with how similar we are (Weidmann et al., 2017). Of course, if I have a congenial, dependable personality, too, then you’re also happy, and our personalities are fairly similar—but it’s not our similarity per se that’s promoting our

Attraction is influenced by similarity. People who are similar in background characteristics, physical attractiveness, and attitudes are more likely to be attracted to each other than are those who are dissimilar.

FIGURE 3.6. The relationship between attraction and perceived similarity in attitudes. People expected to like a stranger when they were led to believe that the stranger shared their attitudes.

6.00

A ttr

ac tio

n

12.00

Proportion of Similar Attitudes 1.00.00 .10 .20 .30 .40 .50 .60 .70 .80.90

1 1.00

10.00

9.00

8.00

7.00

Source: Adapted from Byrne, D., & Nelson, D. (1965). “Attraction as a linear function of proportion of positive reinforcements,” Journal of Personality and Social Psy- chology, 1, 659–663.Asia Images Group/Getty Images

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satisfaction (Wood & Furr, 2016). The key here is that the link between similarity and attraction is stronger for attitudes than for personalities (Watson et al., 2004), and it actually varies some from country to country. In China, a country that values group harmony, for instance, the personalities of husbands and wives are typically more similar than those of spouses in the United States, a country that celebrates individu- alism (Chen et al., 2009). (And that sounds like a point to ponder.)

In any case, people with similar styles and traits usually get along well when they encounter each other (Sharabi & Caughlin, 2017); for instance, the first meet- ings of two gregarious people or two shy people are typically more enjoyable than the first conversation of a gregarious person and a shy person is (Cuperman & Ickes, 2009). People even like others better, when they meet online, if they have similar avatars (van der Land et al., 2015).

Do Opposites Attract?

So, in general, the more two people have in common, the more they like each other. “Relationships are formed, in part, by the selection of partners who share important attitudes, values, prejudices, activities, and some personality traits” (Bahns et al., 2017, p. 341).8 When others share our views, we assume that they like us, we trust them (Singh et al., 2017), and we enjoy time with them more than is the case when we disagree (Hampton et al., 2019). Why, then, do some of us believe that “opposites attract”? Are people really more attracted to each other when they are less alike? The simple answer is no. There are some nuances at work, but people are not routinely more content with dissimilar, rather than similar, partners. However, there are several important subtleties in the way similarity operates that may mislead people into think- ing that opposites do sometimes attract.

How Much Do We Think We Have in Common? Perceived Similarity Matters

The first subtlety is that our perceptions of how much we have in common affect our attraction to each more than our actual similarity does. For instance, 4 minutes after people have met in a speed-dating study, their interest in each other has little to do with how much they really have in common; instead, to the extent their liking for each other is influenced by their personalities and interests, it depends on how similar they think they are (Tidwell et al., 2013). And perceived similarity remains important even if a relationship develops and the partners come to know each other better. After years of friendship—or marriage!—partners still routinely think that they have more in common with each other than they really do (Goel et al., 2010). They overestimate the similarities they share (de Jong & Reis, 2014)—and discovering how wrong they are (if they ever do)

A Point to Ponder

Husbands and wives in China typically have person- alities that are more similar to one another than spouses in the United States do. When it comes to marital satisfaction, is that a good or a bad thing?

8I added the italics to this quote.

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can take some time. Meanwhile, interested onlookers—friends, family, co-workers—may correctly observe that the partners are two very different people and infer, therefore, that opposites must attract. No, the partners aren’t together because their differences are desirable, they’re together because they think they’re not very different, and they’re wrong (Sprecher, 2014).

Discovering Dissimilarities Can Take Time

If we like others when we meet them (perhaps simply because they’re good-looking), we tend to expect (or is it hope?) that they have attitudes and values that are similar to our own (Rodrigues et al., 2017)—and of course, sometimes we’re mistaken. If we get to know them better, the interests and attitudes we actually share will become influential (Luo, 2009), but it may take a while for us to figure that out.

A process like this was evident in Newcomb’s (1961) study of developing friend- ships among men sharing a boardinghouse. Soon after they met, the men liked best the housemates who they thought were most like them; thus, at first, their friendships were influenced mostly by perceived similarity. As the semester progressed, however, the actual similarities the men shared with each other played a larger and larger role in their friendships. When they got to know each other better, the men clearly pre- ferred those who really were similar to them, although this was not always the case at first.

Then, even when we do know our partners well, there may still be surprises ahead. According to Bernard Murstein’s (1987) stimulus-value-role theory, we gain three

Interethnic Relationships

Most of our intimate relationships are likely to be with others of the same race. Neverthe- less, marriages between spouses from differ- ent ethnic groups are occurring at a record pace in the United States, with 17 percent of newlyweds marrying someone of a different race (Geiger & Livingston, 2019). Those couples raise an interesting question: If simi- larity attracts, what’s going on? The answer is actually straightforward: nothing special. If you ignore the fact of their dissimilar ethnic- ity, interethnic couples appear to be influ- enced by the same motives that guide everyone else. The partners tend to be similar in age, education, and attractiveness, and their relationships, like most, are based on common interests and personal compatibil- ity (Brummett, 2017). A few things distin- guish people who date partners from other

cultural groups: Compared to their peers, they’ve had closer contact with other ethnici- ties (Skinner & Rae, 2019) and they’re more accepting of other cultures (Brooks & Neville, 2017). They also tend to live in areas where potential partners of the same race are relatively scarce (Choi & Tienda, 2017). In general, however, inter ethnic partners are just as satisfied as other couples (Troy et al., 2006) and despite some lingering disap- proval from others (Skinner & Rae, 2019), they have the same chances for marital suc- cess as their peers (Zhang & Van Hook, 2009). Their relationships operate the same way: Two people who consider each other to be good-looking and smart (Wu et al., 2015)— and who are more alike than different— decide to stay together because they’re happy and they’ve fallen in love.

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different broad types of information about our partners as a new relationship develops. When we first meet, our attraction to each other is primarily based on “stimulus” information involving obvious attributes such as age, sex, and, of course, looks. There- after, during the “value” stage, attraction depends on similarity in attitudes and beliefs as we learn whether we like the same kinds of pizzas, movies, and politics (see Figure 3.7). Only later does “role” compatibility become important, when we finally find out if we agree on the basics of parenting, careers, and housecleaning, among other life tasks. The point is that partners can be perfectly content with each other’s tastes in music (for instance) without ever realizing that they disagree fundamentally about where they’d like to live and how many kids—if any!—they want to have. Impor- tant dissimilarities sometimes become apparent only after couples have married— and such spouses may stay together despite their differences, but it’s not because opposites attract.

The influence of time and experience is also apparent in fatal attractions (Felmlee, 2001). These occur when a quality that initially attracts one person to another gradu- ally becomes one of the most obnoxious, irritating things about that partner. For instance, partners who initially seem spontaneous and fun may later seem irresponsible and foolish, and those who appear strong and assertive may later seem domineering. Those who initially welcome a partner’s high level of attention and devotion may come to resent such behavior when it later seems too possessive. In such cases, the annoying trait is no secret, but people fail to appreciate how their judgments of it will change with time. Importantly, such fatal qualities are often different from one’s own; they may seem admirable and desirable at first—so that a spendthrift who’s always broke may initially admire a tightwad who counts every penny—but over time people realize that such opposites aren’t attractive (Rick et al., 2011).

FIGURE 3.7. Three different phases of relationship development. Murstein’s (1987) stimulus-value-role theory suggests that developing relationships are influ- enced by three different types of information that differ in importance and influence as time goes by and the partners learn more about each other.

Im po

rt an

ce o

f I nf

or m

at io

n

Increasing Intimacy

Role

Value

Stimulus

Source: Data from Murstein, B. I. (1987). “A clarification and extension of the SVR theory of dyadic pairing,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 49, 929–933.

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You May Be the Person I Want to Become

Along those lines, people also admire those who possess skills and talents they wish they had. Another nuance in the operation of similarity lies in our attraction to others who are similar to our ideal selves, that is, who exhibit desirable qualities that we want to, but do not yet, possess (Strauss et al., 2012). This tendency is complex because it’s threatening and unpleasant when people surpass us and make us look bad by comparison (Herbst et al., 2003). However, if others are only a little better than us—so that they offer us implicit encouragement instead of humiliation—we may be attracted to those who are actually a little different from us (for now) (Cemalcilar et al., 2018). Let’s not overstate this subtlety. The most appealing partners of all are those who are similar to us in most dimensions but who fit our attainable ideals in others (Liu et al., 2018). Such people are hardly our “opposites.” But as long as the differences are not too great, we may prefer a partner who is someone we’d like to become to one who more closely resembles who we really are now.

Dissimilarity May Decrease over Time

Moreover, relationships can change people (Denzinger et al., 2018). Their per- sonalities don’t change much (Rammstedt et al., 2013), but as time goes by, the members of a couple often come to share more similar attitudes (Gonzaga et al., 2010). Some of this decrease in dissimilarity probably occurs automatically as a cou- ple shares compelling experiences, but some of it also occurs as the partners con- sciously seek compatibility and contentment (Luo, 2017). Thus, opposites don’t attract, but some opposites may gradually fade if a couple stays together for some other reason.

Some Types of Similarity Are More Important than Others

A further nuance is that some similarities may be quite influential, whereas other similarities—or opposites—may be rather innocuous. In particular, it’s especially reward- ing to have someone agree with us on issues that are very important to us (Bahns et al., 2017). Religion is often one such issue; shared beliefs are quite satisfying to a couple when they are highly religious, but they have little effect—and even disagreement is immaterial—when neither of the partners actively observes a faith (Lutz-Zois et al., 2006). Thus, opposites don’t attract, but they also may not matter if no one attaches much importance to them.

Housework and gender roles appear to be among the similarities that do routinely matter. Cohabiting couples who disagree with each other about the division of household labor are more likely to break up than are those who share similar views (Hohmann- Marriott, 2006), and spouses who share such work are more satisfied than those who divide it unequally (Amato et al., 2007). And husbands and wives who are more similar in their gender roles—not less, as a traditional outlook would lead us to expect—are more happily married than those who differ from one another in their styles and skills (Gaunt, 2006). In particular, compared to spouses who are more alike, macho husbands and feminine wives (who clearly have different gender roles) feel less understood, share less companionship, and experience less love and contentment in their marriages as time goes by (Helms et al., 2006).

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Matching Is a Broad Process

Another source of confusion arises when people pair off with others who are obviously very different but who nevertheless have a similar mate value—as may be the case when an old rich guy marries a lovely young woman. In such cases, the partners are clearly dissimilar, and “opposites” may seem to attract. That’s a rather unsophisti- cated view, however, because such partners are really just matching in a broader sense, trading looks for money and vice versa. They may have different assets, but such partners are still seeking good matches with others who have similar standing overall in the interpersonal marketplace. People usually end up with others of similar mate value, but the specific rewards they offer each other may be quite different.

This sort of thing goes on all the time. A study of 6,485 users of an online dating service found that very homely—okay, ugly—men (those in the bottom 10 percent of attractiveness among men) needed $186,000 more in annual income in order to attract as much attention from women as fine-looking fellows (i.e., those in the top 10 percent); nevertheless, if they did make that much more money, ugly guys received just as many inquiries as handsome men did (Hitsch et al., 2010). Indeed, we tend to assume, don’t we, that when a lovely woman is paired with a homely fellow, he must be pretty well off or fairly famous (Hoplock et al., 2019).

It’s not very romantic, but fame, wealth, health, talent, and looks all appear to be commodities that people use to attract more desirable partners than they might other- wise entice. If we think of matching as a broad process that involves both physical attractiveness and various other assets and traits, it’s evident that people usually pair off with others of similar status, and like attracts like.

In fact, trade-offs like these are central ideas in evolutionary psychology. Because men are more likely to reproduce successfully when they mate with healthy, fertile women, sexual selection has presumably promoted men’s interest in youthful and beau- tiful partners (Buss, 2019). Youth is important because women are no longer fertile after they reach menopause in middle age. Beauty is meaningful because, as we’ve already seen, it is roughly correlated with some aspects of good health (Van Dongen & Gangestad, 2011). Thus, men especially value good looks in women (see Figure 3.5), and, as they age, they seek partners who are increasingly younger than they are (Conroy-Beam & Buss, 2019). They pay more for prostitutes in their teens and early 20s than for women in their 30s (Dunn, 2018), and if they purchase a bride (as may hap- pen in South Korea), they never buy one older than 25 even when they’re in their 40s or 50s (Sohn, 2017). On dating sites, younger women get many more messages from men than older women do (see Figure 3.8), and around the world, men who marry in their twenties pair off with women who are 2 years younger than they are, on average, but men who marry in their fifties seek wives who are 15 years younger than they (Dunn et al., 2010).

Women don’t need to be as concerned about their partners’ youth because men normally retain their capacity for reproduction as long as they live. Instead, given their vastly greater parental investment in their offspring,9 women should seek mates with resources who can provide for the well-being of mother and child during the long

9If a reminder regarding parental investment will be welcome, look back at page 38.

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period of pregnancy and nursing. In fact, as Figure 3.9 illustrates, around the world, women do care more about their partners’ financial prospects than men do (Walter et al., 2020), and men who flash their cash attract more sexual partners than stingy men do (Sundie et al., 2011). When he asks a woman who is walking by, for instance, a guy climbing out of a luxury car (an Audi A5) is more likely to get her phone number than he would be if he had a cheap car (a Renault Mégane) (Guéguen & Lamy, 2012). Furthermore, women’s preferences for the age of their mates do not change much as they age (Conroy-Beam & Buss, 2019); women don’t start seeking younger men as mates until they (the women) are around 75 years old (Alterovitz & Mendelsohn, 2011).

Thus, matching based on the exchange of feminine youth and beauty for masculine status and resources is commonplace (Zhang et al., 2019). Sure enough, when they advertise for partners on Craig’s List, women get the most interest from men when they say they’re “lovely, slim, and very attractive,” but men get the most interest from women when they describe themselves as “financially independent and successful” (Strassberg & English, 2015). In addition, a high salary improves a woman’s impression of an ugly man to a much greater extent than it affects a man’s (lack of) interest in an ugly woman (Wang et al., 2018).10 Still, is all this the result of evolutionary pres- sures? Advocates of a cultural perspective argue that women pursue desirable resources through their partners because they are so often denied direct access to political and

FIGURE 3.8. Age and desirability online. The figure compares the number of messages received, on average, by men and women who were seeking partners of the other sex on a “popular, free online dating service” in New York, Boston, Chicago, and Seattle. Users with higher rankings were more popular than those with lower ranks. Men reached their peak desirability to women at age 50, but women were most sought-after by men when they were 18 years old—and their comparative desirability declined sharply thereafter.

D es

ira bi

lit y

R an

k

20 25 30 35 40 45 50 55 60 65 Age

3

4

5

6

7

Women Men

10Here’s joke that acknowledges this pattern: “If I had a dollar for every girl that found me unattractive, they’d eventually find me attractive” (Anand, 2017).

Source: Data from Bruch, E. E., & Newman, M. E. J. (2018). “Aspirational pursuit of mates in online dating markets,” Science Advances, 4(8), eaap 9815.

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economic power of their own (Wood & Eagly, 2007). Indeed, in the United States—a culture in which smart women have access to career opportunities—the more intelligent a woman is, the lower her desire is for wealth and status in a romantic partner (Stanik & Ellsworth, 2010). Nevertheless, around the world, even in countries that support and promote female equality, women care a lot more about a mate’s financial prospects, on average, than men do (Zhang et al., 2019).

So, the origins of the feminine-beauty-for-masculine-money trade-off remain uncer- tain. But in any case, the bottom line here is that matching is a broad process that involves multiple resources and traits. When “opposites” seem to attract, people may be trading one asset for another in order to obtain partners of similar social status, and it’s their similar mate values, not any desired differences, that make them attractive to each other.

One Way “Opposites” May Attract Now and Then: Complementarity

Finally, there are times when different types of behavior can fit together well. In keep- ing with the principle of instrumentality (back on page 88), we like responses from others that help us reach our goals (Fitzsimons et al., 2015). When two partners have different skills, each is usually happy to allow the other to take the lead on those tasks at which the other is more talented (Beach et al., 2001). Such behavior is said to complement our own, and complementarity—reactions that provide a good fit to our own—can be attractive. Most complementary behaviors are actually similar actions; people who are warm and agreeable, for instance, are happiest when they are met with warmth and good humor in return.

However, some profitable forms of complementarity involve different behaviors from two partners. Consider a couple’s sexual interactions; if one of them enjoys receiving oral sex, their satisfaction is likely to be higher when the other enjoys giving it (de Jong & Reis, 2014). Divisions of labor that suit our talents in pursuit of shared goals are often advantageous: If I’m a dreamer who comes up with great ideas and you’re a details person who’s a careful planner, we can enjoy some terrific vacations if we like to go to the same places (Bohns et al., 2013). And when we really want something, it’s nice when our

FIGURE 3.9. Desire for good financial prospects in a romantic partner. Around the world, women care more about a partner’s financial prospects than men do.

.5

0

1.0

1.5

2.0

2.5

3.0Indispensable Men

Unimportant Japan Zambia Yugoslavia Australia USA

Women

Source: Data from Buss, D. M., & Schmitt, D. P. (1993). “Sexual strategies theory: An evolutionary perspective on human mating,” Psychological Review, 100, 204–232.

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partners let us have our way. When we feel very sure of ourselves, we want our partners to heed our advice; on other occasions, when we need help and advice, we want our partners to give it (Markey et al., 2010).

Do these examples of rewarding complementarity sound like “opposites attract” to you? I hope not. In general, patterns of behavior in others that are genuinely oppo- site to our own—such as cool aloofness instead of our warmth, or submissive passivity instead of our assertion and self-confidence—are annoying and frustrating (Hopwood et al., 2011). Dominant people like to get their way, but they like other assertive folks more than they like those who are chronically servile (Markey & Markey, 2007)—and in any case, there’s not a lot of one spouse bossing the other around in happy mar- riages (Cundiff et al., 2015). And trust me, if you’re an impulsive person who tends to act without thinking, you do not want to pair off with a partner who is cautious and planful (why? to keep you out of trouble?); you’ll be happier if you partner with some- one who is just as impetuous and reckless as you are (Derrick et al., 2016).

The bottom line appears to be that we like partners who entertain and support us but we don’t like partners who frustrate or impede us, and a partnership is fulfilling when we desire the same goals and are able to work together to successfully achieve them. So, the blend of similarities and differences that form an optimal mix may vary from couple to couple (Baxter & West, 2003). Personal growth and novel activities are also rewarding, so we like people with interests that are different from (but not incom- patible with) our own when they introduce us to things we’ll both like (Aron et al., 2006). The important thing to remember is that similar partners are more likely than others to share our goals (Gray & Coons, 2017), so they supply us what we want more often than anyone else can.

Add it all up, and opposites may sometimes seem to attract, but birds of a feather are more likely to flock together. Similarity is usually rewarding; opposition is not.

SO, WHAT DO MEN AND WOMEN WANT?

We are nearly at the end of our survey of major influences on attraction, but one important point remains. As we’ve seen, men and women differ in the value they place on a partner’s physical attractiveness and income (Walter et al., 2020). I don’t want those results to leave you with the wrong impression, however, because despite those differences, men and women generally seek the same qualities in their relational part- ners (Thomas et al., 2020). Let’s look more closely at what men and women want.

Around the world, there are three themes in the criteria with which people evalu- ate potential mates (Lam et al., 2016). If we had our way, almost all of us would have partners who offered

• warmth and loyalty, being trustworthy, kind, supportive, and understanding; • attractiveness and vitality, being good-looking, sexy, and outgoing; and • status and resources, being financially secure and living well.

All of these characteristics are desirable, but they’re not of equal importance, and their prominence depends on whether we’re seeking a relatively casual, short-term fling or a more committed long-term romance.

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Men and women have the same (relatively low) standards when they’re pursuing short-term flings (Eastwick et al., 2014). They both want a casual lover to be good- looking (Perilloux & Cloud, 2019), and both sexes are less picky when they’re evaluating partners for short-term liaisons than for lasting unions (Fletcher et al., 2004). For instance, both sexes will accept lower intelligence, warmth, and earning potential in a lover with whom they have a casual fling than they would require in a spouse (Buunk et al., 2002). In particular, when they are contemplating short-term affairs, women will accept men who aren’t especially kind, dependable, or understanding as long as their lovers are muscular, sexy, and “hot” (Frederick & Haselton, 2007).

But women clearly recognize that attractive, dominant, masculine men who might make compelling lovers often make unreliable long-term mates (Boothroyd et al., 2007). When they are picking husbands, women consider a man’s good character to be more important than his good looks. They attach more importance to the criteria of warmth and loyalty and status and resources than to the criterion of attractiveness and vitality when they are thinking long term (Thomas et al., 2020). When she finds she can’t have it all, the average woman prefers a man who is kind, understanding, and well to do—but not particularly handsome—to a good-looking but poor one, or a rich and good- looking but cold and disloyal one (Li, 2008).

Men have different priorities. Like women, they value warmth and loyalty, but unlike women, they attach more importance to attractiveness and vitality in a long-term partner than to status and resources (Thomas et al., 2020). The average guy prefers a kind, beautiful woman without any money to wealthy women who are gorgeous grouches or women who are sweet but ugly (Li, 2008).

Of course, we typically have to accept some trade-offs like these when we’re seek- ing intimate partners. Fulfilling all of our diverse desires by finding (and winning!) the perfect mate is hard to do. If we insist that our partners be kind and understanding and gorgeous and rich, we’re likely to stay frustrated for a long time. So, when they’re evaluating potential mates, men typically check first to make sure that a woman has at least average looks, and then they seek as much warmth, kindness, honesty, open- ness, stability, humor, and intelligence as they can get (Li et al., 2002). Great beauty is desirable to men, but it’s not as important as high levels of warmth and loyalty are (with status and resources coming in a distant third). Women usually check first to make sure that a man has at least some money or prospects, and then they, too, seek as much warmth, kindness, honesty, openness, stability, humor, and intelligence as they can get (Li et al., 2002). Wealth is desirable to women, but it’s not as important as high levels of warmth and loyalty, and looks are in third place.

Gays and lesbians behave similarly, wanting the same things that heterosexual men and women do (Lawson et al., 2014). And although most of the research results described in this chapter were obtained in the United States, people all over the world concur; a global sample of 218,000 Internet users ranked intelligence, humor, kindness, and dependability as the top four traits they sought in a relationship partner (Lippa, 2007), and studies in Brazil ( Castro & de Araújo Lopes, 2010), Russia (Pearce et al., 2010), Singapore (Li et al., 2011), China (Chen et al., 2015), and Iran, Pakistan, and Turkey (Atari et al., 2020) have all yielded similar results.

Men and women generally agree on the things they don’t want in a mate, too. When they are asked to identify dealbreakers, the characteristics that would lead them

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to reject someone as a partner, both sexes put objectionable traits (such as being untrustworthy, unfeeling, or abusive), ill-health (STDs or alcoholism), and poor hygiene (“smells bad”) at the top of their lists (Jonason et al., 2015). Women are a bit more cautious and choosy (Fletcher et al., 2014), having more dealbreakers than men, and as you would expect (given our discussion back on page 105), people with higher mate value have more dealbreakers, too (Jonason et al., 2015).

There is, of course, some idiosyncrasy in particular preferences from person to person11—but individual preferences tend to be rather stable (Gerlach et al., 2019), so that, if you change romantic partners, your past and present lovers may be noticeably similar, resembling each other in attractiveness, IQ (Eastwick et al., 2017), and person- ality (Park & MacDonald, 2019). And if your standards are changing, there may be several reasons why (Bredow & Hames, 2019). Your mate value may have risen; did

There’s some idiosyncrasy in what we want in our partners, but in general, men and women around the world share preferences for warmth, kindness, humor, and dependability in their mates.

11There are some different emphases in different cultures, too. People in Western cultures value a partner’s sense of humor more than do those in Eastern cultures, and a partner’s financial prospects are judged to be even more important in the East than in the West. But as noted above, the take home message is that mate preferences are generally quite similar from one culture to the next (Thomas et al., 2020).

www.CartoonCollections.com

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you just get a big promotion and pay raise? Or, if you’ve been struggling to find a partner, you may be gradually lowering your standards (Jonason et al., 2020). If you’re already in a relationship, you’re probably adjusting your preferences some so that they fit your current partner (Kučerová et al., 2018); “when it comes to matters of the heart, we tend to love what we currently have” (Gunaydin et al., 2018, p. 598). Or perhaps you’re simply getting older; if they’re seeking a partner, people are less picky when they’re 40 than when they’re 25 (Sprecher et al., 2019).

Still, add all this up, and attraction isn’t so mysterious after all. Men attend to looks and women take note of resources, but everybody seems to want partners who are ami- able, agreeable, loving, and kind. Men and women do not differ in this regard and their preference for warmth and kindness in a mate grows stronger as they get older (and wiser?) (Brumbaugh & Wood, 2013). As long as she’s moderately pretty and he has some money, both sexes want as much warmth and loyalty as they can get. To the extent there is any surprise here, it’s in the news that women don’t simply want strong, dominant men; they want their fellows to be warm and kind and capable of commitment, too (Thomae & Houston, 2016). If you’re an unemotional, stoic, macho male, take note: Women will be more impressed if you develop some affectionate warmth to go with your strength and power.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Rasheed introduced himself to Rebecca because she was really hot, and he was mildly disappointed when she turned out to be a little suspicious, self-centered, and vain. On the other hand, she was really hot, so he asked her out anyway. Because she was impressed with his designer clothes and bold style, Rebecca was intrigued by Rasheed, but after a few minutes she thought him a little pushy and arrogant. Still, he had tick- ets to an expensive concert, so she accepted his invitation to go out on a date.

Having read this chapter, what do you think the date—and the future—hold for Rebecca and Rasheed? Why?

KEY TERMS

rewards ........................................... p. 87 instrumentality ............................... p. 88 proximity ........................................ p. 88 mere exposure ............................... p. 90 waist-to-hip ratio ............................ p. 97

matching ....................................... p. 104 mate value .................................... p. 105 stimulus-value-role theory ........... p. 110 fatal attractions............................ p. 111 complementarity .......................... p. 115

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The Fundamental Basis of Attraction

We are attracted to people whose presence is rewarding because they offer us instrumentality, assistance in achieving our goals.

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Proximity: Liking Those Near Us

We select our friends, and our enemies, from those around us.

Familiarity: Repeated Contact. In general, familiarity breeds attraction. Even brief, mere exposure to others usually increases our liking for them.

Convenience: Proximity Is Rewarding, Distance Is Costly. Relationships with dis- tant partners are ordinarily less satisfying than they would be if the partners were nearby.

The Power of Proximity. Close proximity makes it more likely that two people will meet and interact, for better or for worse.

Physical Attractiveness: Liking Those Who Are Lovely

Our Bias for Beauty: “What Is Beautiful Is Good.” We assume that attractive people have other desirable personal characteristics.

Who’s Pretty? Symmetrical faces with features of average dimensions are espe- cially beautiful. Waist-to-hip ratios of 0.7 are very appealing in women, whereas a WHR of 0.9 is attractive in a man if he has money.

An Evolutionary Perspective on Physical Attractiveness. Cross-cultural agreement about beauty, cyclical variations in women’s desires, and the link between attractiveness and good health are all consistent with the assumptions of evolutionary psychology.

Culture Counts, Too. Standards of beauty also fluctuate with changing economic and cultural conditions.

Looks Matter.  When people first meet, nothing else affects attraction as much as their looks do.

The Interactive Costs and Benefits of Beauty. Physical attractiveness has a larger influence on men’s social lives than on women’s. Attractive people doubt the praise they receive from others, but they’re still happier than unattractive people are.

Matching in Physical Attractiveness. People tend to pair off with others of similar levels of beauty.

Reciprocity: Liking Those Who Like Us

People are reluctant to risk rejection. Most people calculate others’ overall desir- ability by multiplying their physical attractiveness by their probability of reciprocal liking. People who are desirable partners—that is, those with high mate value—insist that their partners be desirable, too.

Similarity: Liking Those Who Are Like Us

Birds of a feather flock together. People like those who share their attitudes.

What Kind of Similarity? Happy relationship partners resemble each other in demographic origin, attitudes, and, to a lesser degree, in personalities.

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Do Opposites Attract? Opposites do not attract, but they may seem to for several reasons. First, we are attracted to those who we think are like us, and we can be wrong. Then, it takes time for perceived similarity to be replaced by more accurate understand- ing of the attributes we share with others. People may be attracted to those who are mildly different from themselves but similar to their ideal selves. People also tend to become more similar over time, and some types of similarity are more important than others. Matching is also a broad process; fame, wealth, talent, and looks can all be used to attract others. Finally, we may appreciate behavior from a partner that differs from our own but that complements our actions and helps us to reach our goals.

So, What Do Men and Women Want?

People evaluate potential partners with regard to (a) warmth and loyalty, (b) attrac- tiveness and vitality, and (c) status and resources. For lasting romances, women want men who are warm and kind and who are not poor, and men want women who are warm and kind and who are not unattractive. Thus, everybody wants intimate partners who are amiable, agreeable, and loving.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Proximity is attractive; don’t expect absence to make the heart grow fonder. • Don’t be fooled: A dating site that promises to find a perfect partner for you probably won’t.

• Don’t judge a book by its cover; beauty isn’t talent. • Seek friends and lovers with whom you agree on all of the things that are impor- tant to you.

• Join the crowd: Put a potential partner’s warmth and kindness at the top of your list of priorities.

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C H A P T E R 4

Social Cognition

First Impressions (and Beyond) ♦ The Power of Perceptions ♦ Impression Management ♦ So, Just How Well Do We Know Our Partners? ♦ For Your

Consideration ♦ Key terms ♦ chapter summary ♦ suggestions for satisfaction ♦ references

Imagine that you’re home in bed, sick with a flu, and your lover doesn’t call you dur- ing the day to see how you’re doing. You’re disappointed. Why didn’t your partner call? Is he or she thoughtless and inconsiderate? Is this just another frustrating example of his or her self-centered lack of compassion? Or is it more likely that your loving, caring partner didn’t want to risk waking you from a nap? There are several possible explana- tions, and you can choose a forgiving rationale, a blaming one, or something in between. And importantly, the choice may really be up to you; the facts of the case may allow several different interpretations. But whatever you decide, your judgments are likely to be consequential. At the end of the day, your perceptions will have either sustained or undermined the happiness of your relationship.

We’ll focus on judgments like these in this chapter on social cognition, a term that refers to all the processes of perception, interpretation, belief, and memory with which we evaluate and understand ourselves and other people (Fiske & Taylor, 2017). So, in short, this chapter will be concerned with the ways we think about our relationships. We’ll explore how our judgments of our partners and their behavior set the stage for the events that follow. We’ll consider our own efforts to influence and control what our partners think of us. And we’ll ponder just how well two people are likely to know each other, even in an intimate relationship. Throughout the chapter, we’ll find that our per- ceptions and interpretations of our partnerships are of enormous importance: What we think helps to determine what we feel, and then how we act. This wouldn’t be a problem if our judgments were always accurate. However, there are usually a variety of reasonable ways to interpret an event (as my opening example suggests), and we can make mistakes even when we’re confident that we have arrived at the truth. Indeed, some of those mistakes may begin the moment we meet someone, as studies of first impressions reveal.

FIRST IMPRESSIONS (AND BEYOND)

First impressions matter. The judgments we form of others after a brief first meeting often have enormous staying power, with our initial perceptions continuing to be influ- ential months later (Brown & Bernieri, 2017). This fact may be obvious if we dislike

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someone so much after an initial interaction that we avoid any further contact with him or her (Denrell, 2005); in such cases, our first impressions are the only impressions we ever get. However, first impressions continue to be influential even when we do see more of a new acquaintance. When researchers formally arranged get-acquainted conversations between new classmates, the initial impressions the students formed continued to influ- ence their feelings about each other 10 weeks later (Human et al., 2013).

Conceivably, some first impressions last because they are discerning and correct. Sometimes it doesn’t take us long to accurately decide who’s nice and who’s not, and if we’re right, there’s no need to revise our initial perceptions. On the other hand, first impressions can be remarkably persistent even when they’re erroneous (Harris & Garris, 2008). Right or wrong, first impressions linger, and that’s why they matter so much. Let’s consider how they operate.

We start judging people from the moment we meet them. And by “moment,” I mean the first one-thirtieth of a second. That’s all it takes—only 33 milliseconds1—for us to form judgments of a stranger’s attractiveness, trustworthiness, and status that are very similar to those we’ll hold after a minute’s careful inspection of the person’s face (Palomares & Young, 2018). “Before we can finish blinking our eyes, we’ve already decided whether we want to hire, date, hate, or make friends with a person we’re encountering for the first time” (Rule, 2014, p. 18). Then, after watching the stranger chat with someone of the other sex for only 5 seconds, we’ve decided how extraverted, conscientious, and intelligent he or she is (Carney et al., 2007). We jump to conclu- sions very, very quickly.

Our snap judgments are influenced by the fact that everyone we meet fits some category of people about whom we already hold stereotyped first impressions. This may sound like a daring assertion, but it isn’t, really. Think about it: Everyone is either male or female, and (as we saw in chapter 1), we expect different behavior from men and women. (And if we can’t decide what sex you are, we probably won’t like you very much [Stern & Rule, 2018].) Furthermore, at a glance, we can tell whether someone is beautiful or plain, and (as we saw in chapter 3), we assume that pretty people are likable people. Dozens of other distinctions may come into play: young/old, Black/ white, pierced/unpierced, rural/urban, and many more. The specifics of these stereo- types may vary from one perceiver to the next, but they operate similarly in anyone: Stereotypes supply us with preconceptions about what people are like. The judgments that result are often quite incorrect (Olivola & Todorov, 2010), but they’re hard to avoid: Stereotypes influence us automatically, even when we are unaware of using them (Nestler & Back, 2013). So, some initial feelings about others may spring up unbidden even when we want to be impartial and open minded.

Then, if we take a close look at others before we say hello, there may be a surpris- ing amount of specific information about them that is available from afar. Examine their shoes: Students at the University of Kansas gained some insight into others’ age, gender, income, and even anxiety about abandonment from nothing more than a pic- ture of their shoes (Gillath et al., 2012). Study their faces: We tend to assume that men with high facial width-to-height ratios—whose faces are wide and short—are more

1A millisecond is a thousandth of a second. So, after 33 milliseconds have passed, there’s still 96.7 percent of a second yet to come before one full second has passed.

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likely to be prejudiced than those whose faces are narrower and taller. And we’re right. They are (Hehman et al., 2013). With a quick glance at a politician’s face, we’re also fairly good at judging whether he is conservative or liberal (Wänke et al., 2012) and how corruptible he is (Lin et al., 2018)!

If we do interact with someone, we continue jumping to conclusions. Please take a moment—seriously, take your time and read the next line slowly—and consider some- one who is

envious, stubborn, critical, impulsive, industrious, and intelligent.

Would you want this person as a co-worker? Probably not much. Now, please take another moment to size up someone else who is

intelligent, industrious, impulsive, critical, stubborn, and envious.

More impressive, yes? This person isn’t perfect, but he or she seems competent and ambitious. The point, of course, is that the two descriptions offer the same information in a different order, and that’s enough to engender two different impressions (Fourakis

What is your first impression of these two people? The man on the left has a lower facial width-to-height ratio (fWHR), so his face is narrower and taller than the face of the man on the right. The white rectangles indicate the measurements that are used to calculate fWHR, across the face at the top of the jaw and vertically from the top of the upper lip to the middle of the eyebrows. To a modest degree, men with higher fWHRs are more likely than other men to report prejudicial attitudes (possibly because they're more likely to tell the truth, no matter what anyone thinks). Indeed, we judge men with narrower faces to have more integrity and to be more trustworthy (Ormiston et al., 2017). Women actually prefer men with larger fWHRs as short-term mates—which makes sense because they have higher sex drives and are more open to casual sex (Arnocky et al., 2018) but they’re not more desirable when women are evaluating them as potential future husbands (Valentine et al., 2014).

Dr. Eric Hehman

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& Cone, 2020). Our judgments of others are influenced by a primacy effect, a tendency for the first information we receive about others to carry special weight, along with our instant impressions and our stereotypes, in shaping our overall impressions of them.

Primacy effects provide one important indication of why first impressions matter so much: Right or wrong, our quick first judgments of others influence our interpreta- tions of the later information we encounter. Once a judgment forms, it affects how we use the data that follow, and often in subtle ways that are difficult to detect. John Darley and Paget Gross (1983) demonstrated this when they showed Princeton stu- dents a video that established the social class of a young girl named “Hannah.” Two different videos were prepared, and some people learned that Hannah was pretty poor, whereas others found that she was rather rich; she either played in a deteriorating, paved schoolyard and returned home to a dingy, small duplex or played on expansive, grassy fields and went home to a large, lovely house. The good news is that when Darley and Gross asked the participants to guess how well Hannah was doing in school, they did not assume the rich kid was smarter than the poor kid; the two groups both assumed she was getting average grades (see Figure 4.1). After that, however, the researchers showed the participants a video of Hannah taking an aptitude test and doing an inconsistent job, answering some difficult questions correctly but blowing some easy ones. Everyone saw the same video, but—and here’s the bad news—they interpreted it very differently depending on their impressions of her social class. People who thought that Hannah was poor cited her mistakes and judged her as performing below average, whereas those who thought she was rich noted her suc-

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Background Information

Achievement Test Information

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4

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Higher Social Class

Lower Social Class

FIGURE 4.1. Our preconceptions control our interpretations of information about others. People equipped with different expectations about the social class of a fourth-grade girl drew very different conclusions about her performance on an achievement test, although they all witnessed the very same performance. Those who thought they were watching a rich kid judged her to be performing at a level that was an entire grade better than did those who thought they were watching a girl from a more modest background.

Source: Data from Darley, J. M., & Gross, P. H. (1983). “A hypothesis-confirming bias in labeling effects,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 20–33.

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cesses and rated her as considerably better than average. Perceivers equipped with different preconceptions about Hannah’s social class interpreted the same sample of her behavior in very different ways and came to very different conclusions. And note how subtle this process was: They didn’t leap to biased assumptions about Hannah simply by knowing her social class, making an obvious mistake that might easily be noticed. Instead, their knowledge of her social class lingered in their minds and contaminated their interpretations of her later actions. And they probably made their biased judg- ments with confidence, feeling fair and impartial. Both groups could point to a portion of her test performance—the part that fit their preconceptions—and feel perfectly jus- tified in making the judgments they did, never realizing that people with other first impressions were watching the same videotape and reaching contradictory conclusions.

Thus, first impressions affect our interpretations of the subsequent information we encounter about others. They also affect our choices of the new information we seek. When we want to test a first impression about someone, we’re more likely to pursue information that will confirm that belief than to inquire after data that could prove it wrong. That is, people ordinarily display a confirmation bias: They seek information that will prove them right more often than they look for examples that would prove them wrong (Costabile & Madon, 2019). For instance, imagine that you’re instructed to interview a fellow student to find out if he or she is a sociable extravert, and you’re handed a list of possible questions to ask. Some of the questions are neutral (e.g., “What are the good and bad points of acting friendly and open?”) but others are slanted toward eliciting introverted responses (“What do you dislike about loud par- ties?”) while still others are likely to get extraverted answers (“What do you do when you want to liven things up at a party?”). How would you conduct the interview? If you’re like most people, you’d select questions that probe for evidence that your expec- tation is correct.

That’s just what happened when researchers asked some people to find out if a stranger was extraverted, but asked others to find out if the person was introverted (Snyder & Swann, 1978b). The two groups of interviewers adopted two very different lines of investigation, asking questions that made it likely that they’d get examples of the behaviors they expected to find. In fact, the interviews were so biased that audi- ences eavesdropping on them actually believed that the strangers really were rather extraverted or introverted, depending on the interviewers’ preconceptions.

Indeed, the problem with confirmatory biases is that they elicit one-sided informa- tion about others that fits our preconceptions—and as a result, we too rarely confront evidence that shows that our first impressions are wrong. Thus, not only may we cling to snap judgments that are incorrect, but we routinely also experience overconfidence, thinking that we’re more accurate than we really are and making more mistakes than we realize (Ames et al., 2010). Here’s an example. After you begin dating a new roman- tic partner, you’re likely to become confident that you understand his or her sexual history as time goes by. You’ll probably feel increasingly certain, for instance, that you know whether or not he or she has a sexually transmitted infection. Unfortunately, you’re not likely to be as well-informed as you think. Studies at the University of Texas at Austin found that people could not estimate the risk that a new acquaintance was HIV-positive as well as they thought they could (Swann et al., 1995). They were

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overconfident when a new relationship began, and as the relationship developed, they only got worse (Swann & Gill, 1997). With greater familiarity, they became more cer- tain that they understood their new partners well, but their accuracy did not change (see Figure 4.2).

So, first impressions matter (Gunaydin et al., 2017). We rarely process information about others in an unbiased, evenhanded manner. Instead, our existing notions, whether they’re simple stereotypes or quick first impressions, affect how we access and what we make of the new data we encounter. We are usually unaware of how readily we overlook evidence that we could be wrong. We’re not tentative. Armed with only some of the facts—those that tend to support our case—we put misplaced faith in our judg- ments of others, being wrong more often than we realize. And this all adds up to our early impressions of others being “more resistant to change than our intuitions would have us believe” (Brown & Bernieri, 2017, p. 725).

Now, of course, we come to know our partners better with time and experience, and first impressions can certainly change as people learn more about each other (Satchell, 2019). However—and this is the fundamental point I wish to make—existing beliefs are influential at every stage of a relationship, and when it comes to our friends and lovers, we may see what we want to see and hold confident judgments that aren’t always right (Leising et al., 2014).

For instance, who are the better judges of how long your current romantic rela- tionship will last, you or your parents? Remarkably, when university students, their roommates, and their parents were all asked to forecast the future of the students’ dating relationships, the parents made better predictions than the students did, and the roommates did better still (MacDonald & Ross, 1999). You’d think that people would be the best judges of their own relationships, but the students focused on the

100 Confidence

50

Length of Relationship 0

Actual Accuracy

A ct

ua l a

nd E

xp ec

te d

A cc

ur ac

y (%

c or

re ct

b el

ie fs

)

39%

62%

90%

FIGURE 4.2. Accuracy and (over) confidence in developing relationships. At the beginning of their relationships, people felt that they knew more about the sexual histo- ries of their new partners than they really did. Then, as time went by, they became quite certain that they were familiar with all the facts, when in truth, their actual accuracy did not improve.

Source: Data from Swann, W. B., Jr., & Gill, M. J. (1997). “Confidence and accuracy in person perception: Do we know what we think we know about our relationship partners?”, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 73, 747–757.

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strengths of their partnerships and ignored the weaknesses, and as a result, they con- fidently and optimistically predicted that the relationships would last longer than they usually did. Parents and roommates were more dispassionate and evenhanded, and although they were less confident in their predictions, they were more accurate in predicting what the future would hold. In fact, the most accurate predictions of all regarding the future of a heterosexual relationship often come from the friends of the woman involved (Loving, 2006). If her friends approve of a partnership, it’s likely to continue, but if they think the relationship is doomed, it probably is (Etcheverry & Agnew, 2004).

Thus, the same overconfidence, confirmatory biases, and preconceptions that com- plicate our perceptions of new acquaintances operate in established relationships as well. Obviously, we’re not clueless about our relationships, and when we’re deliberate and cautious, we make more accurate predictions about their futures than we do when we’re in a romantic mood. But it’s hard to be dispassionate when we’re devoted to a relationship and want it to continue; in such cases, we are particularly prone to con- firmation biases that support our optimistic misperceptions of our partners (Gagné & Lydon, 2004).

So, our perceptions of our relationships are often less detached and completely correct than we think they are. And, for better or for worse, they have considerable impact on our subsequent feelings and behavior, as we’ll see next.

When we meet others for the first time, stereotypes and primacy effects influence our inter- pretations of the behavior we observe. Confirmation biases and overconfidence may follow.

MB Images/Shutterstock

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THE POWER OF PERCEPTIONS

Our judgments of our relationships and our partners seem to come to us naturally, as if there were only one reasonable way to view them. Little do we realize that we’re often choosing to adopt the perspectives we use, and we facilitate or inhibit our satisfac- tion with our partners by the choices we make.

Idealizing Our Partners

What are you looking for in an ideal romantic relationship? As we saw in chapter 3, most of us want a partner who is warm and trustworthy, loyal and passionate, and attractive and rich, and our satisfaction depends on how well our lovers approach those ideals (Tran et al., 2008). What we usually get, however, is something less. How, then, do we ever stay happy with the real people we attract?

One way is to construct charitable, generous perceptions of our partners that emphasize their virtues and minimize their faults. People often judge their lovers with positive illusions that portray their partners in the best possible light (Fletcher et al., 2013). Such “illusions” are a mix of realistic knowledge about our partners and ideal- ized perceptions of them. They do not ignore a partner’s faults; they just consider them to be circumscribed, specific drawbacks that are less important and influential than their many assets and advantages are (Neff & Karney, 2003). They have all the facts, but they interpret them differently than everyone else—so they judge their partners more positively than other people do, and even more positively than the partners judge themselves (Gignac & Zajenkowski, 2019).

We Don’t Always Know Why We Think What We Do

Consider this: When you show up for a psy- chology study, the researcher asks you to hold her cup of warm coffee for about 20 sec- onds while she records your name on a clip- board. Then, you’re asked to form an impression of a stranger who is described in a brief vignette. Would your warm hands lead you to intuit that the stranger is a warm and generous person? Would you have liked the stranger less if you had been holding a cup of iced coffee instead? Remarkably, the answer to both of those questions is yes. Warm hands lead research participants to think warmer thoughts about a stranger than cool hands do (Bargh & Melnikoff, 2019).

How about this? Would sitting at a wobbly table on a wobbly chair increase

your desire for stability (such as trustworthi- ness and reliability) in a mate? The answer is yes, again (Kille et al., 2013), and there are two aspects of these phenomena that are intriguing. First, our impressions of others can be shaped by a variety of inf luences, and some of them have nothing to do with the person who’s being judged. Second, the people in these studies were completely un- aware that current conditions such as the temporary temperature of their hands were swaying their judgments. We don’t always know why we hold the opinions we do, and on occasion, our impressions of others are unwarranted. Both points are valuable les- sons for a discerning student of social cognition.

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Isn’t it a little dangerous to hold a lover in such high esteem? Won’t people inevi- tably be disappointed when their partners fail to fulfill such positive perceptions? The answers may depend on just how unrealistic our positive illusions are (Neff & Karney, 2005). If we’re genuinely fooling ourselves, imagining desirable qualities in a partner that he or she does not possess, we may be dooming ourselves to disillusionment (Niehuis et al., 2011). On the other hand, if we’re aware of all the facts but are merely interpret- ing them in a kind, benevolent fashion, such “illusions” can be very beneficial (Fletcher, 2015). When we idealize our partners, we’re predisposed to judge their behavior in positive ways, and we are more willing to commit ourselves to maintaining the relation- ship (Park & Young, 2020). And we can slowly convince our partners that they actually are the wonderful people we believe them to be because our high regard improves their self-esteem (Murray et al., 1996). Add it all up, and idealized images of romantic part- ners are associated with greater satisfaction as time goes by (Murray et al., 2011).

In addition, as I mentioned in chapter 3, there’s a clever way in which we protect ourselves from disillusionment: Over time, as we come to know our partners well, we tend to revise our opinions of what we want in an ideal partner so that our standards fit the partners we’ve got (Kučerová et al., 2018). To a degree, we conveniently decide that the qualities our partners have are the ones we want.

Thus, by choosing to look on the bright side—perceiving our partners as the best they can be—and by editing our ideals and hopes so that they fit the realities we face, we can increase the chances that we’ll be happy with our present partners. Indeed, our partners generally know that we’re idolizing them, and they usually want us to, within reason (Boyes & Fletcher, 2007)— and if we receive such positive, charitable perceptions in return, everybody wins.

Attributional Processes

Our delight or distress is also affected by the manner in which we choose to explain our partners’ behavior. The explanations we generate for why things happen—and in particu- lar why a person did or did not do something—are called attributions. An attribution identifies the causes of an event, emphasizing the impact of some influences and mini- mizing the role of others. Studies of such judgments are important because there are usually several possible explanations for most events in our lives, and they can differ in meaningful ways (Weiner, 2018). We can emphasize influences that are either internal to someone, such as the person’s personality, ability, or effort, or external, implicating the situation or circumstances the person faced. For instance (as you’ve probably noticed), students who do well on exams typically attribute their success to internal causes (such as their preparation and talent), whereas those who do poorly blame exter- nal factors (such as a tricky test) (Forsyth & Schlenker, 1977). The causes of events may also be rather stable and lasting, as our abilities are, or unstable and transient, such as moods that come and go. Finally, causes can be said to be controllable, so that we can manage them, or uncontrollable, so that there’s nothing we can do about them. With all of these distinctions in play, diverse explanations for a given event may be plausible. And in a close relationship in which interdependent partners may both be partly responsible for much of what occurs, judgments of cause and effect can be especially complicated.

Nevertheless, three broad patterns routinely emerge from studies of attributions in relationships. First, despite their intimate knowledge of each other, partners are affected

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by robust actor/observer effects: They generate different explanations for their own behav- ior than they do for the similar things they see their partners do (Malle, 2006). People are often acutely aware of the external pressures that have shaped their own behavior, but they overlook how the same circumstances affect others; as a result, they acknowledge external pressures when they explain their own actions, but they make internal attributions (for instance, to others’ personalities) when other people behave exactly the same way. What makes this phenomenon provocative in close relationships is that it leads the partners to overlook how they often personally provoke the behavior they observe in each other. During an argument, if one partner thinks, “she infuriates me so when she does that,” the other is likely to be thinking, “he’s so temperamental. He needs to learn to control himself.” This bias is so pervasive that two people in almost any interaction are reasonably likely to agree about what each of them did but to disagree about why each of them did it (Robins et al., 2004). And to complicate things further, the two partners are unlikely to be aware of the discrepancies in their attributions; each is likely to believe that the other sees things his or her way. When partners make a conscious effort to try to understand the other’s point of view, the actor/observer discrepancy gets smaller (Arriaga & Rusbult, 1998), but it rarely vanishes completely (Malle, 2006). The safest strategy is to assume that even your closest partners seldom comprehend all your reasons for doing what you do.

Second, despite genuine affection for each other, partners are also likely to display self-serving biases in which they readily take credit for their successes but try to avoid the blame for their failures. People like to feel responsible for the good things that happen to them, but they prefer external excuses when things go wrong (Allen et al., 2020). Thus, although they won’t tell their partners (Miller & Schlenker, 1985), they usually think that they personally deserve much of the credit when their relationships are going well, but they’re not much to blame if a partnership is doing poorly (Thompson & Kelley, 1981). One quality that makes this phenomenon interesting is that most of us readily recognize overreaching ownership of success and flimsy excuses for failure when they come from other people, but we think that our own similar, self- serving perceptions are sensible and accurate (Ross, 2018). This occurs in part because we are aware of—and we give ourselves credit for—our own good intentions, even when we fail to follow through on them, but we judge other people only by what they do, not what they may have intended to do (Kruger & Gilovich, 2004).

This is a provocative pattern, so let’s consider how it works. Imagine that Fred goes to sleep thinking, “I bet Wilma would like breakfast in bed in the morning.” He intends to do something special for her, and he proudly gives himself credit for being a thoughtful partner. But when he oversleeps and has to dash off to work without actually having done anything generous, he’s likely to continue feeling good about himself: After all, he had kind intentions. In contrast, Wilma can only judge Fred by his actions; she’s not a party to what he was thinking, and she has no evidence in this instance that he was thoughtful at all. Their different sources of information may lead Fred to consider himself a better, more considerate partner than Wilma (or anyone else) perceives him to be (Lemay, 2014). (Remember those thank-you notes you were intending to write but never did? You probably give yourself some credit for wanting to get around to them, but all your disappointed grandmother knows is that you never thanked her, and you’re behaving like an impolite ingrate!)

Subtle processes like these make self-serving explanations of events routine in social life. It’s true that loving partners are less self-serving toward each other than

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they are with other people (Sedikides et al., 1998). Nev- ertheless, self-serving biases exist even in contented relationships. In particular, when they fight with each other, spouses tend to believe that the argument is mostly their partner’s fault (Schütz, 1999). And if they have extramarital affairs, people usually consider their own affairs to be innocuous dalliances, but they con- sider their spouse’s affairs to be grievous betrayals (Warach et al., 2019).

Thus, partners’ idiosyncratic perspectives allow them to feel that they have better excuses for their mistakes than their friends and lovers do. They also tend to believe that their partners are the source of most disagreements and conflict. Most of us feel that we’re pretty easy to live with, but they’re hard to put up with sometimes. Such perceptions are undoubtedly influential, and, indeed, a third important pattern is that the general pattern of a couple’s attributions helps determine how satisfied they will be with their relationship (Osterhout et al., 2011). Happy people make attributions for their partners’ behavior that are relationship enhancing. Positive actions by the partner are judged to be intentional, habitual, and indicative of the partner’s fine character; that is, happy couples make controllable, stable, and internal attributions for each other’s positive behavior. They also tend to discount one another’s transgressions, see- ing them as accidental, unusual, and circumstantial; thus, negative behavior is excused with attributions to external, unstable, and uncontrollable causes (Walsh & Neff, 2020).

Through such attributions, satisfied partners magnify their partner’s kindnesses and minimize their missteps, and, as long as a partner’s misbehavior really is just an occasional oversight, these benevolent explanations keep the partners happy (McNulty, 2011). But dissatisfied partners do just the opposite, exaggerating the bad and minimiz- ing the good (Fincham, 2001). Unhappy people make distress-maintaining attributions that regard a partner’s negative actions as deliberate and routine and positive behavior as unintended and accidental. (See Figure 4.3.) Thus, whereas satisfied partners judge each other in generous ways that are likely to keep them happy, distressed couples perceive each other in an unforgiving fashion that can keep them dissatisfied no mat- ter how each behaves (Durtschi et al., 2011). When distressed partners are nice to one another, each is likely to write off the other’s thoughtfulness as a temporary, unchar- acteristic lull in the negative routine. When kindnesses seem accidental and hurts seem deliberate, satisfaction is hard to come by (Hook et al., 2015).

Where does such a self-defeating pattern come from? Attachment styles are inf luential. People with secure styles tend to tolerantly employ relationship-enhancing attributions, but insecure people—particularly those who are high in anxiety about abandonment—are more pessimistic (Kimmes et al., 2015). And disappointments of various sorts may cause anyone to gradually adopt a pessimistic perspective (Karney & Bradbury, 2000). But one thing is clear: Maladaptive attributions can lead to cantankerous behavior and ineffective problem solving (Hrapczynski et al., 2011), and they can cause dissatisfaction that would not have occurred otherwise (Kimmes et al., 2015). With various points of view at their disposal, people can choose to explain a partner’s behavior in ways that are endearing and forgiving, or pessimistic and pejorative—and the success of their relationship may ultimately hang in the balance.

A Point to Ponder

To what extent are you able to comprehend your partner’s perceptions of the role you played in escalating your last argument with him or her?

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Memories

Our perceptions of the current events in our relationships are obviously influential. So are our memories of the things that have happened in the past.

We usually assume that our memories are faithful representations of past events. In particular, we’re likely to trust vivid memories because they seem so certain and detailed. But years of research (Loftus, 2019) have clearly demonstrated that, although our memories are mostly reliable (Brewin et al., 2020), we nevertheless edit and update our memories— even seemingly vivid ones—as new events unfold, so that what we remember about the past is always a mix of what h appened then and what we know now. Psychologists use the term reconstructive memory to describe the manner in which our memories are continually revised and rewritten as new information is obtained.

Reconstructive memory influences our relationships. For one thing, partners’ cur- rent feelings about each other influence what they remember about their shared past (Smyth et al., 2020). If they’re presently happy, people tend to forget past disappoint- ments; but if they’re unhappy and their relationship is failing, they underestimate how happy and loving they used to be. These tricks of memory help us adjust to the situations we encounter, but they often leave us feel- ing that our relationships have always been more stable and predictable than they really were—and that can pro- mote damaging overconfidence.

FIGURE 4.3. Attributions made by happy and unhappy couples. Relationship-enhancing attributions give partners credit for thoughtful, generous actions and excuse undesirable behavior as a temporary aberration. Distress-maintaining attributions do just the opposite; they blame partners for undesirable conduct but give them no credit for the nice things they do.

Unhappy Distress Maintaining

Positive

Negative

External Unstable Uncontrollable

Internal Stable Controllable

Happy Relationship Enhancing

Positive

Negative

Internal Stable Controllable

Attributions Made

Attributional Pattern

State of the Couple’s Relationship

Partner’s Behavior

External Unstable Uncontrollable

Source: Data from Brehm, S., & Kassin, S. M. (1990). Social Psychology (6th ed.), Houghton Mifflin.

A Point to Ponder

When a relationship ends badly, how accurately are you able to remember how won- derful it seemed back when it was going well?

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The good news is that by misremembering their past, partners can remain opti- mistic about their future (Lemay & Neal, 2013). At any given point in time, contented lovers are likely to recall that they have had some problems in the past but that things have recently gotten better, so they are happier now than they used to be (Karney & Frye, 2002). What’s notable about this pattern is that, if you follow couples over time, they’ll tell you this over and over even when their satisfaction with each other is gradually eroding instead of increasing (Frye & Karney, 2004). Evidently, by remember- ing recent improvement in their partnerships that has not occurred, people remain happier than they might otherwise be. Like other perceptions, our memories influence our subsequent behavior and emotions in our intimate relationships (Cao et al., 2020).

Relationship Beliefs

People also enter their partnerships with established beliefs about how relation- ships work. For instance, Brian Willoughby and his colleagues (2015a) suggest that we have a collection of beliefs about getting and being married that take the forms of marital paradigms, which are broad assumptions about whether, when, and under what circumstances we should marry that are accompanied by beliefs about what it’s like to be married. About one-third of a sizable sample of students at Ball State University in Indiana were enthusiastic about marriage and eager to get married, but a greater number of them (58 percent) were more cautious: They attached less priority to being married, wanted to wait longer to get married, and were more accepting of divorce. And the remaining 10 percent of the group judged marriage to be even less important, thinking they’d be 35 years old when (or if) they mar- ried (Willoughby & Hall, 2015).

Underpinning such broad outlooks are a variety of more specific beliefs, and some of them are clearly disadvantageous. Certain beliefs that people have about relationships are dysfunctional; that is, they appear to have adverse effects on the quality of relationships, making it less likely that the partners will be satisfied (Goodwin & Gaines, 2004). What ideas could people have that could have such deleterious effects? Here are six:

• Disagreements are destructive. Disagreements mean that my partner doesn’t love me enough. If we loved each other sufficiently, we would never disagree.

• “Mindreading” is essential. People who really care about each other ought to be able to intuit each other’s needs and preferences without having to be told what they are. My partner doesn’t love me enough if I have to tell him or her what I want or need.

• Partners cannot change. Once things go wrong, they’ll stay that way. If a lover has faults, he or she won’t improve.

• Sex should be perfect every time. Sex should always be wonderful and fulfilling if our love is pure. We should always want, and be ready for, sex.

• Men and women are different. The personalities and needs of men and women are so dissimilar, you really can’t understand someone of the other sex.2

• Great relationships just happen. You don’t need to work at maintaining a good relationship. People are either compatible with each other and destined to be happy together or they’re not.

2 You don’t really still think that men are from Mars and women are from Venus, do you?

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Most of these beliefs were identified by Roy Eidelson and Norman Epstein (1982) years ago, and since then, studies have shown that they put people at risk for distress and dissatisfaction in close relationships (Wright & Roloff, 2015). They’re unrealistic. When disagreements do occur—as they always do—they seem momentous to people who hold these views. Any dispute implies that their love is imperfect. Worse, people with these perspectives don’t exert much effort to nurture and maintain their relation- ships (Weigel et al., 2016)—after all, if you’re made for each other, you shouldn’t have to break a sweat to live happily ever after—and they don’t behave constructively when problems arise. Believing that people can’t change and that true love just happens, such people don’t strive to solve problems; they report more interest in ending the relation- ship than in working to repair it (Knee & Petty, 2013).

In their work on relationship beliefs, Chip Knee and his colleagues refer to per- spectives like these as destiny beliefs because they assume that two people are either well suited for each other and destined to live happily ever after, or they’re not (Knee & Petty, 2013). Destiny beliefs take an inflexible view of intimate partnerships (see Table 4.1). They suggest that if two people are meant to be happy, they’ll know it as soon as they meet; they’ll not encounter early doubts or difficulties, and once two

TABLE 4.1. Destiny and Growth Beliefs

Chip Knee (1998) measured destiny and growth beliefs with these items. Respondents were asked to rate their agreement or disagreement with each item using this scale:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 strongly disagree strongly agree

1. Potential relationship partners are either compatible or they are not.

2. The ideal relationship develops gradually over time.

3. A successful relationship is mostly a matter of finding a compatible partner right from the start.

4. Challenges and obstacles in a relationship can make love even stronger.

5. Potential relationship partners are either destined to get along or they are not.

6. A successful relationship is mostly a matter of learning to resolve conflicts with a partner.

7. Relationships that do not start off well inevitably fail.

8. A successful relationship evolves through hard work and resolution of incompatibilities.

As you undoubtedly surmised, the odd-numbered items assess a destiny orientation and the even-numbered items assess a growth orientation. A scale with these items and 14 more is now used in destiny and growth research (Knee & Petty, 2013), but these classic items are still excellent examples of the two sets of beliefs. Do you agree with one set of ideas more than the other?

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soulmates find each other, a happy future is ensured. This is the manner in which Hollywood often portrays love in romantic comedies, and people who watch such movies do tend to believe that true loves are meant to be (Hefner, 2019). And sure enough, more than half (56 percent) of American adults believe that soulmates— practically perfect partners—exist (Ballard, 2020).

Different views, which you see less often at the movies, assume that happy relation- ships are the result of hard work (Knee & Petty, 2013). According to growth beliefs, good relationships are believed to develop gradually as the partners work at surmount- ing challenges and overcoming obstacles, and a basic presumption is that with enough effort, almost any relationship can succeed.

As you might expect, these different perspectives generate different outcomes when difficulties arise (and as it turns out, Hollywood isn’t doing us any favors). When couples argue or a partner misbehaves, people who hold growth beliefs remain more committed to the relationship and more optimistic that any damage can be repaired than do those who do not hold such views. Those who endorse destiny beliefs are more likely than others to have ended a relationship obnoxiously by ghosting their partners, simply cutting off all contact (Freedman et al., 2019). “It may be romantic for lovers to think they were made for each other, but it backfires when conflicts arise and reality pokes the bubble of perfect unity. Instead, thinking of love as a journey, often involving twists and turns but ultimately moving toward a destination, takes away some of the repercussions of relational conflicts” (Lee & Schwarz, 2014, p. 64).

The belief that all you have to do to live happily ever after is to find the right, perfect partner is not advantageous.

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Thus, some relationship beliefs are more adaptive than others (Cobb et al., 2013). These perspectives can gradually change over time as our romances wax and wane (Willoughby et al., 2015b), but they can also change with education and insight (Sharp & Ganong, 2000). Indeed, if you recognize any of your own views among the dysfunc- tional beliefs three pages back, I hope that these findings are enlightening. Unrealistic assumptions can be so idealistic and starry-eyed that no relationship measures up to them, and distress and disappointment are certain to follow.

Expectations

Sometimes, we have judgments of others that are initially false but that, knowingly or not, we make come true (Rosenthal, 2006). I’m referring here to self-fulfilling prophecies, which are false predictions that become true because they lead people to behave in ways that make the erroneous expectations come true. Self- fulfilling prophecies are extraordinary examples of the power of perceptions because the events that result from them occur only because people expect them to, and then act as if they will.

Mark Snyder and his colleagues (1977) provided an elegant example of a self- fulfilling prophecy when they led men at the University of Minnesota to believe that they were chatting on the phone with women who were either very attractive or quite unattractive. The experimenters gave each man a fake photograph of the woman with whom he’d be getting acquainted and then recorded the ensuing

Attachment Styles and Perceptions of Partners

Relationship beliefs can vary a lot from per- son to person, and another individual differ- ence that’s closely tied to the way people think about their partnerships is attachment style (Gillath et al., 2016). People with differ- ent styles are thought to have different “men- tal models” of relationships; they hold different beliefs about what relationships are like, expect different behavior from their part- ners, and form different judgments of what their partners do. I’ve already noted that se- cure people are more likely than those with insecure styles to employ relationship- enhancing attributions (Kimmes et al., 2015); they’re also less likely to hold maladaptive relationship beliefs (Stackert & Bursik, 2003). Secure people trust their partners more (Mikulincer, 1998), believe that their partners are more supportive (Collins & Feeney, 2004), and have more positive expectations about what the future holds (Birnie et al.,

2009). They’re also more likely than insecure people to remember positive things that have happened in the past (Miller & Noirot, 1999). Even their dreams are different; compared to those who are insecure, secure people portray others in their dreams as being more available and supportive and as offering greater com- fort (Mikulincer et al., 2011). In general, then, people with secure styles are more generous, optimistic, and kindly in their judgments of others than insecure people are (Rodriguez et al., 2019).

Attachment styles can change, as we saw in chapter 1, but no matter what style people have, they tend to remember the past as being consistent with what they’re thinking now (Feeney & Cassidy, 2003). Happily, if positive experiences in a rewarding relationship help us gradually develop a more relaxed and trust- ing outlook on intimacy with others, we may slowly forget that we ever felt any other way.

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conversations to see what happened. Men who thought they’d be talking to gorgeous women had higher expectations than those who anticipated a conversation with a plain partner, and they were much more eager and interested when the interactions began; listeners rated them as more sociable, warm, outgoing, and bold. The men’s (often erroneous) judgments of the women were clearly ref lected in their behavior. How did the women respond to such treatment? They had no knowledge of having been labeled as gorgeous or homely, but they did know that they were talking to a man who sounded either enthusiastic or aloof. As a result, the men got what they expected: The women who were presumed to be attractive really did sound more alluring, reacting to their obviously interested partners with warmth and appeal of their own. By comparison, the women who talked with relatively detached men who thought they were unattractive sounded pretty drab. In both cases, the men elicited from the women the behavior they expected whether or not their expectations were accurate. By behaving in a manner that fit their expectations, they made their pre- dictions come true.

Let’s examine Figure 4.4 together to detail how this process works. As a first step in a self-fulfilling prophecy, a person whom we’ll call the perceiver forms an expectancy about someone else—the target—that predicts how the target will behave. The men in Snyder et al.’s (1977) study were influenced by the women’s apparent physical attrac- tiveness, but various other types of information, such as a target’s age, sex, race, or social class may also affect the perceiver’s judgments in ways of which the perceiver is unaware (Bjornsdottir & Rule, 2017).

P interprets the target’s response.

Ignoring his or her role in producing it; support for the expectancy is likely to be perceived.

P forms an expectancy about the target.

Based on stereotype, casual knowledge, or prior contact.

T interprets the perceiver’s behavior.

T responds.

Usually in a reciprocal fashion, meeting kind- ness with kindness, hostility with hostility.

P acts.

Subtly communicating his or her expectancy to the target.

FIGURE 4.4. A self-fulfilling prophecy. Originally false expectations held by a perceiver (P) can seem to come true when he or she interacts with someone else, his or her target (T).

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Then, in an important second step, the perceiver acts, usually in a fashion that is in accord with his or her expectations. Indeed, it may be hard for the perceiver to avoid subtly communicating what he or she really thinks about the target. People with favor- able expectations, for instance, interact longer and more often with their targets, shar- ing more eye contact, sitting closer, smiling more, asking more questions, and encouraging more responses than do perceivers who have less positive expectations (Rosenthal, 2006). In Snyder’s study, men who thought they were talking to lovely women were more enthusiastic and engaged than were men who believed their partners were plain.

The recipient of the perceiver’s behavior is likely to notice all of this, and the target’s interpretation will influence his or her response (Stukas & Snyder, 2002). In most cases, however, when the target responds in the fourth step, it will be in a manner that is similar to the perceiver’s behavior toward him or her. Enthusiasm is usually met with interest (Snyder et al., 1977), hostility with counterattacks (Snyder & Swann, 1978a), and flirtatiousness with allurement (Lemay & Wolf, 2016). Sure enough, the women in Snyder’s study who were thought to be attractive really did sound more enticing because they responded to the men’s enthusiasm with energy of their own. Thus, the perceiver usually elicits from the target the behavior he or she expected, and that may be nothing like the way the target would have behaved if the perceiver hadn’t expected it.

But such is the nature of a self-fulfilling prophecy that, as the perceiver interprets the target’s response, the perceiver is unlikely to recognize the role that he or she played in producing it (McNulty & Karney, 2002). The actor/observer effect will lead the perceiver to attribute the target’s behavior to the target’s personality or mood. And after all, the perceiver found in the target the behavior he or she expected; what better evidence is there that his or her expectations were correct? (This is another reason that we tend to be overconfident in our judgments of others; when we make our false expectations come true, we never realize that we were ever wrong!)

Here, then, is another fundamental reason that our perceptions of others are so influential. They not only influence our interpretations of the information we gain, they also guide our behavior toward others (Gunaydin et al., 2017). We often get what we expect from others, and that is sometimes behavior that would not have occurred without our prompting—but we’re rarely aware of how our expectations have created their own realities.

Because they guide our actions toward others, our expectations are clearly not inert. Another fascinating example of this was obtained when researchers sent people to chat with strangers after leading them to expect that the strangers would probably either like or dislike them (Curtis & Miller, 1986). Participants in the study were told that, to study different types of interactions, the researchers had given a stranger bogus advance information about them, and they could anticipate either a friendly or an unfriendly reaction from the stranger when they met. In truth, however, none of the strangers had been told anything at all about the participants, and the false expectations that the interaction would go well or poorly existed only in the minds of the partici- pants themselves. (Imagine yourself in this intriguing position: You think someone you’re about to meet already likes or dislikes you, but the other person really doesn’t know anything about you at all.) What happened? People got what they expected.

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Expecting to be liked, people greeted others in an engaging, open, positive way—they behaved in a likable manner—and really were liked by the strangers they met. However, those who expected to be disliked were cautious and defensive and were much less forthcoming, and they actually got their partners to dislike them. Once again, false expectations created their own behavioral reality—and positive expectations were ben- eficial and advantageous, whereas negative expectations were not.

Indeed, over time, people who chronically hold different sorts of expectations about others may create different sorts of social worlds for themselves (Stinson et al., 2009). For instance, Geraldine Downey and her colleagues have demonstrated that people who tend to worry about rejection from others often behave in ways that make such rejection more likely (Romero-Canyas et al., 2009). People who are high in rejec- tion sensitivity tend to anxiously perceive snubs from others when none are intended. Then they overreact, fearfully displaying more hostility and defensiveness than others would (Romero-Canyas et al., 2010). Their behavior is obnoxious, and as a result, both they and their partners tend to be dissatisfied with their close relationships.

The flip side of rejection sensitivity may be optimism, the tendency to expect good things to happen. People who are chronically optimistic enjoy more satisfying close relationships than do those who are less hopeful because their positive expectations have beneficial effects on their partnerships (Carver & Scheier, 2009). They perceive their partners to be more supportive than pessimists do (Srivastava et al., 2006), and they report that they’re able to solve problems with their partners cooperatively and creatively and well (Assad et al., 2007). Their expectations that they can resolve their difficulties evidently lead them to address any problems with hopeful confidence and energy that actually do make the problems more manageable.

Altogether, then, our perceptions of our partners, the attributions we make, and the beliefs and expectations we bring to our relationships can exert a p owerful influ- ence on the events that follow. Our judgments of each other matter. And those of us who expect others to be trustworthy, generous, and loving may find that others actually are good to us more often than those with more pessimistic perspectives find others being kind to them (Lemay et al., 2015).

Self-Perceptions

Yet another example of the power of our perceptions lies in the judgments we form of ourselves. Our discussion of self-esteem in chapter 1 noted that our self-evaluations are potent influences on our interactions. But self-esteem is just one part of our broader self-concepts, which encompass all of the beliefs and feelings we have about ourselves. Our self-concepts include a wide array of self-knowledge along with our self-esteem, and all the components of the self-concept are intimately tied to our relationships with others.

During social interaction, our self-concepts try to fulfill two different functions (Swann & Buhrmester, 2012). On the one hand, people seek feedback from others that will enhance their self-concepts and allow them to think of themselves as desirable, attractive, competent people (Dufner et al., 2019). We like to hear good things about ourselves, and we try to associate with others who will help us support positive self- images.

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On the other hand, because it’s unsettling to encounter information that contra- dicts our beliefs, we also want feedback that sustains our existing self-concepts. For better or worse, our self-concepts play vital roles in organizing our views of the world; they make life predictable and support coherent expectations about what each day will bring. Without a stable, steady self-concept, social life would be a confusing, chaotic jumble, and being constantly confronted with information that contradicts our self- images would be unnerving. For that reason, people are also comforted by feedback from others that is consistent with what they already think about themselves and that verifies their existing self-concepts (Seidman & Burke, 2015), and this is true around the world (Seih et al., 2013).

These two motives, self-enhancement—the desire for positive, complimentary feedback—and self-verification—the desire for feedback that is consistent with one’s exist- ing self-concept—go hand-in-hand for people who like themselves and who have positive self-concepts. When such people associate with others who compliment and praise them, they receive feedback that is simultaneously self-enhancing and self-verifying. But life is more complex for people who genuinely consider themselves to be unskilled and unlovable. Positive evaluations from others make them feel good but threaten their negative self-images; negative feedback and criticism affirm their self-concepts but hurt their feelings.

How do both motives coexist in people with negative self-concepts? One answer is that people with poor self-concepts like global praise that suggests that their partners are happy with them, but they prefer self-verifying feedback about their specific faults (Neff & Karney, 2005). Partners who accurately recognize your deficiencies but who like you anyway appear to satisfy both motives (Lackenbauer et al., 2010). Self-enhance- ment also appears to be a more automatic, relatively nonconscious response that is primarily emotional, whereas self-verification emerges from deliberate and conscious cognition. What this means is that people with poor self-concepts like praise and com- pliments from others, but once they get a chance to think about them, they don’t believe or trust such feedback (Swann et al., 1990).

Okay, so what? The relevance of these phenomena to the study of relationships lies in the fact that if people are choosing relationship partners carefully, they’ll seek intimate partners who support their existing self-concepts, good or bad (Swann & Buhrmester, 2012). Here’s an example: Imagine that after a semester of sharing a double room in a college dorm, you’re asked if you want to change roommates. You have a positive self-concept, and your roommate likes you and tells you so. Do you want to leave? Probably not. But if your roommate disliked you and constantly dispar- aged you, you’d probably want out. You’d not want to live with someone who disagreed with you about who you are because it would be wearying and unpleasant to have to face such a contrary point of view all the time.

Now imagine that you have a lousy self-concept and you’re paired with a roommate who constantly tells you that there’s no reason to doubt yourself. Such encouragement feels great, and you want more, right? Wrong. The motive to protect and maintain our existing self-concepts is so strong that people with negative self-concepts want to escape roommates who perceive them positively; they’d rather have roommates who dislike them (Swann & Pelham, 2002). Such disapproval is unpleasant, but at least it reassures the recipients that the world is a predictable place.

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Things get more complicated in romantic relationships. When people choose dat- ing partners, self-enhancement is preeminent; everybody seeks partners who like and accept them. Thus, even people with poor self-concepts pursue casual partners who provide positive feedback. However, in more interdependent, committed relationships such as marriages, self-verification rises to the fore—a phenomenon called the marriage shift—and people want feedback that supports their self-concepts (Swann et al., 1994). (See Figure 4.5.) If people with negative self-images find themselves married to spouses who praise and appreciate them too much, they’ll gradually find ways to avoid their spouses as much as possible:

Imagine a man who receives what he construes to be undeserved praise from his wife. Although such praise may make him feel optimistic and happy at first, the positive glow will recede if he concludes that his wife could not possibly believe what she said. . . . [or] he may decide that she is a fool. In either case, overly favorable evaluations from someone who knows one well may foster a sense of uneasiness, inauthenticity, and dis- trust of the person who delivered them. (Swann, 1996, p. 118)

FIGURE 4.5. The marriage shift in self-verification. Self-enhancement is obvious in dating partnerships: We feel closer to dating partners who approve of us than to those who think we’re flawed. But once people marry, self-verification rises to the fore. People with negative self-concepts actually feel closer to spouses who don’t approve of them than to those who do. Beware of the marriage shift if your current romantic partner has low self-esteem.

Source: Swann, W. B., Jr., De La Ronde, C., & Hixon, J. G. (1994). “Authenticity and positivity strivings in mar- riage and courtship,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 66, 857–869.

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On the other hand, if their spouses belittle them, people with negative self- concepts will stay close at hand (Campbell et al., 2006). (And of course, it’s the other way around for those who have positive self-concepts.)

Overall, then, our self-concepts help direct our choices of intimate partners. Approval and acceptance from others is always pleasant, but in meaningful relationships over the long haul, people prefer reactions from others that confirm what they think of themselves. And that means that although most of us will be most content with spouses who uplift us, people with negative self-concepts will not; they’ll likely feel better understood by, and closer to, partners who verify their low opinions of them- selves (Chun et al., 2017).3

3Of course, self-concepts can change, and the ease with which they do depends on the certainty with which they are held. The good news is that if you suspect you’re a nincompoop but aren’t really sure, positive feedback from an adoring lover may change your self-image as you enjoy, and come to believe, what your partner says (Stinson et al., 2009). The bad news is that if you’re quite sure you’re unworthy, you’ll feel more at home around those who know you well enough to take you as you are—that is, those who agree that you’re unworthy (Campbell et al., 2006).

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Narcissism and Relationships

A negative self-concept can evidently have an adverse impact on one’s relationships, but an overly positive self-concept can be problem- atic, too. Narcissists possess highly inflated, unrealistic perceptions of their talents, desir- ability, and self-worth. They don’t just have high self-esteem, feeling satisfied with them- selves, they think they’re better than other people; they “view their own needs and goals as more significant than others’ and exhibit an inflated sense of importance and deserv- ingness” (Krizan & Herlache, 2018, p. 6). So, their self-perceptions are grandiose, and they’re prone to strong self- serving biases (Stucke, 2003); if things go well, they want all the credit, but if things go wrong, they will accept none of the blame. They’re touchy, too; their excessive pride leads them to over- react to imagined slights from others, and they’re always alert for any hint of disregard ( McCullough et al., 2003); they feel cruelly wronged when they judge that people are dis- respectful or uncaring, so they react more angrily and aggressively than others would (Shoikhedbrod et al., 2019).

When they enter close relationships, “nar- cissists aim not to get along but to get ahead. They seek not intimate bonds but superiority and status” (Myers, 2016, p. 36). They’re chron- ically less committed to their romantic partners than others are; their arrogant sense of entitle- ment leads them to stay on the prowl, looking for more desirable partners than the ones they have (Campbell & Foster, 2002). They work less hard to please their current partners and constantly think they deserve “better.”

Narcissists obviously make rather poor partners, but it is sometimes surprisingly hard for all the rest of us to see that at first (Czarna et al., 2016). They dress really well (Holtzman & Strube, 2013), and early on, their self- assurance can be appealing (Giacomin & Jordan, 2019), and it often takes time to realize how selfish and exploitative and touchy they really are. Thus, narcissism often takes the form of a “fatal attraction”; it may be attractive at first but deadly in the long run (Rentzsch & Gebauer, 2019), and it presents a challenge to us to be as astute in our judgments of potential partners as we can possibly be.

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Nonconscious Social Cognition

If you stop and think, you’ll probably recognize most of the elements of social cogni- tion we’ve discussed so far. Some attributions, beliefs, and expectations may be habit- ual, operating almost automatically without any deliberation or contemplation. But they are still conscious processes; if we turn our attention to them, we can identify them, and consider their possible effects.

Notably, however, you also have some other inclinations toward your intimate partners—perhaps both positive and negative—of which you are completely unaware. I’m referring here to implicit attitudes, which are the unintentional and automatic associations in our judgments that are evident when our partners come to mind (Greenwald & Lai, 2020). Let’s say that after seeing a picture of your beloved, you have to instantly decide in a reaction time task if a photo of a garbage dump is “good” or “bad”: If your nonconscious, gut feelings about your partner are wholly positive, it’ll take you a few milliseconds longer to accurately choose “bad” than would be the case if you had mixed feelings about your partner, and “bad” simply came to mind more easily. The speed with which “good” and “bad” judgments of various stimuli (such as flowers and puppies versus scorpions and moldy cheese) can be correctly made when you’ve been reminded of your partner is thought to reflect your nonconscious, implicit attitudes toward your partner; positive regard for your partner makes “good” judgments come quicker than “bad” ones, whereas disregard for your partner brings “bad” responses to the fore. (Explore this procedure, the Implicit Association Test, for your- self at https://implicit.harvard.edu!)

Why should we care about fractions of a second in reaction time? Because implicit attitudes can tell us things about people’s feelings for their partners that their conscious, intentional self-reports cannot (de Jong et al., 2019). First of all, our implicit attitudes are typically uncorrelated with our conscious evaluations of our relationships (Hicks & McNulty, 2019); our automatic associations often differ from the feelings about our partners that we consciously experience (and can describe to researchers). In particular, in most relationships, our partners activate both positive and negative automatic evalu- ations; when we’re happy with our partners, our favorable, positive implicit attitudes outweigh our negative, disapproving ones, but some nonconscious negativity of which we’re unaware exists nonetheless (Zayas et al., 2017). We may not be able to explicate them, but most of us have some nonconscious mixed feelings, or implicit ambivalence, about our sweethearts. Perhaps this shouldn’t be surprising; as we’ll see in chapter 11, conflict is inevitable in intimate partnerships, and as we’ll see in chapter 6, interdepen- dency routinely involves significant costs as well as rewards. So, there are usually some drawbacks to any close relationship. But what makes implicit attitudes especially inter- esting is that they predict the future of a marriage better than the spouses consciously can; Jim McNulty and his colleagues assessed both the implicit attitudes and the explicit self-reports of newlywed couples twice a year for four years and found that their automatic associations forecast the spouses’ subsequent satisfaction better than their conscious evaluations did. Regardless of how happy the new spouses thought they were, their implicit attitudes better predicted how happy they would later be (McNulty et al., 2013). Interestingly, even when we love our partners very much, we may have some quiet, nonconscious, mixed feelings about our relationships with them.

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Another intriguing aspect of nonconscious social cognition occurs when we unwit- tingly import old experiences in prior relationships into our reactions to our current partners. In a process called transference, old feelings can be “transferred” to new partners, influencing our behavior and our implicit attitudes toward them, when those new partners subtly remind us of significant others from our past (Andersen & Przybylinski, 2018). And what makes this interesting is that we need not be consciously aware of the manner in which something about our new partners is summoning up old associations. If new acquaintances resemble others who treated us badly in the past, for instance, we may behave more coolly toward the newcomers without realizing it (Faure et al., 2018). Those actions may elicit less friendly reactions from them, and we may begin to create new unpleasant relationships that resemble our unhappy past experiences without our disagreeable old partners ever coming consciously to mind (Berenson & Andersen, 2006). Happily, nonconscious transference can work for us, too. If a new acquaintance resembles someone with whom you shared good times, your interactions may get off to an especially good start. Although you may not consciously be reminded of your prior partner, you may, without meaning to, be particularly warm and sociable (Przybylinski & Andersen, 2015).

So, we can bring some interpersonal “baggage” into our new partnerships, and con- nections and implicit associations of which we are unaware can shape our feelings and actions toward our partners without us noticing. Unbidden, unintentional, and noncon- scious tendencies may have more influence on our intimate relationships than we realize.

IMPRESSION MANAGEMENT

Others’ impressions of us clearly matter. And because they do, we often try to control the information that others receive about us. We sometimes try to make deliberate impressions on others, choosing our words, our actions, our apparel, and even our associates carefully to pre sent a certain public image. On other occasions, when we’re not consciously pursuing a particular impression, we often fall into habitual patterns of behavior that portray us in ways that have elicited desirable responses from others in the past (Schlenker, 2012). So, whether or not we’re thinking about it, we’re often engaging in impression management, trying to influence the impressions of us that others form.

This is a significant idea for at least two reasons. First, nearly anything we do in the presence of others may be strategically regulated in the service of impression man- agement. Women are more likely to wear high heels (Prokop & Švancárová, 2020) and then eat less on a date with an attractive man than they would have eaten had they been out with their girlfriends ( Robillard, 2008). Men take greater risks (and incur more sensational crashes) on their skateboards (Ronay & von Hippel, 2010), pretend to be unaffected by horror films (Dosmukhambetova & Manstead, 2012), and display flashier luxury goods4 (Kruger & Kruger, 2018) when they want to impress women.

4One does not buy a $450,000 Porsche Carrera GT with only two seats, a tiny trunk, and lousy gas mileage for transportation alone. Interestingly, however, when we’re evaluating others as potential friends, we find those driving fancy BMWs to be less attractive than those who (like us?) are driving more modest Hondas (Garcia et al., 2019). Flashy displays of high-status goods make poorer impressions than most of us think.

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During sex, women cry out in exaggerated pleasure (Brewer & Hendrie, 2011), and both sexes will occa- sionally fake orgasms (79 percent of the women and 53 percent of the men in an Australian sample had done so) (Jonason, 2019). Indeed, any public behavior may communicate meaningful information about us to others. The e-mail addresses we select (Back et al., 2008), the avatars we build (Fong & Mar, 2015), the tattoos we apply (Guéguen, 2013), and, of course, the profiles we construct online (check out the “So, What Are You Showing the World Online?” box on the next page) all allow strangers to gauge some of our personality traits surprisingly well.

A second reason that impression management matters is that it is a pervasive influence on social life. Others’ evaluations of us are eventful, and when we are in the presence of others, we are rarely unconcerned about what they may be thinking of us (Miller, 1996). By providing a means with which we can influence others’ judgments, impression management increases our chances of accomplishing our interpersonal objectives. And there’s rarely anything dishonest going on; impression management is seldom deceitful or duplicitous. Yes, people fake orgasms, and women misrepresent their weight, and men their height, in their online profiles (Hitsch et al., 2010), but most impression management involves revealing, perhaps in a selective fashion, one’s real attributes to others ( Schlenker, 2012). By announcing some of their attitudes but not mentioning others, for example, people may appear to have something in common with almost anyone they meet; this simple tactic of impression management facilitates graceful and rewarding social interaction and does not involve u ntruthfulness at all. Because others reject frauds and cheats, people seldom pretend to be things they are not.

Strategies of Impression Management

Nevertheless, because most of us have diverse interests and talents, we can honestly attempt to create many distinct impressions, and we may seek different images in dif- ferent situations (Gohar et al., 2016). Indeed, people routinely use four different broad strategies of impression management (Jones & Pittman, 1982). We use ingratiation when we seek acceptance and liking from others; we do favors, pay compliments, men- tion areas of agreement, and are generally charming to get others to like us. Ingratiation is a common form of impression management with romantic partners (Nezlek et al., 2007), and as long as such efforts are not transparently manipulative or obviously insincere (Tenney & Spellman, 2011), they usually do elicit favorable reactions from others (Proost et al., 2010).

On other occasions, when we wish our abilities to be recognized and respected by others, we may engage in self-promotion, recounting our accomplishments or strategi- cally arranging public demonstrations of our skills. Self-promotion is a frequent strategy of impression management in a workplace (Nezlek et al., 2007), but even in profes- sional settings, vigorous self-promotion can be risky for women because it risks seem- ing “unladylike” (Moss-Racusin & Rudman, 2010). One does not wish to appear to be

A Point to Ponder

You realize that a friend has posted pictures on a dating site that are 2 years old, when she was 20 pounds lighter. Is her choice of images disrepu- table duplicity or a savvy strategy?

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Personal Characteristic

Researchers’ Accuracy

Sex 93%

Race 95%

Sexual orientation (men) 88%

Sexual orientation (women) 75%

Single/in a relationship 67%

Using drugs 65%

Divorced parents 60%

So, What Are You Showing the World Online?

When we put profiles and post pictures online, we’re engaging in impression management, selecting the information we make available to our social networks. You can limit what others see with your privacy settings, of course, but you may be surprised at just how much strangers can learn about you if they inspect your posts.

Let’s start with the basics on Facebook. Let’s assume that others don’t get to read your profile or see any pictures—they just look at your “likes” (which are public, after all, unless you go to some trouble to hide them). An analysis of the endorsements made by 58,466 American volunteers found that the patterns of their likes made it easy to discern whether they were male or female and white or Black. Sexual orientation was also pretty obvious, and whether or not one’s parents were divorced, one was presently in a relationship, and one was using drugs were all surprisingly plain (Kosinski et al., 2013). Here’s the scorecard:

Add in your profile, your pictures, and your posts, and you make some of those char- acteristics known for certain. More interest- ingly, strangers gain useful insight into how extraverted, agreeable, and conscientious you are from both the pictures and the comments you post (Azucar et al., 2018; Reiss & Tsvet- kova, 2020). (If you routinely use words such as “damn,” “bitch,” and “shit,” on your page, for instance, you’re probably lower in agree- ableness than someone who’s often using “wonderful,” “amazing,” and “thank you” [Park et al., 2015]).5 We can also all get some sense of how your romantic relation-

ship is faring: People who post a profile picture of themselves with their partners are more satisfied with their relationships, on average, than others are (Krueger & Forest, 2020). They also share more information about their relationships on days when things are going well (Saslow et al., 2013).

And here’s a pro tip: Don’t post too many selfies on Instagram. Like our other footprints on social media, selfies allow strangers to form impressions of our personalities that are sur- prisingly accurate (Kaurin et al., 2018). But importantly, a lot of selfies will lead observers to think that you are lonelier and less likable than would have been the case were you posting fewer selfies (Barry et al., 2019). Instead of selfies, mix in more candid photos in which you’re not posing and looking at the camera; they make us seem genuine and likable and make better impressions than posed photos do (Berger & Barasch, 2018).

We know, of course, that anything we post online can be seen by anyone who can access our accounts. What’s notable, though, is how much others may learn about us that we didn’t intend to tell.

5Speaking of language, if you’re writing a profile for a dating site, have a good writer proofread it before you post it! Misspellings and grammatical errors will lead readers to think that you’re either inattentive or stupid, and either way, you’ll get fewer responses from potential partners than you would have otherwise (Van der Zanden et al., 2020).

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bragging (Sezer et al., 2018). Nevertheless, during a job interview, self-promotion makes a better impression than ingratiation does—and a combination of the two does even better (Proost et al., 2010).

Both ingratiation and self-promotion create socially desirable impressions, but other strategies create undesirable images. Through intimidation, people portray them- selves as ruthless, dangerous, and menacing so that others will do their bidding. Such behavior is obnoxious and tends to drive others away, but if it’s used only occasionally— or if the recipients are children or impoverished spouses with no place else to go— intimidation may get people what they want. Finally, using the strategy of supplication, people sometimes pre sent themselves as inept or infirm to avoid obligations and to elicit help and support from others. People who claim that they’re “just too tired” to do the dishes after a “hard day at work” are engaging in supplication. If ingratiation and self- promotion work for them, most people use intimidation and supplication only rarely because most of us prefer to be liked and respected rather than feared or pitied. But almost everyone uses intimidation and supplication occasionally. If you’ve ever made a point of showing a partner that you were angry about something or sad about something else in order to get your way, you were using intimidation and supplication, respectively (Clark et al., 1996).

Impression Management in Close Relationships

Two specific features of impression management with intimate partners are worthy of mention. First, the motivation with which people manage their impressions differs from person to person, and these differences are consequential (Nezlek & Leary, 2002). People who are high in the trait of self-monitoring readily adjust their behavior to fit the varying norms of different situations. They’re alert to social cues that suggest what they should do, and they are ready, willing, and able to tailor their behavior to fit in. By comparison, low self-monitors are both less attentive to social norms and less flex- ible; they have smaller repertoires of skills, so they behave more consistently from one situation to the next, making the same stable impressions even when they don’t fit in. High self-monitors, then, are more changeable and energetic impression managers (Parks-Leduc et al., 2014).

These different styles lead to different networks of friends. Because they more often switch images from one audience to the next, high self-monitors tend to have more friends than low self-monitors do, but they have less in common with each of them.6 High self-monitors often surround themselves with activity specialists, partners who are great companions for some particular pleasure—such as a “tennis buddy” or “fitness friend”—but with whom they are not compatible in other respects (Leone & Hawkins, 2006). High self-monitors are adept at steering clear of any topics that would

6I should note that this and the following distinctions between high and low self-monitors are based on comparisons of the highest self-monitors, the 25 percent of us with the very highest scores, to the lowest self-monitors, the 25 percent of us with the lowest scores. Researchers sometimes do this to study the pos- sible effects of a personality trait as plainly as possible, but you should recognize that half of us, those with scores ranging from somewhat below average to somewhat above, fall between the examples being described here.

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cause dispute, and the specialist friends allow them to really enjoy those particular activities—but if they threw a party and invited all those friends, very different people who have little in common with each other would show up. By comparison, low self- monitors must search harder for partners with whom they are more similar across the board. If low self-monitors had all their friends over, fewer people would come, but they’d all be a lot alike.

These differences in style appear to be consequential as time goes by. When they first meet others, high self-monitors enjoy interactions of higher intimacy than low self-monitors do; they work to find common ground for a conversation and are good at small talk (Fuglestad & Snyder, 2009). Being active impression managers seems to help them interact comfortably with a wide variety of people. On the other hand, they invest less of their time in each of their friends, so that they tend to have shorter, somewhat less committed relationships than low self-monitors do (Leone & Hawkins, 2006). The interactive advantage enjoyed by high self-monitors when a relationship is just beginning may become a liability once the relationship is well established (Wright et al., 2007).

Thus, the greater attentiveness to social images evinced by high self- monitors influ- ences the relationships they form. Would you rather be high or low on this trait? You can determine your own self-monitoring score using the scale in Table 4.2. Just remem- ber that only very high and very low scorers closely fit the portraits I’ve drawn here.

The second intriguing aspect of impression management in close relationships is that—although the impressions we make on our friends and lovers are much more influential than the images we create for acquaintances or strangers—we usually go to less trouble to maintain favorable images for our intimate partners than we do for oth- ers. We worry less about how we’re coming across and try less hard to appear likable and competent all the time (Leary et al., 1994). The longer people have known their partners, for instance, the less time they spend grooming themselves in the restroom during a dinner date (Daly et al., 1983).

Why do we pay less heed to the images we present to intimate partners than to the impressions we make on others? There may be several reasons why (Leary & Miller, 2000). For one thing, we know our friends and lovers like us, so there’s less motivation to be charming to win their approval. If you have a satisfied spouse someday, for example, you’re likely to put on more weight than you would have if you were working harder to impress your spouse (Meltzer et al., 2014). Also, because they know us well, there’s less we can do to have much effect on what they think. However, it’s also likely that people simply get lazy. Being on one’s best behavior requires concentration and effort. Polite behavior usually involves some form of self- restraint. We can relax around those who already know and love us, but that means that people are often much cruder with intimate partners than they are with anyone else they know (Miller, 1997). People who are very decorous early in a relationship— who would never show up for breakfast without being showered and dressed—often become spouses who sit at the table in their underwear, unwashed, scratching and picking, and pilfering the last doughnut. This is ironic. Having behaved beautifully to win the love of a romantic partner, some of us never work at being so charming to that lover ever again. (And this may be a big problem in many relationships, as we’ll see in chapter 6.)

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TABLE 4.2. The Self-Monitoring Scale

Is each of the following statements true or false?

1. I find it hard to imitate the behavior of other people.

2. At parties or social gatherings, I do not attempt to say or do things that others will like.

3. I can only argue for ideas that I already believe.

4. I can make impromptu speeches even on topics about which I have almost no information.

5. I guess I put on a show to impress or entertain others.

6. I would probably make a good actor.

7. In a group I am rarely the center of attention.

8. In different situations and with different people, I often act like very different persons.

9. I am not particularly good at making other people like me.

10. I’m not always the person I appear to be.

11. I would not change my opinions (or the way I do things) in order to please someone.

12. I have considered being an entertainer.

13. I have never been good at games like charades or improvisational acting.

14. I have trouble changing my behavior to suit different people and different situations.

15. At a party I let others keep the jokes and stories going.

16. I feel a bit awkward in public and do not show up quite as well as I should.

17. I can look anyone in the eye and tell a lie (if for a right end).

18. I may deceive people by being friendly when I really dislike them.

Give yourself a point for each of these statements that were true of you: 4, 5, 6, 8, 10, 12, 17, 18.

Then give yourself a point for each of these statements that were false: 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16.

What’s your total score? If it’s 13 or higher, you’re a relatively high self-monitor. If it’s 7 or lower, you’re a r elatively low self-monitor (Snyder, 1987). Scores between 7 and 13 are average.

Source: Snyder, M., & Gangestad, S. (1986). “On the nature of self-monitoring: Matters of assessment, matters of validity,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 125–139.

SO, JUST HOW WELL DO WE KNOW OUR PARTNERS?

Let’s add up the elements of social cognition we’ve encountered in this chapter. In a close relationship, partners often hold idealized but overconfident perceptions of each other, and when they act in accord with those judgments, they may elicit behavior from each other that fits their expectations but would not have otherwise occurred. More- over, right or wrong, they are likely to interpret one another’s actions in ways that fit their existing preconceptions. And both of them are trying to make the impressions on each other that they want to make. Evidently, various processes are at work in intimate partnerships that cause us to see in our partners those attributes and motives

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that we expect or want (or that they want us) to see. How accurate, then, are our perceptions of our partners? How well do we know them?

The simple answer is, “not as well as we think we do.” Of course, we have exten- sive knowledge about our partners. But as we saw in chapter 3, we routinely perceive them to be more like us than they really are. We believe that they agree with us more often than they really do, and we overestimate how similar their personality traits are to our own (Luo & Snider, 2009). As a result, we feel that we understand them, and they understand us, more than is actually the case. Such misperceptions are not disad- vantageous. Indeed, the more similarity and understanding we perceive in our partners, the more satisfying our relationships with them tend to be (Hinnekens et al., 2020). Still, we misunderstand our partners more than we realize. To a degree, our perceptions of our partners are fictions that portray our partners as people they are not.

Several factors determine just how accurate or inaccurate our judgments are. Inter- personal perception depends both on the people involved and on the situation they face (Kenny, 2020).

Knowledge

The conclusion that we don’t know our partners as well as we think we do isn’t incon- sistent with the fact that intimate partners know a great deal about each other. As their relationship develops and they spend more time together, two people do come to understand each other better (Lee & Ashton, 2017). Married people perceive each other more accurately than dating couples or friends do, and acquaintances judge each other more accurately than strangers do (Letzring et al., 2006). Clearly, the more we know about our partners, the more accurate our judgments of them become (Wessels et al., 2020).

Motivation

However, our perceptions of others don’t necessarily become more accurate as time goes by. Spouses who have been married for decades don’t understand each other any better than those who have been married for only a year or two (Fletcher & Kerr, 2010). (Are you surprised by this? I was.) This is because the interest and motivation with which we try to figure each other out help to determine how insightful and accu- rate we will be (Smith et al., 2011), and in striving to know each other, people who have recently married may understand each other as well as they ever will. If their motivation wanes, longer periods of close contact may even gradually result in less, not more, accuracy as time goes by (Ickes, 2003).

To some extent, we also tend to see in our partners what we want and expect to see (Lemay & Clark, 2015). Because it causes positive illusions, liking someone makes our judgments less accurate than they would be if we were more dispassionate (Wessels et al., 2020). We also perceive our partners’ goals (Dunlop et al., 2018) and their emo- tions (Clark et al., 2017) to be more like our own than they really are. Caring and interdependency seem to interfere with impartiality and objectivity.

In general, women are better judges of others than men are, but some of that has to do with men simply not trying as hard to understand others as women do (Hall &

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Mast, 2008). Whether they’re male or female, people who are high in avoidance of intimacy don’t read others very well, both because they don’t pay close attention to others and because they just don’t care (Izhaki-Costi & Schul, 2011). But we all tend to understand beautiful people more than we do those who are plain, and that’s because they are beautiful, and we’re trying harder (Lorenzo et al., 2010). We know people better when we are motivated to do so.

Partner Legibility

Some of the traits people have are more visible than others—that is, they impel behavior that is observable and obvious—and the more evident a trait is, the more accurately it will be perceived (Hehman et al., 2017). People who are sociable and extraverted, for instance, are likely to be accurately perceived as gregarious and affable, but high negative emotion- ality that involves fretfulness and anxiety is harder to detect (Vazire, 2010). Moreover, some people are generally easier to judge correctly than others are (Human & Biesanz, 2013). One intriguing example of this was obtained when research participants watched videos of people on speed dates (Place et al., 2009). The observers could usually tell when men were interested in a woman they had met, but women’s interest was a little harder to judge (perhaps because more of the women were playing it cool). Nevertheless, some members of both sexes were quite transparent and easy to read, whereas others (about 20 percent of the group) consistently misled those who were watching. When people were hard to read, the observers routinely had no clue of what they were thinking.

Perceiver Ability

Some people may be hard to judge, but some judges are more discerning than others, too. People who have good social skills tend to be adept at judging others (Hall et al., 2009), often because they’re high in emotional intelligence, a set of abilities that describes a person’s talents in perceiving, using, understanding, and managing emotions (Mayer et al., 2016). When people have emotional intelligence, they’re able to read others’ feelings sensitively, and they enjoy more satisfying and more intimate interac- tions with others as a result (Czarna et al., 2016). Women tend to have higher emo- tional intelligence than men do, and that’s another reason they tend to be good at judging others (Brackett et al., 2005).

Unsettling consequences may result from being a poor judge of others. When Wil- liam Schweinle and his colleagues asked married men to watch videotapes of women discussing their divorces, they found (as you might expect) that some men read the women’s thoughts and feelings better than others. The videos were highly charged and full of emotion, and the men had never met the women they were watching, but those who could accurately tell when the women were really angry or bitter tended to be satisfied with their own marriages. In contrast, other men considered the women to be more hostile than they really were; these men perceived criticism and rejection in the women’s remarks that was not apparent to other perceivers. And creepily, those men were more likely to be wife beaters who abused their own wives (Schweinle et al., 2002). A thin-skinned tendency to perceive antagonism from female strangers that did not exist was correlated with mistreatment of one’s own spouse.

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Happily, training and practice can improve people’s abilities to understand their partners (Teding van Berkhout & Malouff, 2016). In one study, participants in a 10-hour empathy training program were able to understand their partners’ thoughts and feelings more accurately 6 months later, and their partners were more satisfied with their relationship as a result (Long et al., 1999).

Threatening Perceptions

Intimate partners typically understand each other much better than they understand mere acquaintances, but they may not want to on those occasions when a partner’s feelings or behavior is distressing or ominous. When accurate perceptions would be worrisome, intimate partners may actually be motivated to be inaccurate in order to fend off doubts about their relationship (Ickes & Hodges, 2013). And that’s a good thing because relationships suffer when people correctly perceive unwanted, threaten- ing feelings in their partners (Simpson et al., 2012). Imagine this situation: You and your romantic partner are asked to examine and discuss several pictures of very attrac- tive people your partner may be meeting later. Afterward, while watching a videotape of the two of you discussing the pictures, you try to discern exactly what your partner

Do You Really Know What Others Think of You?

Okay, you know more about yourself than anyone else does. No one else, of course, is with you as much as you are. But other people are still likely to know some things about you that you don’t know, for two rea- sons. First, they have a different point of view. They can see what you’re doing, and they’re sometimes aware of behavior that escapes your notice (Vazire & Carlson, 2011). In particular, others often disagree with you about how agreeable—that is, warm, cooperative, and self less—you’re be- ing at any given moment (Sun & Vazire, 2019). Have you ever been surprised by how you looked on a video? That’s the per- spective of you that others have all the time. Second, they’re more objective. Whereas you and I are prone to self-serving biases, others evaluate us with more dispas- sion; they know better, for instance, how physically attractive we are (Epley & Whitchurch, 2008).

You can more fully comprehend what others think of you if you recognize that

they are generally unaware of your unspo- ken fears, good intentions, and other private experiences; they can judge only what you say and do. As a result—and here comes some good news—others see us as less anx- ious, more assertive, and more conscien- tious than we judge ourselves to be (Allik et al., 2010). They are less aware of our wor- ries, occasional timidity, and unfulfilled plans than we are, so they don’t hold our private moments of weakness against us the way we do. And in general, we are reason- ably well aware of the different impressions we make on different audiences such as par- ents, friends, and co-workers (Carlson, 2016), but—and here’s some more good news—they usually like us and enjoy our company more than we think they do (Boothby et al., 2018). Add it all up, and there usually are some things that almost everybody thinks of us of which we are un- aware (Gallrein et al., 2016). To really un- derstand what others think of you, the thing to do is ask (Epley, 2014).

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was thinking when he was inspecting the pictures of gorgeous women (or she was inspecting the pictures of handsome men) that could be potential rivals for you. How astute would you be? Would you really want to know that your partner found one of the pictures to be especially compelling and was really looking forward to meeting that person? Not if you’re like most people. The more attractive (and thereby threatening) the photos were and the closer their relationship was, the less accurately dating partners perceived each other’s thoughts and feelings in this situation (Simpson et al., 1995). Most people understood a partner’s reactions to unattractive photos reasonably well, but they somehow remained relatively clueless about a partner’s reactions to attractive pictures. They were inattentive to news they did not want to hear.

But not everyone successfully managed threatening perceptions in this manner. People with a preoccupied attachment style were actually more a ccurate in judging their partners when the partners inspected the attractive photos (Simpson et al., 1999). They were unsettled by their perceptions, however, and they evaluated their relationships less favorably as a result. Preoccupied people were like moths drawn to a flame; they were especially good at intuiting their partners’ feelings in just those situations in which accuracy was disconcerting and costly. Such sensitivity may be one reason that such people are chronically anxious about their relationships. People with dismissing styles7 do better when they’re confronted with distressing information because they divert their attention and simply ignore it. This protects their feelings, but it does leave them rather unaware of what’s going on (Simpson et al., 2011).

Perceiver Influence

Finally, we should remember that we’re not passive judges of others. In a close rela- tionship, we’re engaged in continual interaction with our partners, and if we come to realize that they are not the people we wish they were, we may try to change them by encouraging some behaviors and discouraging others. In a sense, we’re sometimes like sculptors who try to construct the partners we want from the raw material they provide (Rusbult et al., 2009). If our partners seem dispirited, we may try to cheer them up. Or if they’re too pompous and pretentious, we may try to bring them back to Earth (De La Ronde & Swann, 1998). Because intimate partners are continually shaping and molding each other’s behavior, perceptions that are initially inaccurate may become more correct as we induce our partners to become the people we want them to be.

Summary

With all these influences at work, our perceptions of our partners can range from outright fantasy to precise correctness. We certainly know our partners better as a relationship develops, but motivation and attentiveness can come and go, and some people are easier to read than others. Some of us are more astute perceivers than oth- ers, too. In addition, even if you know your partner well, there may be occasions when

7Are you recognizing the terms preoccupied and dismissing? If not, go back to page 16 to refresh your memory.

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inattention is profitable, helping you avoid doubt and distress. And partners influence each other, so perceptions can become either more or less accurate as time goes by. In general, then, we usually understand our partners less well than we think we do—and because relationships tend to be happier when the partners accurately understand each other (Huelsnitz et al., 2020), we should ask our lovers what they’re thinking and feel- ing more often (Eyal et al., 2018).

Clearly, our perceptions of our partners are influential. Right or wrong, our judg- ments of our lovers and friends can either support or undermine our contentment in our relationships. Some of us look on the bright side, thinking well of our partners, using relationship-enhancing attributions, and expecting kindness and generosity—and that’s what we get. Others of us, however, doubt our partners and expect the worst—and thereby make it more likely that our relationships will fail.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Martha looked forward to meeting Gale because those who knew her said that she was friendly, outgoing, and bright. But their paths happened to cross when Gale was suf- fering from a bad case of poison ivy; she was uncomfortable from the endless itching and drowsy from the allergy medicine, and altogether, she was having a really bad day. So, things did not go well when Martha said hello and introduced herself. Martha came away from their brief interaction thinking that Gale was really rather cold and unsociable.

After Gale recovered and was back in her usual spirits, she encountered Martha again and greeted her warmly and was surprised when Martha seemed distant and wary. Having read this chapter, what do you think the future holds for Martha and Gale? Why?

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KEY TERMS

social cognition ........................... p. 133 primacy effect .............................. p. 136 confirmation bias ........................ p. 137 overconfidence ............................. p. 137 positive illusions .......................... p. 140 attributions ................................... p. 141 actor/observer effects ................. p. 142 self-serving biases ........................ p. 142 reconstructive memory ............... p. 144 marital paradigms ....................... p. 145 destiny beliefs .............................. p. 146 growth beliefs .............................. p. 147 self-fulfilling prophecies ............. p. 148

self-concepts ................................. p. 151 self-enhancement ......................... p. 152 self-verification ............................ p. 152 implicit attitudes ......................... p. 154 transference .................................. p. 155 impression management ............. p. 156 ingratiation ................................... p. 157 self-promotion .............................. p. 157 intimidation .................................. p. 159 supplication .................................. p. 159 self-monitoring ............................. p. 159 emotional intelligence ................. p. 163

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CHAPTER SUMMARY

Social cognition includes all of the processes of perception, thought, and memory with which we evaluate and understand ourselves and other people.

First Impressions (and Beyond)

When we first meet others, we jump to conclusions because of stereotypes and primacy effects. Confirmation biases then affect our selection of subsequent data, and overconfidence leads us to put unwarranted faith in our judgments.

The Power of Perceptions

Partners’ perceptions can be very consequential.

Idealizing Our Partners. Happy partners construct positive illusions that emphasize their partners’ virtues and minimize their faults.

Attributional Processes. The explanations we generate for why things happen are called attributions. Partners are affected by actor/observer effects and self-serving biases, and they tend to employ either relationship- enhancing or distress-maintaining patterns of attribution.

Memories. We edit and update our memories as time goes by. This p rocess of reconstructive memory helps couples stay optimistic about their futures.

Relationship Beliefs. Our assumptions about the role marriage will play in our lives take the form of marital paradigms. Dysfunctional relationship beliefs such as destiny beliefs are clearly disadvantageous. Growth beliefs are more realistic and profitable.

Expectations. Our expectations about others can become self-fulfilling prophecies, false predictions that make themselves come true.

Self-Perceptions. We seek reactions from others that are self-enhancing and complimentary and that are consistent with what we already think of ourselves—with self- verification leading people to seek intimate partners who support their existing self-concepts.

Nonconscious Social Cognition. We often have both positive and negative associations with our partners, implicit attitudes, of which we are unaware. We also may not recognize how, through transference, experiences with prior partners can influence our feelings and behavior in current relationships.

Impression Management

We try to influence the impressions of us that others form.

Strategies of Impression Management. Four different strategies of impression management—ingratiation, self-promotion, intimidation, and supplication—are commonplace.

Impression Management in Close Relationships. High self-monitors are less committed to their romantic partners, but all of us work less hard to pre sent favorable images to our intimate partners than to others.

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So, Just How Well Do We Know Our Partners?

We generally don’t understand our partners as well as we think we do.

Knowledge. As a relationship develops and partners spend more time together, they typically do understand each other better.

Motivation. The interest and motivation with which people try to figure each other out help to determine how insightful and accurate they will be.

Partner Legibility. Some personality traits, such as extraversion, are more visible than others.

Perceiver Ability. Some judges are better than others, too. Emotional intelligence is important in this regard.

Threatening Perceptions. However, when accurate perceptions would be worrisome, intimate partners may actually be motivated to be inaccurate.

Perceiver Influence. Perceptions that are initially inaccurate may become more correct as we induce our partners to become the people we want them to be.

Summary. Right or wrong, our judgments matter.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Humility is attractive. Strive to be humble instead of overconfident in your judg- ments of others.

• Celebrate your partner’s virtues and acknowledge, but do not dwell, on their faults.

• Blame less; remember that nearly all of the annoyances and inconveniences a lov- ing partner causes you are unintended.

• Accept more personal responsibility for the setbacks you encounter in your relationships.

• Love, all by itself, does not conquer all. Adopt the perspective that successful relationships require creative collaboration, compromise, and effort.

• Remember that people behave the way they do around you due in part to the way you behave toward them.

• Don’t overestimate your ability to change a potential partner’s negative self-concept.

• Don’t get lazy. Continue to work hard to make good impressions on your friends and lovers.

• Recognize that you don’t understand your partners as well as you think you do. Actively strive to know and understand them better.

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C H A P T E R 5

Communication

Nonverbal Communication   ♦ Verbal Communication ♦ Dysfunctional Communication and What to Do About It 

♦ For Your Consideration ♦ Key terms ♦ chapter summary  ♦ suggestions for satisfaction ♦ references

Imagine that you and your romantic partner are seated alone in a comfortable room, revisiting the topic of your last disagreement. Your conversation is more structured than most because, before you say anything to your partner, you record a quick rating of what you intend to say next. You rate the intended impact of your message by pushing one of five buttons with labels ranging from super negative through neutral to super positive. Then, after you speak, your partner quickly rates his or her percep- tion of your message in the same way before replying to you. This process continues as you take turns voicing your views and listening to what your partner says in return. You’re engaging in a procedure called the talk table that allows researchers to get a record of both your private thoughts and your public actions. The notable point is that if you’re currently unhappy with your relationship, you may not intend to annoy or belittle your lover, but you’re likely to do so, anyway. Unhappy couples don’t differ on average from happy, contented couples in what they are trying to say to each other, but the impact of their messages—what their partners think they hear—is more critical and disrespectful nonetheless (Gottman et al., 1976). And this is consequen- tial because this single afternoon at the talk table predicts how happy the two of you will be later on; spouses whose communications are frustrating will be less happily married 5 years later (Markman, 1981).

Communication is incredibly important in intimate relationships. And it’s more complex than we usually realize (Vangelisti, 2015). Let’s consider the simple model of communication shown in Figure 5.1. Communication begins with the sender’s inten- tions, the message that the sender wishes to convey. The problem is that the sender’s intentions are private and known only to him or her; for them to be communicated to the listener, they must be encoded into verbal and nonverbal actions that are public and observable. A variety of factors, such as the sender’s mood or social skill, or noisy distractions in the surrounding environment, can influence or interfere with this pro- cess. Then, the receiver must decode the speaker’s actions, and interference can occur here as well (Albright et al., 2004). The final result is an effect on the receiver that is again private and known only to him or her.

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The point here is that getting from one person’s intentions to the impact of that person’s message on a listener involves intermediate steps at which error and misunder- standing may occur (Puccinelli, 2010). We usually assume that our messages have the impact that we intended, but we rarely know that they do. More often than we realize (Vangelisti, 2015), we face an interpersonal gap in which the sender’s intentions differ from the effect on the receiver. Indeed, such gaps are actually more likely to occur in close relationships than they are among strangers (Savitsky et al., 2011). We don’t expect our partners to misunderstand us, so we don’t work as hard as we do with strangers to check that we’re on the same page.

Interpersonal gaps are frustrating. And not only are they related to dissatisfaction, they can even prevent rewarding relationships from ever beginning! Consider what happens when a shy man has a chance to make his interest in dating a woman known to her. Chatting after class, he may make a timid, innocent inquiry—“What are you doing this weekend?”—thinking that his romantic intentions are transparent and hoping for an enthusiastic reply. Unfortunately, he probably thinks that his amorous aims are more obvious to his potential partner than they really are (Cameron & Vorauer, 2008). If she fails to notice that he’s hinting about a date and makes a bland, noncommittal response, he may perceive an explicit rejection of a clear-cut invitation that she never actually received. Wounded, he may then keep his distance, and she may never realize what has transpired.

This sort of thing actually happens (Vorauer et al., 2003). I don’t want it to hap- pen to you, however, so I’ll do what I can in this chapter to help you close your own interpersonal gaps. But we’ll start our survey of communication in relationships not

Sender’s Intentions (private and known only by the sender)

Sender’s Actions (public and observable by anyone)

E�ect on Listener (private and known only by the listener)

Sender’s Style of Encoding

Noise and Interference

Listener’s Style of Decoding

Noise and Interference

FIGURE 5.1. A simple model of interpersonal communication. There is often a discrepancy—an interpersonal gap—between what the sender intends to say and what the listener thinks he or she hears.

Source: Adapted from Gottman, J. M., Notarius, C., Gonso, J., & Markman, H. (1976). A couple’s guide to communication. Research Press.

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with what people say in interaction but with what they do. Accompanying spoken words in communication is a remarkable range of nonverbal actions that also carry many messages, whether you intend them or not.

NONVERBAL COMMUNICATION

Consider this: As part of a study, research participants walk around town shopping, eating lunch, and applying for jobs wearing caps that endorse a group that most people loathe. Because they’ve put on the caps without looking at them, they don’t know what they’re wearing. What do you think? Would they realize that the people they’re encoun- tering don’t like what they see? They did, indeed (Hebl et al., 2002). Waitresses were standoffish and unsmiling, and passers by glanced at them and then looked away with brief flashes of disgust. Without a word being said, others’ behavior made it quite clear that the caps they were wearing were offensive instead of innocuous.

In such a situation, you, too, would probably notice the remarkable amount of information carried by nonverbal behavior (Hall et al., 2019), which includes all of the things people do in their interactions except for their spoken words and syntax. Non- verbal behavior can serve several functions in our transactions with others, and Table 5.1 lists five of them. I’ll emphasize three.

TABLE 5.1. Functions of Nonverbal Behavior in Relationships

Category Description Example

Providing information

A person’s behavior allows others to make inferences about his or her intentions, feelings, traits, and meaning

A husband’s facial expression leads his wife to judge that he is upset

Regulating interaction

Nonverbal behavior provides cues that regulate the efficient give-and- take of smooth conversations and other interactions

A woman starts looking steadily at her partner as the tone of her voice drops on her last word, and he starts speaking because he knows she’s finished

Defining the nature of the relationship

The type of partnership two people share may be evident in their non- verbal behavior

Lovers stand closer to each other, touch more, and look at each other more than less intimate partners do

Interpersonal influence

Goal-oriented behavior designed to influence someone else

As a person requests a favor from his friend, he leans forward, touches him on the arm, and gazes intently

Impression management

Nonverbal behavior that is managed by a person or a couple to create or enhance a particular image

A couple may quarrel on the way to a party but then hold hands and pre- tend to be happy with each other once they arrive

Source: Data from Patterson, M. L. (2011). More than words: The power of nonverbal communication. Aresta.

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First, nonverbal behavior provides information about people’s moods or meaning. If you playfully tease someone, for instance, your facial expression and the sound of your voice may be the only way listeners can tell that you don’t intend to be antagonistic. This function is so important that we have had to invent emojis, the imitation facial expressions people put in text messages, to sometimes show what we mean.

Second, nonverbal behavior also plays a vital part in regulating interaction. Nonverbal displays of interest often determine whether or not a conversation ever begins, and, there- after, subtle nonverbal cues allow people to take turns as they talk seamlessly and gracefully.

Finally, by expressing intimacy and carrying signals of power and status, nonverbal behavior helps to define the relationships we share with others. People who are intimate with each other act differently toward one another than acquaintances do, and dominant, high-status people act differently than subordinates do. Without a word being spoken, care- ful observers can usually tell who likes whom and who’s the boss.

How are these functions carried out? The answer involves all of the diverse com- ponents of nonverbal communication, so we’ll survey them next.

Components of Nonverbal Communication

One clue to the enormous power of nonverbal communication is the number of different channels through which information can be transmitted. I’ll describe seven: facial expres- sions, gazing behavior, body movement, touch, interpersonal distances, smells, and paralanguage.

Facial Expression

People’s spontaneous facial expressions signal their moods and emotions in a manner you’ll recognize anywhere you go (Cordaro et al., 2017). Even if you don’t speak the language in a foreign country, for example, you’ll usually be able to tell if others are happy: If they are, the muscles in their cheeks will pull up the corners of their mouths, and the skin alongside their eyes will crinkle into folds. Obviously, they’re smiling, and happiness, like several other emotions— sadness, fear, anger, dis- gust, surprise, and contempt—engenders a protoypical facial expression that’s recogniz- able all over the world. In fact, the similarity of these expressions from one culture to the next suggests that they are hardwired into our species. People don’t learn to smile when they’re happy—they’re born to do it. People who have been blind all their lives, for instance, display the same facial expressions all the rest of us do (Hwang & Matsumoto, 2016).

Compelling information is often available in facial expressions. Are you displaying a big smile in your Facebook profile photo, or do you look like a s ourpuss? The bigger the smiles college students posted during their first semester at school, the more satis- fied they were with their social lives and their college careers when they were seniors 4 years later (Seder & Oishi, 2012). In fact, the smiles people display in their college yearbooks predict their chances of being divorced later in life; compared to those with the biggest smiles, those who smile least are about 5 times more likely to divorce someday (Hertenstein et al., 2009)! Happy expressions are clearly correlated with suc- cess in life, and in some respects, a forecast of your future may be available to everyone you meet.

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Of course, facial expressions can be nuanced (and as I’ll note in a moment, they can be feigned), and the underlying emotions that engender them are often complex. People tend to smile when they’re happy, for instance, but “the happiness umbrella cov- ers joy, pleasure, compassion, pride and so on” (Heaven, 2020, p. 504), and somewhat different smiles distinguish each of these states (Rychlowska et al., 2017). Smiles take a variety of forms, and all by themselves, they and other elements of facial expressions can be ambiguous (Barrett et al., 2019). Nevertheless, particular expressions are routinely accompanied by distinctive body movements, and when attentive observers take them into account—and also consider the context in which the expressions occur, noting the surrounding situation and the actions of others (Chen & Whitney, 2019)—they can reli- ably identify dozens of discrete emotions in others (Cowen & Keltner, 2020).

So, facial expressions can be extremely informative—when they’re authentic. Unfortunately, because facial expressions do figure so prominently in nonverbal com- munication, people sometimes try to deliberately manage them to disguise their true emotions. On occasion, this occurs due to display rules, cultural norms that dictate what emotions are appropriate in particular situations (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2016).

Happy Lana K/Shutterstock

Contempt D-VISIONS/Shutterstock

Sadness Shannon Fagan/Image Source

These are examples of seven facial expressions that appear to be universal, being much the same from culture to culture. If I hadn’t provided the labels for each of them, would you be able to identify them? I bet that you could, even though you’ve never seen these people before.

Fear rubberball/Getty Images

Disgust Gorich/Shutterstock

Anger Ion Chiosea/123RF

Surprise Mix and Match Studio/ Shutterstock

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There are at least four ways we may try to modify our expressions of emotion to follow these rules. First, we may intensify our expressions, exaggerating them so that we appear to be experiencing stronger feelings than we really are. Even if you’re underwhelmed by a gift you’ve just opened, for example, you should try to look pleased if the giver is present. Second, we sometimes minimize our expressions, try- ing to seem less emotional than we really are. Because Western culture assumes that “big boys don’t cry,” a man may stoically try not to seem too affected by a sad movie. Third, we may neutralize our expressions, trying to withhold our true feelings alto- gether. Good poker players try to do this so that they give no hint of what their cards may be. Finally, we can mask our real feelings by replacing them with an entirely different apparent emotion. A first runner-up in a talent show who looks so thrilled when another contestant is named the winner is almost certainly masking her true feelings.

However, even when people try to control their expressions, the truth may leak out. First, feigned expressions usually differ from authentic expressions. Genuine smiles con- tract the muscles around our eyes, causing them to crinkle, but only about a quarter of us activate those muscles when we’re faking a smile (Gunnery et al., 2013)—and even if we do, there are subtle differences in timing and movement between real and fake smiles that are often apparent to attentive viewers (Ambadar et al., 2009). Second, despite our efforts, authentic flashes of real emotion, or microexpressions, can be visible during momentary lapses of control. Even when you’re consciously trying to control your expression, you may look disgusted for half a second when you first see something gross (Yan et al., 2013).

The Eyes and Gazing Behavior

Obviously, facial expressions provide meaningful information about a partner’s feel- ings. All by themselves, the eyes do, too. Even when we wish they wouldn’t, our pupils dilate when we’re looking at something that interests us (Adams & Nelson, 2016), so they expand when we look at others we judge to be sexually appealing (Attard-Johnson et al., 2016). (In fact, if you watch men’s eyes as you show them pictures of nude men and women, you’ll probably be able to tell who’s gay and who’s straight; the pupils of heterosexual men dilate when they see nude women, whereas the pupils of gay men expand when they see nude men [Watts et al., 2017].) And at some level, we’re aware of this pattern; when others are looking at us with large pupils, we tend to assume that they are more aroused and sexually available than we would judge them to be with smaller pupils (Lick et al., 2016)! Clearly, nonverbal communication can be both subtle and meaningful.

Gazing, the amount and direction of a person’s looking behavior, is also influen- tial. For one thing, “when others make eye contact with us, they signal that we are the target of their attention” (Adams & Nelson, 2016, p. 347), and people with friendly expressions who catch our eye and keep looking seem more likable and attractive than those who glance at us and then look away (Mason et al., 2005). If you find someone looking your way in a singles bar and you don’t want to talk to him or her, look away and don’t look back.

Gazing also helps define the relationship two people share once interaction begins. Lovers really do spend more time looking at each other than friends do, and

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friends look more than acquaintances do (Kleinke, 1986). Moreover, when strangers spend time gazing into each other’s eyes, they end up liking each other more (Kellerman et al., 1989) and sharing more personal, intimate information about themselves (Croes et al., 2020) than they would have if they’d spent the time together looking someplace else. A lot of looking can evidently communicate affection as well as simple interest.

But it can communicate dominance, too. In ordinary interaction, people usually look at their conversational partners more when they’re listening (gazing at the speaker about 60 percent of the time, on average) than when they’re speaking (look- ing at the listener about 40 percent of the time). However, powerful, high-status people tend to depart from these norms—they look more while speaking but less while listening than the average person does (Koch et al., 2010). Researchers sum- marize these patterns in a visual dominance ratio (VDR) that compares “look-speak” (the percentage of time a speaker gazes at a listener) to “look-listen.” A high-power pattern of gazing turns the typical ratio of 40/60 on its head, producing a high VDR of 60/40 (Ellyson et al., 1992). Dominant partners in an interaction can insist, “Look at me when I’m talking to you!” but they often do not offer as much visual attention in return.

Body Movement

So far, I’ve been describing nonverbal communication only from the neck up, but the rest of the body is involved, too. Body movements routinely accompany and support our verbal communication, making it easier for us to convey what we mean—try describing the size of a fish you caught without using your hands (Dargue et al., 2019)—but they can also replace spoken words entirely in the form of gestures that are widely understood. (A good example in North America, for better or worse, is a gesture in which one holds up one’s hand with one’s middle finger extended. The recipient of the gesture will probably know what it means.) The problem with gestures is that, unlike facial expressions, they vary widely from culture to culture (Matsumoto & Hwang, 2016). For instance, in the United States, touching your thumb to your index finger and extending the other fingers is a gesture that means “okay,” or “good.” However, in France it means “zero,” in Japan it means “money,” and in the Middle East it’s an obscene insult (just like the American middle finger). The language of the face needs no interpreter, but that’s not true of the language of gestures.

Less specific but still useful information can be conveyed by the posture or motion of the body (Stephan et al., 2018). For instance, how well do you dance? Using 3D motion-capture technology, Bernhard Fink and his colleagues (2012) can produce an avatar—that is just the shape of a body on a computer screen—that moves the way you do when you’re dancing, and if others watch the figure for 15 seconds, they’ll get a sense of your style. What’s interesting is that men who are judged to be good dancers by women tend to be more agreeable, consci- entious, and extraverted than guys who dance badly. So, in short, they’re more desirable mates!

A Point to Ponder

How does a woman’s walking motion change when she’s wearing high heels? How do those changes affect our per- ceptions of her attractiveness?

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Body postures can also signal status. High-status people tend to adopt open, asym- metric postures in which the two halves of the body assume different positions (Cuddy, 2015). They take up a lot of space. In contrast, low-status people use closed, symmet- ric postures that are relatively compact. If a powerful boss is talking with a subordinate seated across from him or her, you can usually tell who’s who just by watching them (Bente et al., 2010).

Touch

Physical contact with another person can also have various meanings. In some cultures, people may touch each other by shaking hands when they first meet, and—just as common sense suggests—there is useful information to be gained from the strength and vigor and fullness of grip with which someone shakes your hand. People with firm,

Tanya Vacharkulksemsuk and her colleagues (2016) planted pictures like these on Tinder pro- files in San Francisco, swiped “yes” to 750 people, and waited to see what other users of the app would do. Over two different weekends, three men and three women all appeared twice, once in an expansive posture that took up a lot of space, and again in a closed posture like the one on the right. Both the men and the women attracted more interest when they adopted an open, expansive posture—indicative of self-confidence and status—like the one on the left.

©Rowland S. Miller ©Rowland S. Miller

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full, long handshakes tend to be more extraverted and open to experience, and lower in negative emotionality, than people with wimpy handshakes are (Chaplin et al., 2000).

So, touch may be informative from the moment two people meet. Thereafter, dif- ferent types of touches have distinctly different meanings. Positive, supportive feelings such as love (which, for instance, might lead you to stroke someone’s arm) and sympa- thy (with you patting it) engender touches that are quite different from those that com- municate disgust (pushing) or anger (hitting). The emotions communicated by touch are often so distinct, both the recipient of the touch and bystanders watching it can tell what feelings are at work even when the touch is all they see (Hertenstein, 2011).

Two people also tend to touch each other more when their relationship is more intimate (Debrot et al., 2013), and that’s a good thing. If romantic partners hold hands when they’re discussing a disagreement, they’re less cantankerous and more construc- tive than they would’ve been if they weren’t touching each other (Jakubiak & Feeney, 2019). So it’s not surprising that the more satisfied spouses are with the amount of touching they receive, they more happily married they tend to be (Wagner et al., 2020). And loving touches are actually good for our health, too: Kissing your partner more often can reduce your cholesterol (Floyd et al., 2009), affectionate touch from your

Nonverbal Behavior and Sexual Orientation Or, “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell”? Who Has To Ask?

For 17 years, from 1994 to 2011, the U.S. Armed Forces maintained a “don’t ask, don’t tell” policy toward the sexual orienta- tion of their personnel. Fearing that open same-sex sexuality would undermine the co- hesion of its troops— something that, as it turned out, didn’t happen (Belkin et al., 2013)—the military asked its gays and lesbi- ans not to advertise their orientations. Of course, the policy assumed that someone’s sexual orientation wasn’t already obvious— but often it is. “Gaydar” exists: Nonverbal channels of information allow attentive ob- servers to assess the orientations of others quite quickly with reasonable accuracy (Kachel et al., 2020). A 10-second video of a person’s body movements is all observers need to make correct judgments 72 percent of the time (Ambady et al., 1999).

What’s visible in the videos? The pat- terns of a person’s gestures and movement are key. Heterosexual men tend to swagger, swinging their shoulders when they walk, and heterosexual women tend to sway, mov-

ing their hips. People whose behavior in- cludes the motions that are typical of the other sex are likely to be judged to be homo- sexual, and those perceptions are often cor- rect (Johnson et al., 2007). Differences in posture and gazing are evident when people are just sitting and chatting, too (Knöfler & Imhof, 2007).

But the most remarkable result of these studies is the finding that people who get a glimpse of men’s faces that lasts for only half a second can accurately judge whether they are gay or straight about 60 percent of the time, and they do almost as well when the faces are turned upside down (Tabak & Zayas, 2012)! How? The differences are sub- tle, but gay men tend to have narrower jaws, larger foreheads, and more feminine faces than straight men do (Wang & Kosinski, 2018). So, an attentive observer often has some idea of whether someone shares his or her sexual orientation before a single word is said, and this is true around the world (Rule et al., 2011).

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partner reduces your production of stress hormones (Burleson et al., 2013), and getting a lot of hugs makes it less likely that you’ll catch a cold (Cohen et al., 2015). Touch can clearly convey closeness and affection, and it can have healing properties, too.1

Interpersonal Distance

One aspect of touching that makes it momentous is that people have to be near each other for touching to occur. That means that the two partners are typically in a region of interpersonal distance—the physical space that separates two people—that is usually reserved for relatively intimate interactions. The intimate zone of interpersonal distance extends out from the front of our chests about a foot-and-a-half (Hall, 1966). (See Figure 5.2.) If two people are standing that close to each other face-to-face, their interaction is probably either quite loving or quite hostile. More interactions occur at greater distances in a personal zone that ranges from 1½ to 4 feet away from us. Within this range, friends are likely to interact at smaller distances and acquaintances at larger ones, so distancing behavior helps to define the relationships people share. Even further away, in a social zone (4 to 12 feet), interactions tend to be more busi- nesslike. When you sit across a desk from an interviewer or a professor, you’re in the social zone, and the distance seems appropriate; however, as many of us found during the coronavirus pandemic of 2020, it can seem quite odd to stand 6 feet away from a good friend to hold a personal conversation. Beyond 12 feet, interactions tend to be quite formal. This is the public zone, which is used for structured interaction like that between an instructor and his or her students in a lecture class.

These distances describe the general patterns of interactions among people in the United States, but they tend to be smaller than those used by many other peoples of the world; Asian countries, for instance, routinely use distances larger than these (Sorokowska et al., 2017). Temperature seems to matter: In warmer coun- tries around the world (and even in the American South compared to the North), people prefer closer distances when they interact with strangers, but larger distances with intimate partners, than people in cooler climates do. Women like somewhat larger distances than men do, too (Sorokowska et al., 2017). Whatever one’s preferences, however, spacing behavior is a subtle way to calibrate the desired intimacy of an interac- tion, and it may even be an indirect measure of the quality of a relationship: Spouses who are unhappy keep larger distances between each other than do spouses who are cur- rently content (Crane et al., 1987).

Intimate Distance 0” to 18” Personal Distance 1½’ to 4’ Social Distance 4’ to 12’ Public Distance 12’ and Up

FIGURE 5.2. Zones of interpersonal distance. There are four discrete regions of space in which different kinds of social interac- tion are likely to occur.

1But not everyone likes a lot of touching. People who are high in avoidance of intimacy (see page 16) don’t like to cuddle with either their lovers or their children as much as the rest of us do (Chopik et al., 2014), and they take less comfort in being touched by a friend or lover, too (Jakubiak & Feeney, 2016). Evidently, compared to those with secure styles of attachment, they’re less comfortable with both psychological and physical closeness.

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Smell

If you’re near enough to others, you can smell them, too, and you’ll likely be gain- ing more information than you realize. Different emotions cause people to emit differ- ent chemicals, or chemosignals, from their bodies—and people who are scared, for instance, have a different aroma than do those who are disgusted ( Pazzaglia, 2015). In fact, the atmosphere in a movie theater changes as a film evokes different emotions in its audience; different chemicals are exhaled when a film is funny than when it is suspenseful, causing measurable changes in the air (Williams et al., 2016). And whether or not we realize it, we can be affected by chemosignals like these: When people are exposed to the armpit odors of others who are happy, they feel happier, too (de Groot et al., 2015)! Smells carry information (de Groot et al., 2017), so perhaps it should be no surprise that people who were born without a sense of smell are at an interpersonal disadvantage; such men, for example, have only one-fifth as many sexual relationships during their lives as normal men do (Croy et al., 2013).

Paralanguage

The final component of nonverbal communication isn’t silent like the others can be. Paralanguage includes all the variations in a person’s voice other than the actual words he or she uses, such as rhythm, pitch, loudness, and rate. Thus, paralanguage doesn’t involve what people say, but how they say it (Frank et al., 2013). Good examples of distinctive paralanguage are the sounds we make— without using any words at all—that can tell people what we’re feeling. If you wanted to show someone with just a brief sound that you were scared, or angry, or sad, could you do it? How about relieved, amused, or awed? We are indeed able to reliably communicate these emotions and several more to listeners without using words (Cowen et al., 2019)—and we do it very quickly, within just half a second (Lima et al., 2019)—and this is true around the world (Cordaro et al., 2016).

In fact, our voices provide better information about what we’re feeling than our facial expressions do; when others watch us interacting with someone, or just listen to us, or watch and listen to us, they actually identify our emotions most accurately when they listen to us but don’t look at us (Kraus, 2017)! Authentic, reliable evidence of our emotions is pretty plain in our voices.

Paralanguage also helps define relationships because lovers tend to talk to each other differently than friends do. When they start a phone call by saying “how are you?,” men use a lower pitch with their lovers than with their friends, but women use a higher pitch— and strangers listening in can usually tell whether a friend or lover is on the other end of the call (Farley et al., 2013). Moreover, listeners who hear brief clips of simultaneous laughter (but nothing else) taken from the conversations of various couples can tell with 61 percent accuracy whether the two people are friends or strangers who have just met— and this, too, is true all over the world (Bryant et al., 2016). Laughter appears to be a nonverbal language we all understand. (Friends sound more spontaneous and relaxed, with shorter bursts of laughter that have more irregular volumes and pitch; listen for yourself at http://www.pnas.org/content/suppl/2016/04/05/1524993113.DCSupplemental)

Some voices are routinely more beguiling than others as well. Women like their men to have deep, low-pitched voices (Suire et al., 2019), and around the world, winners of presidential elections typically have lower pitched voices than the losers do (Banai et al., 2017). And voices are a cue to a partner’s mate value because people with appealing voices

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tend to have alluring faces and bodies, too (Hill et al., 2017). Even more intriguingly, if you listen to tapes of a variety of women counting from 1 to 10 at various times during their menstrual cycles, you’ll hear that a woman’s voice becomes more attractive just before she ovulates each month (Pipitone & Gallup, 2008). This is probably due to the effects of her changing hormones on her larynx, and it doesn’t happen in women who are on the pill—but when nature is allowed to run its course, this is a fine example of the subtlety with which nonverbal channels communicate important information from one person to another.

Combining the Components

I’ve introduced the components of nonverbal communication as if they are inde- pendent, discrete sources of information, and, in one sense, they are: Each of them can have its own effects on interaction. Usually, however, they reinforce each other, working together to convey consistent information about a person’s sentiments and intentions. When you’re face-to-face with someone, all of these components are in play, and together, they’ll tell you what people really mean by what they say. Consider sar- casm, for instance, when people say one thing but mean another: Their true intent is conveyed not in their words but in their actions and paralanguage. Most of the time, our nonverbal behavior communicates the same message as our words, and we like people better when that’s the case (Weisbuch et al., 2010). But when there is a dis- crepancy between people’s words and actions, the truth behind their words usually lies in their nonverbal, not their verbal, communication (Vrij, 2006).

Furthermore, all the channels may be involved in the nonconscious behavioral mim- icry that occurs during a conversation when the participants adopt similar postures and mannerisms, display comparable expressions, and use similar paralanguage. If they’re enjoying their interaction, people tend to synchronize their nonverbal behavior auto- matically without thinking about it; if one of them scratches his or her nose, the other is more likely to do so as well. When this occurs, the conversation tends to flow smoothly, and, more importantly, they tend to like each other even when they don’t notice the mutual imitation taking place (Chartrand & Lakin, 2013). Indeed, it seems to be reward- ing to be met with nonverbal behavior from others that resembles our own (Salazar Kämpf et al., 2018). In one demonstration of this effect, participants watched a persuasive argument from an avatar in a virtual reality that either used the recorded movements of a real person or simply mimicked the participant’s own actions with a 4-second delay. People were not consciously aware of the mimicry, but they attributed more positive traits to the avatar and were more convinced by its argument when it duplicated their own actions than when it behaved like someone else (Bailenson & Yee, 2005). (Is this the future of high-tech advertising?) We are evidently charmed and more at ease when non- verbal mimicry takes place (Sharon-David et al., 2019), and it can be surprisingly stress- ful to interact with someone who does not imitate us at all (Kouzakova et al., 2010).

The various components of nonverbal behavior also allow us to fine-tune the inti- macy of our interactions to establish a comfortable level of closeness ( Patterson, 2011). Imagine that you’re seated next to an acquaintance on a two-person couch when the conversation takes a serious turn and your acquaintance mentions an intimate personal problem. If this development makes you uncomfortable—if you’ve just received too much information—you can adjust the perceived intimacy of your interaction by non- verbally “backing off.” You can turn away and lean back to get more distance. You can

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avert your gaze. And you can signal your discomfort through less animated paralan- guage and a less pleasant facial expression, all without saying a word (Montoya et al., 2018). Nonverbal communication serves several important functions in interaction and is the source of useful subtlety in social life.

Nonverbal Sensitivity

Given all this, you might expect that it’s advantageous for couples to do well at non- verbal communication, and you’d be right. The sensitivity and accuracy with which couples read, decode, and correctly interpret each other’s nonverbal behavior predict how happy their relationship will be (Fitness, 2015). Husbands and wives who do poorly tend to be dissatisfied with their marriages, and, moreover, when such problems occur, it’s usually the husband’s fault (Noller, 2006).

What? How do we arrive at such a conclusion? Well, when non verbal exchanges fail, there may be errors in encoding or decoding, or both (Puccinelli, 2010): The sender may enact a confusing message that is difficult to read (that’s poor encoding), or the receiver may fail to correctly interpret a message that is clear to everyone else (and that’s poor decoding). Women typically start with an advantage at both tasks because, if no deception is involved, women are both better encoders and more astute decoders than men are on average (Brody & Hall, 2010). (Men and women don’t dif- fer in their abilities to detect deception, as we’ll see in chapter 10.) Thus, stereotypes

Air Rabbit/DigitalVision/Getty Images

People often adopt similar postures during a conversation, mimicking each other, and they like each other better as a result.

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about “women’s intuition” (Gigerenzer et al., 2014) actually have a basis in fact; more than men, women tend to attentively use subtle but real nonverbal cues to discern what’s going on. Do women possess more skill at nonverbal communication, or are they just working harder at it? That’s a good question, and I’ll answer it shortly.

Researchers can assess the quality of husbands’ and wives’ encoding and decoding by asking them to send specific nonverbal messages that are then decoded by the other spouse. The messages are statements that can have several different meanings, depend- ing on how they are nonverbally enacted; for instance, the phrase, “Are you going to do the dishes?” could have several different meanings (Gottman, 2015):

• “I’ve been doing the dishes every night for the past six weeks. I’m sick of it! It’s your turn to do the dishes”; or

• “I’m just wondering who’s going to do the dishes tonight. Is it my turn? I’m just looking for information”; or

• “Oh, I’m so pleased! It looks like you’re going to do the dishes. That’s very sweet!”

In research on nonverbal sensitivity, a spouse is assigned a particular meaning to convey and is filmed sending the message. Then, impartial strangers are shown the film. If they can’t figure out what the spouse is trying to communicate, the spouse’s encoding is assumed to be faulty. On the other hand, if they can read the message but the other spouse can’t, the partner’s decoding is implicated.

In the first ingenious study of this sort, Patricia Noller (1980) found that husbands in unhappy marriages sent more confusing messages and made more decoding errors than happy husbands did. There were no such differences among the wives, so the poorer communication that Noller observed in the distressed marriages appeared to be the husbands’ fault. Men in troubled marriages were misinterpreting communications from their wives that were clearly legible to total strangers. Even worse, such husbands were completely clueless about their mistakes; they assumed that they were doing a fine job communicating with their wives, and they were confident that they understood their wives and that their wives understood them (Noller & Venardos, 1986). The men were doing a poor job communicating and didn’t know it, and that’s why they seemed to be at fault.

On the other hand, to be fair, nonverbal marital miscommunication is not entirely due to husbands’ shortcomings. In another study, Noller (1981) compared spouses’ accu- racy in decoding the other’s messages to their accuracy in decoding communications from strangers. In unhappy marriages, both the husbands and wives understood strangers better than they understood each other. When they were dissatisfied, everyone was communicat- ing poorly, despite being capable of adequate nonverbal communication with others.

This is a key point because, now that you’re becoming a more sophisticated con- sumer of relationship science, you’ve probably already realized that a correlation between nonverbal miscommunication and relationship dissatisfaction is consistent with several possibilities. On the one hand, the partners’ nonverbal skills may determine how satisfy- ing their relationships are; poor skills may result in poor relationships, but good skills may promote pleasurable partnerships. On the other hand, the partners’ satisfaction may determine how hard they work to communicate well; poor relationships may engen- der lazy (mis)communication, and good relationships may foster good communication.

Actually, both of these propositions are correct. Nonverbal insensitivity makes someone a less rewarding partner than he or she otherwise would be

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(Määttä & Uusiautti, 2013). But once partners grow dissatisfied for any reason, they tend to start tuning each other out, and that causes them to communicate less adeptly than they could if they really tried (Noller, 2006). In this fashion, nonverbal insensitivity and dissatisfaction can become a vicious cycle, with each exacerbating the other.

In any case, people’s problems with communication may stem from either skill deficits or performance deficits, and the distinction is an important one. Some people simply aren’t very talented at nonverbal communication, and their deficits are pro- vocative (and a little eerie). For instance, men who beat their wives have more trouble than nonviolent men figuring out what their wives are feeling (Marshall & Holtzworth- Munroe, 2010). And abusive mothers have trouble identifying signs of distress in infants; they tend not to know when their babies are scared and unhappy (Wagner et al., 2015). It’s possible, then, that skill deficits give some people blind spots that make them less likely to realize just how much harm they are doing to others.

So, why is it that women do better at nonverbal communication than men do? Skill and motivation both seem to be involved (Flannery & Smith, 2017): Men’s performance improves when they’re motivated to do the work it requires (Cameron et al., 2019) to pay close attention and to judge others correctly, but they never do better than women (Hall & Mast, 2008), who naturally seem to judge others’ emotions more quickly and accurately than men do (Olderbak et al., 2019). Given the frustrating impact of nonver- bal miscommunication, men’s poorer performances can be a nuisance, so here’s a tip: Watch someone’s eyes. Women spend more time watching others’ eyes than men do, and that appears to be one reason why they read others’ expressions more accurately (Hall et al., 2010). And as this tip suggests, training and practice can improve one’s skills (Blanch-Hartigan et al., 2012). The good news is that both men and women do better at nonverbal communication when they look and listen and put their minds to it, and we’re usually more adept at reading our intimate partners’ nonverbal cues than those of acquaintances or strangers (Zhang & Parmley, 2011). The bad news is that lazy inattention from either partner is likely to lead to more misunderstanding and less hap- piness and satisfaction than a couple would otherwise enjoy (Fitness, 2015).

VERBAL COMMUNICATION

If nonverbal communication is so important, what about the things we actually say to each other? They are probably even more consequential, of course (Solomon & Theiss, 2013). Verbal communication is a vital part of close relationships, and it is extensively involved in the development of intimacy in the first place.

Self-Disclosure

Imagine that as part of a psychology experiment, you meet a stranger and answer ques- tions that lead you to gradually reveal more and more personal information about yourself (Aron et al., 1997). The questions aren’t intimate at first—“Given the choice of anyone in the world, whom would you want as a dinner guest?”—but they slowly get more personal: “If you could go back in your life and change any one experience, what would it be and why?” “When did you last cry in front of another person? By yourself?”

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The stranger answers the questions, too, and 45 minutes later, you know a lot of per- sonal details about each other. What would happen? Would you like the stranger more than you would have if the two of you had just shared small talk for the same amount of time? In most cases, the answer is definitely “yes.” Experiences such as these usually generate immediate closeness between the participants. People who open up to each other, even when they’re just following researchers’ instructions, like each other more than do couples who do not reveal as much (Slatcher, 2010).

The process of revealing personal information to someone else is called self- disclosure. It is one of the defining characteristics of intimacy: Two people cannot be said to be intimate with each other if they do not share some personal, relatively confidential information with one another (Willems et al., 2020).

How Self-Disclosure Develops

Of course, in real life, meaningful self-disclosure takes longer than 45 minutes. Most relationships begin with the exchange of superficial information—“small talk”—and only gradually move to more meaningful revelations. The manner in which this occurs is the subject of social penetration theory, which holds that relationships develop through sys- tematic changes in communication (Altman & Taylor, 1973). People who have just met may feel free to talk with each other about only a few relatively impersonal topics: “Where are you from?” “What’s your major?” But if this superficial conversation is rewarding, they’re likely to move closer to each other by increasing two aspects of their communication:

1. Its breadth: the variety of topics they discuss, and 2. Its depth: the personal significance of the topics they discuss.

According to the theory, if we diagram all the things there are to know about someone, self-disclosure at the beginning of a new relationship is likely to take the form of a wedge that’s both narrow (only a few different topics are being discussed) and shallow (only impersonal information is being revealed). (See Figure 5.3.) As the

Number of Topic s

Superficial Lev el

Intim ate Lev el

Early in a Relationship

Very Intimate

Level

As the Relationship Develops

FIGURE 5.3. Altman and Taylor’s wedge of social penetration. If information about someone exists in several layers, self-disclosure increases in both breadth and depth as a relationship develops.

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relationship develops, however, the wedge should become broader (with more topics being discussed) and deeper (with more topics of personal significance being revealed).

In general, that is what happens (Derlega et al., 2008). In addition, early encoun- ters between acquaintances usually involve obvious reciprocity in self-disclosure. New partners tend to match each other’s level of openness, disclosing more as the other person does, and disclosing less if the other person’s self-disclosure declines. Just how much people reveal about themselves, then, tends to depend on the specific partner and may vary considerably from relationship to relationship (Willems et al., 2020). This also tends to be a gradual process, with new partners moving toward deeper

Are You a High “Opener”?

Some people are especially good at eliciting self-disclosure from others. Lynn Miller, John Berg, and Rick Archer (1983) devel- oped the Opener Scale to assess this ability, and people who get high scores really do draw out more intimate information from others than do people who receive low scores on the scale. They do this through both verbal and nonverbal channels: High openers appear more attentive during conversation—gazing and nodding more, and looking interested—and they verbally express more interest in what others are

saying (Purvis et al., 1984). They seem to be absorbed by what others have to say, so they tend to be very good interviewers (Shaffer et al., 1990).

Women tend to be better openers than men (Miller et al., 1983). The average score for women on the Opener Scale is 31, whereas 28 is typical for men. If your own score is 5 points higher than average, you’re a fairly high opener, but if it’s 5 points lower, your score is rather low. You can fig- ure your score by rating yourself on each item using this scale:

The Opener Scale

1. People frequently tell me about themselves.

2. I’ve been told that I’m a very good listener.

3. I’m very accepting of others.

4. People trust me with their secrets.

5. I easily get people to “open up.”

6. People feel relaxed around me.

7. I enjoy listening to people.

8. I’m sympathetic to people’s problems.

9. I encourage people to tell me how they are feeling.

10. I can keep people talking about themselves.

0 1 2 3 4

Strongly Disagree Neither agree Agree Strongly disagree nor disagree agree

Source: Miller, L. C., Berg, J. H., & Archer, R. L. (1983). “Openers: Individuals who elicit intimate self- disclosure,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 44, 1234–1244.

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topics by stages rather than all at once. Saying too much too soon can be risky; it violates others’ expectations and often makes a poor impression (Buck & Plant, 2011). The best strategy is usually to be patient. Take turns instead of engaging in long monologues, and allow measured reciprocity to gradually increase the intimacy of your interactions (Sprecher & Treger, 2015).

However, an interpersonal process model of intimacy proposed by Harry Reis and Phillip Shaver (1988) argues that genuine intimacy is likely to develop between two people only when certain conditions have been met. When we open up to others, we want our disclosures to be received with apparent interest, sympathy, and respect. That is, we want responsiveness from others that indicates that they understand us and care about us. If they are suitably responsive, trust builds, disclosures deepen, and intimacy increases; alternatively, if they seem disinterested or uncaring, we back off and our disclosures decrease. So, for two people to become close, three things have to happen. First, they have to engage in meaningful self-disclosure. Relationships that are charac- terized by authenticity, openness, and honesty involve more commitment and are gen- erally more satisfying than superficial partnerships are (Wickham et al., 2015). Then, they have to respond to each other’s personal information with interest and empathy— and in heterosexual relationships, it’s particularly valuable when men do this (Mitchell et al., 2008). Finally—and this is important—they each have to recognize that the other is being responsive. The judgment that one’s partner is understanding and caring, which is known as perceived partner responsiveness, is a key part of the ongoing process by which intimacy develops (Ohtsubo et al., 2014). If we don’t perceive our partners to be caring, understanding, and respectful, we’ll not tell them our secrets.

So, here’s a good idea: When your partner offers a meaningful bit of self-disclosure, make it more likely that she or he will perceive you to be responsive by asking follow- up questions that communicate your interest in what you’ve been told. Your partner will like it when you do (Yeomans et al., 2019).

Secrets and Other Things We Don’t Want to Talk About

Even when a relationship becomes quite intimate, we’ll probably keep some things to ourselves. Social penetration is almost never total, and it probably shouldn’t be because partners like and need some privacy, too (Petronio, 2010). Both intimate self- disclosure and selective secrecy contribute to marital satisfaction (Finkenauer et al., 2009), and some privacy is desirable even in a close, intimate relationship. In general, “the value of openness should be balanced against other values, such as politeness, respectfulness, and discretion” (Caughlin & Basinger, 2015, p. F2). (I’m reminded of a cover story in Cosmopolitan magazine that asked, if you’ve had an affair, “Should You Ever Tell?” Their answer, after much discussion, was “probably not.”)

Of course, it’s not always easy to keep a secret, especially in an intimate relation- ship. Doing so is often quite stressful (Baum & Critcher, 2020); deep, dark, shameful secrets tend to intrude on our thoughts (Slepian et al., 2020), making our constant efforts to conceal them both distracting and tiring (Slepian et al., 2019). Keeping secrets is risky, too: Relationships are undermined when people learn that their partners are concealing something (Aldeis & Afifi, 2015). And most of the time, people feel better when they finally fess up and tell the truth (Slepian & Moulton-Tetlock, 2019). So, why go to the trouble and take the risk of keeping secrets? It’s pretty straightforward, really:

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When they intentionally withhold information from others, “people generally long to protect themselves, protect their relationships, or protect others” (Afifi et al., 2007, p. 79). If they come to believe that keeping a secret is more trouble than it’s worth, they usually reveal it to others after a while (Caughlin & Vangelisti, 2009). On the other hand, if they worry that they or others may be harmed by an unwanted truth, they may strive to conceal it forever.

There may also be important issues that both partners simply don’t want to talk about. Explicitly or implicitly, partners may agree to steer clear of taboo topics, sensitive matters that, in their opinion, may threaten the quality of their relationship. Curiously, the most common taboo topic is the state of the relationship itself; in one study, 54 percent of the respondents acknowledged that the current or future state of their romantic relationships was a subject that was better off not being mentioned (Knobloch & Carpenter-Theune, 2004). (Other common taboos involved current relationships with other people, avoided by 31 percent of the respondents, and past relationships [22 percent]. Discussion of past sexual experiences is also routinely avoided [Anderson et al., 2011].) People are often keenly interested in the likely

Cautious Communication: Coming Out

You probably know someone who’s openly gay or lesbian. LGBs (lesbians, gays, and bisexu- als) are much more likely to announce their sexual identities to friends and family, and to do so at earlier ages, than was the case a gen- eration ago (Pew Research Center, 2013). Pub- lic acknowledgments of their identities are still important milestones for most LGBs, however, and it’s an action they usually take thoughtfully and cautiously (if they do so at all).

LGBs typically know for sure that they are gay, lesbian, or bisexual when they are teenagers, but they don’t tell anyone until three years later (at age 18 for gay men, 20 for bisexuals, and 21 for lesbian women, on aver- age) (Martos et al., 2015). Their first disclo- sures usually go well, resulting in supportive, positive reactions because the confidant is commonly a trusted friend (Savin-Williams, 2005). But it’s a year later when they first tell a parent, usually their mothers, and some parents never learn the truth; about two- thirds of gays and lesbians have come out to their mothers, but only half have told their fathers. Overall, three-fourths of gays and les- bians have told most of the important people

in their lives of their sexual orientations, but only 19 percent of bisexuals have done so (Brown, 2019).

So, although concealing one’s true sex- ual identity is stressful (Riggle et al., 2017), LGB teens usually live with a big secret for several years before telling anyone (and some never do). Why so long? It’s usually because they correctly recognize that their disclosure will be a turning point in their relationships with their families. And they rarely wish to injure anyone; instead, they seek to be honest and authentic rather than secretive and dis- tant (Hunter, 2007). They disclose the truth to be closer to the ones they love, and the good news is that they usually succeed: They usually receive support from their friends, and over time most parents come to accept their same-sex orientation with either equa- nimity or encouragement (Legate et al., 2012). Nevertheless, coming out is often a mixed blessing (Alonzo & Buttitta, 2019): Re- grettably, announcing one’s authentic identity can still make one a target of discrimination (Brown, 2020). How will you react if a friend comes out to you?

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future of their partnerships and are eager to learn their partners’ expectations and intentions—but they don’t ask (Knobloch et al., 2013). Instead, romantic partners may create secret tests of their lovers’ fidelity and devotion (Baxter & Wilmot, 1984). They watch closely to see how their lovers respond to other attractive people (that’s a “triangle test”); they contrive difficulties that the lover must overcome in order to demonstrate his or her devotion (an “endurance test”); and they find reasons to be apart to see how enthusiastically their lovers welcome their return (a “separation test”). This all seems like a lot of trouble when they could simply ask the partner what he or she is thinking—and they do often ask the partner’s friends—but in many relationships, such matters seem too delicate to be discussed openly. But watch out: The more taboo topics there are in a relationship, the less satisfied the partners are unless they feel that they’re avoiding touchy topics to promote and protect their relationship (Palomares & Derman, 2019). Ducking discussions because of cowardice or incompetency erodes partners’ satisfaction, but politely working together to main- tain the partnership rarely has ill effects.

Self-Disclosure and Relationship Satisfaction

The bottom line is that the more self-disclosure romantic couples share, the hap- pier they tend to be. Self-disclosure that fits the situation breeds liking and contentment in close relationships, and that occurs for several reasons (Collins & Miller, 1994). First, we tend to reveal more personal information to those we like. If we’re attracted to others, we tend to be more open with them. However, we also tend to like others because we have self-disclosed to them. Everything else being equal, opening up to others causes us to like them more. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, it’s reward- ing to be entrusted with self-disclosures from others. People who engage in intimate disclosures are liked more by others than are those who say less about themselves (Sprecher et al., 2013). So, it feels good to give and to receive self-disclosures, and this aspect of verbal communication is an essential building block of close relationships. Try it yourself for 45 minutes, and you’ll probably make a new friend (Slatcher, 2010).

Finally, self-disclosure is not only good for our relationships, it’s good for us. Com- pared to those who engage in more superficial small talk, people who have substantive, deep conversations and who make themselves known to others enjoy better health (Sloan, 2010) and more satisfaction with life (Milek et al., 2018). And there’s a particular sort of self-disclosure that you should absolutely, positively engage in more often: Tell those you love that you love them. Your honest expressions of fondness, regard, affection, and care are powerful rewards for those who want to be close to you (Hesse & Tian, 2020), and it’s not enough just to have such feelings; you have to communicate them in a way that makes them plain (Burleson et al., 2013). But here’s the real point of this paragraph: Affectionate communication is not just affirming and pleasing to your partner; it also can be remarkably beneficial to you (Aloia & Brecht, 2017). In lab studies, people who get randomly assigned to write love letters that express their affection for their partners experience improved neuroendocrine responses to stress (Floyd et al., 2007b) and, over time, lower cholesterol levels, heart rates, and blood pressures (Floyd et al., 2007a). Tell your partners of your affection for them. It’ll be good for both of you.2

2There’s no need to tell them I put you up to it.

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Gender Differences in Verbal Communication

People have made a lot of money writing books that describe men and women as dif- ferent species that come from different planets and speak different languages. I’m trying to combat that simple-minded way of thinking throughout this book because the sexes really are more similar than they are different. However, there are some gender differences in verbal communication that can influence our interactions. For instance, men and women don’t speak different languages, but they do sometimes talk about different things.

Topics of Conversation

If you read a transcript of a conversation between two friends, would you be able to tell if the participants were men or women? You might. Among themselves, women are more likely than men to discuss their feelings about their close relationships and other personal aspects of their lives. Feelings and people figure prominently in both the conversations and text messages of women (Fox et al., 2007). In contrast, men tend to stick to more impersonal matters, discussing objects and actions such as cars and sports, gossiping about celebrities and politicians instead of friends, and seeking a few laughs instead of support and counsel (McHugh & Hambaugh, 2010). As a result, the conversations men have with each other tend to be less intimate and personal than the conversations women share (Reis, 1998).

Attachment Styles and Communication

Attachment styles are evident in communi- cative behavior. Compared to those who are insecure, people with secure styles generally exhibit warmer, more expressive nonverbal behavior involving more laughter, smiling, gazing, and touching; their lower concern about acceptance from others and their greater comfort with closeness is apparent in their actions (Tucker & Anders, 1998). Se- cure people are also more affectionate (Hesse & Trask, 2014) and keep fewer se- crets (Merrill & Afifi, 2015) than insecure people do.

In particular, people who are high in avoidance of intimacy tend to be especially closelipped; they engage in less self-disclo- sure (Bradford et al., 2002) and express their emotions less openly (Kafetsios, 2004) than less avoidant people do. They also decode others’ expressions of positive emotions less accurately (Kafetsios et al., 2014) and judge

others’ negative emotions to be more intense and hostile than they really are (Overall et al., 2015). (Do you see how such misperceptions can lead people to keep a defensive distance from others?) By comparison, people with secure styles are more open and accurate with their intimate partners than avoidant people are, and those are two reasons why their part- nerships are more satisfying as the years go by (Tan et al., 2012).

People who are high in anxiety about abandonment are more talkative; if any- thing, in their nervous quest for intimacy and acceptance, they routinely self-disclose too much, too soon (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2013). In general, though, the most relaxed and responsive communicators are those who are low in both avoidance and anxiety— that is, those who are secure. They’re the most desirable confidants ( Mikulincer & Shaver, 2013).

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Texts, Tweets, and Status Updates: Modern (Mis?)Communication

We send a lot of text messages these days, and they offer us great convenience, global reach, and the opportunity for even more confusion in our communication with oth- ers. Texts, tweets, and other forms of com- puter-mediated communication (or CMC) differ in important ways from a ctually talk- ing to someone. For one thing, we can take our time to consider what we want to say, if we wish. Also, no “leaky” nonverbal behav- ior is involved, so we have more control over the messages we send (Vitak & Ellison, 2018). These qualities make CMC seem safer and more manageable to some people than actual conversation is, so that, for in- stance, shy people are more comfortable chatting online than they are face-to-face (Van Zalk et al., 2011).

Text is a more pallid form of communi- cation than talking, however, so we often go to some trouble to specify how a statement is meant to be read. Lots of our e-mails contain at least one phrase that should not be taken literally (Whalen et al., 2009), so we offer in- structions such as emojis that clarify our meaning (Gesselman et al., 2019). Hi, out there in textbook land, by the way: {*_*} The problem is that we usually think that we’ve resolved any doubt and that our messages are more exact and unambiguous than they re- ally are. Because we know what we mean, we typically fail to appreciate how easily others can take our words differently (Riordan & Trichtinger, 2017). Interpersonal gaps abound online.

Still, despite frequent misunderstand- ings, there’s an amazing amount of informa- tion about people available in CMC. For instance, strangers get some insight into our personalities from the Twitter handles and e- mail addresses we choose (Back et al., 2008), and if we use lots of exclamation points in our messages, they’ll probably think we’re female (McAndrew & De Jonge, 2011). We also

seem extraverted when we expand instead of abbreviate words and use a lot more charac- ters than we need (as in “bitchhhhhhhhhhh”) (Holtgraves, 2011). But those stylistic nuances pale by comparison to the wealth of personal details that many of us intentionally self- disclose on social networking sites. Almost everybody posts their birthdays, and most people post their hometowns—key bits of info that are hugely valuable to identity thieves—and of course, that just scratches the surface of the personal data people put out there. People aren’t entirely heedless of their privacy on Facebook, for instance, but they manage it less attentively online than they do in face-to-face communication.

Overall, though, the most important as- pect of CMC for our relationships is the manner in which it provides us private access to others (Vanden Abeele et al., 2017). Texting provides a way to be in (almost) con- tinuous contact, and young adults typically exchange texts with those they’re dating ev- ery single day (Boyle & O’Sullivan, 2016). Notably, however, a constant stream of su- perficial and trivial messages seems to result in lower satisfaction with a relationship (Rains et al., 2016); contented partners send high proportions of more meaningful mes- sages that contain thoughtful self-disclosures, affirmations and assurances, and other use- ful news (McEwan & Horn, 2016).

Still, CMC doesn’t provide the same rewards we routinely gain from talking to people in person (Sharabi et al., 2019); we enjoy our interactions—and like people—less when we get to know them over CMC than when we chat with them face-to-face (Spre- cher & Hampton, 2017). And when we’re troubled, we get more comfort from talking to others than from texting them (Holtzman et al., 2017), in part because the familiar sound of a partner’s voice reduces the stress hormones in our blood (Seltzer et al., 2012).

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However, when men and women interact with each other, these differences are less apparent than you might think. When young adults chatted with strangers online using written messages, they were generally unable to correctly guess the sex of the person they were chatting with if the researchers didn’t tell them. The sorts of things that distinguish men’s and women’s conversations (such as the latest sports results) rarely came up, so there was usually no way to determine with whom one was chatting (Williams & Mendelsohn, 2008). What differences there are in men’s and women’s discourse are clearly rather subtle.3

Styles of Conversation

Women speak somewhat less forcefully than men do, being more indirect and seem- ing less certain (Leaper & Robnett, 2011). It’s a style of conversation in which one uses hedges to soften assertions and asks questions instead of making straightforward state- ments, as in this wry example: “Women are sort of more tentative than men, aren’t they?” (Palomares, 2009, p. 539). However, this tentativeness may not stem from a lack of asser- tion; it may just reflect greater concern for others’ feelings (Leaper & Robnett, 2011). Supporting that possibility, women are also less profane (McHugh & Hambaugh, 2010).

There are also hackneyed stereotypes that suggest that women are more talkative than men, but that is not the case. Portable recordings of their interactions demonstrate that college women speak 16,215 words a day, on average, whereas men speak 15,559. It’s a trivial difference (Mehl et al., 2007). What’s more striking is that men speak up and say something less often than women do, but when they do get started, they talk longer, brooking no interruption (Leaper & Ayres, 2007). Women speak more often but produce fewer monologues.

So, despite some stereotypes to the contrary, there aren’t sizable global differences in the way men and women talk. However, there are meaningful differences in language use from one person to the next, and the words we use are so informative that strang- ers can get accurate impressions of us by overhearing a few seconds of our conversation (Mahrholz et al., 2018). Our personalities are apparent in the words we use. For exam- ple, a careful analysis of the writings of almost 700 bloggers found that words such as awful, worse, horrible, and annoying were used more often by people who were high in negative emotionality than by those who were less prone to fretfulness and worry. Drinks and dancing characterized extraverts, and visiting, together, hug, and other such friendly terms were related to agreeableness (Yarkoni, 2010).4 Our vocabulary really does tell others who we are, and, notably, two people are likely to be more attracted to each other at first meeting if they use language the same way (Ireland et al., 2011).

So, CMC certainly isn’t perfect, and it can be disadvantageous if it begins to inter- fere with rich face-to-face interaction with others (Dwyer et al., 2018). But most of us

are clearly at home with our keypads, and CMC is here to stay. And that’s the end of this box. Thanks for reading it. TTFN. LUMTP.

3And seriously, isn’t it a little ridiculous to suggest that men and women come from different planets and speak different languages when, if we don’t already know who they are, we can’t even tell them apart? 4If you don’t quite recall what these traits are, take a look back at page 30.

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Self-Disclosure

So far, we haven’t encountered big differences in men’s and women’s verbal com- munication. But here’s a difference that matters: In established relationships, women are more self-disclosing than men are, and in keeping with their higher scores on the “Opener” scale (on page 195), they elicit more self-disclosure from others, too (Dindia, 2002). Indeed, men tend to offer their female p artners more intimate self-disclosures than they provide their male best friends—and the result is that interactions that include a woman tend to be more intimate and meaningful than are interactions that involve only men (Reis, 1998). Men open up to women, and women are open among them- selves, but men disclose less to other men.

An important consequence of all this is that men often depend more on women for emotional warmth and intimacy than women do on them in return (Wheeler et al., 1983): Whereas women routinely have intimate, open, supportive connec- tions with partners of both sexes, heterosexual men often share their most meaning- ful intimacy only with women. Consequently, a man may need a woman in his life to keep him from being lonely, but women don’t usually need men this way in return.

Instrumentality versus Expressivity

Importantly, however, this difference between men and women in self- disclosure is a gender difference that is more closely associated with people’s gender roles than with their biological sex. Women engage in intimate verbal commu- nication with trusted partners because they tend to be high in expressivity5 and are comfortable talking about their feelings. This also comes n aturally to men who are high in expressivity, as androgynous men are, and such men tend to have meaningful, intimate interactions with both sexes just as women do (Aubé et al., 1995). So, to refine the point I just made, it’s really just traditional, macho men who have superficial conversations with their best friends (Shaffer et al., 1996) and who need relationships with women to keep from being lonely (Wheeler et al., 1983). In contrast, androgynous men (who are both assertive and warm) self-disclose readily to both sexes and enjoy meaningful interactions with all their friends; as a result, they tend not to be lonely, and, as a bonus, they spend more time interacting with women than less expressive, traditional men do (Reis, 1986).

Given this, it’s silly to think that men and women speak different languages and come from different planets. Many men are more taciturn than the average woman, but there are also men who are more open and self-disclosing than most women are. The typical intimacy of a person’s interactions is tied to his or her level of expressivity, and once you take that into account, it doesn’t matter whether the person is a man or woman. Moreover, expressivity is a trait that ranges from low to high in both women and men, so it makes more sense to take note of individual differences in communica- tive style than to lump all men together and treat them as a group distinct from women. Indeed, and notably, men and women agree that the ability to adequately communicate one’s love, respect, and regard for one’s partner is indispensable in close relationships (Floyd, 2006).

5Expressivity, instrumentality, and androgyny? See pages 26–29.

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DYSFUNCTIONAL COMMUNICATION AND WHAT TO DO ABOUT IT

As we’ve seen, the more self-disclosing partners are, the more satisfied they tend to be. But not all our efforts to speak our minds and communicate with our partners have positive results. More often than we realize, an interpersonal gap causes misunderstand- ing in those who hear what we have to say. And the nature and consequences of miscommunication are very apparent in relationships in which the partners are dis- tressed and dissatisfied. The verbal communications of unhappy partners often just perpetuate their discontent and make things worse instead of better.

Miscommunication

Indeed, we can gain valuable insights into what we shouldn’t do when we talk with others by carefully comparing the communicative behaviors of happy lovers to those of unhappy partners. John Gottman and his colleagues at the University of Wash- ington did this for over 30 years, and they observed several important patterns. First, unhappy people do a poor job of saying what they mean (Gottman, 1994). When they have a complaint, they are rarely precise; instead, they’re prone to kitchen- sinking, in which they tend to address several topics at once (so that everything but the “kitchen sink” gets dragged into the conversation). This usually causes their primary concern to get lost in the barrage of frustrations that are announced at the same time. If they’re annoyed by overdrawn fees on a debit card, for instance, they may say, “It’s not just your carelessness; it’s about your drinking and your lousy attitude about helping out around the house.” As a result, their conversations fre- quently drift off-beam, wandering from topic to topic so that the conversation never stays on one problem long enough to resolve it: “You never do what I ask. You’re just as hard-headed as your mother, and you always take her side.” Flitting from problem to problem on a long list of concerns makes it almost certain that none of them will get fixed.

Second, unhappy partners do a poor job of hearing each other. They rarely try to patiently double-check their understanding of their partners’ messages. Instead, they jump to conclusions (often assuming the worst) and head off on tangents based on what they presume their partners really mean. One aspect of this is mindreading, which occurs when people assume that they understand their partners’ thoughts, feelings, and opinions without asking. All intimate couples mindread to some extent, but distressed couples do so in critical and hostile ways; they tend to perceive unpleasant motives where neutral or positive ones actually exist: “You just said that to make me mad, to get back at me for yesterday.” Unhappy partners also interrupt each other in negative ways more than contented couples do. Not all interruptions are obnoxious. People who interrupt their partners to express agreement or ask for clarification may actually be communicating happily and well. But people who interrupt to express disagreement or to change the topic are likely to leave their partners feeling disregarded and unappreci- ated (Daigen & Holmes, 2000).

Distressed couples also listen poorly by finding something wrong or un-workable with anything their partners say. This is yes-butting, and it communicates constant criticism

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of the others’ points of view: “Yeah, we could try that, but it won’t work because. . . .” Unhappy partners also engage in cross-complaining that fails to acknowledge others’ concerns; instead of expressing interest in what their partners have to say, they just respond to a complaint with one of their own:

“I hate the way you let the dishes pile up in the sink.” “Well, I hate the way you leave your clothes lying around on the floor.”

Finally, unhappy partners too often display negative affect when they talk with each other (Gottman & Levenson, 1992). They too often react to their partner’s complaints with sarcastic disregard that is demeaning and scornful, and instead of mending their problems, they often make them worse. Damaging interactions like these typically begin with clumsy criticism that attacks a partner’s personality or character instead of iden- tifying a specific behavior that is causing concern. For instance, instead of delineating a particular frustration (“I get annoyed when you leave your wet towel on the floor”), a critic may inflame the interaction by making a global accusation of a character flaw (“You are such a slob!”). Contempt in the form of insults, mockery, or hostile humor is often involved as well. The partners’ common response to such attacks is defensive- ness; instead of treating the clumsy complaint as legitimate and reasonable, the part- ners seek to protect themselves from the unreasonable attack by making excuses or by cross-complaining, hurling counterattacks of their own. Stonewalling may follow as a partner “clams up” and reacts to the messy situation by withdrawing into a stony silence (Eldridge & Baucom, 2012). People may believe they’re helping the situation by refus- ing to argue further, but their lack of responsiveness can be infuriating (Arriaga et al., 2014). Instead of demonstrating appropriate acknowledgment and concern for a part- ner’s complaints, stonewalling typically communicates “disapproval, icy distance, and smugness” (Gottman, 1994, p. 94). Ultimately, destructive belligerence may occur with one partner aggressively rejecting the other altogether (“So what? What are you gonna do about it?”).

When communication routinely degenerates into these contentious patterns, the outlook for the relationship is grim (Lannin et al., 2013). Surly, churlish communica- tion between spouses predicts discontent and distress down the road (Markman et al., 2010). In fact, videotapes of just the first 3 minutes of a marital conflict enable researchers to predict with 83 percent accuracy who will be divorced 6 years later (Carrère & Gottman, 1999). Couples whose marriages are doomed display noticeably more criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling than do those who will stay together. Gottman (2015) even refers to these four corrosive behaviors as “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse” to emphasize the fact that, when they occur, a relationship is crumbling and its end is near.6

The challenge, of course, is that it’s not always easy to avoid these problems. When we’re angry, resentful, or anxious, we may find ourselves cross-complaining, kitchen- sinking, and all the rest. How can we avoid these traps? Depending on the situation, we may need to send clearer, less inflammatory messages, listen better, or stay polite and calm, and often we need to do all three. 6In the Book of Revelation in the Bible, the “four horsemen” are variously interpreted to be pestilence, war, famine, and death, harbingers of the end times. Gottman wants you to take these four destructive behaviors seriously.

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Saying What We Mean

Complaints that criticize a partner’s personality or character disparage the partner and often make mountains out of molehills, portraying problems as huge, intractable dilem- mas that cannot be easily solved. (Given some of the broad complaints we throw at our partners, it’s no wonder that they sometimes get defensive.) It’s much more sen- sible—and accurate—to identify as plainly and concretely as possible a specific behavior that annoyed us. This is behavior description, and it not only tells our partners what’s on our minds but also focuses the conversation on discrete, manageable behaviors that, unlike personalities, can often be readily changed. A good behavior description speci- fies a particular event and does not involve generalities; thus, words such as always or never should never be used. This is not a good behavior description: “You’re always interrupting me! You never let me finish!”

We should also use I-statements that specify our feelings. I-statements start with “I” and then describe a distinct emotional reaction. They force us to identify our

Communicating Sympathy and Concern

Few of us know what to say when we encoun- ter bereaved others who are suffering from the loss of a loved one. But offering welcome comfort to others is more straightforward than you may have thought. Grief, and others’ reactions to it, have been studied by relationship researchers (Wortman & Boerner, 2007), and I can offer some advice about this important kind of communica- tion. First, you should mention the person’s loss (Toller, 2011). The death of a beloved is a huge loss, something that the person will never forget (Carnelley et al., 2006). Assum- ing that the person’s pain has ended or is no longer salient to him or her, even months later, is simply insensitive. Talking about the lost partner acknowledges the person’s dis- tress and communicates caring and concern. It may not be easy for you to do (Lewis & Manusov, 2009), but it’s kind.

What should you say? Something simple. Try “I’m so sorry,” or “I feel so sad for you,” or “I’ve been thinking of you” and then stop. Do not mention any of your own tales of woe. Do not imply that the loss is not the most tragic, awful thing that has ever happened. Do not try to comfort the person with optimistic

projections about the future. And do not offer advice about how the person can put his or her life back together (Tanner et al., 2018). Such efforts may spring from good intentions, but each of them ultimately demeans the per- son’s current suffering. Offer heartfelt sympa- thy and nothing more. Just nod your head and be a good listener and be nonjudgmental.

Thus, you can offer comfort to others as long as you avoid the pitfalls of saying too much. With this in mind, can you see what’s wrong with the following dumb remarks? Each is a quote from someone who was prob- ably trying—and f ailing—to be helpful ( Wortman & Boerner, 2007):

“The sooner you let go, the better.”

“Crying won’t bring him back.”

“He should have been wearing a seat belt.”

“You’ll get over this in time.”

“God needed her more than you did.”

“You’re young, you can have other children.”

“You have many good years left.”

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feelings, which can be useful both to us and to our partners. They help us to “own” our feelings and to acknowledge them instead of keeping the entire focus on the part- ner. Thus, instead of saying, “You really piss me off,” one should say, “I feel pretty angry right now.”

A handy way to use both behavior descriptions and I-statements to communicate more clearly and accurately is to integrate them into XYZ statements. Such statements follow the form of “When you do X in situation Y” (that’s a good behavior description), “I feel Z” (an I-statement). Listen to yourself next time you complain to your partner. Are you saying something like this:

“You’re so inconsiderate! You never let me finish what I’m saying!”

Or, are you being precise and accurate and saying what you mean:

“When you interrupted me just now, I felt annoyed.”

There’s a big difference. One of those statements is likely to get a thoughtful, apologetic response from a loving partner, but the other probably won’t.

Active Listening

We have two vital tasks when we’re on the receiving end of others’ messages. The first is to accurately understand what our partners are trying to say, and the second is to communicate that attention and comprehension to our partners so that they know we care about what they’ve said. Both tasks can be accomplished by paraphrasing a message, repeating it in our own words and giving the sender a chance to agree that that’s what he or she actually meant. When people use paraphrasing, they don’t assume that they understood their partners and issue an immediate reply. Instead, they take a moment to check their comprehension by rephrasing the message and repeating it back. This sounds awkward, but it is a terrific way to avoid arguments and conflict that would otherwise result from misunderstanding and mistakes. Whenever a conversation begins to get heated, paraphrasing can keep it from getting out of hand. Look what’s wrong here:

Wilma: (sighing) I’m so glad your mother decided not to come visit us next week. Fred: (irate) What’s wrong with my mother? You’ve always been on her case, and

I think you’re an ungrateful witch!

Perhaps before Fred flew off the handle, some paraphrasing would have been helpful:

Wilma: (sighing) I’m so glad your mother decided not to come visit us next week. Fred: (irate) Are you saying you don’t like her to be here? Wilma: (surprised) No, she’s always welcome. I just have my paper due in my rela-

tionships class and I won’t have much time then. Fred: (mollified) Oh.

Another valuable listening skill is perception checking, which is the opposite of mindreading. In perception checking, people assess the accuracy of their inferences about a partner’s feelings by asking the partner for clarification. This communicates one’s attentiveness and interest, and it encourages the partner to be more open: “You seem pretty upset by what I said, is that right?”

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Listeners who paraphrase and check their percep- tions make an active effort to understand their part- ners, and that care and consideration is usually much appreciated (Bodie et al., 2015). In terms of the inter- personal process model of intimacy, they are being responsive, and that’s a good thing. Active listening like this is likely to help smooth the inevitable rough spots any relationship encounters. Indeed, people who prac- tice these techniques typically enjoy more satisfying relationships than do those who simply assume that they understand what their partners mean by what they say ( Kuhn et al., 2018).

Being Polite and Staying Cool

Still, even the most accurate sending and receiving may not do much good if our conversations are too often crabby and antagonistic. It’s hard to remain mild and relaxed when we encounter contempt and belligerence from others, and people who deride or disdain their partners often get irascible, ir ritated reactions in return. Indeed, dissatisfied spouses spend more time than contented lovers do locked into patterns of negative affect reciprocity in which they’re contemptuous of each other, with each being scornful of what the other has to say (Levenson et al., 1994). Happy couples behave this way, too—there are probably periods of acrimonious disregard in most relation- ships—but they break out of these ugly cycles more quickly than unhappy partners do (Gottman, 2015).

In fact, defusing cycles of increasing cantankerousness when they begin is very beneficial, but it may not be easy. Although XYZ statements and active listening skills can help prevent surly interactions altogether, Gottman and his colleagues argue that people rarely have the presence of mind to use them once they get angry (Gottman et al., 2000). It can be difficult or even “impossible to make ‘I-statements’ when you are in the ‘hating-my- partner, wanting revenge, feeling-stung-and-needing-to-sting-back’ state of mind” (Wile, 1995, p. 2).

Thus, being able to stay cool when you’re provoked by a partner and being able to calm down when you begin to get angry are very valuable skills. (And given that, you may want to skip ahead to page 444.) Anger results from the perception that others are causing us illegitimate, unfair, avoidable grief. Use a different point of view to reduce or prevent anger altogether (Finkel et al., 2013). Instead of thinking, “S/he has no right to say that to me!,” it’s more adaptive to think, “Hmm. Contrary statements from someone who loves me. I wonder why?”

Of course, it can be hard to maintain such a placid stream of thought when we’re provoked. So, it’s also a good idea to (try to) reduce the number of provoca- tions you encounter by agreeing in advance to be polite to each other when you disagree (Gottman, 1994). You may wish to schedule regular meetings at which you and your partner (politely) air your grievances; knowing that a problem will be addressed makes it easier to be pleasant to your partner the rest of the week (Markman et al., 1994). And under no circumstances should the two of you continue

A Point to Ponder

When was the last time you asked your partner if your per- ception of his or her feelings was accurate? Have you ever done that?

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an interaction in which you’re just hurling insults and sarcasm back and forth at each other. If you find your- self in such a pattern of negative affect reciprocity, take a temporary time out to stop the cycle. Ask for a short break—“Honey, I’m too angry to think straight. Let me take 10 minutes to calm down”—and then return to the issue when you’re less aroused. Go off by yourself and take no more than six long, slow, deep breaths per minute, and you will calm down, faster than you think (Tavris, 1989).

The Power of Respect and Validation

The key ingredients in all of these components of good communication—our conscious efforts to send clear, straightforward messages, to listen carefully and well, and to be polite and nonaggressive even when disagreements occur—are the indications we pro- vide that we care about and respect our partners’ points of view. We expect such concern and regard from our intimate partners, and distress and resentment build when we think we’re disrespected. Thus, validation of our partners that acknowledges the legitimacy of their opinions and communicates respect for their positions is always a desirable goal in intimate interaction (Kellas et al., 2013).

Validation does not require you to agree with someone. You can communicate appropriate respect and recognition of a partner’s point of view without agreeing with it. Consider the following three responses to Barney’s complaint:

Barney: I hate it when you act that way.

Cross-complaining  Betty: And I hate it when you get drunk with Fred.

Agreement  Betty: Yeah, you’re right. I’ll stop.

Validation  Bet ty: Yeah, I can see how you’d feel that way. You’ve got a point. But I’d like you to try to understand what I’m feeling, too.

Only the last response, which concedes the legitimacy of Barney’s point of view but allows Betty her own feelings, invites an open, honest dialogue. We need not be inauthentic or nonassertive to respect our partners’ opinions, even when we disagree with them.

Indeed, validating our partners will often make disagreement much more tolerable. All of the skills I have mentioned here support an atmosphere of responsive care and concern that can reduce the intensity and impact of d isputes with our partners (Ver- hofstadt et al., 2005). You may even be able to set a troubled relationship on a more promising path by rehearsing these skills and pledging to be polite and respectful to one another when difficulties arise (Stanley et al., 2000).

Unhappy partners often have difficulty saying what they mean, hearing each other, and staying polite and calm when disagreements arise.

Stuart Jenner/Getty Images

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FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

James loved deer hunting season. He liked to sit shivering in a deer blind in the chill before dawn, sipping coffee, and waiting for what the day would bring. But his wife, Judy, always dreaded that time of year. James would be gone for several weekends in a row, and each time he returned he’d either be grumpy because he was empty-handed or he would have lots of venison—and extra work—for her to handle. The costs of his gas, permit, and lease were also substantial, and the expense kept them from enjoying an occasional weekend at that bed-and-breakfast at the lake she liked so much.

So, when Judy handed James a thermos of hot coffee and walked with him to the door at 4:30 in the morning on the first day of deer season, she was already feeling melancholy and lonely. She looked at him and tried to be cheerful, but her smile was forced and her expression downcast as she said in a plaintive tone, “Have a nice time, dear.” James happily replied, “Okay, thanks, hon. See you Sunday night!” and was gone.

Having read this chapter, what do you think the future holds for James and Judy? Why?

KEY TERMS

interpersonal gap .........................p. 180 providing information .................. p. 181 regulating interaction ................... p. 181 defining relationships .................. p. 181 display rules ..................................p. 183 visual dominance ratio ................p. 185 intimate zone ................................p. 188 personal zone ...............................p. 188 social zone ....................................p. 188 public zone ...................................p. 188 paralanguage .................................p. 189 mimicry .........................................p. 190 self-disclosure ................................p. 194 social penetration theory ............p. 194 interpersonal process model .......p. 196 taboo topics ..................................p. 197 kitchen-sinking ............................. p. 203

off-beam ........................................ p. 203 mindreading ................................. p. 203 interruption .................................. p. 203 yes-butting .................................... p. 203 cross-complaining ........................ p. 204 criticism ........................................ p. 204 contempt ...................................... p. 204 defensiveness ................................ p. 204 stonewalling ................................. p. 204 belligerence .................................. p. 204 behavior description ................... p. 205 I-statements .................................. p. 205 XYZ statements .......................... p. 206 paraphrasing ................................ p. 206 perception checking .................... p. 206 validation ...................................... p. 208

CHAPTER SUMMARY

When a sender’s intentions differ from the impact that a message has on the recipient, a couple faces an interpersonal gap.

Nonverbal Communication

Nonverbal communication serves vital functions, providing information, regulating interaction, and defining the nature of the relationship two people share.

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210 chapter 5: Communication

Components of Nonverbal Communication. Nonverbal communication includes

• Facial expression. Facial expressions are good guides to others’ moods, but cultural norms influence expressive behavior.

• Gazing behavior. The direction and amount of a person’s looking is important in defining relationships and in regulating interaction. In addition, our pupils dilate when we’re seeing something that interests us.

• Body movement. Gestures vary widely across cultures, but the posture and motion of the entire body are informative as well.

• Touch. Different types of touch have distinctly different meanings. • Interpersonal distance. We use different zones of personal space—the intimate, per- sonal, social, and public zones—for different kinds of interactions.

• Smell. Information about one’s emotions is transmitted to others by one’s smell.

• Paralanguage. Paralanguage involves all the variations in a person’s voice—such as rhythm, rate, and loudness—other than the words he or she uses.

• Combining the components. Mimicry occurs when people use similar nonverbal behavior without realizing it. Nonverbal actions allow us to fine-tune the intimacy of our interactions in subtle but real ways.

Nonverbal Sensitivity. Unhappy spouses, especially husbands, do a poor job at nonverbal communication.

Verbal Communication

Self-Disclosure. Intimacy involves sharing personal information about oneself to one’s partner.

• How self-disclosure develops. As a relationship develops, both the breadth and depth of self-disclosure increase. Intimacy develops when we perceive responsiveness in others that indicates that they understand us and care about us.

• Secrets and other things we don’t want to talk about. Couples avoid taboo topics, and some secrecy is routine even in intimate partnerships.

• Self-disclosure and relationship satisfaction. Appropriate self-disclosure breeds liking and contentment, and expressions of affection are good for us.

Gender Differences in Verbal Communication. Women are more likely than men to discuss feelings and people, but men and women are equally talkative. However, macho men self-disclose relatively little to other men even when they are friends, and thus are likely to share their most meaningful intimacy only with women.

Dysfunctional Communication and What to Do About It

Miscommunication. Distressed couples have trouble saying what they mean, and they engage in destructive verbal behavior characterized by kitchen-sinking, drifting off- beam, mindreading, interruptions, yes-butting, and cross-complaining. Criticism, contempt, stonewalling, defensiveness, and belligerence are especially corrosive.

Saying What We Mean. Skillful senders use behavior description, I-statements, and XYZ statements to focus on specific actions and make their feelings clear.

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Active Listening. Good listeners use paraphrasing and perception checking to under- stand their partners.

Being Polite and Staying Cool. Happy couples also avoid extended periods of negative affect reciprocity.

The Power of Respect and Validation. Partners should communicate respect and recognition of the other’s point of view even when they disagree.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Affectionate touching is good for both you and your partner. Consider doing more of it.

• Tune in. Pay attention. Watch your partner’s eyes and listen to their paralanguage and strive to discern what they really mean by what they say.

• Open up. Share your hopes, dreams, and fears with trusted, responsive partners.

• Ask your partner what they think about the things that are important to you.

• Tell those you love that you love them.

• When it matters, don’t text. Talk.

• Construct complaints carefully. Discard terms such as “always” or “never” and practice the use of XYZ statements.

• Don’t assume that you understand. Paraphrase and check your perceptions of your partner’s meaning.

• If you get angry, take a time out. Ask to take a break, go off by yourself, and calm down.

• Communicate respect for your partner’s opinions whether or not you agree with them.

• Contempt is caustic. Avoid it at all costs.

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221

C H A P T E R 6

Interdependency

Social ExchangE ♦ ThE EconomiES of RElationShipS ♦ ArE WE REally ThiS GrEEdy? ♦ ThE NaturE of CommitmEnt ♦ For Your ConSidEration ♦ KEy tErmS ♦ chaptEr Summary ♦ SuggEStionS for SatiSfaction ♦ rEfErEncES

If you’ve been in a relationship for a while, why are you staying in that relationship? Are you obligated to continue it for some reason? Are you simply waiting for something better to come along? Or have you carefully shopped around, examined your options, and decided that you can’t do better than your present partner? Hopefully, your current relationships have been so rewarding that you’ve never given much thought to any of these questions. However, they’re just the sort of things we’ll consider in this chapter, which will take an economic view of our dealings with others.

Our subject will be interdependency, which exists when we need others and they need us in order to obtain valuable interpersonal rewards. If I rely on you to provide me affection, support, and acceptance that I’m not getting anywhere else, and you similarly rely on me in return, we need each other and are thus “interdependent.” Studies of interdependency yield fascinating explanations of why we stay in some relationships and leave others but we won’t say anything about love; that’s another chapter. Instead, our focus will be the spreadsheets with which we tally the profits and losses of our interactions with others. You may not yet have thought of yourself as an interpersonal accountant, but doing so provides powerful insights into the workings of close relationships.

SOCIAL EXCHANGE

Interdependency theories assume that we’re all like shoppers in an interpersonal mar- ketplace: We’re all seeking the most fulfilling relationships that are available to us. And from this perspective, relationships begin when two people offer each other rewards that entice them to begin a process called social exchange in which they each provide to the other benefits and rewards that the other wants. When you give me (some of) what I want and I give you (some of) what you want, we engage in social exchange, the mutual exchange of desirable rewards. There are several different social exchange theories, but the ideas introduced by John Thibaut and Harold Kelley (1959; Kelley & Thibaut, 1978)—now known as interdependence theory—are most often used by relationship scientists, so I’ll feature them here. Let’s consider the central elements of social exchange.

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Rewards and Costs

The rewards of interactions are the gratifying experiences and commodities we obtain through our contact with others. They come in very different forms ranging from impersonal benefits, such as the directions you can get from strangers when you’re lost, to personal intimacies, such as acceptance and support from someone you love. I’ll use the term reward to refer to anything within an interaction that is desirable and welcome and that brings enjoyment or fulfillment to the recipient.

In contrast, costs are punishing, undesirable experiences. They can involve financial expenditures, such as buying drinks for your date, or actual injuries, such as split lips. However, some of the most important costs of intimate interaction are psychological burdens: uncertainty about where a relationship is headed, frustration over your part- ner’s imperfections, and regret about all the things you don’t get to do because you’re in that relationship (Sedikides et al., 1994). All of the diverse consequences of interac- tion that are frustrating or distressing are costs.

We’ll summarize the rewards and costs associated with a particular interaction with the term outcome, which describes the net profit or loss a person encounters, all things considered. Adding up all the rewards and costs involved,

Outcomes = Rewards − Costs

Obviously, if an interaction is more rewarding than punishing, a positive outcome results. But remember, the social exchange perspective asserts that people want the best possible outcomes. The simple fact that your interactions are profitable may not mean that they are good enough to keep you coming back to that partner. Indeed, one of the major insights of interdependence theory is its suggestion that whether your out- comes are positive or negative isn’t nearly as important as how they compare to two criteria with which we evaluate the outcomes we receive. The first criterion involves our expectations, and the second involves our perceptions of how well we could manage without our current partner.

What Do We Expect from Our Relationships?

Interdependence theory assumes that each of us has an idiosyncratic comparison level (which I’ll abbreviate as CL) that describes the value of the outcomes that we’ve come to expect and believe that we deserve in our dealings with others. Our CLs are based on our past experiences. People who have a history of highly rewarding partnerships are likely to have high CLs, meaning that they expect and feel they deserve very good outcomes now. In contrast, people who have had troublesome relationships in the past are likely to expect less and to have lower CLs.

A person’s comparison level represents his or her neutral point on a continuum that ranges all the way from abject misery to ecstatic delight. That makes our CLs the standards by which our satisfaction with a relationship is measured. If the outcomes you receive exceed your CL, you’re happy; you’re getting more than the minimum payoff you expect from interaction with others. Just how happy you are depends on the extent to which your outcomes surpass your expectations; if your outcomes are considerably higher than your CL, you’ll be very satisfied. On the other hand, if your

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outcomes fall below your CL, you’re dissatisfied even if your outcomes are still pretty good and you’re doing better than most people (Zoppolat et al., 2020). This is a sig- nificant point: Even if you are still making a profit on your dealings with others, you may not be happy if the profit isn’t big enough to meet your expectations. If you’re a rich, spoiled celebrity, for instance, you may have very high expectations and be rather dissatisfied with a fabulous partner who would bedazzle the rest of us.

So, satisfaction in close relationships doesn’t depend simply on how good our outcomes are in an absolute sense; instead, satisfaction derives from how our outcomes compare to our expectations—our comparison levels—like this:

Outcomes − CL = Satisfaction or Dissatisfaction

How Well Could We Do Elsewhere?

However, another important assumption of interdependence theory is that satisfaction is not the only, or even the major, influence that determines how long relationships last. Whether or not we’re happy, we use a second criterion, a comparison level for alternatives (or CLalt), to determine whether we could be doing even better somewhere else. Your CLalt describes the outcomes you’d receive by leaving your current relationship and moving to the best alternative partnership or situation you have available. And if you’re a good accountant, you can see that our CLalts are also the lowest levels of outcome we will tolerate from our present partners. Here’s why: If other relationships promise better profits than we currently receive, we’re likely to leave our present partners and pursue those bigger rewards. Even if we’re currently satisfied with what we’re getting; we’d still go because, according to interdependency theory, we always want the best deal we can get. On the other hand, even if we are unhappy in a current relationship, we won’t leave it unless a better alternative presents itself. This is a very important point, which helps explain why people stay in relationships that make them miserable: Even though they’re unhappy where they are, they think they’d be worse off if they left. They won’t go any- where until they think something better awaits them elsewhere (Edwards et al., 2011). This idea—that our contentment with a relationship is not the major determinant of whether we stay in it or go—is one of interdependence theory’s most interesting insights.

Thus, our CLalts determine our dependence on our relationships. Whether or not we’re satisfied, if we believe that we’re already doing as well as we possibly can, we depend on our present partners and are unlikely to leave them (Tan et al., 2018). Moreover, the greater the gap between our current outcomes and our poorer alternatives, the more dependent we are. If our current outcomes are only a little better than those

that await us elsewhere, we don’t need our current partners very much and may leave if our alternatives improve.

But would you really leave a satisfying relationship? Presumably, you would, if the alternatives luring you away were genuinely better than what you have now. To keep things simple when you consider this, think of your CLalt as the global outcome, the net profit or loss, that you believe will result from switching partners, all

A Point to Ponder

You love your job, but you get an offer for another job that is—all things considered—even better. Would you change jobs? How is our behavior in our relationships any different?

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things considered (Kelley, 2002). If the whole process of ending a present partnership and moving to an alternative promises better outcomes—if you’d simply be better off if you moved—you should move. It’s just economic good sense.

A problem, of course, is that these are difficult calculations to make. There’s a lot to consider. On the one hand, we need to assess the desirability and availability of the alternative partners that could lure us away, and going it alone—being without a p artner—is also an option to ponder. When other partners or simple solitude seem attractive, our CLalts go up. However, we’ll also incur a variety of costs by leaving an existing relationship, and they can dramatically affect the net profit to be gained by moving elsewhere. For instance, Caryl R usbult demonstrated that one’s investments in a present relationship, the things one would lose if the relationship were to end, are also important influences on one’s decision to stay or go (e.g., Rusbult et al., 2012). The investments a person leaves behind can either be tangible goods, such as furniture and dishes you have to split with your ex, or intangible psychological benefits, such as love and respect from in-laws and friends (Goodfriend & Agnew, 2008). An unhappy spouse may refrain from filing for divorce, for example, not because she has no other options but because she doesn’t want to accept the potential costs of confused children, disappointed parents, and befuddled friends. A fear of change would increase the costs of leaving (George et al., 2020), and the prospect of wounding one’s dependent partner would, too (Joel et al., 2018). All of these would reduce the global desirability of leav- ing and, thus, reduce one’s CLalt.

Another complication is that a person’s CLalt is what he or she thinks it is, and a variety of factors can influence people’s perceptions of their alternatives. Self-esteem, for one. When people don’t like themselves, they doubt their desirability (Swann & Buhrmester, 2012) and underestimate their prospects with other partners. Access to information affects one’s CLalt, too. If you become a stay-at-home parent who doesn’t work, you’ll probably have much more limited information about potential alternatives than you would have if you went to work in a large city every day (Rusbult & Martz, 1995); as a result, you’ll have a lower CLalt than you would have if you got out and looked around.

Indeed, desirable alternatives will only enhance your CLalt if you are aware of them, and if you’re content with your current partners, you may not pay much attention to people who could be compelling rivals to your existing relationships. In fact, people who are satisfied with their existing partnerships are relatively uninterested in looking around to see how they could be doing elsewhere. As a result, they think they have lower CLalts than do those who pay more attention to their alternatives (Miller, 2008). This may be important. College students who keep track of their options and monitor their alternatives with care switch romantic partners more often than do those who pay their alternatives less heed (Miller, 2008).

These results mean that although interdependence theory treats satisfaction and dependence as relatively independent influences on relationships, they are actually correlated. As an old cliché suggests, the grass may be greener in other relationships, but if you’re happy with your current partner, you’re less likely to notice. Still, there’s wisdom in remembering that satisfaction with a relationship is not the only influence on a person’s decision to stay in it or go (Tan et al., 2018). Consider the usual trajec- tory of a divorce: Spouses who divorce have usually been unhappy for quite some time

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before they decide to separate (Lucas, 2007). What finally prompts them to act? Some- thing changes: Their CLalts finally come to exceed their current outcomes (Albrecht & Kunz, 1980). Things may get so bad that their outcomes in the marriage fall below those that are available in alternative options that used to seem inadequate. Or the apparent costs of ending the marriage may decrease (which raises one’s CLalt): Because the spouses have been unhappy for so long, for instance, their kids, parents, and pastor may change their minds and support a divorce for the first time. Or the apparent rewards of leaving increase, perhaps because they have saved some money or obtained a degree. (This also raises one’s CLalt.) The bottom line is that people don’t divorce when they get unhappy; they divorce when, one way or the other, their prospects finally seem brighter elsewhere.

So, if we remember that CLalt is a multifaceted judgment encompassing both the costs of leaving—such as lost investments—and the enticements offered by others, we get:

Outcomes − CLalt = Dependence or Independence

Let’s review. The three key elements of social exchange are people’s outcomes, comparison levels (CLs), and comparison levels for alternatives (CLalts). The net profits or losses people receive from interaction are their outcomes. When their outcomes exceed their expectations, or CLs, they are satisfied; however, if they are not doing as well as they expect (that is, when their outcomes are lower than their CLs), they are dissatisfied. In addition, when people’s current outcomes are better than those they could get elsewhere (that is, when their outcomes exceed their CLalts), they depend on their current partners and are unlikely to leave. However, if their outcomes from their current partners get worse than those that can be readily obtained else- where (and their outcomes fall below their CLalts), they will be independent and will be likely to depart.

Four Types of Relationships

Let’s see how these calculations combine to define the types of relationships people encounter. CLs, CLalts, and the outcomes people experience can all range from low to high along a continuum of outcome quality. Interdependence theory suggests that when we consider all three of these factors simultaneously, four different broad types of relationships result.

Consider what happens when people’s outcomes exceed both their CLs and their CLalts. They’re getting more from their partners than they expect and they believe they’re doing better than they could anywhere else. So, they’re happy and (as far as they’re concerned) their relationships are stable. They’re not going anywhere. This pleasant situation is depicted in Figure 6.1 in two different ways. In one case, a person’s CL is higher than their CLalt, whereas in the other case the reverse is true. In these and all the other examples I’ll explain, the specific amount of satisfaction (or depen- dence) a person feels depends on the extent to which CL (or CLalt) differs from the person’s current outcomes. However, in both graphs A1 and A2—and this is the point I wish to make—the person is in a happy, stable relationship. I showed you both graphs to demonstrate that, in terms of the simple classifications illustrated in Figure 6.1, it doesn’t matter whether CL is higher than CLalt or vice versa. Even if they’re exactly

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the same, the same broad category will apply; if the person’s current outcomes surpass both CL and CLalt, that person will be content and unlikely to leave.

1

Contrast that situation with what happens when people’s outcomes fall below their CLs but are still higher than their CLalts (in graph B). These folks are dissatisfied.

FIGURE 6.1. Types of relationships in interdependence theory. These examples may look daunting at first glance, but a patient reading of the text will make them clear. A1 and A2 are different examples of the same broad type of relationship, and D1 and D2 are too. As you can see, for our purposes, when CL and CLalt are both better than, or both worse than, one’s current outcomes, it doesn’t matter which of them is higher than the other; what matters is where each of them is relative to current outcomes.

O ut

co m

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A1

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CLalt

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A Happy, Stable Relationship

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Current Outcomes

CLalt

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D2

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CL

An Unhappy, Unstable Relationship

1This is the type of relationship that I hope you’ll settle into someday (if you haven’t already). You’ll be satis- fied and you’ll believe that you’re doing better with your partner than you could be with anyone else. And if your partner feels the same way—if you both need each other and are happily interdependent—you’ll both be motivated to nurture your relationship to keep your good thing going. One can’t do better than that.

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They’re getting less than they expect and feel they deserve, but they’re still doing better than they think they can elsewhere. They’re in an unhappy but stable relationship that they will not leave. Hopefully, you’ve never encountered such a situation yourself, but if you’ve ever had a lousy job that you disliked but couldn’t leave because it was the best job available at the time, you know what I’m talking about. That’s the sort of fix these folks are in.

By comparison, if people’s CLalts are higher than their outcomes but their CLs are lower, they’re in a much more favorable situation (graph C, Figure 6.1). They’re satisfied with their present partners but believe that they have even more attractive outcomes, all things considered, awaiting them somewhere else. Their current relation- ships are happy but unstable because they’re not likely to stay where they are. In an analogous situation in the workplace, you’d face this situation if you liked your existing job but you got an even better offer from another employer. If you added it all up— including the friends you’d leave behind, the costs of relocating, and the uncertainties of your new p osition—and thought you’d be clearly better off by leaving—you would leave, wouldn’t you?

Finally, people’s outcomes may be lower than both their CLs and CLalts. Again, at this level of analysis, it wouldn’t matter whether their CLs were lower than their CLalts (graph D1) or vice versa (graph D2); as long as their present outcomes were lower than both of them, they’d be in an unhappy and unstable relationship that prob- ably wouldn’t last much longer.

In real relationships, of course, a huge variety of configurations is possible as people’s CLs, CLalts, and outcomes all range from excellent to poor. These four types of relationships are meant only to be general guides to diverse possibilities. CLs, CLalts, and outcomes can all change over time, too, and that leads to further interesting nuances of interdependence theory.

CL and CLalt as Time Goes By

Imagine you find the perfect partner. He or she is loving, gorgeous, smart, rich, and generous, and is an award-winning chef, accomplished masseuse, and expert auto mechanic. You receive outcomes from him or her that exceed your wildest dreams. When you get home each night, your partner has something exquisite for you to eat after you get your welcome-home massage and pedicure. Would you be satisfied? Of course. But what’s likely to happen after you’ve enjoyed several straight months of this bliss?

You might get home one evening to find no massage and no supper because your partner has been delayed by traffic. “Hey,” you might think, “where’s my gourmet meal? Where’s my backrub?” You’ve come to expect such marvelous treatment, which means your comparison level has risen. But if your CL goes up and your outcomes remain the same, satisfaction wanes. Once you get used to your perfect partner, you may find that you derive less pleasure from his or her pampering than you used to (Sheldon et al., 2013).

Indeed, interdependence theory predicts such a pattern. Because they are based on our experiences, our CLs tend to f luctuate along with the outcomes we receive (Schmitt & Jonason, 2019). When we first encounter excellent outcomes,

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we’re delighted, but our pleasure may slowly dwindle as we come to take such benefits for granted and our CLs rise. In this manner, rewarding relationships can gradually become less and less satisfying even though nothing (but our expecta- tions) has changed.

Does this really happen in a good relationship? Well, perhaps. You certainly shouldn’t expect the sort of happiness that would lead you to marry to continue indef- initely. A remarkable study that tracked more than 5500 young adults in The Nether- lands for 18 years (!) found that starting to date someone, choosing to cohabit, and getting married were all associated with noticeable increases in happiness. But the participants’ delight faded over the years, and 14 years later they were no happier than they had been before they met their lovers (Soons et al., 2009). An even more amazing study in Germany kept in touch with over 30,000 people for 18 years; it also found

Power and (In)Dependence

Figure 6.1 portrays the situations that may face one member of a couple, but a relation- ship involves two people. How might their re- spective CLalts influence their interactions with each other? Let’s assume that a romantic couple, Betty and Barney, receive similar out- comes from their relationship, and each needs the other, but Barney’s CLalt is lower than Betty’s (see Figure 6.2). That would mean that Barney needs Betty more than she needs him; if the relationship ended, he would lose more by moving to his next best option than she would. Because neither of them wants to leave their partnership, this might seem like a trivial matter, but, in fact, this disparity in depen- dence gives her more power than he has.

As we’ll see in chapter 12, power is the ability to influence another person’s behav- ior. A nuance of social exchange, the principle of lesser interest, suggests that the partner who depends less on a relationship has more power in that relationship (Waller & Hill, 1951). Or, the person with less to lose by end- ing a desired partnership gets to call the shots. In fact, when it comes to winning argu- ments and getting one’s way, the principle seems to be accurate; the more independent member of a romantic relationship is usually the more dominant of the two (Carpenter, 2017). So, for instance, if you’re more

committed to a relationship than your part- ner is, you probably work harder to manage frustrations, control irritations, and remain polite—but, being less committed, your part- ner can be as cranky as he or she wants to be (Lemay & Dobush, 2015). In a national sam- ple in the United States, one partner was more committed than the other in a full third (35 percent) of unmarried heterosexual part- nerships (Stanley et al., 2017). Is that true in any of your relationships?

Betty and Barney’s Outcomes

Betty’s CLalt

Barney’s CLalt

FIGURE 6.2. Dependence and Power In this situation, Betty and Barney depend on each other, and neither is likely to leave. Nevertheless, Betty’s alternatives are better than Barney’s, and that gives her more power in their relationship.

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that getting married made people happier, but only for a while. Two years later, most of that delight had faded and the spouses were only as happy, on average, as they had been before they wed (Lucas, 2007). Quite clearly, finding the love of your life doesn’t make you happy forever.

Worse, since you were born, sociocultural influences have caused our expectations to creep up and up. Compared to our grandparents, we now often want our romances to be magical rather than merely pleasant, and deeply fulfilling instead of just fine, and it’s hard to be happy when we expect so much. Our grandparents typically hoped that their marriages would “fulfill needs like loving, being loved, and experiencing romantic passion,” and that’s still true today—but we now often think that a good mar- riage should also “fulfill needs like self-esteem, self-expression, and personal growth,” with our spouses helping us fulfill all our hopes and dreams (Finkel et al., 2015, p. 239). Our spouses are supposed to be “our best friends, workout partners, spiritual brethren, likeminded sexual partners, culinary compatriots, parental supporters, financial plan- ners, philanthropic kindred spirits, and travel companions” (DeWall, 2015, p. 31). Wow. That’s asking a lot, and such high standards are hard to meet (McNulty, 2016). Indeed, on average, American marriages are less happy than they were 30 years ago, and our higher CLs may be partly responsible (Glenn, 2007).

Cultural changes have also increased our CLalts. Women’s increased participation in the workforce has provided them both interesting coworkers and financial resources that make it easier for them to leave unhappy relationships (Greenstein & Davis, 2006). People are more mobile than ever before, changing residences and traveling at unprecedented rates (Ren, 2011), so their options are more diverse. And even if we stay home in one place, a vast array of alternative partners is available online if we go looking for them (Pronk & Denissen, 2019). Moreover, legal, religious, and social barriers against divorce have gradually eroded (Horner, 2014), so the costs of departing a marriage have declined even as many people have found more options and more partners available to them. We may even have entered an era of “permanent availability,” in which people remain on the marriage market—continuing to size up the people they meet as potential future mates—even after they’re married (Dibble et al., 2018)! If you add up these influences and look back at Figure 6.1, maybe we shouldn’t be surprised that the U.S. divorce rate has risen sharply since 1960; when CLs and CLalts are both high, people are more likely to find themselves in unhappy and unstable relationships.

THE ECONOMIES OF RELATIONSHIPS

As you can see, interdependence theory takes an unromantic view of close relationships. In describing some of its nuances, I even likened a happy, stable relationship to a desirable job with good benefits. But can the success or failure of our relationships really be reduced to little more than the profits or losses on an interaction spread- sheet? Are rewards and costs or the size of your “salary” everything that matters? The answer, of course, is “no.” Too specific a focus on the rewards and costs of a couple’s interactions can lead us to overlook other influences that can make or break a part- nership. For instance, your ultimate success in an important relationship may someday

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depend on how well you adapt to external stresses that you cannot control (Buck & Neff, 2012).

On the other hand, interdependence theory’s businesslike emphasis on the out- comes people provide each other is enormously important. Counting up the rewards and costs of a relationship provides extraordinary information about its current state and likely future. And the picture of normal intimacy that emerges from studies of this sort is a bit surprising. The stereotype of i ntimate relations is that they are generous and loving, and, sure enough, couples who are nice to each other are more likely to stay together over time than are those who p rovide each other fewer rewards (e.g., Le et al., 2010). You won’t be surprised to hear that the amount of affectionate behavior newly- weds display nicely predicts how happy they’ll be 16 months later (Graber et al., 2011).

But costs are informative, too, and the surprise is that a lot of unpleasantness actually occurs in many relationships. On any given day, 44 percent of us are likely to be annoyed by a lover or friend (Averill, 1982). Typical spouses report one or two unpleasant disagreements in their marriages each month (McGonagle et al., 1992). Long-term intimacy with another person tends to involve more irritation and exas- peration than we may expect. Indeed, during their lives together, sooner or later, married people are likely to be meaner to each other than to anyone else they know (Miller, 1997). Of course, desirable relationships are much more rewarding than punishing overall; nevertheless, on those (hopefully rare) occasions when intimates are at their worst, they’re likely to be more tactless, impolite, sullen, selfish, and insensitive with each other than they would be with total strangers.

In fact, research has compared the manners in which people interact with their spouses and with total strangers on a problem-solving task (Vincent et al., 1975). When they were discussing issues with others they did not know well, people were polite and congenial; they withheld criticism, swallowed any disapproval, and suppressed signs of frustration. In contrast, with their spouses, people were much more obnoxious. They interrupted their lovers, disparaged their points of view, and openly disagreed. Intimacy and interdependence seemed to give people permission to be impolite instead of cour- teous and considerate.

Does this matter? You bet it does. Over time, irritating or moody behavior from a spouse puts a marriage at risk (Rivers & Sanford, 2018), and outright hostility is even worse (Gottman, 2015). And even a few frustrations may be influential because negative behaviors in a close relationship seem to carry more psychological weight than similar amounts of positive behavior do. “Bad,” it seems, “is stronger than good” (Baumeister et al., 2001, p. 323).

Here’s an example of what I mean. Imagine that you’re walking down a sidewalk when a $20 bill blows into your path. There’s no one else around, and it’s obviously yours to keep. Does finding the money feel good? Of course it does. But now imagine that on another occasion you reach into a pocket where you put a $20 bill and find nothing but a hole. That’s a disappointment. But which has the stronger effect on your mood, finding the new money or losing the money you already had? The answer is that losses usually affect us more than equivalent gains do; we like gains, but we really hate losses (Sokol-Hessner & Rutledge, 2019).

Indeed, undesirable events in close relationships are more noticeable and influential than logically equivalent desirable events are. If you get one compliment and one

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criticism from your lover in the same evening, for instance, they won’t cancel each other out. The compliment will help soften the blow of the criticism, but the combination will leave you somewhat distressed. “Criticism hurts more than compliments please” (Myers, 2019, p. 35). Bad is stronger than good.

In fact, to stay satisfied with a close relationship, we may need to maintain a rewards-to-costs ratio of at least 5-to-1. That figure comes from research by John Gottman and Robert Levenson (1992), who observed married couples who were revisiting the topic of their last argument. The partners’ behavior during their discus- sion was carefully coded, with each spouse receiving a point for each attempt at warmth, humor, collaboration, or compromise, and losing a point for each display of anger, defensiveness, criticism, or contempt. Some of the couples were able to disagree with each other in a manner that communicated respect and regard for each other, and the longer their conversations went on, the more positive their scores became. These couples, who were said to be at low risk of divorce by Gottman and Levenson, were maintaining a ratio of positive to negative exchanges of 5:1 or better. (See Figure 6.3.) However, other couples disagreed with sarcasm and disdain, and in those cases, the longer they talked, the worse their scores got. When the research- ers compared the two groups at the time of the study, the low-risk couples were more satisfied with their marriages than the other couples were. No surprise there. More impressively, however, more than half (56 percent) of the high-risk couples were divorced or separated only 4 years later, whereas just under a quarter (24 percent) of the low-risk couples had split up. A short discussion on a single afternoon clearly provided meaningful information about the chances that a marriage would last. And couples who did not maintain a substantial surfeit of positive exchanges faced twice the risk that their marriages would fail.

So, both rewards and costs are important influences on relationship satisfaction and stability, and there may need to be many more of the former than the latter if a relationship is to thrive. “We are in our favorite relationships because we were—and continue to be—drawn to the people with whom share joy, we share laughs, we feel admiration, and we express gratitude” (Algoe, 2019, p. 186). On the surface, this is a pretty obvious conclusion; we’d expect happy relationships to be more rewarding than punishing. For instance, 93 percent of the happily married couples in one study reported making love more often than they argued, whereas none of the unhappily married couples did (Howard & Dawes, 1976). But if it’s so obvious, why are there so many unhappy relationships? One possibility is that romantic partners simply don’t notice all of the loving and affectionate behaviors their lovers provide; a study that tracked partners’ perceptions for 2 weeks found that both men and women failed to notice fully half of the generous small sacrifices that their partners made for their benefit (Visserman et al., 2019). And husbands and wives with dismissing or fearful attachment styles are especially likely to miss some of the positive, loving things their spouses do for them. In fact, it appears that one reason such people are less comfort- able with interdependent intimacy is that they don’t fully realize how pleasant it can be (Spielmann et al., 2013)!

Another complication is that partners may disagree about the meaning and value of the rewards they exchange. Judgments of what favors are worth, for example, rou- tinely differ for those who provide the favors and those who receive them (Visserman

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et al., 2020), and gender differences complicate things further. So, when spouses are asked what they would change if they could, wives say they desire more emotion and affection from their husbands, whereas the husbands say they want more sex (Heyman et al., 2009). What matters to you may not be quite the same as what matters to your partner, and those differing perceptions add intricacy to your quest for mutually satis- fying interaction.

FIGURE 6.3. The arguments of couples at low and high risk of divorce. These are the actual charts of the conversations of two couples who had returned to the topics of their last arguments. During their discussions, one couple remained (mostly) polite and collaborative, whereas the other was more disrespectful, sour, and sarcastic. Which of these couples was much more likely to be separated or divorced 4 years later?2 (“Pos-Neg” = number of positive vs. negative exchanges.) Source: Gottman, J. M., & Levenson, R. W. (1992). “Marital processes predictive of later dissolution: Behavior, physiology, and health,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 63, 221–233.

200 –5

0

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05 10 15

20 25 30 35 40 45

40 60 80 100 120 140

20 40 60 80 100 120 140 1600 –160

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2Okay, I admit that’s a dumb question. Isn’t the answer obvious?

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Rewards and Costs Are Different

Another more subtle influence is that rewards and costs have different, separate effects on our well-being in relationships (Deits-Lebehn et al., 2020), and this causes complex- ity. According to research by Shelly Gable and her colleague (Gable & Gosnell, 2013), we try to do two things in our close relationships. First, we try to obtain rewards, and second, we try to avoid costs—and importantly, these are not the same things. In seek- ing rewards, we try to satisfy an appetite for desirable experiences that is known as an approach motivation. That is, we pursue pleasure and our motivation for doing some- thing is to feel good, and when we draw near to—or approach—desired experiences, we feel positive emotions such as enthusiasm and excitement. Approach motivations for having sex, for instance, would be to feel close to our partners and to enjoy the phys- ical experience (Cooper et al., 2011). Our desire to avoid costs is a different drive known as an avoidance motivation. That is, we also seek to elude or escape punishment and pain, so we strive to avoid undesired experiences and to reduce negative feelings such as anxiety and fear. Avoidance motivations for having sex would be to avoid rejec- tion or to end a peevish partner’s pouting.

The key point is that our approach and avoidance motives are not just two differ- ent sides of the same coin. They don’t cancel each other out (Kuster et al., 2017). Pleasure results from fulfilling our approach goals, and pain results from failing to fulfill our avoidance goals, but—and here’s where this gets really interesting— pleasure and pain are different processes. They operate independently, involving different brain mechanisms and causing distinct emotions and behaviors (Cacioppo et al., 2012). The provocative result is that pleasure and pain can coexist, or both may be absent, in any relationship. Moreover, because pleasure and pain are unrelated, safe and secure rela- tionships in which nothing bad happens are not necessarily satisfying, and satisfying relationships are not always safe and secure.

Let’s explore this more fully with a look at Figure 6.4, which shows the approach and avoidance dimensions arranged at right angles. Every relationship you have lies somewhere along both of those lines, and its current status is defined by how well you are fulfilling both your approach and avoidance goals. For instance, the vertical line is the approach dimension; relationships that are full of positive events are excit- ing and invigorating—so they would lie near the top of the line—whereas those that offer few positive outcomes are unfulfilling and stagnant (and they would land near the bottom). Importantly, dull relationships aren’t actually painful, they’re just not fun. The horizontal line is the avoidance dimension. Whether or not they’re reward- ing, some relationships are full of conflict and danger (which would put them on the left side of the line), whereas others are more placid (which is on the right); however, just because a partnership is safe and has no negatives doesn’t necessarily mean it is fun. As Reis and Gable (2003, p. 142) asserted, “the absence of conflict and criticism in a relationship need not imply the presence of joy and fulfillment, just as the presence of joy and fulfillment need not denote the absence of conflict and criticism.”

So, why do we care, exactly? There are several reasons. First, in a really great rela- tionship, we’re able to fulfill both motivations at the same time. Such relationships are full of delights and aggravations are absent, and the partnership can be said to be

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flourishing (Fincham & Beach, 2010). (Take a good long look at Figure 6.4.) And clearly, in contrast, if neither motivation is being fulfilled so that costs are high and rewards are low, a relationship is distressed. But because our approach and avoidance motivations operate independently, one motivation may also be fulfilled while the other is not, and that allows some interesting possibilities. Consider a relationship that offers compelling a ttractions—so that it is passionate and exciting—but that is also replete with doubts and discord: There’d be a lot of drama, and the potent pleasures of the partnership would be infused with danger and uncertainty in a perilous and precarious mix. There’d be a lot to like, but one’s costs would be too high, so the partners’ feelings about the relation- ship might vacillate widely, depending on which motivation was salient to them at the time (Gable & Poore, 2008).

The interplay of the two motivations also presents a fourth possibility that’s important enough to get its own paragraph. Consider what results when our avoidance goals are fulfilled and our costs and annoyances are very low—so there’s really nothing to dislike about the relationship—but our approach motivation is unfulfilled, so there’s not much to like about the relationship either. The partnership would have few nega- tives, but it would lack novelty and stimulation; it would be dull, stale, and stagnant and, in a word, boring. Boredom is characterized by tedium, disinterest, and a lack of energy, and it occurs when nothing enticing, intriguing, or new is occurring in an

Approach Goals Are Fulfilled Plenty of novel, enticing rewards are present, so the relationship is

passionate and invigorating

Approach Goals Are Thwarted A monotonous lack of

stimulation makes the relationship dull and stagnant

Avoidance Goals Are Thwarted Insecurity and discord are present, so relationship is

dangerous and threatening

Avoidance Goals Are Fulfilled Aggravation and annoyance

are averted, so relationship is safe and secure

With many delights and many dangers, relationships in this

zone are PRECARIOUS

Being safe but dull, these relationships are

BORING

With many delights and few costs, relationships here are

FLOURISHING

With few rewards and many costs, these relationships are

DISTRESSED

FIGURE 6.4. Approach and avoidance processes in relationships. People seek rewards and want to avoid costs, but these are two different motivations that combine to influence our feelings in close relationships. When avoidance goals are fulfilled, people avoid costs but are not necessarily happy. When approach goals are fulfilled, people feel engaged and excited but may not feel safe and secure. Only when both motivations are fulfilled simultaneously are people wholly content.

Source: Figure based on the insights of Reis & Gable, 2003, and Fincham & Beach, 2010.

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intimate relationship. There are no sparks, no excitement, no arousal, and no fun (Harasymchuk & Fehr, 2013). And, of course, this is not a good place to be: Boredom now is linked to dissatisfaction later. In the Early Years of Marriage Project,3 spouses who thought that their marriages were becoming monotonous after a few years were less happy 9 years later than were spouses who weren’t getting bored (Tsapelas et al., 2009). So, what does all this suggest we do to live happily ever after? Let me return to that in just a moment.

A second reason to note the roles of approach and avoidance motivations in our relationships is that the chronic strength of these motives differs from person to person (Gable, 2006). Bad is generally stronger than good, for instance, but some people are very sensitive to negative events that wouldn’t much ruffle others (Boyce et al., 2016)—and such people may feel especially threatened by disagreements or conflict with their partners. Indeed, a strong motive to avoid costs leads people to notice all of the annoying things their partners do, whereas, in contrast, a strong motive to approach rewards leads them to focus on all the thoughtful and generous things their partners do (Strachman & Gable, 2006). (Which point of view do you think leaves people more satisfied?) When they make small sacrifices to benefit their partners (such as going to a movie they don’t much want to see), people with approach motives are pursuing greater intimacy with their partners; so, they feel good about their actions, and their relationships profit. In contrast, people with avoidance motives are trying to avoid conflict; they begrudge the sacrifice, and their relation- ships suffer (Impett et al., 2014). And over time, people who have high approach motivations are generally less lonely and more content (Gable, 2006). They enter social situations eager to make new friends, whereas people with high avoidance motivations just want to avoid annoying, offending, or upsetting anybody. Evidently, it may be more beneficial to focus on obtaining rewards, rather than cutting costs, in our close relationships (Impett et al., 2013).

Finally, and perhaps most importantly, the independent operation of approach and avoidance motivations means that being happy may involve different strategies than those that are involved in not being unhappy. We want to avoid painful conflict and other costs, of course, but if we wish our relationships to prosper and to be fulfilling, we need to do more than simply avoid any unpleasantries. We need to combat bore- dom: We must strive to meet our partners’ approach goals by providing them joyous, interesting, and exciting experiences (Strong & Aron, 2006).

This conclusion is also at the heart of a self-expansion model of human motivation that holds that we are attracted to partnerships that expand the range of our interests, skills, and experiences (Aron et al., 2013). Novel activities, the development of new talents, and the acquisition of new perspectives are all thought to be inherently gratify- ing (Sheldon et al., 2013), and that’s why new loves are often so exhilarating: Newfound intimacy typically involves increases in knowledge and changes in mutuality that enhance and expand our self-concepts (Aron et al., 2013).

But self-expansion usually slows once a new partner becomes familiar, and that’s when many partnerships begin to feel more bland and ordinary than they initially seemed (Sheets, 2014). The key to staying happy, according to the self-expansion model, is to

3 See pages 63 and 514.

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combat boredom by creatively finding ways to continue your personal growth (Fivecoat et al., 2015):

To keep things exciting once the shiny, new phase of a relationship is over, go on strange and exciting new adventures together. Early on in the relationship, your new partner was your exciting new adventure, and you were theirs. But now instead of being the exciting new adventure, you have to figure out what exciting new adventures you’d like to go on together—and then get out there and go on them (Savage, 2019, p. 27).

You’ll also profit by intentionally inventing new ways to play and have fun and laugh together during your daily routine (Sheldon et al., 2013). Seek and invent “activ- ities that are adventurous, passionate, playful, romantic, sexual, and spontaneous” (Malouff et al., 2015, p. 234). You’re likely to enjoy higher satisfaction with your relationship (Harasymchuk et al., 2020), and, as a bonus, higher sexual desire for your partner, too (Muise et al., 2019). Monotony can make any relationship seem stale, but innovation and novelty can keep boredom at bay. (And I’ll have more to say about this in chapter 14.)

So, rewards and costs are different, and minimizing our costs isn’t the same thing as increasing our rewards. And as our discussion of boredom suggests, relationships begin when a couple’s interactions are rewarding, but that can change with time. Indeed, despite the partners’ best intentions, many relationships gradually become less satisfying as time goes by. Let’s take a closer look at how rewards and costs change as relationships develop.

Rewards and Costs as Time Goes By

Here’s the situation: You’ve started dating a new person and things are going great. Your satisfaction is rising fast, and the two of you are quickly growing closer. Does continual bliss lie ahead? Probably not. After a period of initial excitement that is characterized by a rapid increase in satisfaction, most relationships—even those that are destined to succeed and prosper—hit a lull in which the partners’ pleasure stalls for a time. (See Figure 6.5.) This can be disconcerting, but it shouldn’t be surprising; according to a model of relational turbulence created by Leanne Knobloch and Denise Solomon (2004), we should expect a period of adjustment and turmoil as new partners become accustomed to their increasing interdependence. In particular, as the partners spend more and more time together, they disrupt each others’ routines. Instead of waiting to be asked out on a date, for instance, one of the partners may start assuming that they’ll spend the weekend together, and that may interfere with the other’s plans. The partners may also encounter some resistance from their friends as the new relationship absorbs more of their time and they see less of their old companions. Uncertainty and doubt can also accompany emerging commitment; both partners may wonder where the relationship is going and what the future holds, and the more uncertain they are, the more turbulent the situation is likely to be ( Knobloch & Theiss, 2010). Altogether, the turbulence model suggests that an unsettled period of adjustment and reevaluation often occurs at moderate levels of intimacy in a developing relationship as the partners learn to coordinate their needs and to accommodate each other.

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The turbulence model in beginning relationships is depicted in Figure 6.6. When intimacy levels are low, interdependence is minimal and there is negligible interference from one’s partner and few concerns about the future of the partnership. However, as the partners draw closer, they need to adjust to increasing limitations to their auton- omy, rising uncertainty, and, perhaps, mounting ambivalence from their friends, and this phase—the transition from casual dating to more serious involvement in the rela- tionship—can be tumultuous. If the relationship becomes more established and intimacy increases further, things settle down as doubts diminish, friends adjust, and the partners grow more adept at being interdependent. Successful relationships survive the turbulent transition to the partners’ new status as a recognized couple, and a new but more gradual increase in satisfaction may occur as the relationship continues to develop. (Take another look at Figure 6.5.)

Turbulence may also occur down the road if a relationship undergoes a major transition, as when, for instance, a soldier returns home from a tour of duty (Knobloch & Theiss, 2018), babies are born, the family relocates, or the couple starts caring for their elderly parents. Renegotiation of old roles and expectations—and some resulting uncertainty and turmoil—are common in such situations (Brisini et al., 2018). Hopefully, however, such turbulence is temporary; in particular, marriages are more fragile when they result from courtships in which the partners are too often uncertain about where they’re heading (Ogolsky et al., 2016). And it’s particularly worrisome when people have lasting doubts about whether they should get married in the first place; women with reservations about marrying are about 2.5 times more likely to divorce later on than are those who have no doubts (Lavner et al., 2012). (Men have such doubts more often, but they’re only 1.5 times more likely to divorce as a result.)

In te

rp er

so na

l S at

is fa

ct io

n

Level of Involvement

FIGURE 6.5. Satisfaction in beginning relationships. After a rapid rise in satisfaction at the very beginning of their relationships, many couples encounter a lull as they adjust to their increasing interdependence. Successful relationships survive this period of re-evaluation and become even more satisfying, but at a more gradual rate.

Source: Adapted from Eidelson, R. J. (1980). “Interpersonal satisfaction and level of involvement: A curvilinear relationship,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 39, 460–470.

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So, periods of uncertainty can be problematic, and it’s customary for new partners to experience a lull in their increasing satisfaction as they adjust to their new interdependency. Are there predictable changes in satisfaction over longer stretches of time in established relationships? There are, and I’ve got good news and bad news for you. Let’s begin with the bad news, which starts with Figure 6.7. Pictured there are the annual reports of marital satisfaction from 538 newlywed couples, many of whom were tracked for 10 years (if they stayed married that long). As you can see, the typi- cal trajectory of marital bliss involved a gradual erosion of delight that resulted in people becoming less satisfied as the years rolled by (Kurdek, 1999). Even worse, more recent studies that probed carefully for different trajectories of marital satisfaction over 4 (Lavner & Bradbury, 2012), 16 (Birditt et al., 2012), 20 (Anderson et al., 2010), and 35 years (James, 2015) found that in a number of couples—about one in every six—the declines in contentment were much more severe. In one investigation, about 10 percent of newlyweds were already distressed and dissatisfied just a few months into their mar- riages; financial debt, the balance between work and marriage, in-laws, the sharing of household tasks, the frequency of sex (and more!) had already made them unhappy (Schramm et al., 2005). Some newlyweds find their dreams dashed rather quickly.

The good news from the recent studies is that, despite the general trend pictured in Figure 6.7, a number of couples—about one in every four—don’t experience declines in their delight at all (Karney & Bradbury, 2020), and this is true even among low-income

Transition from Casual Dating to Serious Involvement

Casual Dating

Increasing Intimacy

Pe rc

ep tio

ns o

f T ur

m oi

l

Serious Involvement

FIGURE 6.6. The relational turbulence model. The amount of turmoil and turbulence in a new relationship increases as the partners spend more time together and begin to interfere with each other’s routines and to wonder where the relationship is headed. This turmoil reaches a peak when the couple decides to become more seriously involved, but it then declines as they adjust to their new interdependency.

Source: Adapted from Knobloch, L. K., & Donovan-Kicken, E. (2006). “Perceived involvement of network members in courtships: A test of the relational turbulence model,” Personal Relationships, 13, 281–302.

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couples who must live modestly (Williamson & Lavner, 2020). Most American mar- riages don’t last as long as 21 years (Elliott & Simmons, 2011), but some do, and clearly, it really is possible for some couples to live happily ever after.

What distinguishes those who stay happy from the majority who become less content? There are several influences, and none of them will surprise a careful reader of our prior chapters. Spouses who stay happy tend to have secure attachment styles (Candel & Turliuc, 2019) and to be low in negative emotionality and high in self- esteem, and they start their marriages being happier together than most other couples are. They discuss touchy issues with affection and humor and without anger, and they luckily encounter relatively few stressors such as economic hardship or ill health (Birditt et al., 2012). Over time, then, the outcomes of their interactions are undoubt- edly more positive than those of couples who are more fretful, insecure, surly, and beset with hassles and burdens—and interdependency theory argues that that’s why they stay more content (Lavner et al., 2017a, 2017b).

It also turns out that happy couples keep their expectations in check so that their CLs don’t get too high. Remember that it’s hard to be satisfied when you expect things to be magnificent (Vannier & O’Sullivan, 2018), and sure enough, on average, people who begin their marriages with the highest expectations of how special and wonderful wedlock will be are the least happy spouses a few years down the road. Justin Lavner, Ben Karney, and Tom Bradbury (2013) followed 251 newlywed couples across the first 4 years of their

FIGURE 6.7. The average trajectory of marital satisfaction. Some couples experience decreases in satisfaction that are steeper than this, but others don’t experience any decline at all. In addition, on average, gay and lesbian couples experience milder decreases in satisfaction than heterosexual couples do (Kurdek, 2008).

Source: Data from Kurdek, L. A. (1999). “The nature and predictors of the trajectory of change in marital quality for husbands and wives over the first 10 years of marriage,” Developmental Psychology, 35, 1283–1296.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 Years of Marriage

M ar

ita l A

dj us

tm en

t S co

re s

123

121

119

117

115

113

111

105

107

109

Wife

Husband

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marriages and found that, over time, the happiest couples were those who had had the most realistic outlooks about what wedded life would be like. In contrast, spouses who had unrealistically positive expectations tended to be disappointed once the honeymoon was over. It’s not a good idea to expect that “my partner and I will always be able to resolve our disagreements” or “my partner and I will always communicate well” or even that “my partner will always be interested in how my day went” (Neff & Geers, 2013, p. 60) because it’s just not likely to be true.

Indeed, I can offer several reasons why prudent and cautious expectations about the futures of your intimate relationships are more reasonable and sensible than roman- tic idealism is. First, we all know how to be polite and thoughtful, and we can behave that way when we want to, but it takes effort. Relationships are more satisfying when people work at them (Shafer et al., 2014), but once a courtship is over and a partner is won, we usually stop trying so hard to be consistently charming. The same people who would never fart noisily on a first date may become spouses who fart at will at the dinner table, perhaps dismissing their lack of propriety by saying, “Sorry, I couldn’t help it.” The point is that they could help it if they wanted to—they just didn’t go to the trouble to do so (Miller, 2001).

Second, interdependency magnifies conflict and friction. We spend lots of time with our intimate partners and depend on them for unique, especially valuable rewards, and that means that they are certain to cause us more frustration—even inadvertently— than anyone else can. For instance, we’re more affected by the moods (Caughlin et al., 2000) or work stress (Karney & Neff, 2013) of intimate partners than by the similar difficulties of others. Frequent interaction also means that trivial annoyances may grad- ually cause real grief through sheer repetition—in much the same way that the light tapping of a slowly dripping faucet can drive you mad when you’re trying to sleep at night (Cunningham et al., 2005).

Third, intimacy means that others know your secrets, foibles, and weaknesses. That gives them ammunition with which to wound and tease us when conflict occurs. But even when they have no wish to do us harm, their access to sensitive information practically guarantees that they will accidentally reveal some secret (Petronio, 2010), hurt our feelings (Malachowski & Frisby, 2015), or embarrass us (Miller, 1996) some- time or other. They can unintentionally hurt us in ways others can’t.

Fourth, even if people are usually aware of most of their incompatibilities and prob- lems before they marry, there will almost always be some surprises ahead. These tend to be of two general types. First, there’s learning the truth about things we thought we knew. Good examples of this are the fatal attractions I mentioned in chapter 3. You may like the fact that your lover is fun-loving and spontaneous, but you may not appreciate how irre- sponsible, flighty, and unreliable that same behavior may seem after a few years of mar- riage when you have babies and a mortgage to contend with. Speaking of babies, the other type of unwelcome surprise is learning undesired things that you didn’t know at all, and the real facts of parenthood are often good examples. If you don’t have kids, you might assume that parenthood will be fun, your kids will be invariably adorable, and raising children will bring you and your partner closer together. The reality, however (as you know if you do have kids), is that “after the birth of a child the prognosis for the course of the marital relationship is unequivocally grim” (Stafford & Dainton, 1994, p. 270). I can safely say that parenthood is an extraordinary and often marvelous adventure, and children usu-

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ally bring people more joy than misery (Nelson et al., 2013). Nevertheless, parenthood is unquestionably hard on the relationship between the parents—having a kid “is associated with deterioration of relationship functioning for the average couple” (Doss & Rhoades, 2017, p. 27)—and although outcomes certainly vary from couple to couple (Don & Mick- elson, 2014), most “people are better off without having children” (Hansen, 2012, p. 29). Kids are expensive and they’re endless work, and most parents experience a steep and unexpected decline in the time they spend having fun together (Dew & Wilcox, 2011). When babies arrive, conflict increases, and satisfaction with the marriage (and love for one’s partner) decrease (Doss et al., 2009), and this occurs around the world (Wendorf et al., 2011) in both gay (Huebner et al., 2012) and straight relationships. If the parents don’t expect such difficulties, they’re going to be surprised.

Finally, all of this means that close relationships are often much different from the blissful, intimate idylls we want them to be, and the difference between what we expected and what we get can leave us feeling cheated and disappointed, sometimes unnecessarily so (Niehuis et al., 2015). To the extent that even great relationships involve hard work and sacrifice, people with misplaced, glorified expectations about relationships may end up disappointed in their outcomes even when they’re doing bet- ter than everyone else (Stoeber, 2012).

So, through (a) lack of effort; because (b) interdependency is a magnifying glass; and through (c) access to weaponry, (d) unwelcome surprises, and (e) unrealistic expec- tations, people usually encounter unanticipated costs, even in good relationships (Miller, 1997), and most spouses’ satisfaction actually declines some during the first years of marriage; when they are newly wed, most people are as satisfied with their marriages as they will ever be (Karney, 2015). And these are all normal processes in close relationships, so it’s naïve to think that you won’t encounter them. More annoy- ances and nuisances lie ahead than you may have thought.

This may seem gloomy, but it isn’t meant to be. Indeed, I don’t want this analysis to seem pessimistic at all! To the contrary, knowledge is power, and I suspect that being aware of the usual trajectory of marital satisfaction and thoroughly understanding these issues can help people avoid needless disappointment—and it may even help them to forestall or avoid a creeping decline in outcomes that would otherwise occur. If informed caution leads you to form reasonable expectations, you should be optimistic that your close relationships will succeed; a positive outlook that is rooted in good sense is likely to make lasting satisfaction more, rather than less, attainable (Neff & Geers, 2013).

And importantly, if nothing else, this perspective reminds us of our constant responsibility to be as pleasant as possible to those whose company we value. We want great outcomes, but so do they, and even if they like us, they’ll go elsewhere if we don’t provide them enough reward. This is a consequential idea, and it leads to some subtle- ties of the social exchange perspective that we have yet to consider.

ARE WE REALLY THIS GREEDY?

So far in this chapter, we’ve been portraying people as greedy hedonists who are con- cerned only with their own outcomes. That’s not a complimentary portrayal, but it is useful because rewards and costs matter enormously in close relations. Research supports

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the basic precepts of interdependence theory quite well (Tran et al., 2019). Nevertheless, our portrait so far is incomplete. There are good reasons why people will usually want their partners to prosper as well.

The Nature of Interdependency

Okay, you’ve got the idea: According to interdependence theory, we want maximum reward at minimum cost, and we want the best interpersonal deals we can get. Every- body behaves this way. But what happens when we get a good deal? Then we become dependent on our partners and don’t want to leave them. That’s significant because it means that we have an important stake in keeping our partners happy, so that our part- ners will continue providing those desired rewards. If you want to keep valued relation- ships going, it’s to your advantage to ensure that your partners are just as dependent on you as you are on them, and a straightforward way to do that is to provide them great outcomes that make them want to stick around (Murray et al., 2009).

Pursuing this strategy can influence the value of many transactions with a desired partner. Actions that would be costly if enacted with a stranger can actually be rewarding in a close relationship because they give pleasure to one’s partner and increase the likeli- hood that one will receive valuable rewards in return (Kelley, 1979). Providing good outcomes to one’s partner, even when it involves effort and sacrifice, can ultimately be self-serving if it causes a desirable relationship to continue. Indeed, even greedy people should be generous to others if it increases their own profits! As a writer to an advice column reported, “It is heaven to be with someone who enjoys making sure I’m taken care of in every way. And it makes me want to do everything I can to see that he’s happy in return” (Mitchell & Sugar, 2007, p. A6).

So, interdependence theory suggests that in the quest for good outcomes, indi- viduals will often be magnanimous to those on whom they depend because it is reason- able (and valuable) to do so. And if both partners in a relationship want it to continue, both of them should thoughtfully protect and maintain the other’s well-being. If people need each other, it can be advantageous to be positively philanthropic to each other, increasing the partner’s profits to keep him or her around (Horne et al., 2020). Thus, even if people are greedy, there is likely to be plenty of compassionate thoughtfulness and magnanimity in interdependent relationships.

Exchange versus Communal Relationships

Indeed, when people seek closeness with others, they are often rather generous, offer- ing more to others than they seek in return (Beck et al., 2017). We seem to realize that rewarding interdependency is more likely to develop when we’re not greedily pur- suing instant profit. With this in mind, Margaret Clark and Judson Mills (2012) pro- posed a distinction between partnerships that are clearly governed by explicit norms of even exchange and other, more generous, relationships that are characterized by obvious concern for the partner’s welfare. In exchange relationships, people do favors for others expecting to be repaid by receiving comparable benefits in return. If they accept a kindness from someone, people feel obligated to return a similar favor to even the scales. Thus, as Table 6.1 shows, people in exchange relationships don’t like to be

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in one another’s debt; they track each other’s contributions to joint endeavors; they monitor the other person’s needs only when they think there’s a chance for personal gain; and they don’t feel bad if they refuse to help the other person. As you might expect, exchange relationships are typified by superficial, often brief, relatively task- oriented encounters between strangers or acquaintances.

In contrast, in communal relationships, the partners feel a special concern for the other’s well-being, and they provide favors and support to one another without expect- ing repayment (Clark & Aragón, 2013). As a result, people who seek a communal relationship avoid strict cost accounting, and they’d rather not have their kindnesses quickly repaid; they monitor their partners’ needs even when they see no opportunity for personal gain; and they feel better about themselves when they help their partners (Xue & Silk, 2012). In communal relationships, people often make small sacrifices on behalf of their partners and do costly favors for each other, but they enjoy higher qual- ity relationships as a result (Crocker et al., 2017). Indeed, people like marriages to operate this way, and the more generosity and communal concern spouses display toward each other, the happier they are; when spouses “focus on one another’s needs and welfare and are confident the their partner will do the same, both members feel safer, more secure, and more loved” (Clark et al., 2017, p. 89).

Clearly, the extent of our generosity in response to our partners’ needs can vary from relationship to relationship, and Mills and Clark and their colleagues (Mills et al., 2004) have developed a short scale to measure communal strength, the motivation to be responsive to a particular partner’s needs (see Table 6.2). As their feelings of communal strength increase, people enjoy making small sacrifices for their partners

TABLE 6.1. Differences between Exchange and Communal Relationships

Situation Exchange Relationships Communal Relationships

When we do others a favor We prefer those who pay us back immediately.

We prefer those who don’t repay us immediately.

When others do us a favor We prefer those who request immediate repayment.

We prefer those who do not request immediate repayment.

When we are working with others on a joint task

We seek to distinguish our contributions from those of others.

We don’t make any clear dis- tinction between others’ work and our own.

When we help others Our moods and self-evaluations change only slightly.

Our moods brighten and our self-evaluations improve.

When we don’t help others Our moods do not change. Our moods get worse.

When we feel vulnerable or anxious

We are unwilling to tell others what we are feeling.

We are willing to tell others about our true feelings.

When we’re married We are less satisfied. We are more satisfied.

Sources: Beck & Clark, 2010b; Clark & Aragón, 2013; Clark et al., 2010.

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(Kogan et al., 2010), so they are more generous, providing more small kindnesses (Li & Hui, 2019), and both they and their partners are happier as a result (Day et al., 2015). Thoughtful concern for the well-being of one’s partner is clearly connected to closeness and contentment in intimate partnerships (Le et al., 2018).

But does the lack of apparent greed in communal relationships indicate that the principles of exchange we’ve been discussing do not apply there? Not at all. In businesslike relationships, debts are repaid quickly with comparable benefits, and tit-for-tat exchanges are the norm. In contrast, in close communal relationships, both partners expect that the other will be attentive and responsive to one’s needs when they arise, whatever they are, and more diverse rewards are exchanged by the partners over a longer span of time. What we do to meet a partner’s needs may involve very different actions from what the partner did to meet our own needs, and the reciprocity that results involves broad concern for each other instead of an exchange of specific favors (Clark & Aragón, 2013).

In addition, the partners in a profitable communal relationship may not seem to be keeping track of their specific rewards and costs because they’re happy and they know they’re doing well, so there’s no need to fuss with the details. Being generous to each other may simply become a habit that doesn’t require much thought or effort (Kammrath et al., 2015) and the partners stop scrutinizing their personal profits. How- ever, if their outcomes start falling and their heady profits evaporate, even intimate partners in (what had been) communal relationships may once again begin paying close attention to the processes of exchange (Grote & Clark, 2001). When dissatisfaction sets in, people in (what had been) communal relationships often become very sensitive to minute injustices in the outcomes they receive (Jarvis et al., 2019).

So, a distinction between exchange and communal relationships isn’t incompatible with interdependence theory at all. Communal relationships don’t involve the same explicit this-for-that exchange of specific benefits that occurs in exchange relationships, but they still require the profitable transfer of valuable rewards between the partners. And when they begin, the workings of communal relationships demonstrate how quickly people begin to take others’ welfare into consideration and how readily people provide benefits to those with whom they wish to develop close relationships (Beck et al., 2017). Most people seem to recognize, as interdependence theory suggests, that if you want others to be nice to you, you’ve got to be nice to them.

Equitable Relationships

Another point of view argues that you not only have to be nice but also to be fair. Equity theorists extend the framework of social exchange to assert that people are most

TABLE 6.2.  A Measure of Communal Strength (Mills et al., 2004): Some Example Items

Place a partner’s initials in the blank in each item and ask yourself: How far would you be willing to go in each case?

1. How far would you go out of your way to do something for ?

2. How much would you be willing to give up to benefit ?

3. How high a priority for you is meeting the needs of ?

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satisfied in relationships in which there is proportional justice, which means that each partner gains benefits from the relationship that are proportional to his or her contri- butions to it (Hatfield & Rapson, 2012). A relationship is equitable when the ratio of your outcomes to your contributions is similar to that of your partner, or when

Your outcomes Your contributions

= Your partner’s outcomes

Your partner’s contributions

Now, because this pattern involves a bit of algebra, you may already wish that I was done talking about it. But give this idea a chance! It’s interesting: Relationships are fair only when both partners are getting what they deserve, given their contributions to their partnership. A relationship is fair, according to equity theory, only when a partner who is working harder to maintain the relationship is getting more out of it as well.

Let’s look at some examples. Here are three equitable relationships, with outcomes and contributions rated on a 0-to-100-point scale:

Fred Wilma

(a) 80/50 = 80/50

(b) 20/100 = 20/100

(c) 50/25 = 100/50

In relationships (a) and (b), both partners are receiving equal outcomes and mak- ing equal contributions, but the quality of outcomes is much higher for the partners in relationship (a) than for those in relationship (b). Equity theory emphasizes fairness, not the overall amount of rewards people receive, and because both (a) and (b) are fair, they should both be satisfying to the partners. (Do you think they would be? I’ll return to this point shortly). Relationship (c) is also equitable even though the partners do not make equal contributions or derive equal outcomes. Wilma is working harder to maintain the relationship than Fred is, but both of them are receiving outcomes that are proportional to their contributions; each is getting two units of benefit for every unit he or she contributes, so Wilma’s better outcomes are fair.

In contrast, in inequitable relationships, the two ratios of outcomes to contribu- tions are not equal. Consider these examples:

Fred Wilma

(d) 80/50 ≠ 60/50 (e) 80/50 ≠ 80/30

In relationship (d), the partners are working equally hard to maintain the rela- tionship, but one of them is receiving better outcomes than the other. That’s not fair. If you and I are making similar contributions to our relationship but I’m getting more from it, you’re likely to be annoyed. In (e), the partners’ outcomes are the same, but their contributions are different. That, too, isn’t fair. If you and I are getting similar benefits from our relationship but I’m working harder to keep it going, then I’m likely to be annoyed. And in fact, a notable prediction of equity theory is that in both of these cases, both of the partners are likely to be distressed—even if they’re getting

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good outcomes—because neither relationship is fair. In such situations, one partner is overbenefited, receiving better outcomes than he or she deserves, and the other is underbenefited, receiving less than he or she should. Does that matter? Interdepen- dence theory says it shouldn’t, much, as long as both partners are prospering, but equity theory says it does.

The Distress of Inequity

One of the most interesting aspects of equity theory is its assertion that everybody is nervous in inequitable relationships. It’s easy to see why underbenefited partners would be unhappy; they’re being exploited, and they may feel angry and resentful. On the other hand, overbenefited partners are doing too well, and they may feel somewhat guilty (Guerrero et al., 2008). It’s better to be over- than underbenefited, of course, but people are presumed to dislike unfairness, being motivated to change or escape it. So, equity theory proposes that the most satisfactory situation is an equitable division of outcomes; the theory expects overbenefited people to be somewhat less content than those who have equitable relationships, and underbenefited people to be much less satisfied (Hatfield & Rapson, 2012).

What’s More Important? Being Treated Fairly or Excellent Outcomes?

Several studies that have assessed the satisfaction of spouses and other romantic couples have obtained results that fit the predictions of equity theory very nicely (e.g.,

Sprecher, 2018): Partners who were overbenefited were less relaxed and content than were those whose out- comes were equitable, and people who were underben- efited were less happy still. However, few of these studies took note of just how good the participants’ outcomes were. (Remember, you can be overbenefited relative to how your partner is doing and still be getting crummy outcomes that leave you dissatisfied.) Other investigations that have assessed the quality of part-

ners’ outcomes have found that—just as interdependence theory asserts—the overall amount of reward that people receive is a better predictor of their satisfaction than is the level of equity they encounter (e.g., Cate et al., 1988). In these studies, it didn’t matter what one’s partner gave or got as long as one’s own benefits were high enough, and the more rewards people said they received from a relationship, the better they felt about it.

There’s complexity here. Some studies suggest that fairness is an important factor in the workings of intimate relationships, and some do not. One reason for these con- flicting results may be that some people are more concerned with fairness in interper- sonal relations than other people are. Across relationships, some people consistently value equity more than others do, and they, unlike others, are more satisfied when equity exists than when it does not (Woodley & Allen, 2014).

In addition, no matter who we are, equity may be more important in some domains than in others. Two sensitive areas in which equity appears to be advisable are in the allocation of household tasks and child care. When these chores are divided equally, both spouses tend to be satisfied with their marriages: “When the burden of housework is

A Point to Ponder

If you’re treated well by your partner and are happy in your relationship, would it bother you to realize that your part- ner is profiting even more than you are?

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shared, each spouse is likely to appreciate the other spouse’s contribution, and there may be more leisure time for shared activities” (Amato et al., 2007, p. 166). In contrast, when one of the partners is doing most of the work, “bad feelings spill over and affect the quality of the marriage” (Amato et al., p. 166). Unfortunately, equitable allocation of these duties is often difficult for married women to obtain; husbands are doing more housework than they used to (Skopek & Leopold, 2019), but most heterosexual couples still rely on imagined gender differences to decide who does what (Doan & Quadlin, 2019)—and women do most of it. Even when they have similar job responsibilities outside the home, working wives in the United States provide more child care (Yavorsky et al., 2015) and do about twice as many household chores as their husbands do (Pew Research Center, 2015). Gay (Tornello et al., 2015) and lesbian (Brewster, 2017) couples usually divide these tasks more fairly, which is one reason why they tend to be more satisfied with their partnerships than straight couples are; inequities in housework and child care clearly reduce women’s satisfaction (Gillespie et al., 2019). Indeed, one general admoni- tion offered by marriage researchers to modern couples is for men “to do more house- work, child care, and affectional maintenance if they wish to have a happy wife” (Gottman & Carrère, 1994, p. 225). (And desirable outcomes may follow: Men who do their fair share of housework have more frequent and more satisfying sexual interactions with their wives [Carlson & Soller, 2019].) Equity in these conspicuous domains may be much more influential than similar fairness applied to other areas of a couple’s interactions.

A third and perhaps most important reason why research results are mixed may be that equity is a salient issue when people are dissatisfied, but it’s only a minor issue when people are content (Holmes & Levinger, 1994). When rewards are ample, equity may not matter much. People who are prospering in their relationships may spend little time monitoring their exchanges and may not be concerned by any imbalances they do notice. But if costs rise and rewards fall, people may begin tracking their exchanges much more carefully, displaying concern about who deserves to get what.

Most men should do more housework and child care if they want their wives to be content. Couples are usually happier these days when they share such tasks.

Sidney Harris/www.cartoonstock.com

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Whatever the case, even when their present partnerships are prosperous, people become disgruntled when they ponder past episodes in which they were underbenefited (Sprecher, 2018). So, the best conclusion appears to be that both the global quality of outcomes people receive and underbenefit, when it occurs, play important roles in predicting how satisfactory and enduring a relationship will be (Dainton, 2017). The inequity that accompanies deprivation and exploitation—underbenefit— routinely causes distress (Kuijer et al., 2002), and selfishness is disliked wherever it’s encountered (Crocker et al., 2017). But equity doesn’t seem to improve a relationship if it is already highly rewarding, and the bottom line is that outcome level matters more than inequity does; if our outcomes are poor and unsatisfactory, it isn’t much consolation if they’re fair, and if our outcomes are wonderful, inequity isn’t a major concern.

Some People Are Greedier Than Others

Here’s a term you probably haven’t seen before: satisficer. It refers to people who pur- sue purchases and partners who meet their expectations but who, when they’re satis- fied, stop shopping. They’ll look for good buys—and desirable mates—who meet all their criteria, select the best of the bunch, and then stop looking any further for other options that might be even better. In contrast, other people are maximizers: They don’t want to just be happy, they want to optimize their outcomes and enjoy maximum sat- isfaction, so they keep evaluating their options; “even after making their choices,

Feminism Is Bad for Romance, Right?

Back in chapter 1, I reported that women married to traditional, masculine men are less content, on average, than are women with warmer, more expressive husbands (Cao et al., 2019). Now we’ve seen that un- equal divisions of household chores breed resentment and distress. Both of these points suggest that (if you choose to marry) your chances for lasting marital bliss will be higher if you don’t adhere to rigid, traditional expec- tations about what it means to be husband and wife (Stanik et al., 2013). In fact, in the United States, women enjoy happier, health- ier, and more stable romantic relationships when they are partnered with men who are feminists—that is, who believe in the equality of the sexes—than they do when their men are more traditional. They enjoy better sex, too (Rudman & Mescher, 2012).

Okay, women like their men to think of them as equals. But what about the guys? The

old norms are clearly changing—close to a third of American wives now earn higher incomes than their husbands do (Parker & Stepler, 2017)—but a lot of people still think that women who believe in the equality of the sexes are likely to be homely, pushy, unroman- tic harpies who are lousy in bed (Rudman & Mescher, 2012). However, to the contrary, fe- male feminists are less hostile toward men than other women are (Anderson et al., 2009), and men who are partnered with feminist women enjoy more stable relationships and more sexual satisfaction than do men with tra- ditional partners (Rudman & Mescher, 2012). Clearly, it’s absurd to think that feminism is incompatible with romance. Thinking of one’s lover as an equal partner may help create a relationship that is actually more rewarding and robust than a partnership that is based on the last century’s old, outmoded expectations (Carlson & Soller, 2019).

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[maximizers] continue to exhaustively consider all possible alternatives” (French & Meltzer, 2019, p. 1468). They tend to be beset by lingering uncertainty that they “could have done better by searching a bit more” (Schwartz et al., 2002, p. 1179), so they remain curious about other possibilities.

For instance, when you’re scanning radio stations, seeking a good song, do you stop and listen to the first one you find that you like? Or do you keep going, check- ing all your stations to make sure that there’s not another song that you’d like bet- ter? This is a superficial example because most of us aren’t just satisficers or maximizers; “maximizing” is a trait that ranges from low to high from one person to the next, and a lot of us fall into the middle of the range (Mikkelson et al., 2016). Nevertheless, at the extremes, the difference between these styles is distinct: “Sat- isficers look for ‘good enough,’ whereas maximizers look for ‘the best’” (Hesse & Mikkelson, 2017, p. 24).

As a result, maximizers are comparatively greedy. And their quest for the best leads them to be less satisfied with the friends they choose (Newman et al., 2018) and the lovers they attract than satisficers are. If their partners are very desirable, they’re happy (French & Meltzer, 2019), but on average, they’re less committed to their part- ners, more regretful about the choices they’ve made, and more attentive to the alterna- tives they encounter (Mikkelson et al., 2016). Evidently, a restless longing for maximum delight can leave people chronically less content than they could otherwise be.

Summing Up

So, what’s the final answer? Is simple greed a good description of people’s behavior in intimate relationships? The answer offered by relationship science is a qualified “yes.” Some people are greedier than others, but everyone is happiest when their rewards are high and their costs (and expectations) are low. But because we depend on others for the rewards we seek in intimate relationships, we have a stake in satisfy- ing them, too. We readily protect the well-being of our intimate partners and rarely exploit them if we want those relationships to continue. Such behavior may be encour- aged by selfish motives, but it is still thoughtful, generous, and often loving. So, even if it is ultimately greedy behavior, it’s not undesirable or exploitative.

THE NATURE OF COMMITMENT

The good news is that happy dependence on an intimate partner leads to commitment, a desire for the relationship to continue and the willingness to work to maintain it. People who both need their partners and who are currently content associate the con- cept of commitment with positive qualities such as sharing, supportiveness, honesty, f aithfulness, and trust (Hampel & Vangelisti, 2008); they are affectionate, attentive, and respectful, and they happily plan to be together in the future (Weigel & Ballard-Reisch, 2014). (You can see why these people are staying put.) The bad news is that unhappy people can be committed to their relationships, too, not because they want to stay where they are but because they feel they must. For these people, commitment can be experi- enced more as burdensome entrapment than as a positive feeling (Weigel et al., 2015).

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Different components of commitment are apparent in a handy commitment scale developed by Ximena Arriaga and Christopher Agnew (2001) that contains three themes. First, committed partners expect their relationship to continue. They also hold a long-term view, foreseeing a future that involves their partners. And finally, they are psychologically attached to each other so that they are happier when their partners are happy, too. Each of these themes is represented by four questions on the commitment scale; take a look at Table 6.3 and you’ll be able to tell which theme applies to each question.

This portrayal of commitment as a multifaceted decision is consistent with a well- known conceptualization of commitment developed by Caryl Rusbult and her col- leagues known as the investment model. According to the investment model, commitment emerges from all of the elements of social exchange that are associated with people’s CLs and CLalts (e.g., Rusbult et al., 2012). First, satisfaction increases commitment. People generally wish to continue the partnerships that make them happy. However, alternatives of high quality are also influential, and they decrease commitment. People who have tempting alternatives enticing them away from their present partners are less likely to stay in their existing relationships. But people don’t always pursue such alter- natives even when they’re available, if the costs of leaving their current relationships are too high. Thus, a third determinant of commitment is the size of one’s investments in the existing relationship. High investments increase commitment regardless of the quality of one’s alternatives and whether or not one is happy.

TABLE 6.3. Arriaga and Agnew’s Commitment Scale

Answer each of the questions that follow using this scale:

1 not at all true

2 slightly true

3 moderately true

4 very true

5 extremely true

 1. I feel very strongly linked to my partner—very attached to our relationship.  2. It pains me to see my partner suffer.  3. I am very affected when things are not going well in my relationship.  4.  In all honesty, my family and friends are more important to me than this relationship.  5.  I am oriented toward the long-term future of this relationship (e.g., I imagine being with

my partner several years from now).  6. My partner and I joke about what things will be like when we are old.  7. I find it difficult to imagine myself with my partner in the distant future.  8.  When I make plans about future events in my life, I think about the impact of my deci-

sions on our relationship.  9. I intend to stay in this relationship. 10. I want to maintain our relationship. 11. I feel inclined to keep our relationship going. 12. My gut feeling is to continue in this relationship.

Source: Arriaga, X. B., & Agnew, C. R. (2001). “Being committed: Affective, cognitive, and conative components of relationship commitment,” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 27, 1190–1203.

To determine your total commitment score, reverse the rating you used for questions 4 and 7. If you answered 1, change it to 5; 2 becomes 4; 4 becomes 2; and so on. Then add up your ratings. The higher your score, the greater your commitment.

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Altogether, then, the investment model suggests that people will wish to remain with their present partners when they’re happy, or when there’s no other desirable place for them to go, or when they won’t leave because it would cost too much (see Figure 6.8). These influences are presumed to be equally important, and commitment emerges from the complex combination of all three. Thus, as people’s circumstances change, relationships often survive periods in which one or both partners are dissatis- fied, tempted by alluring alternatives, or free to walk out at any time. Episodes such as these may stress the relationship and weaken the partners’ commitment, but the partnership may persist if the other components of commitment are holding it together.

In general, research results support the investment model quite well. Satisfaction, the quality of one’s alternatives, and the size of one’s investments all tell us something useful about how committed a person is likely to be (Tran et al., 2019), and the model applies equally well to men and women, heterosexual and same-sex couples (Kurdek, 2008), to Eastern (Lin & Rusbult, 1995), as well as Western, cultures, and even to indigenous peoples who are not at all Weird4 (Winking et al., 2018). Moreover, the usefulness of the investment model provides impressive support for an exchange perspective on intimate relationships. The economic assessments involved in the investment model do a very good job of predicting how long relationships will last (Le et al., 2010), whether or not the partners will be faithful to each other (Martins et al., 2016), and even whether bat- tered wives will try to escape their abusive husbands (Rusbult & Martz, 1995).

However, there are some nuances in the nature of commitment that aren’t explicated by the investment model. For one thing, another major influence on your current commitment to a relationship is your forecast of how satisfying the partnership

Quality of Alternatives

Commitment Level

such as: • Accommodation • Willingness to sacrifice • Derogation of tempting alternatives

Relationship Maintenance Mechanisms

Satisfaction Level

Investment Size

+

+

+

–

FIGURE 6.8. The investment model of commitment. Satisfaction and investments are both positively related to commitment. The happier we are and the more we would lose by leaving, the greater our commitment to our present partners. However, high-quality alternatives undermine commitment; the more alluring our other options, the less committed we are.

Source: Adapted from Rusbult, C. E., Martz, J. M., & Agnew, C. (1998). “The Investment Model Scale: Measuring commitment level, satisfaction level, quality of alternatives, and investment size,” Personal Rela- tionships, 5. 357–391.

4Do you remember this clever acronym? It’s on page 65.

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will be in the future (Lemay, 2016). Commitment is enhanced not just by current contentment but also by the expectation that a relationship will be prosperous and fulfilling in the years to come. In fact, the satisfaction you expect to derive down the road is a better predictor of your current commitment than is the satisfaction you’re feeling now (Baker et al., 2017). Beware of pessimistic projections about what the future holds!

Full-fledged commitment to a partnership can also depend on good timing. At any given time, “people have a sense of whether or not they are ready to be in a romantic relationship,” and when they feel low in commitment readiness, they feel unprepared

and incapable of planning a future with anyone (Hadden et al., 2018, p. 1243). When they feel unready, people don’t devote themselves to their partnerships whole- heartedly; they work less hard to sustain their relation- ships and remain relatively uncommitted. But when readiness is high, people behave differently; if they’re single, they actively pursue new partnerships, and then, when they start one, they self-disclose more openly,

A Point to Ponder

Why might someone be low in commitment readiness? What experiences, obliga- tions, or personal characteris- tics might be involved?

Attachment and Interdependency

The attachment dimension of avoidance of intimacy describes the comfort with which people accept intimate interdependency with others. So, as you might expect, avoidance fig- ures prominently in several of the patterns we have encountered in this chapter. First, com- pared to those who are more secure, people who are high in avoidance are more attentive to their alternatives; they keep track of the other romantic options open to them (Miller, 2008) and they are more attracted to the new- comers they meet (Overall & Sibley, 2008). As a result, their CLalts tend to be higher than those of other people, and that leaves them less committed to their present partners ( Etcheverry et al., 2013). Avoidant people also value their independence and self- sufficiency, so their approach motivations are weaker; they perceive intimate connections to others to be less rewarding than secure people do, so they are less highly motivated to pursue fulfill- ment from their partnerships with others (Gere et al., 2013). They are also less attracted to others who use communal norms; they pre- fer people who do not do favors for them with-

out expecting something in return (Bartz & Lydon, 2008), and they think that others do favors for them out of obligation, not kindness (Beck & Clark, 2010a).

People who are anxious over abandon- ment fret that their partners may leave them, so they have strong avoidance motiva- tions and nervously focus on averting con- flict and other costly outcomes (Gere et al., 2013). But that’s not a recipe for contentment, and anxious people tend to be less satisfied with their relationships than more relaxed and trusting—that is, secure—people are (Etcheverry et al., 2013).

Thus, both anxiety about abandonment and avoidance of intimacy are associated—al- beit for somewhat different reasons—with lower satisfaction and commitment in close relationships as time goes by (Hadden et al., 2014). Your chances of living happily ever after will be greater if you settle down with someone who is comfortable and secure needing and depending on you and who is happy to accept your dependence on him or her in return (Waldinger et al., 2015).

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commit more fully, and are less likely to break up (Agnew et al., 2019). Clearly, feeling ready—and currently wanting to be in a committed relationship (Tan et al., 2020)—make thoroughgoing commitment more likely.

The investment model also treats commitment as a unitary concept—that is, there’s really only one kind of commitment—and other theorists argue that commitment not only springs from different sources, it comes in different forms (Knopp et al., 2015). For instance, sociologist Michael Johnson (1999) asserted that there are actually three types of commitment. The first, personal commitment, occurs when people want to continue a relationship because they are attracted to their partners and the relationship is satisfying. In contrast, the second type, constraint commitment, occurs when people feel they have to continue a relationship because it would be too costly for them to leave. In constraint commitment, people fear the social and financial consequences of ending their partnerships, and they continue them even when they wish they could depart. Finally, the third type of commitment, moral commitment, derives from a sense of moral obligation to one’s partner or one’s relationship. Here, people feel they ought to continue the relationship because it would be improper to end it and break their promises or vows. Spouses who are morally committed tend to believe in the sanctity of marriage and may feel a solemn social or religious responsibility to stay married no matter what (Stafford et al., 2014).

Research using this scheme demonstrates that the three types of commitment do feel different to people, and there is value in distinguishing them in studies of relation- ships (Knopp et al., 2015). Personal commitment is often the strongest of the three, but constraint commitment and moral commitment can be influential, too. Even when people are unhappy and their personal commitment is low, for instance, they may stay in a partnership if constraint commitment is high because of financial or family pres- sures (Rhoades et al., 2012). And when people embark on a long-distance romantic relationship, moral commitment does a better job of predicting whether or not the partnership will survive the period of separation than personal commitment does (Lydon et al., 1997). Evidently, moral commitment can keep a relationship going even when one’s enthusiasm for the relationship wanes.

The Consequences of Commitment

Nevertheless, whatever its origins or nature, commitment substantially affects the rela- tionships in which it occurs (Rusbult et al., 2012). The long-term orientation that characterizes commitment reduces the pain that would otherwise accompany rough spots in the relationship. When people feel that they’re in a relationship for the long haul, they may be better able to tolerate episodes of high cost and low reward in much the same way that investors with a long-range outlook will hold on to shares of stock during periods of low earnings (Arriaga et al., 2007). In addition, commitment can lead people to think of themselves and their partners as a single entity, as “us” instead of “him” and “me” (Davis & Weigel, 2020). This may substantially reduce the costs of sacrifices that benefit the partner, as events that please one’s partner produce indi- rect benefits for oneself as well.

Perhaps the most important consequence of commitment, however, is that it leads people to take action to protect and maintain a relationship even when it is costly for

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them to do so. Committed people engage in a variety of behavioral and cognitive maneuvers that both preserve and enhance the relationship and reinforce their com- mitment to it (Ogolsky & Bowers, 2013). We’ll consider these relationship maintenance mechanisms in detail in chapter 14—but to close this chapter, let’s briefly preview that material.

As one example, commitment promotes accommodation in which people refrain from responding to provocation from their partners with similar ire of their own (Häfner & IJzerman, 2011). Accommodating people tolerate destructive behavior from their partners without fighting back; they swallow insults, sarcasm, or selfishness with- out retaliating. By so doing, they avoid quarrels and help dispel, rather than perpetuate, their partners’ bad moods. That’s usually good for the relationship. Such behavior may involve considerable self-restraint, but it is not motivated by weakness; instead, accom- modation often involves a conscious effort to protect the partnership from harm.

Committed people also display greater willingness to sacrifice their own self- interests for the good of the relationship (Righetti & Impett, 2017). They do things they wouldn’t do if they were on their own, and they do not do things they would have liked to do, in order to benefit their partners and their partnerships.

As a final example, commitment leads us to judge other potential partners to be less attractive than they would seem to be if we were single and unattached (Petit & Ford, 2015). This derogation of tempting alternatives reduces the allure of those who might otherwise entice us away from our present partners, and that helps protect our partnerships.

People maintain their relationships with other mechanisms, but these three suffi- ciently illustrate the manner in which commitment motivates thoughts and actions that preserve partnerships. People seek maximum reward at minimum cost in their interac- tions with others, but dependency on a partner leads them to behave in ways that take the partner’s well-being into account. As a result, committed partners often make sacrifices and accommodate their partners, doing things that are not in their immedi- ate self-interest, to promote their relationships.

If people did these things indiscriminately, they would often be self-defeating. How- ever, when they occur in interdependent relationships and when both partners behave this way, such actions provide powerful means of protecting and enhancing desired connections to others (Ramirez, 2008). In this manner, even if we are basically greedy at heart, we are often unselfish, considerate, and caring to those we befriend and love.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

One of the things Gregg liked about Taylor was that she was a great cook. When she would have him over to dinner, she would serve elaborate, delicious meals that were much more appealing than the fast food he often ate on his own. He liked to keep things tidy and neat, and he noticed that her apartment was always disheveled and cluttered, but he didn’t much care because she was an exciting, desirable companion. However, once they were married, Taylor cooked less often; they both worked, and she frequently called him before he came home to ask him to pick up take-out meals for dinner. He also became annoyed by her sl ovenly housekeeping. He did his fair share

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of housework, but a pile of unfolded laundry constantly occupied their living room couch, and they had to push it aside to sit together to watch television. She seemed not to notice just how scattered and disorganized her belongings were, and Gregg began to feel resentful.

What do you think the future holds for Taylor and Gregg? Why?

KEY TERMS

interdependency ...........................p. 221 social exchange .............................p. 221 outcome ........................................ p. 222 comparison level ......................... p. 222 comparison level for alternatives ... p. 223 investments .................................. p. 224 principle of lesser interest ......... p. 228 5-to-1 ..............................................p. 231 approach motivation ................... p. 233 avoidance motivation .................. p. 233 boredom ....................................... p. 234 self-expansion model ................... p. 235 relational turbulence ................... p. 236 lack of effort .................................p. 241 access to weaponry ......................p. 241 unwelcome surprises ....................p. 241 unrealistic expectations ...............p. 241

interdependency is a magnifying  glass ...........................................p. 241 exchange relationships ................ p. 242 communal relationships ............. p. 243 equity .............................................p. 244 overbenefited ............................... p. 246 underbenefited ............................. p. 246 maximizers ................................... p. 248 commitment ................................. p. 249 investment model ........................ p. 250 commitment readiness ............... p. 252 personal commitment ................. p. 253 constraint commitment .............. p. 253 moral commitment ..................... p. 253 accommodation ........................... p. 254 willingness to sacrifice ............... p. 254 derogation of tempting  alternatives ............................... p. 254

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Social Exchange

Interdependence theory offers an economic view of relationships that involves social exchange in which partners provide each other desirable rewards.

Rewards and Costs. Rewards are gratifying and costs are punishing. The net profit or loss from an interaction is its outcome.

What Do We Expect from Our Relationships? People have comparison levels (CLs) that reflect their expectations for their interactions with others. When the outcomes they receive exceed their CLs, they’re satisfied, but if their outcomes fall below their CLs, they’re discontent.

How Well Could We Do Elsewhere? People also judge the outcomes available elsewhere using a comparison level for alternatives (CLalt). When the outcomes they receive exceed their CLalts, they can’t do better elsewhere, and they’re dependent on their current partners.

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Four Types of Relationships. Comparing people’s CLs and CLalts with their out- comes yields four different relationship states: happy and stable; happy and unstable; unhappy and stable; and unhappy and unstable.

CL and CLalt as Time Goes By. People adapt to the outcomes they receive, and relationships can become less satisfying as the partners’ CLs rise. Cultural influences shape both our expectations and our CLalts.

The Economies of Relationships

Counting up the rewards and costs of a relationship provides extraordinary infor- mation about its current state and likely future.

Rewards and Costs Are Different. An approach motivation leads us to seek rewards, an avoidance motivation leads us to avoid costs, and the extent to which each is fulfilled defines different relationship states.

Rewards and Costs as Time Goes By. A relational turbulence model suggests that new relationships usually encounter a lull when partners adjust to their new status as an established couple. Thereafter, marital satisfaction u sually decreases over the first years of marriage. This may be due to the partners’ lack of effort and to the manner in which interdependency magnifies small ir ritations, and to other routine influences such as unwelcome surprises and unrealistic expectations. Insight may forestall or prevent these problems.

Are We Really This Greedy?

The Nature of Interdependency. Interdependent partners have a stake in keeping each other happy. As a result, generosity toward one’s partner is often beneficial to oneself.

Exchange versus Communal Relationships. Exchange relationships are governed by a desire for immediate repayment of favors, whereas communal relationships involve more selfless concern for another’s needs.

Equitable Relationships. Equity occurs when both partners gain benefits from a relationship that are proportional to their contributions to it.

According to equity theory, people dislike inequity. However, overbenefit is not always associated with reduced satisfaction with a relationship—but underbenefit is.

Some People Are Greedier Than Others. Maximizers seek to optimize their out- comes; they remain attentive to their alternative options and so are routinely less committed to their current partners than satisficers are.

Summing Up. Both the quality of outcomes one receives and underbenefit, when it occurs, determine how happy and stable a relationship will be.

The Nature of Commitment

Commitment is a desire to continue a relationship, and the willingness to maintain it. When people are high in commitment readiness, they commit more completely. The

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investment model asserts that satisfaction, the quality of one’s alternatives, and the size of one’s investments influence commitment. However, there may be three kinds of commitment: personal, constraint, and moral.

The Consequences of Commitment. Committed people take action to protect and maintain their relationships, being accommodating, making sacrifices willingly, and derogating others who might lure them away from their relationships.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Savor the benefits your partner provides; don’t take them for granted. • Try to have reasonable expectations about how magnificent your relationship should be.

• Devote less time and attention to other potential partners. Don’t flirt. • Be unstinting with compliments and affection; be sparing with criticism and complaints.

• Seek and invent novel challenges and new ways to play and have fun together. • Expect to adjust and adapt to emerging interdependency as a relationship develops.

• Don’t get lazy; keep trying to be consistently charming to your beloved. • Recognize that if you want others to be nice to you, you’ve got to be nice to them. • Share household tasks and child care equally and evenly. • Don’t be greedy. • Plan for a future that involves your partner.

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266

C H A P T E R 7

Friendship

The Nature of Friendship ♦ Friendship across the Life Cycle  ♦ Differences in Friendship ♦ Friendship Difficulties 

♦ For Your Consideration ♦ Key terms ♦ chapter summary  ♦ suggestions for satisfaction ♦ references

Alone: bad. Friend: good! Bride of Frankenstein (Laemmle & Whale, 1935)

Take a moment and think about your two best friends. Why are they such close companions? You probably like but don’t love them. (Or, at least, you’re not “in love” with them, or you’d probably think of them as more than just “friends.”) You’ve prob- ably shared a lot of good times with them, and you feel comfortable around them; you know that they like you, too, and you feel that you can count on them to help you when you need it.

Indeed, the positive sentiments you feel toward your friends may actually be rather varied and complex. They annoy you sometimes, but you’re fond of them, and because they’re best friends, they know things about you that no one else may know. You like to do things with them, and you expect your relationship to continue indefinitely. In fact, if you look back at the features that define intimacy (way back on page 2), you may find that your connections to your best friends are quite intimate, indeed (Fehr & Harasymchuk, 2017). You may have substantial knowledge of them, and you prob- ably feel high levels of trust and commitment toward them; you may not experience as much caring, interdependence, responsiveness, and mutuality as you do with a romantic partner, but all four are present, nonetheless.

So, are friendships the same as but just less intimate than our romantic partner- ships? Yes and no. Friendships are based on the same building blocks of intimacy as romances are, but the mix of components is usually different. Romances also have some ingredients that friendships typically lack, so their recipes do differ. But many of the elements of friendships and romances are quite similar, and this chapter will set the stage for our consideration of love (in chapter 8) by detailing what it means to like an intimate partner. Among other topics, I’ll describe various features of friendship and question whether men and women can be “just friends.”

THE NATURE OF FRIENDSHIP

Our friendships are indispensable sources of pleasure and support. One study of unmar- ried young adults found that over one-third of them (36 percent) considered a friendship to be their “closest, deepest, most involved, and most intimate” current relationship

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(Berscheid et al., 1989). A larger proportion (47 percent) identified a romantic relation- ship as their most important partnerships, but friendships were obviously significant connections to others. And they remain so, even after people marry. Another study that used ecological momentary assessment1 to track people’s interactions found that they were generally having more fun when they were with friends than when they were alone or with family members, including their spouses. The best times occurred when both their spouses and their friends were present, but if it was one or the other, people derived more enjoyment and excitement from the presence of a friend than from the presence of a spouse (Larson & Bradney, 1988). Why? What’s so great about friendship?

Attributes of Friendships

A variety of attributes come to mind when people think about a good friendship (Perlman et al., 2015). First, close friends feel affection for one another. They like, trust, and respect each other, and they value loyalty and authenticity, with both of them feel- ing free to be themselves without pretense. Second, a good friendship involves commu- nion. The partners give and receive meaningful self-disclosures, emotional support, and practical assistance, and they observe a norm of equality, with both partners’ preferences being valued. Finally, friends offer companionship. They share interests and activities, and consider each other to be sources of recreation and fun. At its best, friendship is clearly a close, rewarding relationship, which led Beverley Fehr (1996, p. 7) to define friendship as “a voluntary, personal relationship, typically providing intimacy and assis- tance, in which the two parties like one another and seek each other’s company.”

Differences between Friendship and Love

How, then, is friendship different from romantic attraction? As we’ll see in chapter 8, love involves more complex feelings than liking does. Both liking and lov- ing involve positive and warm evaluations of one’s partner, but romantic love includes fascination with one’s partner, sexual desire, and a greater desire for exclusivity than friendship does. Love relationships also involve more stringent standards of conduct; we’re supposed to be more loyal to, and even more willing to help, our lovers than our friends (Fuhrman et al., 2009). The social norms that regulate friendship are less c onfining than those that govern romantic relationships, and friendships are easier to dissolve. In addition, friendships are less likely to involve overt expressions of positive emotion, and friends, as a general rule, spend less of their free time together than romantic partners do (Perlman et al., 2015).

These differences are not just due to the fact that so many of our friendships involve partners of the same sex. Friendships with members of the other sex are also less passionate and less committed than romances usually are (Fuhrman et al., 2009). So, friendships ordinarily entail fewer obligations and are less emotionally intense than romantic relationships. And unlike romantic relationships, friendships typically do not involve sexual intimacy (although some do; we’ll consider “friends with benefits” later).

1If a reminder about ecological momentary assessment will be helpful, look back at page 73 (Chapter 2 continues to be useful, doesn’t it?) In this study, participants wore pagers that prompted them to record what they were doing and who they were with every 2 hours during the day.

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So, they are less passionate and less exclusive than romances, but rich friendships still contain all the other components that characterize rewarding intimacy with both friends and lovers. Let’s consider several of those next.

Respect

When people respect others, they admire them and hold them in high esteem. The specific traits that seem to make someone worthy of respect include commendable moral qualities, consideration for others, acceptance of others, honesty, and willingness to listen to others (Frei & Shaver, 2002). We generally like those whom we respect, and the more we respect a friend or lover, the more satisfying our relationship with that person tends to be (Hendrick et al., 2010).

Trust

We trust our partners when we are confident that they will behave benevolently toward us, selflessly taking our best interests into account (Rempel et al., 2001). Such confidence takes time to cultivate, but it is likely to develop when someone is alert to our wishes and reliably behaves unselfishly toward us ( Simpson, 2007). Trust is invalu- able in any close relationship because it makes interdependency more palatable; it allows people to be comfortable and relaxed in their friendships, and those who do not fully trust their partners tend to be guarded and cautious and less content (Rempel et al.). And the loss of trust has corrosive effects on any close relationship (Miller & Rempel, 2004); those who have been betrayed by a partner often find trust, and their satisfaction with their relationship, hard to recover (see chapter 10).

Capitalization

Good friends also tend to enhance, rather than diminish, our delight when we share good news or events with them. We don’t always receive enthusiastic congratula- tions from others when we encounter good fortune; on occasion, we get bland best wishes, and sometimes others are simply uninterested. But good friends are usually pleased by our successes, and their excitement can increase our enjoyment of the event (Gable & Reis, 2010). So, in a pattern of interaction known as capitalization, we usu- ally share good news with friends and receive enthusiastic, rewarding responses that increase our pleasure (Peters et al., 2018) and enhance our relationships: We feel closer to those who excitedly enhance our happiness than to those who respond to our good fortune with apathy or indifference (Pagani et al., 2020), and relationships in which capitalization routinely occurs are more satisfying and longer lasting than those in which it is infrequent (Logan & Cobb, 2016).

Social Support

Enthusiastic celebration of our good fortune is one way in which our intimate partners uplift us and provide us aid, or social support (Gable et al., 2012). We also rely on friends to help us through our difficulties, and there are four ways in which they can provide us help and encouragement (Barry et al., 2009). We rely on our partners for emotional support in the form of affection, acceptance, and reassurance; physical comfort in the form of hugs and cuddling; advice support in the form of infor- mation and guidance; and material support, or tangible assistance in the form of money

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or goods. A partner who tries to reassure you when you’re nervous about an upcoming exam is providing emotional support, whereas a friend who loans you her car is provid- ing material support. But don’t take these distinctions too seriously, because these types of aid can and do overlap; because her generous concern would be touching, a friend who offers a loan of her car as soon as she learns that yours is in the shop could be said to be providing emotional as well as material support.

Social support can be of enormous value, and higher amounts of all four types of support are associated with higher relationship satisfaction and greater personal well- being as time goes by (Barry et al., 2009). Indeed, warm, attentive support from one’s partners matters more than money when it comes to being happy; your income is likely to have less effect on your happiness than your level of social support does (North et al., 2008). But there are several complexities involved in the manner in which social support operates in close relationships. Consider these points:

• Emotional support has real physiological effects and mental health benefits. People who have affectionate partners have chronically lower blood pressures, cholesterol levels, and stress hormone levels than do those who receive lesser amounts of encourage- ment and caring from others (Seeman et al., 2002). They have lower levels of chronic inflammation (Uchino et al., 2018), recover faster from stress (Meuwly et al., 2012), and in lab procedures, they even experience less pain when they submerge their arms in ice-cold water (Brown et al., 2003). When people are under stress, just thinking about a supportive friend tends to reduce their heart rates and blood pressures (Smith et al., 2004). Higher levels of perceived social support are also associated with better sleep (Kent de Grey et al., 2018), higher self-esteem (Stronge et al., 2019), and lower levels of mental illness (Feder et al., 2019).

• Effective social support also leads people to feel closer to those who provide it. Sensi- tive, responsive support from others increases our happiness, satisfaction with life, and optimism about the future (Feeney & Collins, 2015), and all of these have beneficial effects on our relationships. In marriages, happy spouses provide each other more support than distressed couples do (Verhofstadt et al., 2013), and higher levels of support when the partners are newly married are associated with a lower likelihood of divorce 10 years later (Sullivan et al., 2010).

• But some people are better providers of social support than others are. In order to offer effective support, providers need to have the skills, resources, and motivation that are appropriate to the task (Feeney & Collins, 2018), and attachment styles matter. Secure people, who readily accept interdependent intimacy with others, tend to provide effective support that reassures and bolsters the recipient, and they do so for altruistic, compassionate reasons (Davila & Kashy, 2009). In contrast, insecure people are more self-serving, and their support tends to be less effective, either because (in the case of avoidant people) they provide less help than secure people do (Farrell et al., 2016) or because (in the case of anxious people) their help is intrusive and controlling (Jayamaha et al., 2017). People are generally more satisfied with the support they receive when their partners have secure, rather than insecure, attachment styles (Kane et al., 2007).

In addition, people tend to provide better support when they are attentive and empathic and thus are able to tell what their partners need (Gregory et al., 2020).

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People too rarely ask straightforwardly for help when they need it (Don et al., 2019), so those who are better able to read a particular partner’s feelings tend to provide that partner more skillful support.

• Furthermore, the best support fits our needs and preferences. Not all social support is wholly beneficial to its recipients. Even when supportive friends are well- intentioned and altruistic, their support may be of the wrong type or be too plenti- ful (Williamson et al., 2019); their efforts to help may threaten our self-esteem or be intrusive, and unwelcome indebtedness can occur if we accept such help (Floyd & Ray, 2017). So, social support sometimes comes with emotional costs, and for that reason, the best help is often invisible support that is subtly provided without fanfare and actually goes unnoticed by the recipient (Zee & Bolger, 2019). When cohabiting couples kept diaries of the support they gave and received during a

Friends Matter More Than We Think

You’re aware of the pleasures to be found in a close friendship, but it’s likely that your friends are influencing you even more than you realize. One way our friends often matter is in making or breaking our romantic rela- tionships. They routinely help new romances get started by introducing us to potential new partners and running interference for us (Felmlee & Sinclair, 2018). And thereafter, they come to approve or disapprove of our ongoing romances, and their opinions count (Keneski & Loving, 2014). Our romances are imperiled when our friends disapprove of them: Even when they’re (initially) satisfied with their relationships, young lovers are more likely to have broken up 7 months later when their friends disapprove of their part- nerships (Leh miller & Agnew, 2007). One reason this occurs, of course, is that our friends are more dispassionate—and thus often more discerning—about our romances than we are. They tend to disapprove of our romances when they judge us to be less happy than we ought to be ( Etcheverry et al., 2013), and they sometimes see trouble com- ing before we do. But it’s also hard to swim upstream against a tide of disapproval (Rosenthal & Starks, 2015), and even when we would otherwise be genuinely happy with a lover, disregard of the relationship from others can be very burdensome. We’re more

committed to our romantic partners when our friends like them, too (Felmlee & Sinclair, 2018).

Our friends also have surprising influ- ence on whether we’re happy or sad (or fat or thin!). A remarkable 30-year study of the health of more than 12,000 people found that having happy friends makes it more likely that you’ll be happy as well (Christakis & Fowler, 2009). Each friend we have who possesses good cheer increases the chance that we will also be happy by 15 percent. And our friends’ friends also matter; each happy friend our friends have increases our chances of being happy by 10 percent even if we’ve never met that person! The norms supported and the experiences offered by our social net- works are surprisingly potent, and they can work against, as well as for, us. For instance, if a friend gets heavy, the chance that you will also begin gaining too much weight goes up by 57 percent. Each unhappy friend we have decreases the likelihood that we’re happy by 7 percent. And loneliness is contagious: We’re 52 percent more likely to become lonely if a friend gets lonely first, and 25 per- cent more likely if a friend’s friend becomes lonely (Cacioppo et al., 2009). We’re typi- cally more connected to others than we real- ize, and our friends usually matter more than we think.

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stressful period in which one of them was preparing for a bar examination, the support that was most effective in reducing the test taker’s anxiety was aid the partner provided that the test taker did not notice (Bolger et al., 2000). Sometimes, the best way to help a friend who is under substantial stress is to do so unobtru- sively in a manner that does not add to his or her woes (Jakubiak et al., 2020).

When support is visible, it is more effective when it fits the recipient’s current needs and goals (Gleason & Iida, 2015). Another study with frantic law students preparing for a bar exam found that material support—for instance, a partner cook ing dinner—was helpful, but emotional support simply made the examinees more anxious (Shrout et al., 2006). Most of the time, lots of emotional support is a good thing (Lorenzo et al., 2018), but there’s evidently no sort of support that’s suitable for all situations; the type of help and assistance a friend will appreciate will depend on his or her current needs, your capabilities, and the present state of your friend- ship (Priem & Solomon, 2015). We need to be alert to personal preferences and the particular circumstances if we are to provide effective support. Feel free to ask what will help; “supporting others tends to go right if you keep it simple: compassionate intent, an open mind, and enough restraint to let them do most of the talking” (Hax, 2019, p. B5).

• Regardless of what support is offered, one of the most important patterns in studies of social support is that it’s not what people do for us but what we think they do for us that matters in the long run. The support we perceive is often only a rough match for the support we actually get (Lakey, 2013), and people become distressed when they believe that their partners are unsupportive whether or not their partners really are (Bar-Kalifa & Rafaeli, 2013). In fact, perceived support has more to do with the qual- ity of our ordinary interactions with a partner than with the amount of aid he or she actually provides (Lakey et al., 2016): When we’re content with our friends and lovers, we perceive them to be supportive, but when we’re dissatisfied, we perceive them to be neglectful and unhelpful (Lemay & Neal, 2014). Our judgments aren’t totally unrealistic; the more support our partners provide us, the more supportive we usually perceive them to be (Priem et al., 2009). Still, we’re more likely to notice and appreci- ate their aid and assistance when we trust them and we’re content with them, so our judgments of the aid we receive from others “are likely to possess both a kernel of truth and a shell of motivated elaboration” (Reis et al., 2004, p. 214).

• Finally, our personal characteristics also affect our perceptions of social support (Barańczuk, 2019). People who doubt others’ care and concern for them tend to take a biased, and undeservedly critical, view of others’ efforts to aid them. In particular, people who have insecure attachment styles judge the social support they receive to be less considerate and less helpful than do those who hold more favorable, more confident views of themselves and their relationships (Collins & Feeney, 2010). Remarkably, even when their friends are being genuinely supportive, insecure people are likely to consider their partners’ assistance and encouragement to be insufficient ( Collins et al., 2010).

Overall, then, we rely on our friends and lovers for invaluable support, but the amount and quality of sustenance we (feel we) receive is affected by both our and our partners’ characteristics. The social support we perceive is also greatly influenced by the quality of our relationships; in general, partners who make us happy seem more

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supportive than do those with whom we share less satisfying friendships. In the end, however, whether it is visible or invisible, the best support is assistance that indicates that our partners attentively understand and care about—and thus are responsive—to our needs (Maisel & Gable, 2009).

Responsiveness

Each of the characteristics of a good friendship we’ve just encountered—respect, trust, capitalization, and social support—leave us feeling valued, understood, or cared for, so they are all tied to a last component of rewarding intimacy that is probably the most important of them all (Reis, 2013): responsiveness, or attentive and supportive recognition of our needs and interests. Most of the time, our friends are interested in who we are and what we have to say. They pay attention to us, and thereby commu- nicate that they value their partnerships with us. They are also usually warm and sup- portive, and they seem to understand and appreciate us. And these are all reasons why they’re friends. The judgment that someone is attentive, respectful, caring, and sup- portive with respect to our needs and aspirations, which is known as perceived partner responsiveness, is powerfully rewarding,2 and we are drawn to those who lead us to feel valued, protected, and understood. (See Table 7.1.)

2Indeed, perceived partner responsiveness is so influential, this is second time I’ve mentioned it. We encountered it as a key influence on self-disclosure back in chapter 5, on page 196.

TABLE 7.1. The Perceived Responsiveness Scale

Here are items with which Harry Reis measures the extent to which friends and lovers judge their partners to be responsive. To use the scale, identify a particular person and rate your agreement with all 12 items while you are thinking of him or her. As will be apparent, the higher the sum of your combined ratings, the more responsive you perceive your partner to be.

Compared to most experiences I’ve had meeting somebody new, I get the feeling that this person:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 not at all

true somewhat

true very true completely

true

_____  1.  … sees the “real” me. _____  2.  … “gets the facts right” about me. _____  3.  … esteems me, shortcomings and all. _____  4.  … knows me well. _____  5.  … values and respects the whole package that is the “real” me. _____  6.  … understands me. _____  7.  … really listens to me. _____  8.  … expresses liking and encouragement for me. _____  9.  … seems interested in what I am thinking and feeling. _____ 10.  … values my abilities and opinions. _____ 11.  … is on “the same wavelength” with me. _____ 12.  … is responsive to my needs.

Source: Reis, H. T., Maniaci, M. R., Caprariello, P. A., Eastwick, P. W., & Finkel, E. J. (2011). “Familiarity does indeed promote attraction in live interaction,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 101, 557–570.

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Perceived partner responsiveness promotes intimacy (Ohtsubo et al., 2014), encour- aging self-disclosure, trust, and interdependency, and it is unquestionably good for relationships. Two people feel closer and more content with each other when they tune in and start looking out for each other’s needs (Segal & Fraley, 2016). They sleep bet- ter, too; we’re less restless and our sleep is more efficient when we feel cared for and understood (Selcuk et al., 2017). Perceived partner responsiveness may even be a key influence on our health: Life seems more meaningful (Tasfiliz et al., 2018) and the levels of our stress hormones are lower (Slatcher et al., 2015) when we feel appreciated and cared for. There’s enormous value in the understanding, respect, and regard that’s offered by a responsive partner, and it’s clear that friends can supply us with potent interpersonal rewards.

The Rules of Friendship

Good friends can also be counted on to play by the rules. We don’t often explicate our expectations about what it means to be a friend, but most of us nevertheless have rules for relationships that are shared cultural beliefs about what behaviors friends should (and should not) perform. These standards of conduct help

Responsiveness in Action

One of the most successful relationship self- help books of all time is over 85 years old and still going strong. Dale Carnegie published How to Win Friends and Influence People in 1936, long before relationship scientists be- gan studying the interactive effects of respon- siveness. Carnegie firmly believed that the road to financial and interpersonal success lay in behaving toward others in a manner that made them feel important and appreci- ated. He suggested six straightforward ways to get others to like us, and the enduring popularity of his homespun advice helps demonstrate why responsiveness from a friend is so uplifting. Here are Carnegie’s rules (1936, p. 110):

1. Become genuinely interested in other people.

2. Smile.

3. Remember that a man’s name is to him the sweetest and most important sound in any language.

4. Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.

5. Talk in terms of the other man’s interest.

6. Make the other person feel important— and do it sincerely.

All of these actions help communicate the at- tention and support that constitute responsive- ness, and modern research supports Carnegie’s advice. To favorably impress people you’ve just met, for instance, offer them genuine smiles (Miles, 2009), and then focus on them, being warm, interested, and enthusiastic (Eastwick et al., 2010). It also helps to be Latin American. Latinos generally endorse a cultural norm of simpático that values friendly courtesy and con- geniality, and sure enough, when they are left alone with a stranger in Texas, Mexican Americans talk more, look more, smile more, and enjoy the interaction more than American whites or Blacks do. The people who meet them enjoy the interactions more, too (Holloway et al., 2009). Carnegie was on to something. People like to receive warm, attentive interest and support from others, and being responsive is a good way to make—and keep—friends.

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relationships operate more smoothly. We learn the rules during childhood, and one of the things we learn is that when the rules are broken, disapproval and turmoil result. For instance, in a seminal study, British researchers generated a large set of possible friendship rules and asked adults in England, Italy, Hong Kong, and Japan which of the rules they would endorse (Argyle & Henderson, 1984). Several rules for conducting friendships appeared to be universal, and they’re listed in Table 7.2. As you can see, they involve trust, capitalization, and support as well as other desir- able aspects of intimacy.

In general, then, we expect good friends to be (Hall, 2012):

• trustworthy and loyal, having our best interests at heart; • confidants with whom we can share our secrets; • enjoyable and fun companions; • similar to us in attitudes and interests; and • helpful, providing material support when we need it.

(It’s also nice when a friend is attractive and financially well-off, but those are lesser considerations.) Women, in particular, have high standards for their friends (Felmlee et al., 2012); they expect more loyalty, self-disclosure, enjoyment, and similar- ity than men do (Hall, 2012). But all of us expect more from our friends than from less intimate companions, and the more closely we adhere to these rules, the closer

and more satisfying our relationships are (Kline & Stafford, 2004). Romances are richer, too, involving more love, commitment, and sexual gratification, when the lovers value their friendship (VanderDrift et al., 2013). So, people profit when they follow the rules of friendship, and in most cases when friend- ships fail, somebody hasn’t been following the rules ( Perlman et al., 2015).

A Point to Ponder

How rich a friendship do you have with your romantic partner? How would your romance be different if you were even better friends?

TABLE 7.2. The Rules of Friendship

Don’t nag

Keep confidences

Show emotional support

Volunteer help in time of need

Trust and confide in your partner

Share news of success with your partner

Don’t be jealous of each other’s relationships

Stand up for your partner in his/her absence

Seek to repay debts and favors and compliments

Strive to make him/her happy when you’re together

Source: Argyle, M., & Henderson, M. (1984). “The rules of friendship,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 1, 211–237.

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FRIENDSHIP ACROSS THE LIFE CYCLE

We change as we grow and age, and our friendships do, too. For one thing, our attach- ment styles continue to be shaped by the experiences we encounter, and for most of us that’s a good thing: We’re likely to experience less anxiety about abandonment later in life than we do now (Chopik et al., 2013). And here’s more good news: You’re likely to be (even) more satisfied with your friendships in your elder years than you are now (Luong et al., 2011). Why is that? Let’s survey friendships over the life span to find out.

Childhood

Preschool children have rudimentary friendships in which they have favorite play- mates. Thereafter, the enormous changes that children encounter as they grow and mature are mirrored in their friendships, which gradually grow richer and more com- plex (Howes, 2011). One important change involves children’s cognitive development; as they age, children are increasingly able to appreciate others’ perspectives and to understand their wishes and points of view. And accompanying this increasing cogni- tive sophistication are changes in the interpersonal needs that are preeminent as children age. According to Duane Buhrmester and Wyndol Furman (1986), these key needs are acceptance in the early elementary years, intimacy in preadolescence, and sexuality during the teen years. The new needs are added on top of the old ones at each stage, so that older children have more needs to satisfy than younger children do. And the successful resolution of each stage requires the development of specific competencies that affect the way a child handles later stages; if those skills aren’t acquired, problems occur.

For instance, when children enter elementary school, the companionship of, and acceptance by, other children is important; those who are not sufficiently accepted by their peers feel excluded. Later, in preadolescence, children develop a need for intimacy that typically focuses on a friend who is similar to them in age and interests. This is when full-blown friendships characterized by extensive self-disclosure first emerge, and during this period, children develop the skills of perspective taking, empathy, and generosity that are the foundation for close adult relationships. Children who were not previously accepted by others may overcome their sense of isolation, but if they cannot, they experience true loneliness for the first time. Thereafter, sexuality erupts, and the typical adolescent develops an interest in the other sex. Most adolescents initially have difficulty satisfying their new emerging needs, but most manage to form sensitive, car- ing, and open sexual relationships later on.

Overall, then, theorists generally agree that our relationships change as we grow older. The rich, sophisticated ways in which adults conduct their friendships are years in the making. And to some degree, success in childhood relationships paves the way for better adult outcomes. For instance, infants who are securely attached to their caregivers tend to be well liked when they start school; as a result, they form richer, more secure childhood friendships that leave them secure and comfortable with inti- macy when they fall in love as young adults (Oriña et al., 2011). On the other hand, children who are rejected by their peers tend to encounter a variety of difficulties— such as dropping out of school, criminal arrests, and psychological maladjustment—

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more often than those who are well-liked (Wong & Schonlau, 2013). Peer rejection doesn’t necessarily cause such problems, but it might: Interventions that teach social skills enhance children’s acceptance by their peers, and that reduces their risk of later maladjustment (Waas & Graczyk, 1998).

Adolescence

There are other ways in which friendships change during the teen years. First, teens spend less and less time with their families and more and more time with their peers. An ecological momentary assessment study in Chicago found that children in fifth grade spent 35 percent of their time with family members, whereas high school seniors were with their families only 14 percent of the time (Larson et al., 1996).

A second change is that adolescents increasingly turn to their friends for the satisfaction of important attachment needs (Fraley & Davis, 1997). Attachment theo- rists identify four components of attachment (Hazan & Zeifman, 1994): (a) proximity seeking, which involves approaching, staying near, or making contact with an attach- ment figure; (b) separation protest, in which people resist being separated from a part- ner and are distressed by separation from him or her; (c) safe haven, turning to an attachment figure as a source of comfort and support in times of stress; and (d) secure base, using a partner as a foundation for exploration of novel environments and other daring exploits. All of these components of attachment can be found in the relation- ships young children have with their parents, but, as they grow older, they gradually shift their primary attachments from their parents to their peers in a component-by- component fashion.

For instance, around the ages of 11 to 14, young adolescents often shift the loca- tion of their safe haven from their parents to their peers; if something upsets them, they’ll seek out their friends before they approach their parents. Indeed, about a third of older teens identify a peer (who is usually a romantic partner rather than a friend), not a parent, as their primary attachment figure (Rosenthal & Kobak, 2010). Peers gradually replace parents in people’s lives.

Young Adulthood

During their late teens and twenties, people enter young adulthood, a period in which a central task—according to Erik Erikson (1950), a historically prominent theorist—is the development of “intimacy versus isolation.” It’s at this age, Erikson believed, that we learn how to form enduring, committed intimate relationships.

Much of that learning takes place in our teenaged friendships. Teen romances are often rather turbulent (Lantagne & Furman, 2017), and our dating experiences at 18 don’t predict how satisfied we’ll be with our romantic relationships when we’re 30. But the quality of our teen friendships does predict how satisfying our future romances will be (Allen et al., 2020). Strong, close friendships appear to be pivotal in shaping the competencies—insight and understanding, empathy and care, and the manage- ment of frustration—that pay off in successful partnerships down the road (Zhou & Davila, 2019).

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You may be undertaking your own quest for intimacy in a novel environment: a college some distance from home. Leaving home to go to school has probably influ- enced your friendships (Roberts & Dunbar, 2011), and you’re not alone if you haven’t seen much of your old high school friends lately. A year-long survey of a freshman class at the University of Denver found that the friendships the students had at home tended to erode and to be replaced by new relationships on campus as the year went by (Shaver et al., 1985). This didn’t happen immediately, and the students’ satisfaction with their social networks was lowest in the fall after they arrived at college. But by the end of that first year, most people were again content with their social networks; they had made new friends, but it had taken some time.

What happens after college? In one impressive study, 113 young adults kept diaries of their social interactions on two separate occasions, once when they were still in college and again 6 years after they had graduated (Reis et al., 1993). Overall, the participants saw less of their friends each week once they were out of school; in par- ticular, the amount of time spent with same-sex friends and groups of three or more people declined. The total amount of time spent with friends or lovers increased, but the number of those partners decreased, especially for men. Still, just as developmen- tal theory suggests, the average intimacy levels of the participants’ interactions increased during their twenties. After college, then, people tend to interact with fewer friends, but they have deeper, more interdependent relationships with the friends they have.

What’s a Best Friend?

People usually have a lot of friendly acquain- tances, a number of casual friends, a few close friends, and just one or two best friends with whom they share especially rich rela- tionships. What’s so special about a best friend? What distinguishes a best friend from all of the other people who are impor- tant to us?

The simple answer is that it’s all a mat- ter of degree (Fehr, 1996). Best friendships are more intimate than common friendships are, and all of the components of intimacy are involved. Consider knowledge: Best friends are usually our closest confidants. They often know secrets about us that are known to no one else, including our spouses! Consider trust: We typically expect a very high level of support from our best friends, so that a best friend is “someone who is there for you, no matter what” (Yager, 1997, p. 18).

Consider interdependence: When our best friends are nearby and available to us, we try to see more of them than our other friends; we interact with them more often and in a wider range of situations than we do with lesser buddies. And finally, consider commit- ment: We ordinarily expect that a best friend will be a friend forever. Because such a per- son “is the friend, before all others,” best friendships routinely withstand “the tests of time and conflict, major changes such as moving, or status changes, such as marrying or having a child” (Yager, 1997, p. 18).

In general, then, best friendships are not distinctly different relationships of some unique type (Fehr, 1996). Instead, they are simply more intimate than other friendships— involving richer, more rewarding, and more personal connections to others—and that’s why they are so prized.

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Midlife

What happens when people settle down with a romantic partner? It’s very clear: When people gain romantic partners, they spend less time with their families and friends. A pattern of dyadic withdrawal occurs: As people see more and more of a lover, they see less and less of their friends (Burton-Chellew & Dunbar, 2015). One study found that people spent an average of 2 hours each day with good friends when they were casually dating someone, but they saw their friends for less than 30 minutes per day once they became engaged (Milardo et al., 1983). Romantic couples do tend to have more contact with friends they have in common, but this doesn’t offset declines in the total number of friends they have and the amount of time they spend with them (Wrzus et al., 2013).

The erosion of people’s friendships doesn’t stop once they get married. Friendships with members of the other sex are especially affected; people tend to see much less of friends who could be construed by a spouse to be potential romantic rivals (Werking, 1997). Still, even though they see less of their friends, spouses often have larger social networks than they did when they were single because they see a lot more of their in-laws (Milardo et al., 1983). (Make no mistake about this, and beware if you don’t like your lover’s family: You will see a lot more of them if you marry!)

Thus, people’s social lives don’t wither away completely when they commit them- selves to a spouse and kids, but the focus of their socializing does shift from their personal friends to family and friends they share with their spouses. In fact, it appears to be hard on a marriage when a husband and wife disapprove of the other’s friends (Fiori et al., 2018) or have no friends in common (Barton et al., 2014). As you can see in Figure 7.1, couples have more marital problems when none of their personal friendships involve their spouses (Amato et al., 2007). Having some friends of one’s own does no harm, but having only exclusive friendships seems to be risky.

Old Age

Ultimately, elderly people have smaller social networks and fewer friends than younger people do (Gillespie et al., 2015). They’re not unsociable, they’re just more selective: They have just as many close friends as they did when they were younger, but they spend less time with casual friends and other peripheral social partners (Fung et al., 2001).

A socioemotional selectivity theory argues that this change occurs because seniors have different interpersonal goals than younger people do (Löckenhoff & Carstensen, 2004). With a long life stretching out before them, young adults are presumed to pur- sue future-oriented goals aimed at acquiring information that will be useful later in life. (That’s presumably what you’re doing now if you’re in college.) With such ends in mind, young people seek relatively large social networks that include diverse social partners (and, often, hundreds of Facebook “friends”!). However, when people age and their futures seem more and more finite, they become oriented more toward the pres- ent than toward the future, and they emphasize emotional fulfillment to a greater extent (Fung & Carstensen, 2004). The idea is that as their time perspective shrinks, seniors aim for quality not quantity; they focus on a select group of satisfying friendships that are relatively free of conflict (Bruine de Bruin et al., 2020), work harder to maintain and enrich them (Lang et al., 2013), and let more casual partnerships lapse. Indeed, the theory predicts that anyone who considers his or her future to be limited will also

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choose to spend more time with a small number of close friends instead of a wider variety of more casual buddies—and that’s exactly what happens in younger adults whose time orientation is changed by contracting a fatal illness (Carstensen et al., 1999). In general, socioemotional selectivity theory seems to be a reasonable explana- tion for age-related changes in sociability.

Finally, let’s note that—reflecting the vital role of intimacy in our lives—elderly people who have good friends live longer, healthier, happier lives than do those who are less con- nected to others (Gerstorf et al., 2016). Friendships are invaluable for as long as we live.

DIFFERENCES IN FRIENDSHIP

Friendships don’t just differ across the life cycle; they also differ from person to person and from partner to partner. In this section of the chapter, we’ll consider how the nature of friendships is intertwined with gender and other individual differences.

Gender Differences in Same-Sex Friendships

Consider these descriptions of two same-sex friendships: Wilma and Betty are very close friends. They rely on each other for support and

counsel, and if they experience any problems in their romantic relationships, they

FIGURE 7.1. Friendship networks and marital adjustment. Spouses encounter more frustrations and difficulties when they have no friends in common.

Source: Amato, P. R., Booth, A., Johnson, D. R., & Rogers, S. J. (2007). Alone together: How marriage in America is changing. Harvard University Press.

-0.1–0.1

–0.2

0

Spouses' Friendship Networks

Some friends sharedNo friends shared All friends shared

M ea

n N

um be

r o f M

ar ita

l P ro

bl em

s (S

ta nd

ar di

ze d

Sc or

es )

0.1

0.2

0.3

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immediately call each other, asking for, and getting, all the advice and consolation they need. Wilma and Betty feel that they know everything about each other.

Fred and Barney are very close friends. Often, they stay up half the night playing cards or tinkering with Fred’s beloved 1966 Chevy, which is constantly breaking down. They go everywhere together—to the bars, to ball games, and to work out. Barney and Fred feel they are the best of friends.

Do these two descriptions sound familiar? They might. Lots of research shows that women’s friendships are usually characterized by emotional sharing and self-disclosure, whereas men’s friendships revolve around shared activities, compan ionship, and competi- tion (Marshall, 2010; McGuire & Leaper, 2016). It’s an oversimplification, but a pithy phrase coined years ago by Wright (1982) is still serviceable today: Women’s friendships are “face-to-face,” whereas men’s are “side-by-side.”3

This difference emerges from several specific patterns in same-sex friendships (Fehr, 1996):

• women spend more time talking to friends on the phone; • men and women talk about different topics: Women are more likely to talk about relationships and personal issues, whereas men are more likely to talk about imper- sonal interests such as sports;

• women self-disclose more than men do; • women provide their friends more emotional support than men do; and • women express more feelings of affection in their friendships than men do.

Add all this up, and women’s same-sex friendships tend to be closer and more intimate than men’s are (Helgeson & Mascatelli, 2018). The net result is that—although adult men and women have the same number of friends, on average (Gillespie et al., 2015)—women typically have partners outside their romantic relationships to whom they can turn for sensitive, sympathetic understanding and support, but men often do not. For instance, ponder this provocative question (Rubin, 1986, p. 170): “Who would you turn to if you came home one night and your wife [or husband or lover] announced she [or he] was leaving you?” When research participants actually considered this

3This clever statement is oversimplified because it implies that women just talk and men just play, and of course that isn’t true. Women share enjoyable activities with their friends about as often as men do (Fehr, 1996). However, men are more reluctant than women to share their feelings and fears with their friends, so emotional sharing does distinguish women’s friendships from those of men, on average (Marshall, 2010).

SolStock/Moment/Getty Images

To some extent, women’s friendships are “face-to-face,” whereas men’s friendships are “side-to-side.” Robert Deutschman/DigitalVision/Getty Images

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question, nearly every woman readily named a same-sex friend, but only a few men did. (In fact, most men in that sample from 1986 could not come up with anyone to whom they could turn for solace if their lovers left them.)

Why are men’s same-sex friendships less intimate than women’s? Are men less capable of forming close friendships with each other, or are they just less willing? Usually, they’re less willing (Flannery & Smith, 2017). Men seem to be fully capable of forming intimate friendships with other men when the circumstances support such closeness—but they generally choose not to do so because such intimacy is less socially acceptable among men than among women (Reis, 1998). And why is that? Cultural norms and gender roles appear to be the main culprits (Bank & Hansford, 2000). A traditional upbringing encourages men to be instrumental, but not expressive,4 and (as we found in chapter 5), a person’s expressivity predicts how self-disclosing he or she will be. Androg- ynous men tend to have closer friendships than traditional, stoic men do, but more men are traditional than androgynous. Indeed, we put pressure on men to display more emo- tional constraint than we put on women with cultural norms that lead men to be more reluctant than women to express their worries and emotions to others. Elsewhere, gender differences in the intimacy of friendship disappear in societies (such as the Middle East) where expressive male friendships are encouraged (Reis, 1998).

Thus, the lower intimacy of men’s friendships usually isn’t due to an inability to share meaningful, close attachments to other men. Instead, it’s a choice that is supported by cultural pressures. Many men would probably have closer same-sex friendships if Western cultures did not discourage psychological intimacy with other men.

Can Men and Women Be Close Friends?

Of course. They often are. Most people have had a close friendship with a member of the other sex, and such relationships are com- monplace among college students. However, once they leave college, most people no lon- ger maintain intimate cross-sex friendships (Marshall, 2010). Why? What’s going on?

The first thing to note is that men and women become friends for the same reasons they grow close to their same-sex friends; the same responsiveness, trust, and social sup- port are involved (Helgeson & Mascatelli, 2018). And because they are dealing with women instead of other men, men are often more open and expressive with their female friends than with their male companions (Fehr, 1996). Indeed, men who have higher

levels of exp ressivity and women who have higher levels of instrumentality are more likely than their peers to have close friend- ships with the other sex (Lenton & Webber, 2006). In particular, 10th-grade boys who un- derstand emotions well have 1.8 more female friends, on average, than less empathic boys do; “females clearly want to befriend em- pathic males” (Ciarrochi et al., 2017, p. 499). As always, perceived similarity attracts.

However, cross-sex friendships face a hur- dle that same-sex partnerships do not ordinarily encounter: determining whether the relation- ship is a friendship or a romance. Friendships are typically nonexclusive, nonsexual, equal partnerships, and people may find themselves in unfamiliar territory as they try to negotiate an

4Would you like a quick reminder about the nature of instrumentality and expressivity? Look back at pages 26–27 in chapter 1.

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Individual Differences in Friendship

Another personal characteristic that influences our social networks is sexual ori- entation. In a convenience sample5 of 1,415 people from across the United States, most heterosexual men and women did not have a close friend who was gay, lesbian, or bisexual, but most lesbians, gays, and bisexuals (or LGBs) did have friends who were

intimate friendship with someone of the other sex. A big question is whether the partners— who, after all, are very close—will have sex. Men are more likely than women to think that sex would be a fine idea (Lehmiller et al., 2011), and they typically think their female friends are more interested in having sex than they really are (Lemay & Wolf, 2016). In turn, women usu- ally underestimate how much their male friends would like to sleep with them, so some misun- derstanding often occurs: “Most women do not reciprocate their male friend’s sexual yearnings, despite the fact that men sometimes delude themselves that their female friends do” (Buss, 2003, p. 262). As a result, “sexual tension” is often mentioned as the thing people dislike most about their cross-sex friendships (Marshall, 2010)—and that’s one reason why women often consider gay men to be desirable friends (Rus- sell et al., 2018a). Women—particularly those who are quite attractive—are more relaxed and engaged when they meet-and-greet gay guys than straight men because they trust the gay men more; taking sexual tension off the table makes the women more comfortable (Russell et al., 2018b).

In the end, most cross-sex friendships never become sexual (Halatsis & Christakis, 2009). But when they do, they take a variety of forms (Mongeau et al., 2013). Some part- ners are genuinely close friends who trust and respect each other and who share a vari- ety of activities in addition to the sex—and who are thus true “friends with benefits,” or FWBs (Lehmiller et al., 2014)—whereas others get together solely to have sex and so are really just engaging in a series of casual “booty-calls” (Jonason et al., 2011). More- over, the partners may be on their way from being just friends to conducting a romance

or, conversely, transitioning out of a romance that has failed. Either trajectory can be com- plex, but there are differences between FWB relationships and romances, so the partners may know where they stand. More commit- ment is involved in romances (Collins & Horn, 2019). FWB partners are less likely to be monogamous; they have sex with a wider variety of other people, and although more of the time they spend together is devoted to sex, they tend to be less satisfied than roman- tic lovers are with both the sex they have and their relationship on the whole (Collibee & Furman, 2016).

Notably, when the participants in FWBs want to stop having sex and just be friends, they’re able to do so most (59 percent) of the time. But those who hope to transition into full-fledged romances are usually disappointed; despite their interest, that happens rarely (only 15 percent of the time). In fact, overall, the single most common outcome for FWBs down the road is to break up entirely; whatever their original hopes and intentions, a plurality of FWBs (31 percent) have no relationship at all 1 year later (Machia et al., 2020).

And even when they’re not sexual, cross-sex friendships can be tricky to main- tain if the partners marry others. Spouses are often threatened by a partner’s close connec- tion to a potential rival (Hart et al., 2016), and sometimes with good reason: When people are attracted to a current cross-sex friend, they tend to be less satisfied with their romantic relationships (Bleske-Rechek et al., 2012). As a result, married people are less likely than singles to have close cross-sex friendships, and that’s a major reason that such relationships become less common af- ter people finish their schooling.

5Chapter 2: the gift that keeps on giving. See page 64.

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straight (Galupo, 2009). Only about one in every six heterosexuals (knew that they) had LGB buddies, but about 80 percent of LGBs had close heterosexual friends. So, the friendship networks of straight people tend to be less diverse with regard to sexual orientation than those of LGBs. If heterosexuals are actually steering clear of LGBs, they may be making a mistake: The friendships of LGBs with h eterosexuals are just as close and rewarding, on average, as their friendships with other LGBs (Ueno et al., 2009), and the more contact heteros have with LGBs, the more they like them (Lytle & Levy, 2015).

Our self-concepts influence our friendships, too. Some of us think of ourselves mostly as independent, autonomous agents, and the qualities that are foremost in our self-concepts are the traits that distinguish us from others. In contrast, others of us define ourselves to a greater extent in terms of our relationships to others, and intrigu- ing individual differences known as relational self-construals describe the extent to which we think of ourselves as interdependent, rather than independent, beings. For those of us with a highly relational self- construal, relationships are central features in our self- concepts, and we “tend to think and behave so as to develop, enhance, and maintain harmonious and close relationships” with others (Cross & Morris, 2003, p. 513). A relational self-construal makes someone a desirable friend (Morry et al., 2013); com- pared to those who are more independent, highly relational people better understand others’ opinions and values, and they strive to behave in ways that benefit others as well as themselves. Motivations supporting both individuality and interdependence with oth- ers tend to be present in everyone, but Western cultures such as that of the United States tend to celebrate and emphasize independence and autonomy. So, highly rela- tional self-construals are more common in other parts of the world (Cross et al., 2011).

Can Pets Be Our Friends?

We’ve all heard that “a dog is a man’s best friend.” Really? Can a pet be a friend?

People certainly behave as if that’s the case: The presence of a beloved pet can help someone manage stressful situations even bet- ter than a human friend can. Pets seem to im- prove the autonomic and cardiovascular health of their owners (Beetz & Bales, 2016), and an average dog owner is 24 percent less likely to die from any cause in the next 10 years than are those without dogs (Kramer et al., 2019). That’s impressive. But are the dogs re- sponsible? Perhaps so. In a study that com- pared pets to people (Allen et al., 2002), par- ticipants were asked to work a mental math problem for 5 minutes—rapidly counting back- ward by threes from 7,654—when they were (a) alone, (b) with their spouses, or (c) with their pets but no one else. The presence of a

pet was soothing; the difficult task caused only slight arousal when people were with their pets, but their heart rates and blood pres- sures went up substantially when they were alone, and their cardiovascular readings soared when their spouses were present. A hu- man audience, even a loving partner, made the potentially embarrassing task more stressful, but a companion animal made it less taxing.

All these results are intriguing, but they could be due to idiosyncrasies in the people who choose to have pets. So, in another test of this effect (Allen et al., 2001), business- men who lived alone were randomly assigned either to adopt pets from an animal shelter or to continue to live alone. When they were then put under stress, the new pet owners displayed increases in blood pressure that were only half as large as those that occurred

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Finally, there are other personality traits that—unlike relational self- construals—have corrosive and deleterious effects on our friendships. We’ve already touched on narcissism,6 the arrogant self-importance, entitlement, and selfishness that can make a good first impression but that quickly wears thin (Jauk et al., 2016); let’s add Machiavellianism and psychopathy to the list. People who are high in Machiavellianism7 think that there’s a sucker born every minute and that it’s smart to take advantage of gullible fools (Jones, 2016); they’re cynical, duplicitous, and manipulative, and they readily lie to others if it helps them get what they want (Azizli et al., 2016). Those who are high in psychopathy tend to be bold, impulsive thrill-seekers who sometimes seem charming but who callously disregard others’ feelings and well-being; they’re rarely remorseful when they do others harm (O’Boyle et al., 2015). Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are often collec- tively called the Dark Triad because they have features in common—they all involve low levels of agreeableness and humility (Muris et al., 2017)—and they all tend to result in behavior toward others that is disadvantageous, being arrogant, manipulative, exploitative, cold, and hostile (Marcus et al., 2018). When disagreements arise, for instance, you can expect to encounter more counterproductive criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stone- walling from those who have higher levels of the Dark Triad traits (Horan et al., 2015). They’re more likely than the rest of us to troll and cyberbully others (Moor & Anderson, 2019), less likely to empathize with others (Kajonius & Björkman, 2020), and more likely to perform a foodie call, accepting a date from someone they don’t much like in order to get a free meal (Collisson et al., 2020). So, although we may initially be attracted to the self-confidence and cleverness of these folks (Qureshi et al., 2016), it’s best to beware: In the end, they make pretty lousy friends. Check out Table 7.3 to see what to look out for.

6Back on page 154. 7The trait is named for an Italian fellow, Niccolò Machiavelli, who advocated such tactics way back in 1512.

played increases in blood pressure that were only half as large as those that occurred among those without pets. Moreover, the fewer friends the men had, the greater the benefits of owning a pet.

Now, let’s not overstate this “friend” business. Animals can soothe us even when they are strangers to us; people who were ex- cluded by others in a lab procedure found the experience less painful when the experimenter’s dog was in the room than when it was not (Aydin et al., 2012). And pet ownership isn’t beneficial for some people: There appear to be differences from person to person in at- tachment to pets that mirror the anxiety and avoidance seen in human relationships (Zilcha-Mano et al., 2011). And of course, a

pet cannot supply the same respect, respon- siveness, or trust that human friends can.

Still, people often imagine that their pets have human traits and qualities (Amiot et al., 2020), and they can feel that their rela- tionships with their pets are just as close as their partnerships with other humans (Kurdek, 2008). When they’re distressed, pet owners are even more likely to turn to their pets for solace than they are to seek out their (human) friends (Kurdek, 2009). And if they had to choose one or the other, one of every seven pet owners would discard their spouses rather than lose their pets (Italie, 2011)! So, given the pleasure and genuine support that pets provide, sure, as long as we use the term loosely, pets can be our friends.

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TABLE 7.3. The “Dirty Dozen”: A Concise Measure of the Dark Triad

Peter Jonason and Gregory Webster developed this short scale to provide efficient assessment of individual differences in the Dark Triad traits of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcis- sism. Rate your agreement or disagreement with each item using this scale:

1 2 3 4 5

disagree strongly

agree strongly

1. I tend to manipulate others to get my way.

2. I have used deceit or lied to get my way.

3. I have used flattery to get my way.

4. I tend to exploit others toward my own end.

5. I tend to lack remorse.

6. I tend to be unconcerned with the morality of my actions.

7. I tend to be callous and insensitive.

8. I tend to be cynical.

9. I tend to want others to admire me.

10. I tend to want others to pay attention to me.

11. I tend to seek prestige or status.

12. I tend to expect special favors from others.

Source: Jonason, P. K., & Webster, G. D. (2010). “The Dirty Dozen: A concise measure of the Dark Triad,” Psychological Assessment, 22, 420–432.

Which items describe each trait? You can probably tell. The first four measure Machiavellian- ism, the middle four pertain to psychopathy, and the last four assess narcissism. Men score higher on Machiavellianism, but the sexes are similar on psychopathy and narcissism. Beware of all three (unless, perhaps, these traits describe you, too [Hart & Richardson, 2020])!

FRIENDSHIP DIFFICULTIES

Now, in this last section of the chapter, let’s examine some of the more common states and traits that interfere with rewarding friendships. We’ll focus on two problems, shy- ness and loneliness, that most of us have experienced at one time or another. As we’ll see, shy or lonely people usually want to develop close friendships, but they routinely behave in ways that make it difficult to do so.

These days, we may need every friend we’ve got. More than one out of every eight adult Americans lives alone—a proportion that’s doubled since 1960 ( Wilson & Lamidi, 2013)—and intimate friendships are less common in the United States than they used to be, too (McPherson et al., 2006). The number of people who say they have no close confidant of any sort has soared from only 10 percent in 1985 to 25 percent today. One of every four adult Americans has no one to whom to turn for intimate counsel and support. Another 19 percent say they have only one confidant (who is often a spouse or

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a sibling), and, overall, the average number of intimate partners people have, including both close friends and lovers, has plummeted from three (in 1985) to two. Many of us have hundreds of “friends” on Facebook, but only rarely are they companions who offer the rich rewards of real intimacy. And once they leave school, only slightly more than half of all Americans (57 percent) have a close confidant to whom they are not related. Many Americans have none. And shyness and loneliness make things even worse.

Shyness

Have you ever felt anxious and inhibited around other people, worrying about what they thought of you and feeling awkward in your conversations with them? Most of us have. Over 80 percent of us have experienced shyness, the syndrome that combines social reticence and inhibited behavior with nervous discomfort in social settings (Miller, 2009). Take a look at Table 7.4; when people are shy, they fret about social disapproval and unhappily anticipate unfavorable judgments from others. They feel self-conscious, uncomfortable, and inept (Arroyo & Harwood, 2011). As a result, they interact with others in an impoverished manner. If they don’t avoid an interaction

TABLE 7.4. The Shyness Scale

How shy are you? Rate how well each of the following statements describes you, using this scale:

0 = Extremely uncharacteristic of me

1 = Slightly characteristic of me

2 = Moderately characteristic of me

3 = Very characteristic of me

4 = Extremely characteristic of me

___1. I am socially somewhat awkward.

___2. I don’t find it hard to talk to strangers.

___3. I feel tense when I’m with people I don’t know well.

___4. When conversing, I worry about saying something dumb.

___5. I feel nervous when speaking to someone in authority.

___6. I am often uncomfortable at parties and other social functions.

___7. I feel inhibited in social situations.

___8. I have trouble looking someone right in the eye.

___9. I am more shy with members of the opposite sex.

The first thing you have to do to calculate your score is to reverse your answer to number 2. If you gave yourself a 0 on that item, change it to a 4; a 1 becomes a 3, a 3 becomes a 1, and a 4 should be changed to 0. (2 does not change.) Then add your ratings. The average score for both men and women is about 14.5, with a standard deviation of close to 6 points. Thus, if your score is 8 or lower, you’re less shy than most people, but if your score is 20 or higher, you’re more shy.

Source: Adapted from Cheek, J. M., & Buss, A. H. (1981). “Shyness and sociability,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 330–339.

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altogether, they behave in an inhibited, guarded fashion; they look at others less, smile less, speak less often, and converse less responsively (Ickes, 2009). Compared to peo- ple who are not shy, they manage everyday conversation poorly.

Shyness may beset almost anyone now and then. It’s especially common when we’re in unfamiliar settings, meeting attractive, high-status strangers for the first time, and it’s less likely when we’re on familiar turf interacting with old friends (Leary & Kowalski, 1995). However, some people are chronically shy, experiencing shyness frequently, and three characteristics distinguish them from people who are shy less often. First, people who are routinely shy fear negative evaluation from others. The possibility that others might dislike them is rarely far from their minds, and the threat of derision or disdain from others is more frightening to them than it is to most people. They worry about social disapproval more than the rest of us do (Miller, 2009). Second, they tend to doubt themselves. Poor self-regard usually accompanies chronic shyness, and shy people tend to have low self-esteem (Tackett et al., 2013). Finally, they feel less competent in their interactions with others, and sometimes with good reason: Overall, they have lower levels of social skill than do people who are not shy (Ickes, 2009).

This unwelcome combination of perceptions and behavior puts shy people between a rock and a hard place: They worry about what people are thinking of them and dread disapproval from others, but they don’t feel capable of making favorable impressions that would avoid such disapproval. As a result, they adopt a cautious, relatively with- drawn style of interaction that deflects interest and enthusiasm from others (Oakman et al., 2003). For instance, if they find an attractive woman looking at them, shy men won’t look back, smile, and say hello; instead, they’ll look away and say nothing (Ickes, 2009). Rewarding conversations that would have ensued had the men been less shy sometimes do not occur at all.

The irony here is that by behaving in such a timid manner, people who are either temporarily or chronically shy often make the negative impressions on others that they were hoping to avoid in the first place. Instead of eliciting sympathy, their aloof, unre- warding behavior often seems dull or disinterested to others. Let’s think this through. Imagine that you’re at a club, and some acquaintances are out on the dance floor moving to the music in a small mob. They call to you—“C’mon!”—urging you to join them, but because you’re not a confident dancer and you don’t want to look silly, you stay on the sidelines. You’d like to join them, but your concern over the evaluations you might receive is too strong, so you hang back and watch. The problem with your reticence, of course, is that instead of being sociable and encouraging everyone’s happy enthusiasm, you’re just sitting there. Inside you may feel friendly, but you’re certainly not being playful, and to all appearances, you may seem awkward and a little dull. Indeed, it’s probably safe to say that you’re making a poorer impression on others staying on the sidelines than you would by joining the mob and dancing clumsily; nobody much cares how well you dance as long as you’re lively and lighthearted, but people do notice when you’re simply no fun.

In fact, shy behavior does not make a good impression on others, as F igure 7.2 shows. The timid, reserved, and hesitant behavior that characterizes shyness can seem aloof and unfriendly, and it is likely to be met by reactions from others that are less sociable and engaging than those that would follow from more gregarious behavior (Davydenko et al., 2020). Over time, shy people may be more likely to encounter neglect

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and rejection than understanding and empathy, and such outcomes may reinforce their shyness. Indeed, shy people make new friends much more slowly than do those who are not shy, and the friendships they do have tend to be less satisfying and supportive, too (Asendorpf & Wilpers, 1998). As a result, they also tend to be lonelier than those who are not shy (Fung et al., 2017). And these

effects are consequential; on average, shy spouses are less happily married than are those who are less shy (Tackett et al., 2013).

Thus, shy behavior may make one’s shyness even worse, and obviously, it’s usually better to feel confident than shy in social life. Now, on occasion, shyness can be useful; when people really are confronted with novel situations and don’t know how to behave, brief bouts of shy caution may keep them from doing something inappropriate (Leary & Jongman-Sereno, 2014). More often, however, shy people run scared from the threat of social disapproval that hasn’t occurred and never will, so their shyness is an unnec- essary and counterproductive burden (Miller, 2009). Formal programs that help people overcome chronic shyness often teach them a more positive frame of mind, helping them to manage their anxiety about social evaluation. The programs also teach social skills, focusing on how to initiate conversations and how to be assertive. Both positive thinking and effective behavior are then rehearsed in role-playing assignments and other practice settings until the clients feel comfortable enough to try them on their own (Henderson et al., 2014).

However, most shy people probably do not need formal training in interaction skills because they do just fine when they relax and quit worrying about how they’re

A Point to Ponder

Think back to the last time you timidly chose not to speak to someone you wanted to meet. How’d that work out for you?

Shy concern over others’ evaluations

Negative impressions on others; perceived to

be aloof, unsociable, and unfriendly

Timid, reticent, and awkward social behavior;

low eye contact, low self-disclosure, and

low responsiveness

Others’ responses are less engaging, less self-disclosing, and

more distant

FIGURE 7.2. Interpersonal effects of shyness. Shy behavior makes negative impressions on others, often creating the unfavorable evaluations that shy people fear. Poorer interactions result, fueling the shy person’s fears, and the cycle continues.

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being judged. If you’re troubled by shyness now, you may make better impressions on others if you actually care less about what they think. Evidence for this possibility comes from an intriguing study by Mark Leary (1986), who asked people to meet and greet a stranger in a noisy environment that was said to simulate a crowded singles bar. Leary created a multi-track tape of overlapping conversations, three different songs, radio static, and party noise (such as laughing and yelling)—it was definitely “noise”— and played it at a mildly obnoxious level as each couple conversed. Importantly, the tape was always played at the same volume, but some people were told that the noise was so loud that it would probably interfere with their conversation and make it hard for them to have a nice chat, whereas others were told that the noise was soft enough that it wouldn’t be a problem. Once these expectations were in place, people who were either shy or not shy were left alone with a stranger—a setting that is ordinarily threat- ening to shy people. Leary monitored the heart rates of his participants to track their anxiety and arousal, and Table 7.5 shows what he found. When the noise was “soft” and there wasn’t a good excuse for their interactions to go poorly, shy people exhibited considerably more arousal than normal people did; their heart rates increased 3 times as much, which is typical among those who are shy (Shimizu et al., 2011). Even worse, they looked obviously shy and uncomfortable to people who later watched videotapes of their conversations. On the other hand, when they had an excuse—the impossibly “loud” noise—that lowered everyone’s expectations, they behaved as if they weren’t shy at all. They exhibited a normal, moderate increase in heart rate as their interactions began and gave observers no clue that they were usually shy.

That’s impressive. If they couldn’t be blamed if their interactions went badly, the shy people in Leary’s (1986) study stayed relatively relaxed and conducted their con- versations without difficulty. When the threat of personal failure was removed from an upcoming interaction, their shyness disappeared. Their shyness, then, was not the result of some persistent lack of skill; it depended on the context in which interaction occurred. Similarly, shy people are much more relaxed when they interact with others relatively anonymously and at their own pace online (Weidman et al., 2012). But add webcams to the mix, so shy people can see and be seen by their online partners, and

TABLE 7.5. Doing Better with an Excuse for Failure

In Leary’s (1986) study, when noise that was said to be impossibly “loud” gave shy people an excuse for their interactions to go badly, they behaved no differently than did people who were not shy. In contrast, “soft” noise that was not supposed to interfere with their conversations left them tense and anxious, even though the noise was played at exactly the same volume in both the “loud” and “soft” conditions.

Change in Heart Rate (in beats per minute)

Noise Volume

Participants’ Chronic Shyness “Soft” “Loud”

Low 5.3 4.7 High 15.8 4.5

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their reticence returns; their self-disclosure drops and their shyness is again apparent (Brunet & Schmidt, 2007).

If their shyness comes and goes depending on whether others can see them, peo- ple (and this probably includes you if you feel shy) don’t need additional training in basic social skills. What they do need is greater calm and self- confidence (Arroyo & Harwood, 2011), and although that may not be easy to come by, shy people should consider the alternative: They’re not winning friends and influencing people by acting shy, so what do they have to lose by trusting themselves and expecting interactions to go well? If you’re shy, instead of thinking about yourself the next time you make a new acquaintance, simply try to find out as much as you can about the other person.8 Things will probably go better than you expect (Margolis & Lyubomirsky, 2020).

Loneliness

It’s one thing to feel anxious and timid in social settings and another to feel dissatis- fied, deprived, and distressed because you have no intimate friends. The unpleasant boredom, sadness, and desperation of loneliness occur when there is an unhappy dis- crepancy between the number and quality of partnerships we want and those we have (Cacioppo et al., 2015). Loneliness isn’t the same as being alone; we can often feel very content in complete solitude, at least for a while (Leary et al., 2003). Instead, loneliness occurs when we want more, or more satisfying, connections with others than we presently have, and “one can feel lonely in a crowd or in a marriage” (Cacioppo et al., p. 239). Indeed, if your relationships with others are too superficial, it’s possible to be lonely even if you’re married (Stokes, 2017) and surrounded by others, with lots of Facebook “friends.”

Loneliness has different facets. Theorist Robert Weiss (1973) was the first to suggest that we can suffer either social loneliness, being dissatisfied because we lack a social network of friends and acquaintances, or emotional loneliness, being lonely because we lack affection and emotional support from at least one intimate relationship. Both ele- ments of loneliness can be found on the UCLA Loneliness Scale, the measure most widely used in research on loneliness in adults (see Table 7.6). The scale has three themes (Hawkley et al., 2005). The first is isolation from others. Lonely people feel alone and less in contact with others than they want to be. They also feel less close connection to others than they wish to have. They perceive their relationships with oth- ers to be less meaningful and close than they wish they were. And finally, loneliness also results from experiencing too little social connection to people in general. Lonely people feel that they have insufficient ties to a network of friends and playmates, so they get too little pleasure and social support from their interactions with others.

Unfortunately, a lot of us are lonely. More than one out of every four Americans (27 percent) are emotionally lonely, and another 12 percent say they suffer from both social and emotional loneliness (Hyland et al., 2019). More than a third of us are distressed by a lack of sufficient intimacy in our lives. And because people usually grow less lonely as they age (and if they marry), loneliness is even more prevalent in young adults than in anyone else (Bruce et al., 2019).

8The box on page 273 has some tips on how to proceed.

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TABLE 7.6. The UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3)

Instructions: The following statements describe how people sometimes feel. For each state- ment, please indicate how often you feel the way described by writing a number in the space provided. Here is an example:

How often do you feel happy?

If you never feel happy, you would respond “never”; if you always feel happy, you would respond “always.”

NEVER RARELY SOMETIMES ALWAYS

1 2 3 4

*1. How often do you feel that you are “in tune” with the people around you? ___

2. How often do you feel that you lack companionship? ___

3. How often do you feel that there is no one you can turn to? ___

4. How often do you feel alone? ___

*5. How often do you feel part of a group of friends? ___

*6. How often do you feel that you have a lot in common with the people around you? ___

7. How often do you feel that you are no longer close to anyone? ___

8. How often do you feel that your interests and ideas are not shared by those around you? ___

*9. How often do you feel outgoing and friendly? ___

*10. How often do you feel close to people? ___

11. How often do you feel left out? ___

12. How often do you feel that your relationships with others are not meaningful? ___

13. How often do you feel that no one really knows you well? ___

14. How often do you feel isolated from others? ___ *15. How often do you feel you can find companionship when you want it? ___ *16. How often do you feel that there are people who really understand you? ___

17. How often do you feel shy? ___

18. How often do you feel that people are around you but not with you? ___

*19. How often do you feel that there are people you can talk to? ___

*20. How often do you feel that there are people you can turn to? ___

Source: Russell, D. W. (1996). “The UCLA Loneliness Scale (Version 3): Reliability, validity and factorial structure,” Journal of Personality Assessment, 66, 20–40. Copyright 1996 by Taylor & Francis. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

Note that the word “lonely” does not appear on the scale. This is intentional. Men are less willing than women to admit that they’re lonely, so none of the items uses the term. To determine your score, reverse the rating you provided on the items with an asterisk. If your answer was 1, change it to a 4; a 2 becomes a 3; 3 becomes 2, and 4 becomes 1. Then, add up your answers. Young men tend to be lonelier than women, and their average total is 42. The average for young women is 39 (Russell, 1996). The standard deviation of the scores for both sexes is 9.5. So, you’re lonelier than most men if your score is 53 or higher, and you’re lonelier than most women if your score is 49 or higher. You’re less lonely than most men if your score is 31 or lower, and less lonely than most women if your score is 29 or lower. By the way, the average score for elderly people is 32. How do you compare to them?

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This is not good news. People suffer when they are poorly connected to others. Back in chapter 1, I suggested that humans have a need to belong, and loneliness is an example of what happens when the need goes unsatisfied. Compared to those with richer, more satisfying friendships, lonely people have chronically higher blood pressure and higher levels of stress hormones in their blood. They sleep more poorly and their immune systems don’t work as well (Cacioppo et al., 2015); they catch colds more easily (LeRoy et al., 2017). And over time, the wear and tear of loneliness may have very noticeable effects on general well-being; around the world, lonely people over the age of 50 are more likely to die in the next 6 years than are those with richer connec- tions to others (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015). When it is prolonged, loneliness may have very deleterious effects on our health.

The good news, however, is that loneliness is often a temporary state. A period of separation from one’s social network can cause anyone distress, but it may be short- lived, ending in reunion or the development of new friendships. The bad news is that some of the personal characteristics that are associated with loneliness are lasting traits that change only gradually—if at all—over time. For one thing, loneliness is heritable. That is, nearly half of the variation in loneliness from person to person (45 percent) is due to genetic influences that are inherited at birth (Spithoven et al., 2019). Some of us are literally born being more likely than others to experience bouts of loneliness throughout our lives (Mund et al., 2020). Indeed, people’s personalities also predict how lonely they will turn out to be; higher levels of extraversion, agreeableness, and conscientiousness are all linked to lower loneliness, whereas higher negative emotional- ity increases the chances that we will be lonely (Buecker et al., 2020).

Loneliness also varies with other attributes that are somewhat more changeable. Insecure attachment is one. Both dimensions of attachment—anxiety about abandon- ment and avoidance of intimacy—are related to loneliness, and the less anxious and less avoidant people are, the less lonely they tend to be (Givertz et al., 2013). Self- esteem is another. Consistent with the sociometer model of self-esteem,9 people who don’t have satisfying, fulfilling connections to others tend not to like themselves very much: Lonely people tend to have low self-esteem (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009).

Men are lonelier than women on average (Bruce et al., 2019), but a lot depends on whether they are currently close to a female partner. Because women often have close friendships with other women, they usually enjoy plenty of intimacy in their lives even when they’re not dating anyone. As we saw back on page 202, though, most heterosexual men share relatively superficial interactions with other men, and they tend to really open up only when they’re with a woman. Thus, most men seem to be depen- dent on women to avoid being lonely in a way that women are not dependent on them in return (as Table 7.7 shows).

It’s actually more correct, however, to say that it’s macho men who need women to keep from being lonely. People who are warm, sensitive, and kind—that is, who are high in expressivity—tend not to be lonely (Wheeler et al., 1983). Women tend to be high in expressivity, and that’s a primary reason why they tend to be less lonely than men. But androgynous men are also high in expressivity, and unlike their more traditional macho brothers, they are not more lonely than women are. So, the global difference between

9Need a reminder about the sociometer model? Take a look back at page 32.

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men and women in loneliness appears to be a gender difference rather than a sex differ- ence. People who are low in expressivity (and that includes most men) tend toward loneliness when they are not paired with an expressive partner who brings intimacy into their lives, but many men (about a third of them) are just as expressive as most women (Bem, 1993), and they do not rely on women to keep from being lonely.

Finally, when people are lonely, they’re not much fun. Their distress and despera- tion is evident in negative attitudes toward others (Segel-Karpas & Ayalon, 2020). Ironically, lonely people tend to mistrust and dislike the very people from whom they seek acceptance and regard. Perhaps as a result, their interactions are usually drab and dull (Arpin & Mohr, 2019). Lonely people are slow to respond to things that are said to them, they don’t ask many questions, and they read rejection into innocent utter- ances from others (Spithoven et al., 2017), so they’re not much fun to chat with. In addition, they don’t self-disclose much; their conversation is usually shallow and incon- sequential, so it’s hard for them to develop the intimacy they seek (Cacioppo & Hawkley, 2009).

Unfortunately, none of this escapes notice. The cynical outlook and dull, half- hearted manner of lonely people often elicit negative reactions from others, who typically feel that they don’t know or like them very much (Tsai & Reis, 2009). Loneliness is thus similar to shyness in being potentially self- perpetuating, but it probably has more potent effects. Whereas shy behavior is essentially innocuous and aloof, lonely behavior is more corrosive and obnoxious. Shy people just keep their distance, but lonely people irritate and annoy us. On college campuses, lonely stu- dents have just as many interactions with their peers as anyone else, but they experi- ence fewer positive outcomes such as support and affection and more negative outcomes such as conflict and distrust (Hawkley et al., 2005). Thus, even when they are surrounded by other people, lonely people often behave in off-putting ways that can make their loneliness worse.

To add insult to injury, loneliness can also lead to depression (Vanhalst et al., 2012). Depression is a broader, more global state of dissatisfaction and distress than loneliness is—loneliness emerges from interpersonal troubles, whereas depression stems from losses and setbacks of all sorts (Weeks et al., 1980)—but each can fuel the other, and being depressed makes it even harder to behave in effective ways that are inviting

TABLE 7.7.  Loneliness in Men and Women with and without Romantic Partners

The table lists loneliness scores of young adults who do have romantic partners alongside the scores of those who do not. Women’s loneliness does not depend much on whether or not they currently have a romantic partner, but men’s loneliness does; heterosexual men are much more lonely, on average, when they do not have an intimate relationship with a female partner.

With a Romantic Partner

Without a Romantic Partner

Men 16.9 31.2

Women 20.2 24.3

Source: Data from Wheeler, L., Reis, H., & Nezlek, J. (1983). “Loneliness, social interaction, and sex roles,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 45, 943–953.

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Are Your Facebook “Friends” Really Your Friends?

Well, sure, some of the people you’ve friended on Facebook are confidants and companions who are clearly good friends. But if you’re a typical young-adult user, most of the people on your list of “Friends” are either mere acquaintances or strangers you’ve never met (Miller et al., 2014), and you’ve accepted friend requests from people you actually dislike be- cause you were too timid to tell them to go away and leave you alone or you wanted to monitor their movements (Vendemia et al., 2017). Your list also contains hundreds of “friends,” but if you see their profile pictures (and if you’re like most people), you can remember the names of only 73 percent of them (Croom et al., 2016). And only a small fraction of them know you very well, have real affection for you, and will drive you to the airport when you’re leaving on a trip. So, of course, only a few of them meet our definition of friendship on page 267.

In fact, Facebook isn’t all that much in- volved in close friendships. Offline intimacy is associated with fewer back-and-forth conversa- tions on Facebook (Ivcevic & Ambady, 2013); when two people are really close, they tend to conduct more of their interactions through other channels. Moreover, people who spend a lot of time on Facebook tend to have more Facebook “friends” than the rest of us, but they don’t have more face-to-face friends, and they aren’t any closer to the offline friends they have (Pollet et al., 2011). Instead, what Face- book does well is to expand our casual social networks; we efficiently stay in touch with a wider variety of people and hear about more parties and other social events (Aubrey & Rill, 2013). And active participation on Facebook can combat loneliness; when researchers asked lonely people to post more than they usually do, they felt more connected to others and were less lonely a week later (Deters & Mehl, 2013), particularly when their posts re- sulted in personal, one-on-one comments in- stead of a bunch of one-click “likes” (Burke & Kraut, 2016).

However, Facebook has disadvantages, too. If you’re not entertaining, you may get a

cool reception from others. For instance, people with low self-esteem think Facebook is a safe place to open up to the world, but their dreary, dispirited posts don’t get many “likes”—and that can reinforce their low self- esteem (Forest & Wood, 2012). And we may find that everybody else seems to be having a great deal of fun that we missed completely, and envy and disappointment can result (Krasnova et al., 2015). And constant com- ments and updates from minor players in one’s life can be so tedious and wearying that most users have at least once taken a “Face- book vacation” and ignored the site for sev- eral weeks or more (Gramlich, 2019).

However, an even greater danger arises when time spent on Facebook and other social media replaces face-to-face interaction that pro- vides much richer rewards (Twenge et al., 2019). Heavy users of Facebook (and Instagram and Snapchat) are actually lonelier than light users are (Phu & Gow, 2019), and when college stu- dents are randomly selected to limit their use of those platforms to 10 minutes each per day, they become less lonely and less depressed (Hunt et al., 2018). We’re generally happier when we can connect with others online than when we can’t (Stieger & Lewetz, 2018), but the sweet spot ap- pears to be 30 to 60 minutes online per day; our well-being gradually decreases after an hour as we spend more time on social media (Twenge et al., 2020).

The bottom line is that sprawling social networks filled with acquaintances are no substitute for rich, intimate friendships offline. Nearly all of our genuinely meaningful interac- tions with our intimates take place offline (Hall, 2018), and “human social needs cannot be satisfied merely by a large number of social contacts” (Lee & Ko, 2018, p. 1341).

We can’t depend on our Facebook “friends” for much social support (Li et al., 2015), and scrolling through our Newsfeeds usually does not make us happy or improve our satisfaction with life—but time spent in the company of real friends does (Sun et al., 2020).

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to others (Baddeley et al., 2013). In addition to being gloomy and glum, depressed people engage in an obnoxious pattern of excessive reassurance seeking: They persistently probe for assurances that others like and accept them but doubt the sincerity of such declarations when they are received (Haeffel et al., 2007). Discontent and anxious, they continue to seek more convincing comfort and gradually wear out their partners’ patience (Lemay & Cannon, 2012).

None of this is pleasant. What are lonely people to do? If you’re lonely now, the last few pages may seem pretty pessimistic, but all is certainly not lost. Some people are more likely than others to encounter loneliness, but the situations we encounter are clearly inf luential, too (Larose et al., 2002). Adverse circumstances can cause anyone to become lonely—but circumstances change, and it’s important to remain hopeful. Loneliness need not last. Indeed, when young adults were hyp- notized and asked to think of experiences involving friendship and belongingness, they were less shy, more sociable, happier, and less lonely than they were when they focused on feelings of loneliness (Cacioppo et al., 2006). One’s outlook can make a tremendous difference.

In particular, the explanations one generates for one’s current distress are important (Vanhalst et al., 2015). College freshmen overcome loneliness more read- ily when they attribute their distress to unstable, short-lived inf luences rather than to lasting deficiencies in either themselves or others (Cutrona, 1982). Judging one’s loneliness to be the result of temporary or changeable difficulties offers the opti- mistic possibility that things will improve, and hopefulness is more likely to cure loneliness than dour pessimism is (Newall et al., 2009). Furthermore, because lone- liness emerges from the discrepancy between the partnerships we want and those we’ve got, lonely people should be careful not to set their sights too high. For instance, students who move away from home to go to school are usually lonely for a while; it comes with the (new, unfamiliar) territory (Weeks et al., 1980). But over the ensuing year, those who simply seek to make new friends usually succeed and become less lonely, whereas those who hunt for a compelling romance are usually disappointed and remain dejected (Cutrona, 1982).

To overcome loneliness then, we should seek new friendships, not romances, and to do that we need to be friendly. If you’re lonely now, watch out for any sour, self-defeating attitudes (Cacioppo et al., 2015). Are you beginning to think that people are generally selfish, shallow, and uncaring? That negative outlook is almost certainly making you less charming, and it may become a self-fulfilling prophecy: What you expect may be what you get. Indeed, if you take a more positive approach— focusing on others’ good qualities, expecting them to be pleasant, and patiently recognizing that friendship takes time—you’ll probably enjoy more rewarding interac- tions with others.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Don and Teddi became best friends when they went through graduate school together. They started their studies the same year and took the same classes, and they worked together on several projects outside of class. They learned that they were both conscientious

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and clever, and they came to respect and trust each other completely. Each learned the other’s most intimate secrets. They also had great fun together. They were both noncon- formists, and they shared a wry and offbeat sense of humor; they would frequently laugh at jokes that nobody else seemed to get. The night that Teddi finished her doctoral dis- sertation, they got drunk and almost had sex, but they were interrupted and the moment passed. And soon thereafter, they graduated and took jobs in different parts of the country; he moved to California and she went to Minnesota. Now, 6 years later, they have both married, and they see each other only every year or so at professional meetings.

Having read this chapter, what do you think the future holds for Don and Teddi’s friendship? Why?

KEY TERMS

friendship...................................... p. 267 capitalization................................ p. 268 invisible support........................... p. 270 perceived partner  responsiveness ........................ p. 272 rules for relationships.................. p. 273 dyadic withdrawal......................... p. 278 socioemotional selectivity  theory......................................... p. 278

emotional sharing........................ p. 280 shared activities........................... p. 280 relational self-construals............. p. 284 Dark Triad.................................... p. 284 shyness.......................................... p. 286 loneliness...................................... p. 290 social loneliness........................... p. 290 emotional loneliness.................... p. 290

CHAPTER SUMMARY

The Nature of Friendship

Our friendships are indispensable sources of pleasure and support.

Attributes of Friendships. Close friendships are genuinely intimate relationships that involve affection, communion, and companionship, but they are usually less passionate and committed than romances are. They involve

• Respect. We usually admire our friends and hold them in high esteem. • Trust. We confidently expect benevolent treatment from our friends. • Capitalization. Friends usually respond eagerly and energetically to our happy outcomes, sharing our delight and reinforcing our pleasure.

• Social support. This comes in various forms, including affection, advice, and mate- rial assistance. Some people are better providers of social support than others are, and the best support fits our needs and preferences. Invisible support that goes unnoticed by the recipient is sometimes very beneficial, but perceived support is very important; it’s not what people do for us but what we think they do for us that matters in the long run.

• Responsiveness. Friends provide attentive and supportive recognition of our needs and interests, and perceived partner responsiveness is powerfully rewarding.

The Rules of Friendship. Friendships also have rules, shared beliefs within a culture about how friends should (and should not) behave.

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Friendship across the Life Cycle

Childhood. As children grow and mature, their friendships gradually grow richer and more complex. The sophisticated ways in which adults conduct their friendships are years in the making.

Adolescence. During the teen years, adolescents increasingly turn to their friends for the satisfaction of important attachment needs.

Young Adulthood. After college, people tend to interact with fewer friends, but they have deeper relationships with the friends they have.

Midlife. Dyadic withdrawal occurs as people see more of a lover; they see less of their friends (but a lot more of their in-laws).

Old Age. Socioemotional selectivity theory suggests that seniors aim for quality, not quantity, in their friendships.

Differences in Friendship

Gender Differences in Same-Sex Friendships. Women’s friendships are usually characterized by emotional sharing and self-disclosure, whereas men’s friendships revolve around shared activities, companionship, and competition.

Individual Differences in Friendship. Most gays and lesbians have heterosexual friends, but most heterosexuals do not (think that they) have gay or lesbian friends. Relational self-construals lead people to emphasize their relationships rather than their independence. And it’s best to beware of people with high levels of the Dark Triad traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy; they’re usually callous and manipulative.

Friendship Difficulties

Shyness. Shy people fear social disapproval and behave timidly, often making the negative impressions that they were hoping to avoid. Many shy people interact comfortably with others when they are given an excuse for things to go poorly, so they need increased self-confidence instead of better social skills.

Loneliness. Dissatisfaction and distress occur when we want more, or more satisfying, connections with others, and both social loneliness and emotional loneliness may be involved. Loneliness results from genetic influences, insecure attachment, low self-esteem, and low expressivity. It is associated with negative attitudes and drab interactions that are unappealing to others. Hopeful attributions and reasonable expectations are helpful in overcoming loneliness.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Enthusiastically celebrate your partner’s good news and successes. • Ask your partner what you can do for them… • …but when they’re stressed, do things to lighten their load without being asked.

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• Strive to show your partner that you care for them, understand them, and support them. • Follow the rules of friendship. • Make time for your friends. • A few close friends are more valuable than lots of casual friends. Prioritize friend- ship quality over quantity.

• Steer clear of those who turn out to be callous and manipulative or selfish and self-important.

• Remember that people don’t much care how well you dance; they’ll just like you better if you do dance with them than if you don’t.

• When you’re lonely, don’t despair. Be friendly, and seek new companionships, not romances.

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Vanhalst, J., Soenens, B., Luyckx, & . . . Asher, S. R. (2015). Why do the lonely stay lonely? Chronically lonely adolescents’ attributions and emotions in situations of social inclusion and exclusion. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 109, 932–948.

Vendemia, M. A., High, A. C., & DeAndrea, D. A. (2017). “Friend” or foe? Why people friend disliked others on Facebook. Communication Research Reports, 34, 29–36.

Verhofstadt, L. L. L., Lemmens, G. M. D., & Buysse, A. (2013). Support-seeking, support-provision and support-perception in distressed married couples: A multi-method analysis. Journal of Family Therapy, 35, 320–339.

Waas, G. A., & Graczyk, P. A. (1998). Group interventions for the peer-rejected child. In K. C. Stoiber & T. R. Kratochwill (Eds.), Handbook of group intervention for children and families (pp. 141–158). Allyn & Bacon.

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C H A P T E R 8

Love

A Brief History of Love ♦ Types of Love ♦ Individual and Cultural DifferenCes in Love ♦ Does Love Last? ♦ For Your Consideration 

♦ Key terms ♦ Chapter summary ♦ suggestions for satisfaCtion ♦ referenCes

Here’s an interesting question: If someone had all the other qualities you desired in a spouse, would you marry that person if you were not in love with him or her? Most of us reading this book would say no: Huge majorities of American men and women consider romantic love to be necessary for marriage (Sprecher & Hatfield, 2017). Along with all the other characteristics people want in a spouse—such as warmth, good looks, and dependability—young adults in Western cultures insist on romance and passion as a condition for marriage (Geiger & Livingston, 2019). What makes this remarkable is that it’s such a new thing. Throughout history, the choice of a spouse has usually had little to do with romantic love (Finkel, 2017); people married each other for political, economic, practical, and family reasons, but they did not marry because they were in love with each other. Even in North America, people began to consider love to be a requirement for marriage only a few decades ago. In 1967, 76 percent of women and 35 percent of men would have married an otherwise perfect partner whom they did not love (Kephart, 1967). These days, most people would refuse such a marriage.

In a sense, then, we have embarked on a bold experiment. Never before, until now, have people considered love to be an essential reason to marry (Coontz, 2005). People experience romantic passion all over the world, but there are still many places where it has little to do with their choice of a spouse. North Ame ricans, though, use romance as a reason to marry to an unprecedented degree (Hatfield & Rapson, 2008). Is this a good idea? If there are various overlapping types of “love” and different types of lovers—and worse, if passion and romance decline over time—marriages based on love may often be prone to confusion and, perhaps, disappointment.

Consideration of these possibilities lies ahead. I’ll start with a brief history of love and then ponder different varieties of love and different types of lovers. Then, I’ll finish with a key question: Does love last? (What do you think the answer is?)

A BRIEF HISTORY OF LOVE

Our modern belief that spouses should love one another is just one of many perspec- tives with which different cultures have viewed the experience of love (Hunt, 1959). Over the ages, attitudes toward love have varied on at least four dimensions:

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• Cultural value. Is love a desirable or undesirable state? • Sexuality. Should love be sexual or nonsexual? • Sexual orientation. Should love involve heterosexual or same-sex partners? • Marital status. Should we love our spouses, or is love reserved for others?

Different societies have drawn upon these dimensions to create some strikingly differ- ent patterns of what love is, or should be.

In ancient Greece, for instance, passionate attraction to another person was con- sidered a form of madness that had nothing to do with marriage or family life. Instead, the Greeks admired platonic love, the nonsexual adoration of a beloved person that was epitomized by the feelings shared by two men.

In ancient Egypt, people of royal blood often married their siblings, and in ancient Rome, “the purpose of marriage was to produce children, make favorable alliances, and establish a bloodline . . . it was hoped that husband and wife would be friends and get on amiably. Happiness was not part of the deal, nor was pleasure. Sex was for creating babies” (Ackerman, 1994, p. 37).

Heterosexual love took on more positive connotations in the concept of “courtly love” in the twelfth century. Courtly love required knights to seek love as a noble quest, diligently devoting themselves to a lady of high social standing. It was very idealistic, very elegant, and—at least in theory—nonsexual. It was also explicitly adulterous: In courtly love, the male partner was expected to be unmarried and the female partner married to someone else! In the Middle Ages, marriage continued to have nothing to do with romance; in contrast, it was a deadly serious matter of politics and property. Indeed, passionate, erotic desire for someone was thought to be “dangerous, a trapdoor leading to hell, which was not even to be condoned between husband and wife” (Ackerman, 1994, p. 46).

Over the next 500 years, people came to believe that passionate love could be desir- able and ennobling but that it was usually doomed. Either the lovers would be prevented from being with each other (often because they were married to other people), or death would overtake one or the other (or both) before their love could be fulfilled. It was not until the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries that Europeans, especially the Eng- lish, began to believe that romantic passion could occasionally result in a happy ending. Still, the notion that one ought to feel passion and romance for one’s husband or wife was not a widespread idea; indeed, in the late 1700s, defenders of “traditional marriage” were generally horrified by the emergence of love as a reason for marriage. Marriage was thought to be “too vital an economic and political institution to be entered into solely on the basis of something as irrational as love” (Coontz, 2015, p. 8).

Even now, the assumption that romantic love should be linked to marriage is held only in some regions of the world (Merali, 2012). Nevertheless, you probably do think love and marriage go together. Why should your beliefs be different from those of most people throughout history? Why has the acceptance of and e nthusiasm for marrying for love been most complete in North America (H atfield & Ra pson, 2008)? Probably because of America’s individualism and economic prosperity (which allow most young adults to live away from home and choose their own marital partners) and its lack of a caste system or ruling class. The notion that individuals (instead of families) should choose marriage partners because of emotional attachments (not economic concerns) makes more sense to Americans than it does to many other peoples of the world. In

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most places, the idea that a young adult should leave home, fall in love, decide to marry, and then bring the beloved home to meet the family seems completely absurd (Buunk et al., 2010). This is slowly changing, as technology and socioeconomic devel- opment spread around the world (Manglos-Weber & Weinreb, 2017), but for now, the marital practices of North Americans strike most folks as odd.

In any case, let’s consider all the different views of love we just encountered:

• Love is doomed. • Love is madness. • Love is a noble quest. • Love need not involve sex. • Love and marriage go together. • Love can be happy and fulfilling. • Love has little to do with marriage. • The best love occurs among people of the same sex.

Some of these distinctions simply reflect ordinary cultural and historical variations (Eastwick, 2013). However, these different views may also reflect an important fact: There may be diverse forms of love. Let’s ponder that possibility.

TYPES OF LOVE

Advice columnist Ann Landers was once contacted by a woman who was perplexed because her consuming passion for her lover fizzled soon after they were married. Ms. Landers suggested that what the woman had called “the love affair of the century” was “not love at all. It was one set of glands calling to another” (Landers, 1982, p. 2). There was a big distinction, Ms. Landers asserted, between horny infat- uation and real love, which was deeper and richer than mere passion. Love was based in tolerance, care, and communication, Landers argued; it was “friendship that has caught fire” (p. 12).

Does that phrase characterize your experiences with romantic love? Is there a difference between romantic love and infatuation? According to a leading theory of love experiences, the answer to both questions is probably “yes.”

The Triangular Theory of Love

Robert Sternberg (1987, 2019) proposed that three different building blocks combine to form different types of love. The first component of love is intimacy, which includes the feelings of warmth, understanding, trust, support, and sharing that often character- ize loving relationships. The second component is passion, which is characterized by physical arousal and desire, excitement, and need. Passion often takes the form of sexual longing, but any strong emotional need that is satisfied by one’s partner fits this category. The final ingredient of love is commitment, which includes feelings of per- manence, stability, and the decisions to devote oneself to a relationship and to work to maintain it. Commitment is mainly cognitive in nature, whereas intimacy is emo- tional and passion is a motive, or drive. The “heat” in loving relationships is assumed

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to come from passion, and the warmth from intimacy; in contrast, commitment can be a cool-headed decision that is not emotional or temperamental at all.

In Sternberg’s theory, each of these three components is said to be one side of a triangle that describes the love two people share. Each component can vary in intensity from low to high, so triangles of various sizes and shapes are possible. In fact, count- less numbers of shapes can occur, so to keep things simple, we’ll consider the relatively pure categories of love that result when one or more of the three ingredients is plenti- ful but the others are very low. As we proceed, you should remember that pure experi- ences that are this clearly defined may not be routine in real life.

Nonlove. If intimacy, passion, and commitment are all absent, love does not exist. Instead, you have a casual, superficial, uncommitted relationship between people who are probably just acquaintances, not friends.

Liking. Liking occurs when intimacy is high but passion and commitment are very low. Liking occurs in friendships with real closeness and warmth that do not arouse passion or the expectation that you will spend the rest of your life with that person. If a friend does arouse passion or is missed terribly when he or she is gone, the relationship has gone beyond liking and has become something else.

Infatuation. Strong passion in the absence of intimacy or commitment is infatua- tion, which is what people experience when they are aroused by others they barely know. Sternberg (1987) admits that he pined away for a girl in his 10th-grade biology class whom he never got up the courage to get to know. This, he now acknowledges, was nothing but passion. He was infatuated with her.

Empty love. Commitment without intimacy or passion is empty love. In Western cultures, this type of love may occur in burned-out relationships in which the warmth and passion have died, and the decision to stay together is the only thing that remains. However, in other cultures in which marriages are arranged, empty love may be the first, rather than final, stage in the spouses’ lives together.

None of the categories I’ve mentioned so far may seem much like love to you. That’s probably because each is missing some important ingredient that we associate with being in love—and that is precisely Sternberg’s point. Love is a multifaceted experience, and that becomes clear when we combine the three components of love to create more complex states.

Combinations of the Three Components of Love

Romantic love. When high intimacy and passion occur together, people experience romantic love. Thus, one way to think about romantic love is as a combination of liking and infatuation. People often become committed to their romances, but Stern- berg argues that commitment is not a defining characteristic of romantic love.

1When people experience “love” at first sight, they usually feel physical attraction but no particular intimacy, passion, or commitment (Zsok et al., 2017). Does that change your answer? Why?

A Point to Ponder

According to Sternberg’s triangular theory, is it possible for us to experience love at first sight?1

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A summer love affair can be very romantic, for instance, even when both lovers know that it is going to end when the summer is over.

Companionate love. Intimacy and commitment combine to form love for a close companion, or companionate love. Here, closeness, communication, and sharing are coupled with substantial investment in the relationship as the partners work to maintain a deep, long-term friendship. Companionate love is epitomized by a long, happy marriage in which the couple’s youthful passion has gradually died down.

Fatuous love. Passion and commitment in the absence of intimacy create a foolish experience called fatuous love. (“Fatuous” means “stupid” and “lacking substance.”) This type of love can occur in whirlwind courtships in which two partners marry quickly on the basis of overwhelming passion but don’t know (or necessarily like) each other very well. In a sense, such lovers invest a lot in an infatuation—and that’s a risky business.

Consummate love. Finally, when intimacy, passion, and commitment are all present to a substantial degree, people experience “complete,” or consummate, love. This is the type of love many people seek, but Sternberg (1987) suggests that it’s a lot like losing weight: easy to do for a while, but hard to maintain over time.

Thus, according to the triangular theory of love, diverse experiences can underlie the simple expression “I love you” (as you can see in Table 8.1). Another complication that makes love tricky is that the three components can change over time, so that people may encounter various types of love in a given relationship (Ahmetoglu et al., 2010). Of the three, however, passion is assumed to be the most variable by far. It is also the least controllable, so that we may find our desire for others soaring and then evaporating rapidly in changes we cannot consciously control (Sternberg, 1987).

Love can last a lifetime. But what kind of love do you think this couple shares? Comstock Images

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Is the theory right? Are these assertions accurate? Consider that, if the triangular theory’s characterization of romantic love is correct, one of its key ingredients is a high level of passion that simply may not last. There’s much to consider in wondering whether love lasts, however, so I’ll put that off for a while. For now, I’ll note that the three com- ponents of intimacy, passion, and commitment do all appear to be important aspects of loving relationships; in particular, each of the three components makes a loving relation- ship more satisfying, and the most rewarding romances contain big servings of all three ingredients (Fletcher et al., 2015).

A Physiological Perspective

Studies of the physical foundations of love also suggest that passion and intimacy are distinct experiences. The regions of the brain that regulate our sexual desire for others appear to be different from those that manage our feelings of attachment and commitment to our lovers (Cacioppo, 2019). In some state-of-the-art studies of love, researchers use fMRI technology to examine the activity in people’s brains as they look at pictures of their lovers (as opposed to other people), and passion activates different areas of the brain than affection and commitment do, both in the United States (Ace- vedo & Aron, 2014) and in China (Xu et al., 2011). Thus, it really is possible to feel strong desire for those we do not love and to feel little passion for those to whom we are happily attached (Diamond, 2014). (But you probably already knew that.)

Indeed, theorist Helen Fisher (2006) argued that it makes evolutionary sense for there to be three interrelated but distinct biological systems that control components of love experiences. First, there’s lust, or the sex drive, which is regulated by the sex hormones. Lust drives successful reproduction by providing us the motivation to mate with others. Then there’s attraction, which promotes the pursuit of a particular pre- ferred romantic partner. Attraction drives pair-bonding by fueling romantic love, which is regulated by the neurotransmitter dopamine in specific regions of the brain that control feelings of reward (Cacioppo, 2019). Increased levels of dopamine may be responsible for the excitement and exhilaration that occur when we fall in love, explain- ing “why lovers feel euphoric, rejuvenated, optimistic, and energized, happy to sit up talking all night or making love for hours on end” (Ackerman, 1994, p. 165). Indeed,

TABLE 8.1. The Triangular Theory of Love: Types of Relationships

Intimacy Passion Commitment

Nonlove Low Low Low Liking High Low Low Infatuation Low High Low Empty love Low Low High Romantic love High High Low Companionate love High Low High Fatuous love Low High High Consummate love High High High

Source: Based on Sternberg, R. J. (2019). “When love goes awry (part I): Applications of the duplex theory of love and its development to relationships gone bad.” In R. J. Sternberg & K. Sternberg (Eds.), The new psychology of love (2nd ed., 280–299). Cambridge University Press.

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when people have just fallen in love, a look at their lovers makes pain not hurt as much. Romantic love also activates the areas of the brain that are affected by pain- relieving drugs, and sure enough, when they see their sweethearts, young lovers can shrug off pain (produced by a computer-controlled heating pad attached to a hand) that would be quite troubling under other circumstances (Younger et al., 2010). Finally, there’s attachment, a term used here to describe the feelings of comfort, security, and connection to a long-term mate that keep a couple together long enough to protect and sustain their very young children (Fletcher et al., 2015). Attachment drives com- panionate love, which is regulated by the neuropeptide oxytocin. (More on that later.)

Thus, we may be equipped with three different physiological systems that each evolved to facilitate some component of successful reproduction—and they support the triangular theory’s proposition that the related experiences of passion, intimacy, and commitment can vary separately and range from weak to strong at any given time. On the other hand, intimacy, passion, and commitment are clearly interrelated in many loving relationships (Whitley, 1993). For instance, if men become sexually aroused by inspecting porn, they report more love for their romantic partners than they do when they’re not turned on (Dermer & Pyszczynski, 1978).

As a result, as I warned you earlier, the clearly defined categories offered by the triangular theory may not seem so distinct in real life. People’s actual experiences of love are complex. For instance, a father’s love for his son is likely to resemble his love for his own father, but the two feelings are also likely to differ in meaningful ways that the triangular theory does not readily explain. Different types of love probably overlap in a messier, more confusing way than the theory implies (Fehr, 2019).

Nevertheless, the theory offers a very useful framework for addressing different types of love, and whether or not it is entirely correct, it identifies two types of love that may be especially likely to occur in most romantic relationships over the long haul. Let’s examine each of them more closely.

Romantic, Passionate Love

Has anyone ever told you, “I love you, but I’m not in love with you”? If so, it was probably bad news. As you probably knew, he or she was trying to say, “I like you, I care about you, I think you’re a marvelous person with wonderful q ualities and so forth, but I don’t find you sexually desirable” (Myers & Berscheid, 1997, p. 360). Just as the triangular theory of love proposes, sexual attraction (or passion) appears to be one of the defining characteristics of romantic love (Fehr, 2019). So, it’s disappointing if a romantic partner implies, “I just want us to be friends.”

The fact that romantic love involves passion is important. Passion involves activa- tion and arousal, and remarkably, any form of strong arousal, good or bad, can influ- ence our feelings of romantic love.

Arousal

A classic analysis of romantic love by Elaine Hatfield and Ellen Berscheid proposed that passionate attraction is rooted in two factors: (1) physiological arousal such as a fast heart beat that is coupled with (2) the belief that another person is the cause of your arousal (Berscheid & Walster, 1974). According to this two-factor perspective,

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romantic love is produced, or at least intensified, when feelings of arousal are associ- ated with the presence of another attractive person.

Now, imagine this: You’re in a park in North Vancouver, British Columbia, start- ing across a long, narrow bridge that is suspended by wire, hanging hundreds of feet over a deep gorge. The bridge bounces and tilts and sways as you walk across it, and it has a low wire railing that comes up only to your waist. Far, far below is a rocky creek, and (because you’re just like all the rest of us) you can’t help but feel some nervous excitement (or perhaps outright fear) as you make your way across. But, then, right in the middle of the precarious bridge, you encounter an attractive person of the other sex who asks you to answer a few questions. You’re shown a picture and asked to make up a story, and your interviewer thanks you warmly and invites you to call later if you have any questions. How attracted would you be to the person you met on the bridge?

This is just the question that was asked in a famous experiment by Dutton and Aron (1974), who sent attractive women to interview unaccompanied young men (between 19 and 35 years of age) either in the middle of the spooky suspension bridge or on another bridge that was stable and just a few feet off the ground in another part of the park. The stories that the men wrote were scored for sexual imagery, and Dutton and Aron found that the men on the swaying suspension bridge were thinking sexier thoughts than other men. In addition, those men were more likely to call the woman later at her home. They were more attracted to her, and the arousal—or fear—caused by the dangerous bridge had evidently fueled their interest in her. Other men who encountered the same woman in a less dramatic place found her less compelling. On the precarious bridge, fear had apparently fueled attraction.

If you meet a desirable person on this tilting, swaying, bouncing bridge, would you be more attracted to them than you would be if you met them on stable ground? (Likely, “yes.”)

Yingna Cai/Shutterstock

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Or had it? Could nervous excitement caused by a shaky bridge really be mistaken, at least in part, for romantic attraction to a stranger? Well, try this procedure: You’re a young man who runs in place for either 2 minutes or 15 seconds, so your pulse rate is high and you’re breathing hard, or you’re just a little more aroused than normal. Flushed with more or less arousal, you move to another room and inspect a video of a young woman whom you think you’re about to meet. You and other men all see the same woman, but, through some clever makeup, she looks either quite becoming or rather unattractive. What do you think of her? When real research participants reported their reactions, it was clear that high arousal intensified the men’s responses to the woman (White et al., 1981). The attrac- tive version of the woman was always preferred to the unattractive version, of course, but as you can see in Table 8.2, the men liked the attractive model even more—and liked the unattractive model even less—when they were aroused than when they were calm. High arousal magnified the guys’ responses, so that men who encountered an attractive woman when their pulses were racing thought that she was really hot.

Moreover, the effects of arousal on attraction do not depend on the type of arousal that is produced. In another procedure (White et al., 1981), men listened to one of three tapes:

• Negatively arousing. A description of the brutal mutilation and killing of a mission- ary while his family watched.

• Positively arousing. Selections from Steve Martin’s Grammy Award-winning comedy album, A Wild and Crazy Guy.2

• Neutral. A boring description of the circulatory system of a frog.

Thereafter, as before, the men viewed a video of a lovely or plain woman and provided their impressions of her. Arousal again fueled attraction, and it didn’t matter what type of arousal it was. When the men had experienced either type of strong emotion— whether by laughing hard at the funny material or by being disgusted by the gory material—they were more attracted to the appealing woman and less attracted to the unappealing woman than they were when they had listened to the boring biology tape.

The higher the scores, the more desirable the men judged the woman to be. The lovely woman was always judged to be more desirable than the unattractive woman, but a faster heart beat accentuated this effect: When their pulses were racing, men thought that an attrac- tive woman was more compelling and an unattrac tive woman was even less desirable.

TABLE 8.2. Arousal and Attraction

Attractiveness of the Woman

Arousal of the Men High Low

Low 26.1 15.1 High 32.4 9.4

Source: Data from White, G. L., Fishbein, S., & Rutstein, J. (1981). “Passionate love: The misattribution of arousal,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 41, 56–62.

2You’ve probably never heard this. You should.

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Taken together, these studies demonstrate that adrenaline fuels love. High arousal of various types, including simple exertion and amusement, all seem to be able to enhance our feelings of romantic attraction to desirable potential partners. Consider the implica- tions: Have you ever had a screaming argument with a lover and then found that it was especially sweet to “kiss and make up” a few minutes later? Might your anger have fueled your subsequent passion? Is that what being “in love” is like?

To some degree, it is. One useful measure of the passion component of romantic love is a Passionate Love Scale created by Elaine Hatfield and Susan Sprecher (1986). The short form of the scale is reprinted in Table 8.3; as you can see, the scale assesses fascination and preoccupation with, high desire for, and strong emotions about the object of one’s love. Scores on the Passionate Love Scale increase as someone falls deeper and

TABLE 8.3. The Short Form of the Passionate Love Scale

This questionnaire asks you to describe how you feel when you are passionately in love. Please think of the person whom you love most passionately right now. Keep this person in mind as you complete this questionnaire.

Answer each item using this scale:

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Not at all

true Moderately

true Definitely

true

1. I would feel deep despair if ______ left me.

2. Sometimes I feel I can’t control my thoughts; they are obsessively on ______.

3. I feel happy when I am doing something to make ______ happy.

4. I would rather be with ______ than anyone else.

5. I’d get jealous if I thought ______ was falling in love with someone else.

6. I yearn to know all about ______.

7. I want ______ physically, emotionally, mentally.

8. I have an endless appetite for affection from ______.

9. For me, ______ is the perfect romantic partner.

10. I sense my body responding when ______ touches me.

11. ______ always seems to be on my mind.

12. I want ______ to know me—my thoughts, my fears, and my hopes.

13. I eagerly look for signs indicating ______’s desire for me.

14. I possess a powerful attraction for ______.

15. I get extremely depressed when things don’t go right in my relationship with ______.

Higher scores on the PLS indicate greater passionate love. Across all 15 items, the average rat- ing per item—add up all your ratings and divide by 15—for both men and women is 7.15. If your average is 9 (the highest possible), you’re experiencing more passionate love than most people, and if your average is 5.25 or lower, you’re experiencing less.

Hatfield, E., & Sprecher, S. (1986). “Measuring passionate love in intimate relationships,” Journal of Adolescence, 9, 383–410. Copyright 1986 by Elsevier. All rights reserved. Used with permission.

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deeper into romantic love with someone else, only leveling off when the partners become engaged or start living together. (Note that—as I mentioned earlier—American couples decide to marry or live together when their passion is at a peak.) The vision of romantic love that emerges from the Passionate Love Scale is one of need and desire—ecstasy when one is loved in return and agony when one is not—and these are clearly responses that burn brighter when one is aroused than when one is calm and relaxed.

So, one aspect of romantic love is the exhilaration and euphoria of high arousal, and various events that excite us may increase our feelings of love for our partners. Romance is more than just passion, however. It also involves our thoughts.

Is Romantic Love an Emotion?

I’ll confess up front: The issue is still in doubt, so I don’t have a definite answer to the question posed by the title of this box. Romantic love certainly involves fervent feelings and strong motives, but theorists in affective science typi- cally reserve the term emotion for an organized response with particular characteristics (Lamy, 2016). Many (but not all) researchers consider emotions to result from specific events that cause discrete physiological reactions and that elicit distinct patterns of expressive behavior and goal-oriented responses (Keltner et al., 2019). Emotions exist, theorists argue, because they promote effective, adaptive responses to important, recurring tasks (Ekman & Cardaro, 2011). Thus, if it is unequivocally an emotion, romantic love should have a concrete, useful function, and it should occur in response to particular stimuli, cause distinctive physical changes, be visible to others, and engender rec- ognizable behavioral responses. (If you pause for a moment and consider these last few crite- ria, you may see why the issue is in doubt.)

In focusing our attention and energies on particular partners, romantic love promotes commitment that can increase our reproductive success (Fletcher et al., 2015). It is also elicited by others who we think would make compelling mates. But it doesn’t activate specific, delimited areas of the brain as many other emotions do; regions regulating reward switch on, but so do several other areas, so romantic love has more diffuse effects than other discrete emotions (Cacioppo, 2019). People who are in love

display enthusiastic interest in their partners, with lots of nodding, smiling, and close interper- sonal distances (Gonzaga et al., 2006), but the extent to which these cues are definitive signals of love per se is arguable. And people find it more difficult to talk themselves into feeling in love than they do some other emotions. If you vividly envision the provocation that last made you angry, you can bring back some of your anger—but people have less success reigniting the preoccupied passion of romantic love on command (Aron, 2010). The existing evidence leads most observers to think that romantic love is more a mood with particular motives than a discrete emotion (Diamond, 2014).

And why should you care, exactly? Well, consider that emotions are rather brief events (Keltner et al., 2014). Every other potent emo- tion you’ve ever experienced flared up quickly, burned brightly, and then faded away. Moods last longer, but they’re more diffuse events that have more variable effects on our behavior; if romantic love is a mood, it may have different effects on different people.

So, exactly what sort of affective experi- ence romantic love is remains unde cided. But whatever it is, there’s another question that now looms large: Other emotions, moods, and motives don’t last forever, so does love last? Can our romantic, passionate attraction to a particular partner continue indefinitely? Keep this key question in the back of your mind as you continue reading, and we’ll return to it at the end of the chapter.

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Thought

The two-factor theory of passionate love emphasizes the role of our thoughts and beliefs in accounting for arousal. Our judgments are also linked to romance in other ways, with lovers thinking about each other in ways that differ from the ways they think about their friends. Some of these distinctions are apparent in the contents of a Love Scale and a Liking Scale created by Zick Rubin in 1973. Years before Hatfield and Sprecher created the Passionate Love Scale, Rubin created dozens of statements that reflected a wide range of interpersonal attitudes and asked people to use them to describe both a lover and a friend. The handful of items that epitomized people’s romances ended up on a Love Scale that gives a partial indication of what lovers are thinking.

One theme in the items on the Love Scale is intimacy, just as the triangular theory of love defines it. Romance is characterized by openness, communication, and trust (see item 1 in Table 8.4). A second theme is needy dependence (see item 2 in Table 8.4). The dependence items describe ardent longing for one’s partner that has much in common with the passion we’ve discussed. A last theme on the Love Scale, however, describes feelings that are not mentioned by the triangular theory: caring. Romantic lovers report concern for the welfare and well-being of their partners (see item 3). They want to take care of their partners and keep them happy.

Thus, like other efforts to characterize love (e.g., Fehr, 2019), the Love Scale portrays romantic love as a multifaceted experience that involves both giving (i.e., car- ing) and taking (i.e., dependence). If you’re in love with someone, it’s probably partly selfish—you love your partner because of how that person makes you feel—and partly generous; you genuinely care for your partner and will work to satisfy and protect him or her. (In fact, compassionate concern for those we love may define yet another type of love, as we’ll see on page 324.) In addition, these diverse sentiments are experienced with relative intensity and urgency: You’d do anything for your partner and be miser- able without him or her.

Compare those thoughts and feelings to the sorts of things people say about their friends. As you can see in Table 8.4, the Liking Scale seems bland by comparison. People say they like their friends because their friends are nice, well-adjusted, likable people. But they love their lovers because they need them and would do anything the

TABLE 8.4. Rubin’s (1973) Love and Liking Scales: Some Example Items

Rubin’s Love Scale

1. I feel that I can confide in my partner about virtually anything.

2. If I could never be with my partner, I would be miserable.

3. I would do almost anything for my partner.

Rubin’s Liking Scale

1. My partner is one of the most likable people I know.

2. My partner is the sort of person that I would like to be.

3. I think that my partner is unusually well-adjusted.

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lover asks. There’s a fervor to the thoughts that characterize romantic love that is lack- ing when we just like someone.

The specific judgments people make of their partners are important, too. As we saw in chapter 4, people tend to hold rosy views of their relationship partners, and their tendency to idealize and glorify their lovers is probably at a peak when they are most in love. In fact, the moment romance enters the picture, people start ignoring or reinterpreting undesirable information about potential partners. Imagine that you’re a male college student who is asked to play the role of a restaurant owner who is evalu- ating the work of a woman who is pitching you an advertising campaign (Goodwin et al., 2002). You watch a video of her presentation, which is either coherent and clever or clumsy and inept. Would you be able to tell the difference between the competent and incompetent work? Of course you would. But what if you knew that you’d be going out on a date with the woman on Friday? Would the possibility of a romance influence your judgment? You may not think so, but when men really participated in a procedure like this, a romantic orientation had a big effect, as Figure 8.1 illustrates. The upcom- ing date obviously contaminated the men’s judgment, magically transforming a lousy performance into one of much higher quality. Any distinction between good and bad work disappeared entirely when the possibility of romance was in play.

As these results suggest, in a real way, “love is blind”: People underestimate or ignore their lovers’ faults. They hold idealized images of their lovers that may differ in meaningful ways from the concrete realities they face. In fact, a major difference between love and friendship may be our imaginations: Our lovers are fascinating, mys- terious, and appealing in ways our friends are not (Langeslag et al., 2015).

Romantic love also makes it easier to put tempting alternatives to our present partners out of our minds. When we’re fascinated and preoccupied with a lover, we may have difficulty focusing and concentrating on anyone—or anything—else (van Steenbergen et al., 2014). Here’s another provocative procedure: Imagine yourself inspecting photos of attractive members of the other sex, picking the best-looking one of the bunch, and then writing essays on (a) why that person is attractive and (b) what a perfect first meeting with that person would be like. Clearly, the researchers have you pondering a compelling alternative to your current romantic partner (Gonzaga et al., 2008). But the plot thickens; you’re now asked to put the fantasy alternative out

Romantic love is a complex state that emerges from multifaceted feelings and high arousal. It’s a combination of intimacy and passion.

Luann used with the permission of GEC, Inc. and the Cartoonist Group. All rights reserved.

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of mind and to stop thinking about him or her while you write another essay about (a) your love for your partner, (b) your sexual desire for your partner, or (c) just your current stream of thought. Can you do it? Can you ignore the alluring alternative? You can if you’re mentally rehearsing your love for your current partner. People were better able to distract themselves from the alternative—and they remembered less about the alternative’s looks—when they envisioned their love for their partners than in the other two conditions. Evidently, love keeps our attention on one preferred partner; rehearsing our romantic love for our partners even makes us less likely to notice other attractive people in the first place (Maner et al., 2008).

Finally, even our thoughts about ourselves can change when we fall in love. Arthur and Elaine Aron’s self-expansion model suggests that love causes our self-concepts to expand and change as our partners bring us new experiences and new roles, and we gradually learn things about ourselves that we didn’t know before (Aron & Tomlinson, 2019). Indeed, a study that tracked young adults for 10 weeks while they fell in love found that their self-concepts become more diversified and their self-esteem went up, which were two reasons why falling in love was so delightful (Aron et al., 1995). The passion we feel for our partners seems to be fueled, in part, by the self-expansion they provide us—and over time, if a relationship becomes routine, both our self-expansion and our passion gradually simmer down (Sheets, 2014). (More on this a bit later, too.)

All of this is potent stuff. The arousal and cognition that characterize romantic, passionate love involve surging emotion, imagination and idealization, and occasional obsession (Aron et al., 2008). And it is the presence of this complex, hectic state that leads most North Americans to consider marriage. However, romantic passion may not be the reason they stay married in the years that follow. Whether or not a relation- ship lasts may have more to do with companionate love (Berscheid, 2010).

Dispassionate

C om

pe te

nc e

R at

in gs

Manager’s Mindset Romantic

Competent Target Incompetent Target

3.0

5.8

5.3 5.2

3

0

4

5

7

6

FIGURE 8.1. Love is blind. When men expected to date a woman, they thought her lousy work was much better than it really was.

Source: Data from Goodwin, S. A., Fiske, S. T., Rosen, L. D., & Rosenthal, A. M. (2002). “The eye of the beholder: Romantic goals and impression biases,” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 38, 232–241.

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Companionate Love

Because it does not depend on passion, companionate love is a more settled state than romantic love is. The triangular theory suggests that it is a combination of intimacy and commitment, but I can characterize it more fully as a “comfortable, affectionate, trusting love for a likable partner, based on a deep sense of friendship and involving companionship and the enjoyment of common activities, mutual interests, and shared laughter” (Grote & Frieze, 1994, p. 275). It takes the form of a rich, committed friend- ship with someone with whom our lives are intertwined.

Sounds pleasant, but isn’t it a bit bland compared to the ecstasies of romantic pas- sion? Perhaps so, but you may want to get used to it. When hundreds of couples who had been married at least 15 years were asked why their marriages had lasted, they didn’t say that they’d do anything for their spouses or be miserable without them, like roman- tic lovers do (Lauer & Lauer, 1985). Instead, for both men and women, the two most frequent reasons were (a) “My spouse is my best friend,” and (b) “I like my spouse as a person.” Long-lasting, satisfying marriages seem to include a lot of companionate love.

A useful measure of companionate love is the Friendship-Based Love Scale created by Nancy Grote and Irene Frieze (1994). As you can see in Table 8.5, the feelings described by the scale are very different than those that accompany passionate love; friendship and companionship are much more in evidence on the Friendship-Based Love Scale than they are on measures of romantic love.

Of course, deep friendships also occur often in the context of romantic love. In one study, 44 percent of the young adults in premarital relationships reported that their

TABLE 8.5. The Friendship-Based Love Scale

Think about your closest current relationship, and then rate your agreement or disagreement with each of these questions on the following scale:

1 2 3 4 5 strongly disagree

strongly agree

1. I feel our love is based on a deep and abiding friendship.

2. I express my love for my partner through the enjoyment of common activities and mutual interests.

3. My love for my partner involves solid, deep affection.

4. An important factor in my love for my partner is that we laugh together.

5. My partner is one of the most likable people I know.

6. The companionship I share with my partner is an important part of my love for him or her.

The average total score for married men is 25.2, and the average total for married women is 26.4. Scores ranging between 21 and 30 are typical for men, and scores between 22 and 30 are routine for women. Scores on the scale are more highly correlated with relationship satis faction and duration than scores on the Passionate Love Scale are.

Source: Adapted from Grote, N. K., & Frieze, I. H. (1994). “The measurement of friendship-based love in intimate relationships,” Personal Relationships, 1, 275–300.

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romantic partners were also their closest friends (Hendrick & Hendrick, 1993). How- ever, when they are a part of romantic love, friendships are combined (and sometimes confused) with sexual arousal and passion. The predominant importance of friendship in creating the experience is easier to detect in companionate love, when intimacy is paired with commitment, than in romantic love, when intimacy is paired with passion.

A Physiological Foundation

Companionate love also has a physiological foundation that differs from that of romantic love. Experiences of romantic, passionate love stimulate the release of the neurotransmitter dopamine, which works in reward and pleasure centers of our brains (Cacioppo, 2019). Companionate love, on the other hand, seems to involve oxytocin, a neuropeptide that promotes relaxation and reduces stress (Diamond, 2014). O xytocin is released by mothers during childbirth and breastfeeding (and in fact, a synthetic form of oxytocin, pitocin, is used to induce labor), and the more oxytocin a young mother has in her blood, the more she’ll cuddle and coo, look, and smile at her baby (Feldman et al., 2007). Among adults, a lot of it is produced during orgasm; oxytocin may be one of the causes of the relaxed lethargy that couples often experience after lovemaking (Floyd, 2006). Moreover—and this is interesting—research participants who snort a spray of oxytocin seem to become more motivated to seek social connection with others (Cohen & Shamay-Tsoory, 2018). People who are low in extraversion become more friendly (Human et al., 2016), and those who are avoidant of intimacy feel more kind and warm toward others (Bartz et al., 2015).

Because of patterns like these, journalists sometimes call oxytocin the “love and cuddle hormone,” but it doesn’t always lead us to be nice to strangers. It seems to arouse affiliative motives, but if we encounter barriers to closeness—such as antago- nistic provocation from an opponent in a lab procedure (Ne’eman et al., 2016)—it can make us meaner, too (Bartz, 2016). Oxytocin has variable effects on our social behavior.

Nevertheless, in a close, comfortable relationship, oxytocin seems to promote a soothing sense of well-being. People who have higher levels of oxytocin in their blood tend to be warmer and kinder when they discuss touchy topics with their spouses (Gouin et al., 2010), and they’re more satisfied with their marriages (Holt-Lunstad et al., 2015). And oxytocin may encourage enduring attachments to those who become associated with its presence in the bloodstream (Floyd, 2006)—so, in short, the produc- tion of oxytocin may provide a biological basis for feelings of companionate love.

Still, even if dopamine is a key player in romantic love and oxytocin a central ingredient in companionate love, both agents are always present in the body in some amount, so we rarely encounter pure experiences of romantic and companionate love in which one is present and the other is not. Companionate lovers can and do experi- ence passion, and romantic lovers can and do feel commitment. As we experience them, the distinctions between romantic and companionate love are much fuzzier than this discussion may have implied (Graham, 2011). Nevertheless, if we’re willing to tolerate some ambiguity, we can conclude that there appear to be at least two major types of love that frequently occur in American romance: a love that’s full of passion that leads people to pair off with each other, and a love that’s full of friendship that underlies relationships that last. Over time, companionate love is typically stronger in

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enduring relationships than romantic, passionate love is (Ahmetoglu et al., 2010), and it is more highly correlated with the satisfaction people enjoy (Langeslag et al., 2013). We’ll return to this point at the end of the chapter.

Compassionate Love

There’s a third type of love that occurs in successful romances (Fehr, 2019) that is not delineated by the triangular theory of love because the theory does not assert that considerate caring for other people is a specific component of love. Perhaps it should. An altruistic care and concern for the well-being of one’s partner is a defining charac- teristic of compassionate love, a type of love that combines the trust and understanding of intimacy with compassion and caring that involves empathy, selflessness, and sacri- fice on behalf of the beloved (Fehr et al., 2014). (Now before we go any further, let’s take a moment and examine the label “compassionate” love. It sounds like a combina- tion of romantic, passionate love [which obviously involves passion] and companionate love [which includes the word “companion”], but it is different from either one. Com- passion involves empathy for others and the benevolent wish to aid those who are in need of help [Ministero et al., 2018]. Don’t confuse companionate love with compas- sionate love.3)

People who feel compassionate love tend to share the pain or joy that their loved ones experience (Collins et al., 2014), and they would rather suffer themselves than to allow someone close to them to be hurt. They are attentive, empathic, and generous, and their care and concern for their loved ones are evident in a Compassionate Love Scale created by Susan Sprecher and Beverley Fehr (2005). (See Table 8.6.) As you might expect, compassionate lovers provide their partners more support—and take more pleasure in doing so—than do those who are less compassionate (Sprecher et al., 2007).

The thoughtful, benevolent, and generous behaviors that compassionate lovers offer their partners are good for their relationships. Each night for 2 weeks, Harry Reis and his colleagues (2017) asked 175 newlywed couples from across the United States and Canada to report which of the specific behaviors in Table 8.7 had occurred that day. The young lovers did these things often, but not that often; on average, a new spouse performed at least one of these kind acts on only about 60 percent of all days. But when they did occur, both spouses were more satisfied with their relationship the next day, and it was actually better to give than to receive: The donors of these generous

TABLE 8.6. Items from the Compassionate Love Scale

To what extent are these statements true about you?

1. I spend a lot of time concerned about the well-being of those people close to me.

2. If a person close to me needs help, I would do almost anything I could to help him or her.

3. I would rather suffer myself than see someone close to me suffer.

3And don’t blame me for the similarity of the terms. It’s not my fault.

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actions experienced even better moods than the recipients did. You probably won’t be surprised, then, to read that greater compassionate love for one’s partner, which is evident when compassionate acts like these occur often, is associated with more rela- tionship satisfaction and commitment over time, too (Fehr et al., 2014).

Compassionate love is highly correlated with experiences of romantic love and com- panionate love—they all have intimacy in common—but there are still differences among them that are worth noting (Fehr, 2019). Whereas romantic love is “blind,” compassion- ate love is rooted in more accurate understanding of our partners’ strengths and weak- nesses; we recognize their deficiencies, but we love them anyway (Neff & Karney, 2009). And the selfless concern that defines compassionate love may be invaluable in protecting and maintaining a relationship if the partners become infirm with age or if a “malevolent fate plunges one of the partners from ‘better’ to a per- manent ‘worse’” (Berscheid, 2010, p. 17). Is compassion- ate love necessary for continued satisfaction in long-term relationships? We don’t yet know: Those studies are just beginning to be done (e.g., Sabey & Rauer, 2018). Nevertheless, along with passion and friendship, com- passionate caring for one’s partner may be another key ingredient in the very best experiences of love.

Styles of Loving

Another scheme for distinguishing different types of love experiences was offered by sociologist John Alan Lee (1988), who used Greek and Latin words to describe six styles of love that differ in the intensity of the loving experience, commitment to the

A Point to Ponder

Imagine that you’re develop- ing the recipe for the perfect love that you’d like to get from a perfect lover. What would that love include? What would your lover feel about you?

TABLE 8.7. A Compassionate Love Acts Diary

Which of these things have you done today? Both you and your lover will be more satisfied with your relationship if you up your game and intentionally behave this way more frequently. And just how pleasant and profitable will your partnership be if you both behave this way?

Today, I voluntarily did something special for my partner.

Today, I went out of my way to “be there” for my partner.

Today, I said or did something to show that I value my partner.

Today, I expressed a lot of tenderness and caring for my partner.

Today, I willingly put my partner’s goals or wishes ahead of my own.

Today, I really tried to understand my partner’s thoughts and feelings.

Today, I willingly modified my plans or activities for my partner’s sake.

Today, I was genuinely open and receptive to things my partner said or asked of me.

Today, I really tried to be accepting rather than judging of something about my partner.

Today, I did something to show my partner that I respect and admire him/her as a person.

Source: Reis, H. T., Maniaci, M. R., & Rogge, R. D. (2014). “The expression of compassionate love in everyday compassionate acts,” Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 31, 651–676.

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beloved, desired characteristics of the beloved, and expectations about being loved in return. (See Table 8.8.) One style is eros, from which the word erotic comes. Eros has a strong physical component, and erotic lovers are likely to be heavily influenced by physical appearance and to believe in love at first sight.

A second style, ludus (pronounced “loo-dus”), treats love as an uncommitted game. Ludic lovers are often fickle and (try to) have several different partners at once. In contrast, a third style, storge, (“store-gay”) leads people to de-emphasize strong emotion and to seek genuine friendships that gradually lead to real commitment.

A fourth style, mania, is demanding and possessive and full of vivid fantasy and obsession. A fifth style, agape (“ah-gaa-pay”), is giving, altruistic, and selfless, and treats love as a duty. Finally, the last style, pragma, is practical and pragmatic. Pragma leads people to dispassionately seek partners who will logically be a good match for them.

How useful are these distinctions? Instead of thinking of them as six additional types of love, it makes more sense to consider them as six themes in love experiences that overlap and are differentially related to the types of love we’ve considered so far. In particular, storge, mania, and pragma have little in common with romantic love, companionate love, or compassionate love; the obsession of mania and the cool, friendly practicality of storge and pragma differ noticeably from the loving intimacy at the heart of all three types of love ( Graham, 2011). However, all of the components of love described by the triangular theory—that is, intimacy, passion, and commitment— are positively related to eros and agape (remember, love involves both giving and tak- ing), and negatively related to ludus (which means that love is serious business) (G raham, 2011). (Relationship satisfaction, too, is positively related to eros and agape, and negatively related to ludus [Vedes et al., 2016].) So, some of the styles described by Lee (1988) are related to other widely studied types of love, but others of them are not. Susan and Clyde Hendrick have developed a Love Attitudes Scale to measure people’s endorsement of the six styles, and they’ve found that men score higher on ludus than women do, whereas women are more storgic and pragmatic than men ( Hendrick & Hendrick, 2019). Other researchers have detected a tendency for people to pair off with others who share similar attitudes toward love (Morrow et al., 1995). In general, then, the love styles remind us of intriguing sources of individuality (such as practicality) that are sometimes overlooked.

TABLE 8.8. Styles of Loving

Eros The erotic lover finds good looks compelling and seeks an intense, p assionate relationship.

Ludus The ludic lover considers love to be a game and likes to play the field. Storge The storgic lover prefers friendships that gradually grow into lasting

commitments. Mania The manic lover is demanding, possessive, and excitable. Agape The agapic lover is altruistic and dutiful. Pragma The pragmatic lover is practical, careful, and logical in seeking a mate.

Source: Based on Lee, J. A. (1988). “Love-styles,” in R. J. Sternberg & M. L. Barnes (Eds.), The psychology of love (pp. 38–67). Yale University Press.

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A Type of Love You Probably Don’t Want to Experience Unrequited Love

Have you ever loved someone who did not love you back? You probably have. Depend- ing on the sample, 80 percent (Aron et al., 1998) to 90 percent of young adults (Baumeister et al., 1993) report that they have experienced unrequited love: romantic, passionate attraction to someone who did not return that interest. It’s a common expe- rience that may involve a mere acquaintance, a past partner, or even a current partner who’s less immersed in the relationship than we would wish (Bringle et al., 2013).

Why do we experience such loves? Sev- eral factors may be involved. First, would-be lovers are very attracted to their unwilling targets, and they assume that relationships with them are worth working and waiting for. Second, they optimistically overestimate how much they are liked in return (Aron et al., 1998). And third, perhaps most importantly, unrequited love often offers the hope of fu- ture rewards; people cling to the illusion that

they will win their targets’ love in the end (Bringle et al., 2013).

It’s painful when that doesn’t happen, but it’s actually worse to be the target of someone’s undesired adoration. Sure, it’s nice to be wanted, but those on the receiving end of unrequited love often find their pursu- ers’ persistence to be intrusive and annoying, and they usually feel guilty when they turn their ardent pursuers down (Joel et al., 2014). It’s harder for them to reject unwanted ad- vances than their pursuers realize (Bohns & DeVincent, 2019), and they’re usually nice, “well-meaning people who find themselves caught up in another person’s emotional whirlwind and who themselves often suffer acutely as a result” (Baumeister & Wotman, 1992, p. 203). As distressing as it was to grad- ually realize that the objects of our affection would not become our steady partners, we may have made it harder on them when we fell into unrequited love.

INDIVIDUAL AND CULTURAL DIFFERENCES IN LOVE

Obviously, there are various feelings people may be experiencing when they say, “I love you.” To complicate things further, some people may be more likely than others to experience certain types of love. Several individual differences and cultural influences are linked to love, and I’ll begin our consideration of them by considering whether love differs from one culture to the next.

Culture

If you’re using fMRI, romantic love in China looks just like romantic love in the United States: The areas of the brain that are activated when people see photos of their romantic partners are generally the same in both cultures (Xu et al., 2011). This isn’t surprising because romantic love appears to be a universal human experience that is found in all the peoples of the world (Feybesse & Hatfield, 2019). The distinction between romantic love and companionate love is also apparent in both Western and

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Eastern cultures (Fehr, 2019). Fundamentally, the various types of love seem to oper- ate similarly in diverse cultures. Still, within these broad similarities lie some cultural nuances that make love a little different from place to place.

When they describe their experiences of falling in love, for instance, Americans emphasize the similarity and good looks of their partners more than Chinese people do, and the Chinese mention a desirable personality, others’ opinions, and their own physical arousal more than Americans do (Riela et al., 2010). (Which group do you think is fall- ing in love for the better reasons?) Then, when they’re in love, married couples in the United States and China both feel a lot of compassionate caring and horny desire for their partners, but there are cultural differences, too. Romantic fantasies—thinking of love as a fairy tale, with expectations of living happily ever after—are more prominent in America, whereas acknowledgments that one’s partner is baffling and incomprehensible and that love itself is a mixed blessing are more common in China (Jackson et al., 2006). (Again, which culture do you think has it right?) Finally, people in individualistic Western nations such as the United States are more likely than those in collective cultures to insist on love as a reason to marry (Merali, 2012). In particular, college students in China are more likely than those in the United States to be guided by their parents’ wishes regard- ing whom they should marry (Zhang & Kline, 2009). Whereas marriage in China is often a family decision, young adults in America typically expect that their choice of a spouse will be entirely up to them. (Whom would your parents choose for you, if they could? See the box on the next page.)

Attachment Styles

Because they are rather subtle, cultural influences on love are less consequential than some individual differences are. In particular, whatever one’s culture, the attachment dimensions of anxiety over abandonment and avoidance of intimacy are enormously important because they are associated with all of the elements of love we’ve encoun- tered: intimacy, passion, commitment, and caring.

• Intimacy. People with secure attachment styles generally have high regard for oth- ers, viewing them as trustworthy, dependable, and kind (Luke et al., 2004), so they tend to be more open with their partners, happily engaging in a lot of self-disclosure. Those who are insecure are more wary of others. In particular, people who are high in avoidance typically view others with suspicion, perceiving them to be dishonest and undependable (Collins & Allard, 2001). As a result, they tend to be close-mouthed, telling their partners relatively little about their feelings and desires (Feeney et al., 2000). In general, then, secure people enjoy greater intimacy with their partners than insecure people do (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2013).

• Passion. There’s a lot of drama in the lives of preoccupied people, but much of it isn’t pleasant. Their anxiety over abandonment often has them on edge, nervously experiencing apprehension rather than delight in their intimate interactions (Davis et al., 2004). Those who are avoidant of intimacy are more distant and detached, and less passionate overall (Paquette et al., 2020). So, the best, most fulfilling sex is enjoyed by people with secure attachment styles. Secure people have more fre- quent sex that involves more arousal, greater pleasure, more frequent orgasms, and greater satisfaction (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2013).

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• Commitment. Secure people also tend to be more committed to their partnerships than insecure people are (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2016). This isn’t a surprise because day by day, secure people have more intimate, more positive, and more satisfying interactions with their lovers than insecure people do (Kafetsios & Nezlek, 2002).

• Caring and caregiving. Finally, when their partners are nervous and need support, insecure people are less effective caregivers, providing less reassurance than secure people do and leaving their partners less at ease (Davila & Kashy, 2009). In par- ticular, people who are high in avoidance behave more negatively and sometimes get angry when they are asked to provide comfort and consolation to a needy partner (Campbell et al., 2001). Anxious people often offer a lot of help, but they tend to do so for selfish reasons, hoping to gain approval from their partners. Overall, compassionate love for one’s partner is enhanced and increased by a secure attachment style and reduced by avoidance of intimacy (Sprecher & Fehr, 2011).

Thus, a secure style is positively related to all four of the building blocks that seem to create different love experiences, and sure enough, secure people experience more intense romantic, companionate, and compassionate love than insecure people do (Hepper & Carnelley, 2012).

Importantly, however, all of us typically have several different partners—such as lovers, parents, and friends—who are important attachment figures at any one time, and we may be relatively secure in some of those relationships and somewhat insecure in others (Fraley et al., 2011). Lurking within the global orientations toward relation- ships that we label as attachment styles may be several different sets of feelings about specific partners, so that those of us who are anxiously attached to our mothers, for instance, may nevertheless trust our romantic partners wholeheartedly. So, attachment varies from relationship to relationship, making attachment styles in loving partner- ships rather complex.

Whom Do Your Parents Want You to Marry?

Arranged marriages in which one’s spouse is chosen by one’s family are commonplace in Asia and the Middle East (Merali, 2012), and they beg an interesting question: If it were (or is) up to them, who would (or do) your par- ents want you to marry? In general, your par- ents probably want the same qualities you do: They seek sons- and daughters-in-law with good economic prospects who are attractive, smart, stable, and kind. What’s intriguing is that they probably have different priorities than you do, so that if they can’t have it all— and who can?—they value some characteristics more than you do. P hysical at tractiveness

doesn’t matter as much to them as it does to you (Fugére et al., 2017). You’ll care more about whether your spouse smells nice and is the right height and a trim weight than your folks will, whereas they’ll care more about your mate’s race, social class, family back- ground, and religion (Buunk & Solano, 2010). They also don’t want you hooking up in casual sexual liaisons, especially if you’re their daugh- ter ( Apostolou, 2009). Overall, then, parents think fundamental similarities and commit- ment are more vital than their offspring do, and that’s true across cultures (Buunk & Solano, 2010). Might they have a point?

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Still, the global attitudes I’ve described here are important. Varying levels of avoid- ance of intimacy and anxiety over abandonment characterize relationships all over the world (Schmitt, 2008). And they clearly set the stage for our dealings with others. Toddlers who are securely attached to their mothers tend to have close friendships as adolescents—and then, as a result of those successful friendships, they tend to have satisfying adult romances (Haydon & Roisman, 2013). The potent, lasting influences of attachment styles demonstrate that not only are there different types of loves, there are different kinds of lovers.

Age

Another slowly changing personal characteristic that may affect love is one’s age. Most people mellow as they get older (Shallcross et al., 2013). When researchers compared spouses in their sixties to those in their forties, they found that the older couples interacted with less physical arousal but with more good cheer. Their emotions were less intense, but more positive on the whole, even in marriages that were not particu- larly happy at the time (Levenson et al., 1994). So, some of the burning, urgent, emotional intensity that leads young people to marry seems to dwindle with time to be replaced with a more genial and more mature outlook on love.

Men and Women

A potentially important individual difference that does not change with time is one’s sex. On the whole, men and women are more similar than different when it comes to love (Fehr, 2019). They experience the various types of love similarly, and although men tend to be more avoidant of intimacy and less anxious about abandonment than women are, the differences are rather small (Gillath et al., 2016). Women do experience more intense and more volatile emotions than men do, on average (Brody & Hall, 2010); nevertheless, there are rarely any differences between men and women on mea- sures of romantic feelings such as the Love Scale (Rubin, 1973) and the Passionate Love Scale (Galperin & Haselton, 2010). Evidently, as we have seen before, it’s just plain silly to think that men come from one planet and women come from another.

On the other hand, men tend to possess more romantic attitudes than women do; they’re more likely than women to think that if you just love someone enough, nothing else matters (Sprecher & Metts, 1999). They’re also more likely to believe that it’s pos- sible to experience “love at first sight,” and they tend to fall in love faster than women do (Galperin & Haselton, 2010). Women are more cautious than men when it comes to love; they’re more selective about whom they love, feeling passion more slowly and limiting their affection to partners of higher mate value (Li et al., 2012). Men are typically less discriminating, a fact that is reflected by their greater acceptance, on aver- age, of casual sex (Sprecher et al., 2013). Along those lines, I can report that, contrary to popular stereotypes, men are usually the first to say “I love you” in a new relationship, doing so 70 percent of the time (Ackerman et al., 2011). (All of these patterns, I should remind you, are consistent with an evolutionary perspective, which predicts that women should be cautious about whom they love because their parental investments in any offspring are so much greater than men’s [Buss, 2019]. In contrast, a sociocultural

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model attributes women’s greater selectivity to their traditionally lower status in many societies; according to this perspective, careful selection of a high- status mate is one of the few means available to women to obtain resources that are more accessible to men [Eagly & Wood, 2013]. Which explanation do you find more convincing?)

Men also seem to put more stock in passion. Men and women agree that love should be affectionate and committed, but men also think it should be more passionate than women do (Fehr, 2019). Indeed, of the three components of love, passion is most highly associated with men’s satisfaction with their relationships, whereas commitment is the best predictor of satisfaction for women (Sternberg, 2006). This puts men in the position of relying on the component of love that, according to the triangular theory, is the least stable and reliable as time goes by.

DOES LOVE LAST?

So, how does the passage of time affect love? Does love last? This is a complex ques- tion because, as we’ve seen, there are different types of loves and idiosyncratic types of lovers. Your experiences with love through the years may differ from those of others. Nevertheless, the prototypical North American marriage occurs when people in their late twenties who are flushed with romantic passion pledge to spend the rest of their lives together, probably expecting their passion to last. Will it? Despite the couples’ good intentions, the best answer relationship science can provide is, probably not, at least not to the extent the partners expect.

The simple truth is that romantic love typically decreases after people marry ( Sprecher & Regan, 1998). Scores on romantic and passionate love scales drift lower as the years go by (Tucker & Aron, 1993), and that’s among couples who manage to stay married! After several years, husbands and wives are no longer claiming to the same degree that they’d do anything for each other or that they melt when they look into each other’s eyes. What’s more, the decrease in a couple’s romantic love can be quite rapid. After only 2 years of marriage, average spouses express affection for each other only half as often as they did when they were newlyweds (Huston & Chorost, 1994). Worldwide, divorces occur more frequently in the fourth year of marriage than at any other time (Fisher, 1995). Many couples fail to maintain the urgent longing for each other that leads them to marry in the first place.

Why Doesn’t Romantic Love Last?

In fact, if we consider it carefully, there may be several reasons why we should expect romantic love to decline over time (Walster & Walster, 1978). First, fantasy enhances romance. As we’ve seen, love is blind to some degree. Flushed with passion, lovers tend to idealize their partners and minimize or ignore information that should give them pause. Imagination, hope, and flights of fancy can make people who are quite different from us seem appealing, at least temporarily. The problem, of course, is that fantasy erodes with time and experience. To the extent that romance is enhanced by idealized glorification of one’s partner, we should expect it to decline when people begin living together and reality slowly intrudes. “Ideals are easily tarnished, spells

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broken, sleights of hand exposed . . . romance fades over time because familiarity pro- vides a more realistic, ‘warts and all’ view of the other; the harsh sunlight of the morn- ing after dispels the enchantment of the moonlight” (Mitchell, 2002, p. 94). Or, according to author Erica Jong (2003, p. 48), who became famous with her description of a “zipless” sexual encounter between two strangers,4 “since passion is about fantasy and marriage is about reality, passion and marriage are the oddest of odd bedfellows.”

In addition, sheer novelty adds excitement and energy to new loves. A first kiss is often much more thrilling than most of the thousands that follow, and when people are invigorated and fascinated by a new partner, they may be unable to appreciate how familiar and routine that same lover may seem 30 years later. Indeed, novelty causes sexual arousal in other species: If a male rat is caged with a female in estrus, he’ll mate with her repeatedly until he appears to be sexually exhausted; however, if the first female is then replaced with another receptive female, the male will mount her with renewed interest and vigor. By continuing to replace an old partner with a new one, researchers can elicit two to three times as many ejaculations from the male as would have occurred with only the single female (Dewsbury, 1981). Researchers call this effect of novelty on arousal the Coolidge effect, referring to an old story that may or may not be true. Supposedly, President Calvin Coolidge and his wife were once touring a chicken farm when Mrs. Coolidge noticed a rooster covering one hen after another. Impressed with the bird’s prowess, she asked the guide to mention the rooster to the president. When he heard about the rooster’s stamina, Coolidge is said to have reflected a moment and then replied, “Please tell Mrs. Coolidge that there is more than one hen” (Walster & Walster, 1978).

Does novelty have similar effects on people? It might. In the lab, after heterosexual men have spent 2 weeks watching the same pornographic film clip while they mastur- bate (every 2 or 3 days), they ejaculate larger volumes of semen, and do so more quickly, when they get to watch a new clip featuring a new woman (Joseph et al., 2015).5 Nov- elty is exciting. And engaging in novel, arousing activities together gets romantic couples to feel more in love with each other (Strong & Aron, 2006). Furthermore, Roy Baumeister and Ellen Bratslavsky (1999) have suggested that romantic passion is fueled by changes in our relationships. When we’re falling in love, our selves are expanding, everything is new and intimacy is increasing, and passion is likely to be very high. However, once a relationship is established, and novelty is lost, passion slowly subsides; the longer a relationship lasts, the less passionate it becomes (Campbell & Kaufman, 2017). This pattern is apparent in the results of a broad survey of U.S. sexuality that showed that an average couple’s fre- quency of intercourse (one measure of their passion for each other) declines continually over the course of their marriage (Call et al., 1995). The pairfam study in Germany,6 which has followed thousands of people year after year, has found the same thing—and if any- thing, the single biggest drop in sexual frequency occurs

4Google it. I’m aiming for a PG-13, not an R, rating here. 5Once again, as always, I am not making this up. 6We first encountered this remarkable project back on page 63.

A Point to Ponder

The amount of passion people experience typically declines dramatically as they age. Why does that occur? Will that happen to you?

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in a relationship’s second year (Schröder & Schmiedeberg, 2015). This decline is obvi- ously confounded with age, as Figure 8.2 shows, and it is typical for sexual activity to decline as people get older (Twenge et al., 2017). However, people who remarry and change partners increase their frequency of sex, at least for a while, so aging does not seem to be wholly responsible for the decline of passion with time. Arguably, “romance thrives on novelty, mystery, and danger; it is dispersed by familiarity. Enduring romance is therefore a contradiction in terms” (Mitchell, 2002, p. 27).

Finally, as Figure 8.2 also implies, arousal fades as time goes by. As we’ve seen, there’s no question that physical arousal—such as a rapid pulse rate and fast, shallow breathing—fuels passion. But it’s impossible to stay keyed up forever! “While passion is a great feeling—totally intoxicating—it also tends to be ephemeral. It’s a hard feeling to sustain over the long haul, and marriage is theoretically the longest of long hauls” (Savage, 2016, p. 31). In the case of romantic love, the brain may simply not produce as much dopamine when a partner becomes familiar, so that even if your partner is as wonderful as ever, you’re not as aroused. In any case, for whatever reason, the passion component of love is less lasting than either intimacy or commitment (Ahmetoglu et al., 2010), and that means that romantic love is less durable as well.

So, What Does the Future Hold?

Because three important influences on romantic passion—fantasy, novelty, and arousal—tend to dwindle over the years, romantic love decreases, too (Walster & Walster, 1978). Now, let’s be clear: Some couples do continue to feel lots of romantic love for

19–24 25–29 30–34 35–39 40–44 45–49 50–54 55–59 60–64 70–7465–69 75+

Remarried Cohabiting

Married Once

Age

2

4

6

8

10

12

14 Ti

m es

p er

M on

th

FIGURE 8.2. Frequency of sexual intercourse by age. In general, most romantic relationships become less passionate as the years go by.

Source: Data from Call, V., Sprecher, S., & Schwartz, P. (1995). “The incidence and frequency of marital sex in a national sample,” Journal of Marriage and the Family, 57, 639–652.

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each other after decades together; 40 percent of a random sample of Americans who had been married for 10 years or more reported that they were “very intensely in love” with their spouses. But even their love was less intense, on average, than it had been when they married (O’Leary et al., 2012). And in another large American sample of couples who had been together for years, only about half (55 percent of the women and 43 percent of the men) said that they were generally satisfied with their sex lives (Frederick et al., 2017). So, it’s fair to conclude that almost everybody’s loving feelings change somewhat over time. When they see photos of their beloved spouses, people who are still very much in love after 10 years of marriage still experience activation of the dopamine-rich reward centers in their brains, just as they did when they had just fallen in love—but other areas that are associated with monogamy and commitment become more active, too (Cacioppo, 2019). The obsessive preoccupation with one’s beloved that characterizes new love also tends to fade, even when desire and caring remain (Acevedo & Aron, 2009). The bottom line is that the burning love that gets people to marry tends not to stay the same, and that’s one likely reason that the U.S. divorce rate is so high: A common complaint is that the “magic” has died (see chapter 13).

Passion seems to be the least stable, least reliable component of loving relationships, and it certainly declines some over decades. It’s a good idea to genuinely like, as well as love, your partner.

Sidney Harris/ScienceCartoonsPlus

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However, I really don’t want this news to be depressing! To the contrary, I think it offers important advice about how long-term romances can succeed. Often, the love that encourages people to marry is not the love that keeps them together decades later. Passion declines, but intimacy and commitment both increase as we age (Ahmetoglu et al., 2010). Thus, companionate love may be more stable than romantic love is (Spre- cher & Regan, 1998). And, as we saw earlier, people who have been happily married for a long time typically express a lot of companionate love for their spouses (Lauer & Lauer, 1985). Such people are often genuinely happy, too: Although it does not rely on passion, companionate love is very satisfying to those who experience it (Hecht et al., 1994). And because intimacy and passion are correlated (Whitley, 1993), being good friends may help to keep your passion alive.

So, you should commit yourself only to a lover who is also a good friend. You can also purposefully and creatively strive to forestall any boredom that would undermine your contentment. Relationships become stagnant when they become repetitive and monotonous, and as we saw in chapter 6, boredom occurs not when bad things happen but when nothing interesting, exciting, or challenging is going on (Harasymchuk & Fehr, 2013). And because boredom is antithetical to love and satisfaction, it’s very bad news (Tsapelas et al., 2009). When novelty is lost, create some more.

Indeed, I don’t want you to finish this chapter thinking that your passion will decay and there’s nothing you can do about it. That’s a disadvantageous, self-defeating outlook (Carswell & Finkel, 2018). Instead, being forewarned, you can intentionally, imaginatively strive to nurture passion and keep it alive, even as you age. Happy lovers seek out and invent new and engaging ways to have fun together, both in and out of bed. Couples who try new things, even unconventional, silly things such as eating popcorn with chopsticks (O’Brien & Smith, 2019), typically feel greater sexual desire, have more sex, and enjoy it more than do those whose interactions are more ordinary and routine (Muise et al., 2019). Novel, self-expanding activities can even help resurrect the passion of those whose desire for each other has faded over the years (Raposo et al., 2020).

So, there’s your game plan. Enjoy passion, but don’t make it the foundation of the relationships that you hope will last. Nurture friendship with your lover. Try to stay fresh; grab every opportunity to enjoy novel adventures with your partner (Muise et al., 2019). And don’t be surprised or disappointed if your urgent desires gradually resolve into more placid but deep affection for your beloved. That happy result is likely to make you a lucky lover.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Before Doug and Gina met, neither of them had been in love, so they were both excited when their dating relationship gradually developed into a more intimate love affair. Each was the other’s first lover, and they found sex to be both awkward and thrilling, and, within a few weeks, flushed with more romantic feelings than either of them had known, they decided to marry. But Doug soon became annoyed by Gina’s apparent desire to know everything about his day. She would call him every morning and afternoon when he was

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at work, just to “be in touch,” and she would start to fret if he met clients over lunch or was out of the office running errands. For her part, Gina was troubled by Doug’s appar- ent reluctance to tell her what was on his mind. He prided himself on his self-sufficiency and didn’t feel that it was necessary to tell her everything, and he began to feel crowded by her insistent probing.

Having read this chapter, what do you think the future holds for Doug and Gina? Why?

CHAPTER SUMMARY

A Brief History of Love

Different societies have held very different perspectives on love, and only recently has love been associated with marriage.

Types of Love

The Triangular Theory of Love. Intimacy, passion, and commitment are thought to combine to produce eight different types of love.

Romantic, Passionate Love. Passion (which increases when a person becomes aroused for any reason) and intimacy combine to form romantic love. It is characterized by idealized evaluations of one’s partner.

Companionate Love. Commitment and intimacy combine to form companionate love, a deep friendship with someone with whom one’s life is intertwined. Happy spouses usually say that they are good friends.

Compassionate Love. Intimacy combines with selfless caring for the beloved to form compassionate love. Compassionate acts enhance relationships.

Styles of Loving. Six themes in love experiences that are differentially correlated with the various types of love have also been identified.

Individual and Cultural Differences in Love

Culture. Love is much the same around the world, but cultural nuances exist.

Attachment Styles. Secure people enjoy stronger experiences of romantic, companionate, and compassionate love than insecure people do.

Age. People mellow with age, experiencing less intense love as time goes by.

KEY TERMS

intimacy........................................ p. 310 passion.......................................... p. 310 commitment................................. p. 310 romantic love............................... p. 314 companionate love...................... p. 322 compassionate love..................... p. 324 eros................................................ p. 326

ludus.............................................. p. 326 storge............................................ p. 326 mania............................................ p. 326 agape............................................. p. 326 pragma.......................................... p. 326 unrequited love............................ p. 327 Coolidge effect............................. p. 332

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Men and Women. Men and women are more similar than different when it comes to love. However, women pick their lovers more carefully and fall in love less quickly than men do.

Does Love Last?

In most—but not all—cases, romantic love decreases after people marry, sometimes quite rapidly.

Why Doesn’t Romantic Love Last? Romance and passion involve fantasy, novelty, and arousal, and each fades with time. The Coolidge effect occurs when novelty increases sexual arousal.

So, What Does the Future Hold? Companionate love is very satisfying and may be more stable than romantic love is. If lovers are good friends and work to battle boredom, they may improve their chances for a long, contented relationship.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Relish passion. Celebrate it. But don’t expect it to define your relationship over the years and years to come.

• We idealize our lovers. So, try to be dispassionate when you consider your compat- ibility with a new lover.

• Strive to settle down with someone who is also a good friend. • It’s (even) better to give than to receive. Provide your partner plenty of thoughtful small kindnesses and affection.

• Don’t get into a rut. Be inventive. Pursue new and engaging ways to have fun together, both in and out of bed.

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C H A P T E R 9

Sexuality

Sexual Attitudes ♦ Sexual Behavior ♦ Sexual Satisfaction  ♦ Sexual Coercion ♦ For Your Consideration ♦ Key terms 

♦ chapter summary ♦ suggestions for satisfaction ♦ references

I have two questions for you. First, if a mischievous genie offered you a constant sup- ply of compelling orgasms but required that you experience them alone and never again have sex with another person, would you accept the offer? Second, if you discovered on your honeymoon that your new spouse had been secretly taking a drug like Viagra to enhance his or her sexual response to you, would you be hurt?

Different people will undoubtedly answer these questions in different ways. Those who have not had sex with an intimate romantic partner for a long time may find compelling orgasms, even solitary ones, an attractive option. But I suspect that most people would be reluctant to give up a potential future of physical connections with a lover or lovers. Orgasms are more fulfilling when they are shared with someone (Bensman, 2012), and most of us would be disappointed were we no longer able to share sex with someone we love. And we want our lovers to find us compelling and to want us in return. So, it may be hurtful to learn that a partner’s apparent desire for us is the result, at least in part, of some drug (Morgentaler, 2003).

As these questions may imply, there’s a lot more to human sexuality than great orgasms. For some of us, sex need not always involve romantic intimacy, but for most of us, romantic intimacy involves sex. Our close romantic relationships often have a sexual component, and our sexual behavior and sexual satisfaction are often dependent on the nature, and health, of those relationships. As we’ll see in this chapter, there’s a close connection between sexuality and intimate relationships.

SEXUAL ATTITUDES

Attitudes about Casual Sex

Times have changed, and it’s likely that you’re more accepting of nonmarital sexual intercourse than your grandparents were. Fifty years ago, most people disapproved of sex “before marriage,” but these days, fewer than 25 percent of us think that nonmarital sex is “always or almost always wrong” (Twenge et al., 2015). The circumstances matter. Most of us hold a permissiveness with affection standard (Daugherty & Copen, 2016): We believe that sex between unmarried partners is fine as long as it occurs in the context

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of a committed, caring relationship. We’re more ambivalent about hookups—sexual inter- actions with nonromantic partners that usually last one night and do not involve any expectation of a lasting relationship (Anders et al., 2020). On the one hand, both men and women usually have more positive than negative feelings after a hookup, but mixed feelings are common, and the event is mostly confusing or disappointing about 40 percent of the time (Strokoff et al., 2015). A lot depends on why one has a hookup: If we’re just seeking some fun and pleasure, positive reactions usually outweigh negative ones (such as chagrin and remorse), but if we hook up in order to avoid disapproval, unhappy reactions usually predominate (de Jong et al., 2018) and are especially likely when the hookup was unintended or undesired (Vrangalova, 2015). The good news is that few college students (14 percent) regret their most recent hookup, but the bad news is that most women (66 percent) and a lot of men (46 percent) regret at least one hookup that they’ve had in the past (Uecker & Martinez, 2017).

Do men and women differ in their sexual opinions? On average, they do: Men hold more permissive sexual values and attitudes, although the difference is shrinking over time, and how big it is depends on the particular attitude being measured (Hyde, 2014). One of the larger sex differences is in attitudes toward casual nonmarital sex; men are more likely than women to think that sex without love is okay, so they usually feel better the morning after a hookup than women do (Kennair et al., 2018). This difference undoubtedly influences the things that men and women regret about their past sexual behavior: Whereas women are more likely than men to regret things they’ve done (such as having a hookup), men are more likely than women to regret things they didn’t do (such as not having sex when they had the chance). When it comes to casual sex, women tend to regret their actions, but men regret their inactions (Bendixen et al., 2017).

A person’s sex may be involved in other sexual attitudes, as well. Traditionally, women have been judged more harshly than men for being sexually experienced or permissive. Whereas men who have multiple sexual partners may be admired as “studs,” women with the same number of partners may be dismissed as “sluts.” This asymme- try is known as the sexual double standard, and years ago it was quite obvious, but it appears to be more subtle today: We tend to disapprove of anyone, male or female, who hooks up “a lot” (Allison & Risman, 2013). But a double standard still exists, especially among men (Endendijk et al., 2020). Women expect more disregard than men do if they accept an offer of casual sex (Kettrey, 2016), a woman with a sexually transmitted infection (or STI) is judged more harshly than a man is (Smith et al., 2008), and a woman who participates in a threesome is liked less than a man is (Jona- son & Marks, 2009).1 These days, once they become young adults, people generally like their potential partners to have some sexual experience—being a virgin doesn’t enhance your attractiveness (Gesselman et al., 2017)—but if they’ve had more than two or three lovers, potential mates (both women and men) seem less and less desirable as their number of past partners goes up (Stewart-Williams et al., 2017). So, a strong sexual double standard no longer seems to exist, but a person’s sex can still have some influence on others’ evaluations of his or her sexual experiences.

1And no, it didn’t matter if the three participants were two women and one man or two men and one woman; female participants were judged more negatively in both cases.

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Attitudes about Same-Sex Sexuality

A person’s sexual orientation matters to some people, too. A noticeable minority of adult Americans—31 percent—feel that marriage between adults of the same sex should be illegal. However, most Americans do not hold that view: A clear majority—61 percent—are in favor of same-sex marriage, and that support is even more robust among young adults; 74 percent of them champion marriage equality (Pew Research Center, 2019). This hasn’t always been true, of course, but our attitudes about same-sex sexuality have changed dramatically in recent years (Charlesworth & Banaji, 2019). Back in 2004, for instance, 60 percent of Americans opposed the prospect of legal marriage between same-sex partners, and such marriages were impossible to obtain—but now they’re the law of the land. Similar sizable shifts have also occurred in several other areas of the world (such as Scotland, Ecuador, New Zealand, Taiwan, and Brazil) (Masci et al., 2010).

Why has this occurred? I’ll touch on two contributing reasons. First, gays and lesbians are more visible in public life than ever before; in 2019, for instance, a record number (10 percent) of regularly seen characters on American network television were LGBTQ (Elber, 2019). And that visibility is consequential because the more contact people have with gays, lesbians, and bisexuals, whether in person or just watching them on TV (Bond, 2020), the more favorable their feelings toward them tend to be (Lytle et al., 2017; MacInnis et al., 2017). Young adults in the United States have much more favorable attitudes toward gays and lesbians than elderly people do (Pew Research Center, 2019), but they’re much more likely to know (and like) openly gay or lesbian people, too.

A second stimulus is that we understand same-sex sexuality much better than we used to. For instance, our judgments of same-sex relationships have much to do with our beliefs about why someone is gay or lesbian, as Figure 9.1 shows. By a very large margin, people consider homosexuality to be acceptable when they believe that sexual orientation results from biological influences that occur before we are born. On the other hand, by a substantial margin, people find homosexuality unacceptable if they believe that it is a lifestyle one chooses to adopt. So, it’s important that for the last 20 years the number of people who believe that one’s sexuality is already set at birth has been gradually increasing and the number of those who believe that people choose to be gay or lesbian has declined (Jones, 2015). It’s important because—particularly with regard to gay men— the first group is right and the second bunch is wrong. In just the last few years, psycho- logical and biological science has determined that “preference in sexual identity and partnerships is apparently irrevocably etched in the developing fetal brain and cannot be changed. Who we are sexually, and who and how we love sexually, seem in most cases to be hardwired, beginning even before birth” (Horstman, 2012, p. 60).

As we saw in chapter 1, sexual orientation is complex, involving one’s emotional and sexual attractions to others, one’s actual behavior, and one’s identity, and we humans aren’t just gay or straight: If you insist on categorizing people, at least five categories of sexual orientation—heterosexual, mostly heterosexual, bisexual, mostly gay/lesbian, and gay/lesbian—are needed to capture the range of sexual behavior people display (Savin-Williams, 2016). And to some degree (more for women than for men), our behavior and self- concepts can change over time (Diamond, 2019). But we don’t “catch” same-sex attractions from our friends (Brakefield et al., 2014), and our

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upbringing doesn’t teach us to be gay (Långström et al., 2010). To the contrary, on average, gays and lesbians have interests that differ from those of their heterosexual peers when they are only 3-and-a-half years old (Li et al., 2017). Indeed, most gays and lesbians feel that they’ve had no choice whatsoever about their orientations (Herek et al., 2010), and there are a variety of physical differences between straight and gay men (Myers, 2013). The bottom line is that there’s no longer any doubt that same-sex sexual behavior is based, in part, in one’s genes; “same-sex sexual behavior is influenced by not one or a few genes but many” (Ganna et al., 2019, p. 1). “Clearly, sexual ori- entation is not a matter of conscious, moral choice” (Myers, 2013, p. 90). Slowly but surely, more of us are coming to understand that—and greater tolerance often follows.

Relationship science has demonstrated that there was never any empirical justifica- tion for denying gays and lesbians access to the legal benefits (involving, for instance, taxation, health insurance, pensions, and property rights) that marriage provides (Myers, 2013). Indeed, the American Psychological Association resolved that because (a) same- sex relationships operate in much the same manner as heterosexual partnerships (if not better) (Coontz, 2020), (b) sexual orientation has nothing to do with a person’s ability to be a loving, nurturing, and successful parent (Bos et al., 2018) (in fact, children of gay fathers enjoy higher self-esteem and better mental health than the children of heterosexual couples do [Miller et al., 2017]), and (c) marriage is good for people,

FIGURE 9.1. Tolerance of same-sex sexuality depends on one’s beliefs about its origins. Here are the results of a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center that surveyed a representa- tive national sample of Americans in May 2013. People were much more likely to be tolerant of homosexuality—saying that it should be accepted by society—if they believed that sexual orienta- tion was something that people are born with. On the other hand, if they believed that people choose to be gay or lesbian, they were intolerant of such behavior. The poll’s margin of error was 3 points. N = 1,504.

Source: Data from Pew Research Center. “In gay marriage debate, both supporters and opponents see legal recognition as ‘inevitable.’” June 2013.

Respondents’ Beliefs about the Origins of Sexual Orientation

58

13

30

63

% “Homosexuality should be ACCEPTED by society” % “Homosexuality should be DISCOURAGED by society”

“Which Statement Comes Closer To Your Own Views?”

People are born gay or lesbian

Just the way some people choose to live

6 13

Result of a person’s Upbringing

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including gays and lesbians (Ogolsky et al., 2019), it was ill-informed, unfair, and dis- criminatory to deny gays and lesbians legal recognition of their relationships in years past. (The formal resolution stating the psychologists’ position is intriguing reading [and only four pages long]; it’s available at http://www.apa.org/about/policy/same-sex.aspx). The American Sociological Association and the National Council on Family Relations have taken similar, scientifically grounded, public positions.

So, it’s regrettable that almost one-out-of-three Americans are still opposed to gay marriage. Social disapproval of one’s partnership is burdensome; it can undermine one’s physical (Wofford et al., 2019) and mental health (Rosenthal et al., 2019), and put undue stress on one’s relationship (Guschlbauer et al., 2019). What do you think? What unjust and unwarranted hardships would you face, and how would you feel, if your neighbors didn’t want you to marry?

Cultural Differences in Sexual Attitudes

In general, then, sexual attitudes have become more permissive over time. And if you’re an American witnessing these changes, you may be tempted to think of the United States as being more permissive than most countries. But you’d be wrong: The sexual attitudes of Americans look surprisingly conservative when compared to the opinions expressed by people in many other countries. Denmark was registering gay and lesbian relationships as civil unions in 1989 and Norway started doing so in 1993. Full-fledged marriages were available to gays and lesbians in those countries and in Canada, South Africa, France, Argentina, and several other countries for years before the United States

Can Same-Sex Sexuality Have Evolutionary Origins?

Sexual orientation has a genetic basis (Ganna et al., 2019), but gays and lesbians tend not to have many children of their own. So, how does the evolutionary principle of sexual selection work to maintain a small but consistent proportion of gays and lesbians in a predominantly heterosexual population? There are several possibilities (Bailey et al., 2016), and here are two, emerging from stud- ies of gay men. First, gay men make great uncles; in some societies, they devote them- selves to their nieces and nephews more than other men do, and thereby help their siblings reproduce more successfully (Vasey & VanderLaan, 2010). Around the world, when women need help raising their chil- dren, they tend to have positive attitudes to- ward homosexuals (Playà et al., 2017). Second, compared to other women, the sis-

ters of gay men are more fecund—that is, more fertile—and they have more babies (Iemmola & Ciani, 2009). They are also more likely than other women are to marry “up,” marrying men of higher social status (Barthes et al., 2013). Thus, throughout his- tory, gay men seldom may have fathered their own offspring, but their sisters had more children who may have received better care and protection, on average, than other children did. In difficult environments, it might even have been advantageous, on the whole, for same-sex orientations to run in one’s family. It is possible, then, for same-sex sexuality to have evolutionary origins. The next time you hear sexual bigots claim that being gay or lesbian can’t be natural because they don’t have children, feel free to show them this box.

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allowed them (Masci et al., 2019), so the States certainly didn’t lead the pack on that issue. Indeed, a large cross- cultural survey found that the United States held more conservative beliefs about premarital sex, extramarital sex, and same-sex relations than did Australia, Canada, Germany, Great Britain, Israel, Russia, Spain, and Sweden (Widmer et al., 1998). Things may be changing, but Americans still hold relatively conservative sexual attitudes.

Within the United States, African Americans hold more permissive sexual attitudes than whites do, with His- panic Americans and Asian Americans being more con- servative, in that order (Fugère et al., 2008). However, African Americans hold more negative attitudes toward gays and lesbians than whites do, and Republicans, reli- gious evangelicals, and older folks are more opposed to same-sex marriage than Democrats, nonreligious people, and young Americans are (Pew Research Center, 2019). Sexual attitudes are evidently shaped by a variety of historical, religious, political, and other societal influences: They clearly differ from country to country and from group to group.

SEXUAL BEHAVIOR

It’s one thing to ask what people are thinking and another to find out what they’re actually doing. Do remember, however, as you read this next section, that broad descrip- tions of sexual behavior mask enormous variability in people’s experiences. And behav- ior that is common is not necessarily healthier or more desirable than behavior that is less typical. We’ll find that what is perhaps most important about sexual behavior in relationships is that it is desired by and satisfying for both partners.

Sex for the First Time

These days, almost all—97 percent—of us have intercourse before we get married (Haydon et al., 2014). As you probably recall, typical Americans don’t marry until their late twenties, but the average age of first intercourse—the age at which half of us have had sex and half have not—is now 17 for both men and women. By the age of 20, rather few of us (about 20 percent) have not yet had sex (Keller, 2020).

These patterns are very different from those your grandparents experienced— people in their generation usually waited 2 to 3 years longer to begin having sex (Twenge et al., 2015)—and there is both good news and bad news in the way we do things now. On the one hand, American teens are being more responsible than they used to be. Most adolescents use some form of birth control when they first have intercourse, and the teen birth rate is at an all-time low (Martinez & Abma, 2020). On the other hand, American teens are still not being careful enough: About one of every four adolescent women becomes pregnant before she turns 20 (Child Trends, 2017), and more than one of every four female teenagers in the United States has a sexually transmitted

A Point to Ponder

Dolores Frias-Navarro and her colleagues (2018) found that the beliefs of Spanish university students about the origins of homosexuality were changed by reading about its genetic roots. Have the last four pages influenced your atti- tudes? Why or why not?

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infection! Most often, it’s the human papillomavirus (HPV), the virus that causes genital warts, which is found in 18 percent of young women (Barton et al., 2016) (and in 45 percent of American adults), but new infections of chlamydia, syphilis, and gon- orrhea have reached record levels, too (Ewing & Bryan, 2020).

A sizable majority of teens have sex for the first time with someone who is a part- ner in a steady, emotionally important relationship, and they come to have intercourse following a gradual trajectory of increasingly intimate behavior in which kissing leads to petting, and intercourse ultimately follows (de Graaf et al., 2009). Relatively few people (21 percent) are merely acquaintances or casual friends of their first sexual partners (Reissing et al., 2012), and only rarely is the sex involuntary or nonconsensual (McCarthy-Jones et al., 2019). As a result, most teens find their first experience with sex to be more positive than negative, on the whole. Men enjoy it a lot more, being much more likely to reach orgasm, but on average, both sexes have few regrets (Impett et al., 2014). Still, both men and women usually expect their first experience with inter- course to be more wonderful than it turns out to be; they anticipate more romance and bliss than they get (Barnett et al., 2016). Timing matters in this regard: An early sexual debut—that is, intercourse before the age of 16—is usually more awkward and less reward- ing (Walsh et al., 2011), and it’s associated with both a pattern of risky sexual behavior that tends to persist into adulthood (Huibregtse et al., 2011) and a higher risk of divorce down the road (Paik, 2011). (However, and of course, this doesn’t necessarily mean that an early debut causes those later problems; instead, those of us who have sex at 14 or 15 already tend to be more daring and prone to risk [Harden, 2014b].)

Once we’re sexually active, most of us again encounter someday the question of when to have sex in a new, developing relationship. So, here’s a bit of advice: Taking your time seems to pay off. Couples who have sex on their first date (or soon thereafter) experience poorer outcomes down the road, being less satisfied and communicating less well, than do those who wait a few weeks to become sexually intimate (Willoughby et al., 2014). One reason this occurs may be that a sense of commitment to one’s partner usually improves sexual experiences; most of us enjoy sex more (and have orgasms more frequently) when we feel committed to our partners than when we’re casually just fooling around (Galinsky & Sonenstein, 2013). There are undoubtedly other reasons, too; it’s an interesting point to ponder.

In any case, the psychological intimacy of teenagers’ sexual interactions seems to remain influential down the road. A pattern of sex with casual partners, especially one-night stands (Dubé et al., 2017), is associated with greater tension and more hurt- ful behavior in one’s romances 4 years later (Shulman et al., 2020). And interestingly, Canadian women who have no more than one lover each year by the time they’re 22 achieve higher levels of education than those who, as young adults, have two or more different lovers in a given year (Rossi et al., 2020).

Sex in Committed Relationships

So, what motives lead people to choose to have sex? There are literally hundreds of differ- ent reasons. When students at the University of Texas at Austin were asked to “list all the reasons you can think of why you, or someone you have known, has engaged in sexual

A Point to Ponder

Why is sex on a first date associated with lower relation- ship satisfaction later on if a couple stays together?

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Sex among unmarried teens is common place, and sexually transmitted infections are preva- lent. In response to these patterns, there are hundreds of programs being staged throughout the United States that seek to dissuade Ameri- can teens from having sex (Hall et al., 2016). These programs take various forms and may have innocuous labels such as “sexual risk avoidance,” but many of them are abstinence-only programs that provide no infor- mation whatsoever about how to prevent preg- nancy and how to have safe sex; they merely preach that “true love waits” for marriage. Striving to get their point across, some of them even teach misinformation—such as “condoms don’t work, and you’ll get HIV if you have sex”—that has been repudiated by medical sci- ence (Lin & Santelli, 2008). Such efforts may be well intended, but they’re misguided for two reasons. First, they don’t work (Carr & Pack- ham, 2017). For instance, U.S. sex education programs often promote abstinence by encour- aging teens to make public promises to remain virgins. But only 1 year after they make a vir- ginity pledge, most teens (53 percent) deny having made one, and 5 years later, 82 percent claim that they never said any such thing (Rosenbaum, 2009). Second, even worse, ab- stinence-only programs routinely do more harm than good. (Boyer, 2018). On average, graduates of abstinence programs are not less likely to have sex, but they are less likely to use contraception; most programs that preach ab- stinence do not get teens to delay having sex or to have fewer partners; they just discourage their pupils from having responsible, safe sex (Shepherd et al., 2017). For instance, young women who make an abstinence pledge and then break it, as most do, are actually more likely than their nonpledging peers to contract HPV and to become pregnant before they marry (Paik et al., 2016).

Supporters of abstinence-only “educa- tion” think that such programs work (Bleakley et al., 2010), but they must be basing their opin- ions on their intuitions instead of the facts (Santelli et al., 2017). And there are several

other meaningful facts about teen sex that many people don’t seem to know. Here are three: (1) Sex that occurs in a steady relation- ship, which is the kind of sex most teens have, is not associated with adverse psychological outcomes for teens, either when they begin hav- ing sex (Impett et al., 2014) or over time (Harden, 2014a). (2) HPV vaccinations do not encourage teens to start having risky sex (Jena et al., 2015); those who are vaccinated do not catch other STIs or get pregnant more often than those who are not. (3) A very effective way to reduce unwanted pregnancies and abortions is to give away free birth control. A program in St. Louis that provided 9,256 teen and young- adult women free long-lasting contraceptives (either IUDs or implants) cut their abortion rates in half and reduced their rate of teen births to less than one-fifth of the national aver- age without increasing their rates of sexual activity (Peipert et al., 2012).

So, there are two points I’d like to make about all this. First, knowledge is power. For the record, sex education is most effective in getting teens to delay sex and in reducing pregnancies when it provides explicit instruction in how to negotiate sexual interactions and how to use contraception (Hall et al., 2016). The better and more accurately informed teens are, the more sexually responsible and conscientious they tend to be. The American teen birth rate is at an all-time low not because teens are being absti- nent but because they are using contraception more than ever before when they do have sex (Lindberg et al., 2016). Education is beneficial; misinformation and ignorance are not.

Second, here’s another example of the ethical imperative that underlies relation- ship science: When dispassionate, careful study of human partnerships can provide reliable knowledge that improves our chances for health and happiness, we should do those studies, even when they take us into sensitive territory. Some people still think that ignorance is bliss when it comes to hu- man sexuality, but that’s a point of view with which relationship scientists firmly disagree.

Ignorance Isn’t Bliss

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intercourse in the past,” 237 distinct reasons were identified (Meston & Buss, 2007, p. 479). The most common reasons involved positive states: “attraction, pleasure, affection, love, romance, emotional closeness, arousal, the desire to please, adventure, excitement, experi- ence, connection, celebration, curiosity, and opportunity” (Meston & Buss, p. 498). The infrequent reasons were more calculating and callous, involving the desires to do harm (“I was mad at my partner, so I had sex with someone else”), to gain some advantage (“I wanted to get a raise”), or to enhance one’s social status (“I wanted to impress my friends”). Sexual motives evidently ranged from altruistic to vengeful and from intimate to impersonal.

Four themes seemed to underlie the sprawling list of specific reasons. One of them involved the emotional component of sex as a communication of love and commitment. Another involved the physical aspects of sex; it included both the physical pleasure to be gained from sex, and the physical attractiveness of a potential partner. Other reasons were more pragmatic, involving the wish to attain some goal or accomplish some objective that could range from making a baby to making someone jealous. Still other reasons were based in insecurity, involving the desire to boost one’s self-esteem or to keep a partner from straying. Men and women endorsed emotional reasons with equal frequency, but men were more likely than women to have had sex for physical, pragmatic, and insecure reasons (Meston & Buss, 2007). These differences were often slight, but men nevertheless reported more varied, and more practical, reasons for having sex than women did. And clearly, although sex is often a loving act, it sometimes has no romantic aim.

The frequency with which people have sex is influenced by the nature—and duration—of their relationships. Married and cohabitating couples have sex more often than those who are single (Twenge et al., 2017), probably because singles are less likely to have consistent access to a sexual partner. Married people may sometimes envy the swinging life of singles, but they usually get more sex than singles do. Nevertheless, whether or not they’re married, a steep drop in the frequency with which a couple has sex usually begins in the second year they live together,2 and their frequency decreases further when they’re preg- nant or have small children (Schmiedeberg & Schröder, 2015). And remarkably, all couples are having less sex, on average, than our grandparents did when they were our age. In 2014, for instance, typical spouses had sex 18 fewer times during the year than spouses did in 1990 (Twenge et al.). Why? It’s a provocative point to ponder. The steepest decline in sexual frequency corresponds to the advent of smartphones and is largest among those with college degrees—which is not good news for readers of this book!—but is unrelated to longer working hours or increased use of pornography (Twenge et al.).

Another important factor associated with sexual frequency is a person’s age. Look back at Figure 8.2 Older people generally have sex much less frequently than younger people do. In 2009, most American men and women in their late twenties (86 percent) reported that they had had intercourse with someone in the past year. However, only about half of men (58 percent) and women (51 percent) in their fifties had done so, and a minority of men (43 percent) and women (22 percent) who were 70 or older had had vaginal sex (Herbenick et al., 2010b). Most elderly Americans have not had

A Point to Ponder

Why are committed couples having sex less often, on average, than used to be the case?

2Do you recall our discussion of novelty back on page 332 in chapter 8? I just thought I’d ask.

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intercourse with anyone in the last 12 months (Karraker & DeLamater, 2013). Physical changes associated with aging are influential in this regard (DeLamater, 2012): Decreased hormone levels can reduce one’s desire, and declines in physical health can erode one’s vigor, so we shouldn’t be surprised that sexual desire wanes somewhat over the years.3 But as I noted in chapter 8, the passion partners feel for one another may also simmer down over the long haul as each becomes a familiar and routine sexual partner and the thrill of discovery and novelty is lost (Rubin & Campbell, 2012). The size of this effect (see Figure 8.2) leads me to offer this caution: If you’re a young adult who’s staying in a relationship (at least in part) because of great, hot sex, it’s simply silly to expect that your passion, desire, and need for that partner will never change. Of course it will; “the average couple has more frequent sexual activity during the first year of their relation- ship than they will ever have again” (Diamond, 2013, p. 591).

A final factor associated with sexual frequency is sexual orientation. When their relationships are young, gay men have more sex with their partners than lesbians or heterosexuals do. (See Figure 9.2, and keep this pattern in mind when I discuss sexual

FIGURE 9.2. Differences in sexual frequency by type and length of relationship. The figure displays the proportion of couples in each type of relationship who reported hav- ing sex at least once a week.

Source: Blumstein, P., & Schwartz, P. (1983). American couples: Money, work, sex. William Morrow.

10

0 0–2

Married

20

30

40

50

Pr op

or tio

n of

R es

po nd

en ts

60

70

80

90

100

2–10 10+ 0–2 Gay Men

2–10 10+ 0–2 Lesbians

2–10 10+

Type of Relationship

Years Together

3Our elders have intercourse much less often than young adults do, but they remain sexual beings with plenty of individuality. When their “sex without intercourse,” “exchanging caresses,” and “body contact” are assessed, 30 percent of 60- to 82-year-olds report more such sexual activity than the average 30-year-old does. Physical intimacy is often on their minds, too; 27 percent of them think of and wish for such activity more often than a typical young adult does (Kolodziejczak et al., 2019). Given a happy partnership and good health, people routinely remain interested in and desirous of sex into their nineties (and probably beyond!) (Iveniuk & Waite, 2018).

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Men Report More Sexual Partners than Women Do. How?

The best, most comprehensive surveys of sex paint somewhat different pictures of the sexual behavior of men and women. In particular, in the United States, the National Center for Health Statistics determined that the average middle-aged American man has had seven sex- ual partners during his lifetime, whereas the av- erage woman has had only four. A national sample in Great Britain found that men re- ported having 14 lifetime partners, whereas women reported only seven (Mitchell et al., 2019). Why aren’t these figures the same? One would think that each time a man has sex with a new partner, that partner does, too, and most of the sex men have is with women, not other men. So, why are these different rates routinely found?

There are several possible reasons, and one is procedural. Despite their careful sam- pling techniques, surveys usually fail to in- clude representative numbers of those particular women—prostitutes—who have sex with many men (if for no other reason than that they’re not home at night when the sur- veys are usually conducted). When research- ers make special efforts to include prostitutes in their samples, the average numbers of part- ners reported by men and women are more similar (Brewer et al., 2000).

Also, men and women occasionally de- fine “sex” differently. If a heterosexual cou- ple engages only in oral sex, for instance, he may be more likely to say that they’ve had

“sex” than she is (Gute et al., 2008). The sexes generally agree about whether “sex” has occurred (Sewell et al., 2017), but men are somewhat more likely than women to count as “sex p artners” lovers with whom in- tercourse did not occur (Barnett et al., 2016).

However, the most important source of the discrepancy is the tendency for men to ex- aggerate, and for women to minimize, the number of partners they’ve had. When they are connected to (what they think are effec- tive) lie detectors, men report having had fewer sex partners, and women report having had more (Fisher, 2013). (In fact, when they thought any lies could be detected, these women—who were students at a large univer- sity in the midwestern United States—reported having had more partners than the men did.) So, self-reports like these are clearly prone to social desirability biases like those we covered back in chapter 2 (Mitchell et al., 2019), and they speak to some of the difficulties research- ers face in studying intimate behavior.

One more point: When college students are asked how many sex partners they would like to have during the next year, the typical response from a majority of women is “one,” and from most men, “two” (Fenigstein & Preston, 2007). Only tiny minorities hope to have lots of partners. So, there is a sex differ- ence of note here—men want to have more partners than women do—but very few peo- ple want to be promiscuous.

desire seven pages from now.) After 10 years together, everybody has sex less often, but the drop in frequency is greater for gays, and they end up having sex less frequently than heterosexual couples do. On the other hand, regardless of the duration of the relationship, lesbians have sex less often than any other folks (Diamond & Blair, 2018). When it’s just up to them, women have sex much less frequently than they do when there is a man involved. But don’t confuse quantity with quality; compared to their heterosexual sisters, when do they make love, lesbians spend more time (Blair & Pukall, 2014) engaging in a wider variety of activities and enjoy more, and more satisfying,

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orgasms as a result (Blair et al., 2018). Lesbians have orgasms during their lovemaking more frequently than heterosexual women do.

Infidelity

Most people around the world strongly disapprove of someone who is in a committed relationship engaging in extradyadic sex (that is, having sex outside the dyad, or couple, with someone other than one’s partner) without the permission of one’s partner (Buunk et al., 2018).4 Thus, we might expect that sexual infidelity would be rather rare. But is it? A compilation of 47 different investigations involving more than 58,000 participants, most of them in the United States and most of them married, found that 21 percent of the women and 32 percent of the men had been sexually unfaithful to their romantic partners at least once. Most husbands and wives never have sex with other people after they marry, but about one out of every five wives and one out of three husbands do (Tafoya & Spitzberg, 2007). Rates of cheating are higher in couples that are dating or cohabiting. We usually think that it’s very unlikely that our partners will cheat (Watkins & Boon, 2016), but a national survey in the U.S. found that someone in a cohabiting couple—and sometimes it was both of them—had cheated 31 percent of the time (Frisco et al., 2017). And in another sample that focused on dating partners (Gra ham et al., 2016), when someone had extradyadic sex the other partner usually didn’t know it, and the cheating partner didn’t use a condom 22 percent of the time.5

As you may have noticed, men are more likely to cheat on their partners than women are (Labrecque & Whisman, 2017). They hold more positive attitudes toward casual sex, and they often pursue extradyadic sex simply for the sake of sexual variety (whereas women are more likely to seek an emotional connection; Impett et al., 2014). Indeed, these sex differences are particularly pronounced in the same-sex relationships of gay and lesbian couples, where male and female fidelity operate free of the influ- ence of the other sex. Gay men have a lot more extradyadic sex than both lesbian women and heterosexual men do (Diamond & Blair, 2018), as you can see in Figure 9.3, which depicts the results of a large survey of Americans back in the early 1980s that obtained data on spouses, cohabitating couples, and gay and lesbian cou- ples (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983). In many cases, the gay men had such sex with the permission of their partners, who wanted the same freedom (Sharma et al., 2019), and some observers have speculated that many heterosexual men would also behave this way if their female lovers would let them get away with it ( Diamond, 2015)! Arguably, “straight men would do everything gay men do if straight men could, but straight men can’t because women won’t” (Savage, 2019, p. 31).

Certainly, however, not all men are promiscuous and not all women are chaste, and there is an influential individual difference that makes both men and women more likely to engage in extradyadic sex. For some of us, sex is connected to love and

4The “sex” I’ll be referring to in this section will be vaginal or anal intercourse. Extradyadic behavior takes a variety of forms ranging from erotic texting and cybersex to kissing, heavy petting, oral sex, and intercourse (and more; Thompson & O’Sullivan, 2016), but people differ in their definitions of which of these are “cheating” (Kruger et al., 2013). So that we’ll all be on the same page, I’ll focus on behavior that almost everybody considers to be unfaithful. 5Yikes.

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commitment: It’s not especially rewarding to have sex with people we don’t know well or don’t care much about, and we have casual sex with acquaintances or strangers rarely, if at all. For others of us, however, sex has less to do with love and commitment; we think that “sex without love is OK,” and we’re content to have sex with people for whom we have no particular feelings. These different approaches to sex emerge from our sociosexual orientations, the traitlike collections of beliefs and behaviors that describe our feelings about sex (Simpson et al., 2004). Individual differences in socio- sexuality were discovered by Jeff Simpson and Steve Gangestad (1991), who used the measure in the box on the next page to assess respondents’ sociosexual orientations. People who were generally willing to have sex only in the context of a committed and affectionate relationship were said to have a “restricted” sociosexual orientation, whereas those who did not seek much closeness or commitment before pursuing sex were said to have “unrestricted” sociosexuality. As it turns out, people with unrestricted orientations tend to be dynamic, flirtatious people who are always on the prowl for new partners (Simpson et al., 2004). And around the world, men are more unrestricted on average than women are (Schmitt, 2005).

You probably won’t be surprised, then, to learn that sociosexuality is associated with the likelihood that people will have extradyadic sex. Over their lifetimes, compared to those with more restricted orientations, unrestricted people have more sexual part- ners and are more likely to cheat on their primary lovers (Rodrigues et al., 2017). When they already have romantic partners, they’re more likely to still be actively seeking

10

0 Husbands Wives Male

Cohabitors Female

Cohabitors Gay Men Lesbians

20

30

40

50

Pe rc

en t

60

70

80

90

FIGURE 9.3. Percentages of individuals reporting any instance(s) of extradyadic sex since the beginning of their relationships. Gay men clearly have more extradyadic sex than anyone else, but in many cases they are not “cheating” on their partners. Note, too, that men and women who are cohabiting are more likely to have sex with other people than husbands and wives are. Marriage involves more thoroughgoing commitment than cohabiting does.

Source: Blumstein, P., & Schwartz, P. (1983). American couples: Money, work, sex. William Morrow.

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hookups on Tinder (Weiser et al., 2018) and to be maintaining back burner relation- ships, keeping in touch with others in whom they’re interested who could replace their current partners (Borzea & Dillow, 2017). (In one sizable sample of American college students, by the way, 57 percent of those who were already in committed relationships were continuing to communicate with others “with whom they can see a future roman- tic or sexual connection” [Dibble et al., 2018, p. 206]. It’s not uncommon for unmarried young adults to pay rather close attention to their alternatives.)

Measuring Sociosexuality

Sociosexuality describes the degree to which a person is comfortable having sex in the ab- sence of any love or commitment. Jeff Simp- son and Steve Gangestad (1991) developed this brief measure, the Sociosexual Orienta- tion Inventory, to assess sociosexuality. Re- spondents are asked to answer these questions as honestly as possible:

1. With how many different partners have you had sex (sexual intercourse) within the past year?

2. How many different partners do you foresee yourself having sex with during the next 5 years? (Please give a specific, realistic estimate).

3. With how many different partners have you had sex on one and only one occa- sion?

4. How often do you fantasize about hav- ing sex with someone other than your current dating partner? (Circle one).

a. never

b. once every 2 or 3 months

c. once a month

d. once every 2 weeks

e. once a week

f. a few times each week

g. nearly every day

h. at least once a day

5. Sex without love is OK.

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9    I strongly

disagree I strongly

agree

6. I can imagine myself being comfortable and enjoying “casual” sex with different partners.

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9    I strongly

disagree I strongly

agree

7. I would have to be closely attached to someone (both emotionally and psy- chologically) before I could feel com- fortable and fully enjoy having sex with him or her.

1  2  3  4  5  6  7  8  9    I strongly

disagree I strongly

agree

Responses to the last item (#7) are re- verse scored, and a total score is computed by weighing the scores of some items more heavily than others. In general, higher num- bers on each question (and for the total score) reflect an unrestricted sexual orienta- tion, and lower numbers reflect a restricted orientation. Compared to those with a lower score, people with an unrestricted orienta- tion “typically engage in sex earlier in their romantic relationships, are more likely to en- gage in sex with more than one partner at a time, and tend to be involved in sexual rela- tionships characterized by less expressed in- vestment, less commitment, and weaker affectional ties” (Simpson & Gangestad, 1991, p. 879). Sociosexuality is a good exam- ple of how characteristics of individuals have a powerful impact on the nature of sexual in- teractions.

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David Seal and his colleagues (1994) shed light on this pattern in a clever study of heterosexual college students who were currently in dating relationships but who were asked to evaluate a computer dating video of an attractive member of the other sex. After viewing the tape, participants were told they could enter a drawing to win a free date with the person in the video, and they were invited to indicate how willing they would be—if they went on the date and had a good time—to engage in a series of physically intimate behaviors with the date. The researchers found that 36 percent of those who were unrestricted in their sociosexuality entered the drawing for the date, whereas only 4 percent of those who were restricted did. (Remember, all the partici- pants were currently involved in existing relationships!) Unrestricted individuals were also more interested in having sex with their new dates than restricted individuals were. Sociosexuality is clearly a meaningful characteristic that distinguishes those who are likely to cheat from those who are not.

It’s intriguing, then, that when their faces are presented side-by-side, observers can generally distinguish people with unrestricted orientations (who tend to be on the prowl) from those with restricted orientations (who are more likely to be faithful) (Boothroyd et al., 2011). Unrestricted women tend to have facial features that are somewhat more masculine than those of other women—and remarkably, although their faces are more attractive, men consider them to be less desirable as long-term mates. They’re lovely, but they seem less trustworthy than other women do (Campbell et al., 2009). Unre- stricted men look more masculine, too, but women prefer the faces of restricted men for long-term mates (Boothroyd et al., 2008); they seem to sense that unrestricted men would make riskier husbands.

An evolutionary perspective has an interesting spin on all this. With their lower parental investment,6 men can afford to engage in relatively casual sex, and, arguably, sexual selection7 has historically favored men who mated with as many women as possible. But why would evolution encourage a woman to cheat? Given the potentially violent costs she might incur if her actions are discovered (Buss, 2019), what repro- ductive advantage would there be? One provocative answer is that she’d not be able to produce more children by having extradyadic sex, but she might be able to have better (that is, healthier and more attractive) children. A good genes hypothesis sug- gests that some women—in particular, those with less desirable mates—can profit from a dual mating strategy in which they (a) pursue long-term partners who will contrib- ute resources to protect and feed their offspring while ( b) surreptitiously seeking good genes for their children from other men (Pillsworth & Haselton, 2006). By obtaining commitment and security from one man and having taller, stronger, healthier children with another, women could bear offspring who were especially likely to survive and thrive.

Some modern patterns of behavior are consistent with the good genes hypothesis. First, wives with dominant, assertive, masculine husbands are more satisfied with their marriages when they’re fertile than when they’re not—but wives with less masculine husbands don’t display this pattern (Meltzer, 2017). Second, children have more robust

6This key concept was introduced way back in chapter 1 on page 38. 7Ditto. Chapter 1, page 37.

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immune systems when their parents each give them different sets of genes of the type that regulate immune responses—and women whose partners have similar genes are more likely than those whose partners have different genes to have sex with other men, particularly when they’re fertile (Garver-Apgar et al., 2006). If women were pursuing extradyadic sex simply for the sake of variety, it would be foolhardy to entertain other lovers during the few days they’re fertile each month, but that’s exactly what they do; women are more attracted to extradyadic mates when they’re fertile than when they’re not, and this tendency is more pronounced when their primary partners are relatively unattractive (Larson et al., 2013).

If our ancient female ancestors behaved this way, they often would have had chil- dren who were healthier and more attractive than those who would have been fathered by the women’s usual mates (and thus, their extradyadic sex would have offered some advantages). Does this sort of thing happen today? It does. Meta-analyses of several dozen studies of paternity find that 2 percent of the world’s children, on average, are being raised by men who don’t know that someone else is the child’s biological father (e.g., Larmuseau et al., 2016). Moreover, in the United States, about 1 out of every 400 pairs of fraternal twins involves simultaneous siblings who were fathered by two different men (Blickstein, 2005).

These results suggest that, historically, men have occasionally encountered situa- tions involving sperm competition, which occurs when the sperm of two or more men occupy a woman’s vagina at the same time (Pham & Shackelford, 2015). Some research- ers contend that in response to such situations, evolution has equipped men with a penis that is ideally shaped to scoop any semen from other men away from their partner’s cervix (Gallup & Burch, 2006). Common sense might expect that a second lover would only push an earlier lover’s ejaculate through the cervix and into the woman’s uterus, but that’s not what happens: Deep thrusts force any sperm that is already present behind the head of the penis, which then pulls the sperm out of the woman. Indeed, consistent with this notion, when men know that their partners are spending a lot of time with other men (such as coworkers and friends), they tend to have intercourse in a manner—involving a higher number of unusually deep thrusts over a longer period of time—that is particularly likely to displace any sperm that might be present (Pham et al., 2017).

Thus, an evolutionary perspective argues that extradyadic sex can have reproductive benefits for some women, and that in response to such challenges, men have adapted. An entirely different (and less arguable) perspective on infidelity focuses on the current quality of a couple’s relationship. In general, as you’d expect, people are more likely to cheat when they become dissatisfied with their present partners (Scott et al., 2017) and the quality of their alternatives is high (Martins et al., 2016). Unhappy lovers who have tempting alternatives available to them are less likely to remain faithful. But people don’t cheat only because they’re dissatisfied; they may also be pursuing novelty and excite- ment, testing their desirability, or simply be drunk (Selterman et al., 2019).

If they do cheat, women are more likely than men to break up with their old partners and begin a new long-term relationship with the new mate (Impett et al., 2014); thus, women are more likely to switch mates as a result of an affair (Buss et al., 2017). However, if you’re shopping around, you may want to steer clear of someone who’s cheating on his or her current partner to be with you. Compared to

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the rest of us, cheaters tend to be callous, manipulative people who are high in Machi- avellianism and psychopathy (Alavi et al., 2018) and low in agreeableness and consci- entiousness (Schmitt & Shackelford, 2008) but relatively high in anxiety about abandonment (Russell et al., 2013). And having cheated once, they’re three times more likely than the rest of us to cheat again with their next partner (and that would be you) (Knopp et al., 2017). You can probably do better.

Consensual Non-Monogamy

Of course, not all extradyadic sex is cheating. Some folks engage in consensual non- monogamy (or CNM), an “arrangement in which partners agree that it is acceptable to have more than one sexual or romantic relationship at the same time” (Conley et al., 2017, p. 206). CNM can take three different forms. In an open relationship, the partners feel free to have sex with others—sometimes going on individual “dates” that they may or may not talk about later—but they agree to avoid any romantic or emotional attachments to those other people. Swingers pursue extradyadic sex as a couple, having sex, for instance, at parties that they both attend; their connections to others are also casual. But in polyamory, the partners do have full-fledged love affairs that may be both sexual and romantic relationships with more than one person. Polyamorous partners may be individuals who have two (or more) separate romantic relationships or three (or more) people who are all in love with each other. (And other configurations are possible; let your imagination run wild.)

CNM is not uncommon. Representative surveys in the United States (Haupert et al., 2017) and Canada (Fairbrother et al., 2019) find that one-fifth of us have been in some form of CNM relationship in the past, 4 percent of us are in one now, and 12 percent of us consider a CNM partnership to be their ideal form of relationship. Regrettably, however, some CNM relationships aren’t actually all that consensual; some people tolerate them reluctantly with arguable levels of mutual consent (Hangen et al., 2020). And CNM partnerships definitely aren’t for everybody. Eighty-four percent of the women (but only 68 percent of the men) in a sample of students at the University of Tennessee reported that they’d be unwilling to accept such an arrangement (and only some of the remaining respondents were enthusiastic about the idea) (Sizemore & Olmstead, 2018). Women, heterosexuals, and those with restricted sociosexual orienta- tions are less likely than men, lesbians, gays, and bisexuals, and those with unrestricted sociosexuality to have participated in a CNM relationship (Balzarini et al., 2020; Haupert et al., 2017). (So, altogether, whether it’s consensual or cheating, those with unrestricted sociosexuality are more likely than others are to have extradyadic sex.)

But is it really possible to genuinely love more than one person at a time? Sure. People do (Moors et al., 2019). Most often, when polyamorous people have two lovers, one of them is “primary” and the other is “secondary”; in the primary relationship, the partners have usually been together longer, live together, share finances, and are often married and have children together—and as a result, the secondary partner is “afforded relatively less time, energy, and priority in a person’s life” (Balzarini et al., 2019a, p. 1750). Nevertheless, both lovers are sources of meaningful rewards. Polyam- orous people routinely receive greater nurturance, security, and comfort from their primary partners and enjoy higher eroticism and passion with their secondary partners,

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so their loves are rich with both companionate and passionate love at the same time. And notably, the combined nurturance and eroticism they enjoy from their different partners is usually greater than the warmth and passion monogamous people experi- ence in their relationships with a single lover (Balzarini et al., 2019b). For its devotees, then, polyamory fulfills diverse needs and offers variety that monogamy does not (Moors et al., 2017).

Indeed, although most people disapprove of CNM relationships (Olmstead, 2020)— and psychotherapists judge CNM participants to have various problems (Grunt-Mejer & Lyś, 2020)—CNM relationships are just as satisfying, on average, as monogamous ones (Garner et al., 2019). But one thing is different: CNM participants enjoy higher sexual satisfaction and more frequent orgasms than monogamous folks do (Conley et al., 2018). In fact, when people who want to engage in CNM actually do so, their sexual satisfaction increases, especially when some of their sexual needs and desires are not being met by their primary partners (Murphy et al., 2020). CNM isn’t for everyone, but “removing the expectations that one person (i.e., a romantic partner) will meet all of one’s needs” is clearly a desirable choice for some folks (Muise et al., 2016a, p. 139).

Sexual Desire

Men’s greater interest in extradyadic sex may be a result in part, of another, broader difference between the sexes. On average, men have higher sex drives than women do. They experience more frequent and more intense sexual desires and are routinely more motivated to engage in sexual activity than women are (Gray et al., 2019). One study of young adults found that men reported episodes of sexual desire 37 times per week, whereas women reported only 9 (Regan, 2013). Because you’re being a thoughtful con- sumer of relationship science, you should remember that there are sizable individual differences at work here, and there are certainly many men who are chronically less horny than many women are. Nevertheless, a wide array of facts demonstrates that on average, and around the world (Lippa, 2009), men have higher sex drives than women do:

• Throughout their lives, men masturbate more often (Das et al., 2011), perhaps because their sexual impulses are stronger and harder for them to control (Tidwell & Eastwick, 2013). One-half (51 percent) of all men who have a regular sex partner still masturbate at least once a week, whereas only 25 percent of women who are in sexual relationships masturbate as frequently (Austin Institute, 2014). In England, it’s likely that 73 percent of the men between the ages of 16 and 44 have masturbated in the past month, but only 37 percent of the women have (Gerressu et al., 2008).

• Men want sex more often than women do, and they are more likely than women to feel dissatisfied with the amount of sex they get (Sprecher, 2002).

• In developing relationships, men typically want to begin having sex sooner than women do (Sprecher et al., 1995). As a result, women are usually the “gatekeepers” who decide when sex begins in a new relationship. On average, when he first wants to have sex, he has to wait, but when she wants to have sex, they do.

• Men think about sex more often than women do. When young adults carry clickers with which to count their thoughts, sex-related thoughts enter men’s minds 34 times a day, women’s only 19 (Fisher et al., 2012).

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• Men spend more money on sex, buying more sex toys and porn (Laumann et al., 1994). In particular, men sometimes pay to obtain sex—in one study in Australia, 23 percent of men had paid for sex at least once—but women almost never do (Pitts et al., 2004).

• Finally, as we’ve already seen, men are more accepting of casual sex, on average, than women are (Sprecher et al., 2013). They’d like to have sex with more people, too (Schmitt et al., 2012).

Add up these patterns, and the sex difference in sex drive may be no small matter. To a greater or lesser degree, each of these patterns may lead to misunderstanding or annoyance as heterosexual couples negotiate their sexual interactions. Some husbands may be chronically frustrated by getting less sex than they want at the same time that their wives are irritated by their frequent insistence for more (Moor et al., 2020). (I’m reminded, in this regard, of a clever bit in the movie Annie Hall, which beat Star Wars to win the Academy Award for Best Picture for 1977: On a split screen, both members of a romantic couple are visiting their therapists, who have asked how often they have sex; he laments, “Hardly ever, maybe three times a week,” as she complains, “Con- stantly, I’d say three times a week.”) The typical sex difference in sex drive means that some couples will encounter mismatches in sexual desire, and difficulty—that often involves cranky complaining and/or unwanted sex—may result (Fahs et al., 2020). The sexual satisfaction of both partners suffers when there’s a discrepancy in their desires (Rosen et al., 2018). And the mismatch may get only worse with time; most women experience a drop in desire after they have a child and when they go through meno- pause (McNulty et al., 2019), so perhaps we shouldn’t be surprised that a study of 60-year-olds in Germany didn’t find any couple in which she wanted as much sex as he did (Klusmann, 2006).

There may be further consequences of men wanting more sex than women do. As the gatekeepers who decide when sex occurs, women may find men willing to offer various concessions in exchange for sex (Kruger, 2008). Men’s greater interest in sex may put the principle of lesser interest8 in action: Women’s control over access to something that they have and that men want may give them power with which to influ- ence their men (Baumeister et al., 2017). In some relationships, sex may be “a valued good for which there is a marketplace in which women act as sellers and men as buy- ers” (Baumeister & Vohs, 2004, p. 359).

This sounds “decidedly unromantic” (Baumeister et al., 2017) because it can promote an adversarial view of sexual interactions (Fetterolf & Rudman, 2017). But partners need not endorse or even be consciously aware of this pattern for it to affect their interactions. Instead, without ever thinking about it, people may just take it for granted that a woman who, over a period of time, accepts a series of gifts from a man—such as expensive dates and other desirable entertainments—should feel some obligation to offer sex in return (or else she should stop accepting the gifts). Advice columnists acknowledge this: “Women do not owe sexual favors for a free dinner, but when men bear the entire cost of dating, they believe the woman is interested in a romantic, eventually intimate relationship. They otherwise feel used and resent it” (Mitchell & Sugar, 2008, p. B2). A dark consequence

8Would you like to refresh your understanding of the principle of lesser interest? It’s back on page 228.

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of this pattern is that some men may feel justified in pressuring or coercing women to have sex when they feel that the women “owe it” to them (Basow & Minieri, 2011).

Safe, Sensible Sex

There’s a lot of casual sex going on, and only some of it is safe. Most college students— about three-fourths—have had hookups, with about half of them having had one in the past year (LaBrie et al., 2014). Most hookups involve partners with whom one is well acquainted—much of the time, the partner is a friend—but a lot of hookups (37 percent) involve others who are either strangers or who are not well known (Grello et al., 2006). Some hookups just involve kissing and heavy petting, but about half of them include oral sex or intercourse (especially if people have been drinking), and when sex occurs, condoms are used only about half the time (Lewis et al., 2012).

Sex is no safer off-campus. A survey of 740 women (most of them in their 30s and 40s) who were seeking new partners on dating websites found that the women were generally very careful when they met a new guy face-to-face for the first time; they had long conversations, ran background checks, and negotiated boundaries before agreeing to a meeting, and then they met in a public place, carried pepper spray, or had a friend nearby. But all of that caution did not translate into safe sex. Perhaps because they already (believed that they) knew so much about each other, 30 percent of the women had sex with their new partners when they first met. And, overall, whenever it occurred, 77 percent of the women who met online partners did not use a condom when they first had sex (Padgett, 2007).

Thus, many people do not use condoms when they have sex with a new or tem- porary partner, and they forgo safe sex in an environment in which 45 percent of American men are infected with HPV (Han et al., 2017) and the number of cases of sexually transmitted diseases in the United States is at an all-time high (Ewing & Bryan, 2020). What’s going on? Why is it that so many smart people are having so much unsafe sex? There are several reasons:

• Underestimates of risk. The good news is that if we’re certain that we’d catch an STI through unprotected sex, almost all of us would choose to use a condom. The bad news is that as our perceived likelihood of infection decreases, lots of us become less likely to use condoms even when we know that our partner is infected with something (including HIV, the human immunodeficiency virus!) (Berry et al., 2019). And because a lot of us are lousy at math, we routinely misunderstand and underestimate the risks we take.

For instance, the chance that a woman will be infected with HIV in a single unprotected sexual encounter with an infected male is actually quite low, less than 1 percent. But of course, if you give a low-frequency event several chances to occur, the probability that it will occur at least once goes up. If a woman has unprotected sex with an infected man a few dozen times, it becomes very likely that she will be infected, too; her chance of infection becomes substantial (Linville et al., 1993).

In a similar manner, almost all of us underestimate the cumulative overall risk that a new partner who has been sexually active in the past is carrying a sexually

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The Ins and Outs of Cybersex

There’s a lot of real and imagined sexual activ- ity taking place online these days. The Web offers a unique mix of characteristics that al- low us to have rather personal contact with others cheaply and easily: accessibility to large numbers of people, affordability that makes a cyber-date inexpensive, and anonymity that lowers inhibitions and prevents our partners from following us home (S ubotnik, 2007). The interactions that result often take place in “a sexual space midway between fantasy and action” (Ross, 2005, p. 342); they may fulfill our fantasies when we’re only sitting at home typing, and they can feel very intimate even when we have little, if any, factual infor- mation about our partners.

Is cybersex innocuous? Those who en- gage in cybersex generally think so (Grov et al., 2011), but it’s a complex issue; sex takes three broad forms online, and they have different implications for face-to-face relationships (Henline et al., 2007). First, people pursue porn. In the United States, men consume more porn than their female partners do, and they do it more often than their partners think they do; 64 percent of American men see porn, at least now and then, but only 35 percent of American women do. In particular, 20 percent of mar- ried men in the United States use porn every week, but only 3 percent of married women do (Carroll et al., 2017). And that’s notable because most of us don’t disapprove of a partner’s occcasional consumption of por- nography, but close to a third (31 percent) of us do, actually considering it to be a form of marital infidelity (Carroll et al., 2017).

The critics of porn may have a point. Most porn portrays women in a demeaning manner—as horny sluts who are always ready to serve and please men—and there’s a lot of gagging, slapping, and name-calling in porn (Fritz & Paul, 2017), so it may teach lessons that can have an adverse effect on close rela- tionships. In particular, teens who consume a lot of porn tend to endorse casual, recre-

ational attitudes toward sex, to hold more fa- vorable views of extradyadic sex, and to think of women as sex objects, that is, devices to be used for men’s pleasure (Wright & Bae, 2016). They have more frequent hookups with more people, too (Braithwaite et al., 2015). And because porn is full of (imagi- nary) gorgeous alternative partners who seem eager and willing, men who watch porn alone tend to be less satisfied with, and less committed to, their current partners than are those who watch porn with their partners—or not at all (Willoughby & Leonhardt, 2020). The larger the discrepancy in partners’ use of porn, the more obnoxious porn use becomes (Willoughby et al., 2016)—but porn’s adverse effects disappear when the partners consume it with similar frequencies (Kohut et al., 2018).

Visits to porn sites usually don’t involve interactions with others online, but other forms of online sex do. Sometimes it’s just sexy flirting and talking dirty, but an interac- tion becomes cybersex when it involves sex- ual chat for the purpose of sexual gratification ( Daneback et al., 2005) with, as one exam- ple, the participants sharing explicit descrip- tions of sexual activities while they each masturbate. In Germany, Sweden, Canada, and the United States, close to a third (31 percent) of young adults have had cyber- sex (Döring et al., 2017). It’s often shared between lovers in an existing relationship, but it can also involve anonymous strangers who never meet (and who may not be who they say they are) (Shaughnessy & Byers, 2014), and many of us, 45 percent, would find that to be a serious type of infidelity (Henline et al., 2007).

Even more consequential, however, may be the last form of online sex, which in- volves emotional involvement with someone at the other end of an Internet connection. People can and do form intimate connec- tions with others they have never actually met, and such liaisons seem unfaithful to

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transmitted infection (Knäuper et al., 2005), and that false sense of security deters condom use. (A lot of us never even ask if a new partner has an STI, either [Manning et al., 2012].) Someone who has had several prior sexual partners is more likely to be infected than we think. And whether we’re gay (Sarno & Mohr, 2020) or straight (Berry et al., 2019), we’re particularly likely to underestimate a partner’s risk when he or she is attractive; the better looking someone is, the lower the risk we perceive, and the less likely we are to use a condom if sex occurs.

A particular bias known as the illusion of unique invulnerability can also influ- ence our estimates of risk. Many of us believe that bad things are generally more likely to happen to others than to us, so we fail to take sensible precautions that would prevent foreseeable dangers (Burger & Burns, 1988). The irony here, of course, is that those who consider themselves relatively invulnerable to STIs are less likely to use condoms, and that makes them more likely to catch one. People even think they’re unlikely to catch an STI after they’ve already got one. A rep- resentative national survey of young adults in the United States found that only 22 percent of those who tested positive for chlamydia, gonorrhea, or trichomonia- sis had noticed any symptoms in the past year, so most people didn’t know they were carrying an STI—and only 28 percent of those who already had one of these STIs believed that they were at risk of becoming infected (Wildsmith et al., 2010). There’s a lot of biased—or simply ignorant—assessment of risk out there (Syme et al., 2017).

• Faulty decision making. When we intend to use condoms, we sometimes change our minds in the heat of the moment and then regret our decisions afterward. What causes us to make poor decisions? Sexual arousal, for one. When we get turned on, we see things differently than we do when we’re not aroused: Diverse sexual behaviors (such as spanking, a threesome, and sex with a 60-year-old) seem more appealing (Imhoff & Schmidt, 2014); morally question- able behavior (such as slipping someone a drug to get sex) seems more accept- able (Ariely & Loewenstein, 2006); and condoms seem less desirable (Skakoon-Sparling et al., 2016). We really can get “carried away” when we get turned on.

Intoxication can also alter our decision making, particularly when we’re sexually aroused (Ebel-Lam et al., 2009). When people get drunk, they’re less likely to use condoms when they’re having sex with someone for the first time, in part because intoxication leads them to ignore the potential consequences

39 percent of us. But because these partner- ships are usually much more personal than the typical episode of cybersex—often involv- ing deep self-disclosure—they are often more problematic for existing face-to-face relation- ships. People who become emotionally in- volved online are more likely to arrange a

way to meet offline, and then real extrady- adic sex sometimes occurs (Henline et al., 2007). Online sex can be a playful flight of fancy or a serious search for a new partner, and we sometimes don’t know which until some damage has been done to our current relationships.

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and to think that having sex is a great idea (Davis et al., 2016). This is an exam- ple of a phenomenon known as alcohol myopia, which involves the reduction of people’s abilities to think about and process all of the information available to them when they are intoxicated (George, 2019). This limited capacity means that they are able to focus only on the most immediate and salient environmental cues. When they’re drunk, people may not be able to think of anything but how attractive their partners are, and they completely forget their prior intentions to use the condoms they’re carrying in a pocket or purse (MacDonald et al., 2000). Alcohol and arousal are evidently a recipe for high-risk sexual behavior—so it’s notable that when people are horny and on the prowl, they intentionally drink more than usual (Vincke, 2017). In particular, a lot of hookups would never have happened if the participants hadn’t been drinking (Kuperberg & Padgett, 2017).

• Pluralistic ignorance. One of the striking things about hookups is that they are not as popular as most people, including the participants, think they are. Both men and women overestimate their peers’ approval of, enthusiasm for, and frequency of hooking up (Barriger & Vélez-Blasini, 2013). Women tend to regret hookups that involve intercourse or oral sex (Garcia et al., 2012), but because they believe that other people generally approve of such behavior, they can feel some social pressure to engage in it, too (Lewis et al., 2014).

This is an example of pluralistic ignorance, which occurs when people wrongly believe that their feelings and beliefs are different from those of others. By misper- ceiving each other’s true preferences, a group of people can end up following norms that everyone thinks are prevalent but that almost no one privately supports. Thus, young adults may wisely want to have safe sex but fail to pursue it because they wrongly believe that it’s unpopular. Indeed, women think that men hold more negative attitudes toward condoms than they really do (Edwards & Barber, 2010), and both sexes underestimate how often their peers use condoms and overestimate how frequently they have casual sex (Lewis et al., 2014). Facebook isn’t helpful in this regard; when people browse others’ sexy, playful photos, they come to believe that their friends are having more hookups and using fewer condoms than they really are (Young & Jordan, 2013).

• Inequalities in power. As we’ll see in chapter 12, power is the ability to get a partner to do what you want. When two partners possess different levels of power, they are unlikely to use condoms if the more powerful partner opposes them (Woolf & Maisto, 2008). In general, the more powerful the woman is (Pulerwitz et al., 2000), and the more honest and forthright she is (Impett et al., 2010), the more likely she and her partner are to use condoms when they have sex.

• Abstinence education. In order to convince teens that abstinence is the only way to go, some abstinence education programs teach their students that condoms don’t work (which, of course, is nonsense) (Lin & Santelli, 2008). The undesired result is that when those teens have sex—and most of them do—they are less likely than other adolescents to use condoms ( Hall et al., 2016).

• Low self-control. We’ll find in chapter 14 that self-control is the ability to manage our impulses, practice self-restraint, and generally do the right thing even when

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it requires perseverance and effort. As you might expect, those of us with higher chronic levels of self-control (and who, therefore, are less impulsive and less likely to take unnecessary risks) are more likely to have used condoms and other forms of contraception the last time we had intercourse (Moilanen, 2015).

• Decreased intimacy and pleasure. The most important deterrent of all, however, may be that both men and women enjoy sex more, on average, when they don’t use condoms than when they do. Men are particularly likely to prefer unprotected sex (Randolph et al., 2007), and people who don’t use condoms consider their sex to be more intimate and emotionally satisfying (Smith et al., 2008). Consequently, lots of people—30 percent of men and 41 percent of women—have had a partner try to talk them out of using a condom. Remarkably, the more sex partners people have had—and, therefore, the higher their cumulative risk of having an STI—the more likely they are to try to dissuade their new lovers from using condoms (Ashenhurst et al., 2017). Men are more likely to strenuously resist using a condom when they’re drunk (Stappenbeck et al., 2019)—it’s another downside to intoxication—and a few have engaged in stealthing, which occurs when one surreptitiously removes a con- dom just before or during intercourse without his partner’s knowledge or consent. Compared to other fellows, stealthy men tend to have hostile attitudes toward women and a history of other sexually aggressive behaviors, and they’re twice as likely—sadly, no surprise, here—to already have an STI (Davis, 2019). Stealthing can reasonably be considered to be a form of sexual assault (behavior we’ll con- sider further at the end of the chapter).

Clearly, condom use is subject to diverse influences. Education can counteract some of the misunderstandings that deter condom use, but changing the perception that condoms are impersonal and unpleasant may be more difficult. So, I have two suggestions. Condoms are less likely to “break the mood” when they’re treated as a part of sexy foreplay (Scott-Sheldon & Johnson, 2006). Don’t treat condoms as if they’re a nuisance that interrupts your love-making; when it’s time, help your partner put one

on in a manner that creatively and deliberately enhances, rather than detracts from, your excitement and anticipa- tion. I also suggest that these days it communicates more respect, care, and concern for each other when you do use a condom than when you don’t. It’s likely that a new partner who tries to talk you out of having safe sex does not value you or your relationship as much as one who is glad to respect your wishes (Davis,

2019). And you certainly shouldn’t be embarrassed to ask a new lover to use a condom. Most people will be glad you brought it up—and if your partner is reluctant to do what you want, you probably don’t want to share yourself with that person anyway.

SEXUAL SATISFACTION

What people do in their sexual relationships is important, but how those actions make them feel is even more influential. It’s good news, then, that when they are in good

A Point to Ponder

Have you ever wanted to use a condom but didn’t? Why? Do you think that you’ll ever al- low that to happen again? Why?

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health, free of sexual problems, and have a steady partner, most people have happy sex lives (Heiman et al., 2011). When they had all three things going for them, for instance, only 6 percent of the women who participated in a large study in Boston were dissatisfied with their sex lives, overall (Lutfey et al., 2009). However, past middle age, people often don’t enjoy smooth sexual sailing; among older respondents, only about half of the Boston sample (51 percent) had had sex with anyone in the past month; many of them had no available partner, and others simply hadn’t been inter- ested in having sex. And of those who had been sexually active, over a third (39 per- cent) had experienced frustrating problems with pain, a lack of desire, or difficulty reaching orgasm. Similar problems afflict men, so when all these influences are com- bined, a minority (43 percent) of Americans 45 and older are presently having satisfy- ing sex (Schwartz et al., 2014).

That’s disappointing. Is there anything we can do, if we’re healthy, to attain more sexual satisfaction? Yes, probably, and a variety of investigations have offered some insights. First, for most of us, the quality of our connections to our sex partners is more important than the number of partners we have: We enjoy sex more when we care about our partners and are committed to our partnerships (Cheng & Smyth, 2015). Indeed, U.S. men get more pleasure from sex with a steady relationship partner than they get from sex with anyone else (Herbenick et al., 2010a), and in Germany, Spain, Brazil, Japan, and the United States, the fewer sexual partners men have had during their lives, the more sexually satisfied they are now (Heiman et al., 2011).

The frequency with which people have sex is influential, too—up to a point. In one classic study, 89 percent of husbands and wives who had sex three times a week or more reported that they were content with their sex lives, whereas only 32 percent of spouses having sex just once a month were as satisfied (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983). Of course, several things could be at work in a correlation like this, but two patterns are noteworthy. First, in general, the more sex a couple has, the more satisfied with their sex lives both of them tend to be (Grøntvedt et al., 2020). But second, if they’re having sex at least once a week, having sex more often doesn’t make them any happier with their relationship; on average, couples who have sex two, three, or four times a week, for instance, aren’t more satisfied with their partnerships than those who have sex just once each week (Muise et al., 2016b). In fact, it’s possible to have too much of a good thing. When couples were asked by researchers to double the amount of sex they were having,9 intentionally striving to have sex more often did not add to their delight; their energy and enthusiasm for sex, and the quality of their sex, actually declined slightly (Loewenstein et al., 2015). Evidently, as long as we’re having sex more than just two or three times a month, we’re happier when we focus on the quality, rather than the quantity, of our sexual interactions (Forbes et al., 2017).

In addition, no matter how frequent they are, sexual interactions are most rewarding when they fulfill basic human needs for autonomy, competence, and relatedness. According to the tenets of Self-Determination Theory, we are happiest and healthiest when we routinely engage in activities that allow us to choose and control our own actions (that’s autonomy), to feel confident and capable (that’s competence), and to establish close con- nections to others (relatedness) (Knee et al., 2016). Sex fits this framework, too (Wood et al., 2018): The best, most gratifying sexual interactions allow us to do the things we want, to do them well, and to feel loved and respected in the process.

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That probably doesn’t surprise you. What is notable is that a lot of people rou- tinely have sex that is less satisfying than it could be because it doesn’t fulfill those needs. In particular, people who subscribe to traditional gender roles tend to take it for granted that men should take the lead in directing sexual activity and that proper, feminine women should be submissive and subservient to their men; he’s supposed to make the moves, and she’s supposed to do what he wants (Rubin et al., 2019). The problem is that these expectations cast women into a passive role that undermines their autonomy in bed; they rarely choose the agenda and they rarely call the shots,

9Some of them managed to do this, but most didn’t. On average, there was a 40 percent increase in the frequency with which they had sex.

How to Improve Your Sex Life: Don’t Believe Everything You Read (or Hear)

Sex is portrayed in various ways in the media, and not all of the lessons you can learn there will benefit your relationships. In their ef- forts to appeal to the masses (few of whom, regrettably, will ever read this book), modern media reinforce stereotypes, play on fears, and show us a lot of casual, unprotected sex. For instance, condoms and other matters of sexual responsibility are rarely mentioned when sex shows up on television (Kim & Wells, 2017), and “reality” dating programs such as The Bachelor and The Bachelorette depict developing relationships as crass sexual competitions that routinely involve a lot of alcohol (Aubrey et al., 2020). Indeed, people who watch a lot of these shows tend to endorse the sexual double standard and to think that dating is a contest in which horny men care only about women’s looks and pres- sure them for sex, blithely ignoring them when they pretend to be uninterested (Seabrook et al., 2016). Magazines such as Cosmopolitan suggest that a woman needs to develop mad skillz in bed if she expects a guy to remain committed to her. If she doesn’t have plenty of tricks up her sleeve, she’ll find it hard to keep a man. She has to tread lightly, though, because men are also said to be very

sensitive about possible inadequacies and shortcomings (Farvid & Braun, 2006). And this last point is reinforced by endless streams of spam e-mail messages warning men that, if they don’t increase their penis size, they will surely continue to disappoint their women.

Nonsense. The last time they had sex, most American teens (92 percent!) used some form of contraception, usually condoms (Guttmacher Institute, 2019). There’s a lot more safe sex in real life than on TV. And gentlemen, take note: A survey of over 52,000 women on the Web found that a sizable major- ity of them were satisfied with the size of their partner’s penis. Only 6 percent of the female respondents thought their partners were “small” (as opposed to “average” or “large”), and most of that group did wish that their partners were bigger. Still, overall, 84 percent of the women thought their men were just fine, 14 percent wished they were larger, and 2 percent wanted them to be smaller (Lever et al., 2006). Six out of every seven women have no wish for their men to be larger, and if that’s a surprise, you’ve probably been reading the wrong magazines and visiting the wrong Web sites. Don’t believe everything you see or hear about sex in close relationships.

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so they often don’t get what they want. And robbing women of their initiative and control decreases their sexual desire, reduces their arousal, and makes it harder for them to reach orgasm, so sex is a lot less fun for them (Kiefer & Sanchez, 2007). For their part, some men chafe at always having to be in control. Many men want to feel that they are compelling targets for their partners’ desire, so it’s exciting for them when, instead of being passive, women initiate sex and take the lead (Dworkin & O’Sullivan, 2005). As one fellow complained to advice columnist, “Dear Abby” (Van Buren, 2013, p. E4): Sex “happens only when I make the overtures.” He was worried that he wasn’t very desirable, and asked “must sex always start with the guy, or can women demonstrate more overt interest?” As you can see, the dictates of traditional gender roles can rob both men and women of some sexual freedom and abandon, so that their sexual interactions are less satisfying than they could be; couples who allow each other more autonomy and choice enjoy more gratifying sex (Sanchez et al., 2012).

The motivations that underlie our sexual interactions also influence the satisfaction we derive from them. As we saw earlier (back on p. 351), people have sex for lots of different reasons, and one way to organize them is to employ the approach and avoid- ance dimensions I introduced in chapter 6.10 We sometimes have sex to obtain (or “approach”) positive outcomes such as increased intimacy or personal pleasure. For instance, if we seek to celebrate and enrich our connection with our partners by having sex, we’re pursuing positive outcomes. In contrast, when we have sex hoping to forestall or avoid unpleasant consequences, such as our partners’ anger or disappointment, we are pursuing different goals. Which type of motive do you think is more fulfilling? Sex diaries from students at UCLA have shown that sex is more satisfying, intimate, and fun when people engage in sex for positive reasons. In contrast, when they have sex to avoid unwanted outcomes, they experience more negative emotions and their relation- ships suffer; over time, partners who have sex for avoidance reasons are more likely to break up (Impett et al., 2005). People with strong approach motivations in bed also have more intense and longer lasting sexual desire for their partners (Impett et al., 2008). It’s clear that those who have sex to express their love for their partners, to deepen their relationship, and to give and obtain physical pleasure eagerly pursue—and enjoy—sexual interactions more than do those who have sex for other reasons (Pascoal et al., 2014), and their partners are more satisfied, too (Muise et al, 2013). So, it’s good news that when people intentionally focus on their positive reasons for having sex—by, for instance, spending a few minutes each day thinking about the pleasures sex has provided them in the past (Muise et al., 2017), and pondering how they can provide similar pleasures to their partners (Impett et al., 2019)—they increase the satisfaction both they and their partners derive from the sex they’re having now.

Finally, if you’re disappointed by the sex you’re currently having, you may find value in thinking of sexual satisfaction as a goal that one attains through creativity and effort and taking one’s time, rather than as a state that automatically follows from finding a compatible, perfect partner. We drew a contrast between growth beliefs and destiny beliefs about close relationships back in chapter 4,11 and a similar

10Back on pages 233–236. 11The pause that refreshes: pages 146–147.

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distinction applies here: People who endorse sexual growth beliefs conceive of sexual satisfaction as something you work for; they think that sexual success is malleable (Bőthe et al., 2017) and that you can enjoy more of it by striving to attain it. In contrast, sexual destiny beliefs lead people to think that to have great sex, you just have to find your sexual soulmate; you’re sexually compatible with some people and not with others, and that’s just the way it is. Our mindsets matter, of course, and people enjoy more sexual satisfaction—and have more satisfied partners—when they’re high in sexual growth beliefs. This is especially true when people encounter occa- sional sexual challenges (Maxwell et al., 2017); when difficulties arise or when pas- sion begins to wane, it’s beneficial to believe that creative collaboration and effort can keep your love alive.

Speaking of creative collaboration, sexual satisfaction increases when couples intentionally make time and space in their relationship for sex, seek to pleasure their partners, and introduce fun and novel activities into their lovemaking (De Santis et al., 2019). Variety is evidently rewarding: A mini massage, a shared shower, a new sexual position, a sex toy, some anal stimulation, some light bondage, sharing fantasies, watch- ing porn together, sex in a public place, and inventive uses of whipped cream are all employed more often by satisfied lovers than by those who are blasé or dissatisfied with their sex lives (Frederick et al., 2017). And lest there be any doubt, couples that kiss more enjoy their sex more (Busby et al., 2020a). It’s typical for a couple’s sexual satisfaction to decline steadily after they’ve been together for a year or two (Schmiedeberg & Schröder, 2016), but if you’re imaginative and inventive and adopt sexual growth beliefs, that may not happen to you; “over time, individuals and couples can, and many do, keep passion alive” (Frederick et al., p. 199).

Sexual Communication

Here’s another influence on sexual satisfaction that’s important enough to get its own subheading. A lot of people feel awkward or nervous talking about sex, so too often, they don’t (Rehman et al., 2019). Couples often have sex, for instance, without ever discussing it at all: One of them might signal a desire for sex by moaning, intimate touching, and unbuttoning a shirt, while the other silently signals his or her consent simply by doing nothing to resist (Vannier & O’Sullivan, 2011). Is wordless sex a prob- lem? It can be. It’s wasteful if we never talk honestly, fearlessly, and openly with our partners about our sexual likes and dislikes, for one very big reason: Clear communica- tion about sex is associated with better sexual functioning (e.g., higher arousal, better lubrication and erectile function, and more orgasms; Mallory et al., 2019) and then, as you’d expect, greater satisfaction with sex (Frederick et al., 2017). People who talk candidly about sex, ask for what they want, and give helpful instructions and feedback to their partners have more fulfilling sexual interactions than do those who just grunt and moan now and then.

The famous sex researchers William Masters and Virginia Johnson (1970) high- lighted the importance of good sexual communication in a provocative study that compared the sexual experiences of heterosexuals and gays and lesbians. Masters and Johnson observed couples having sex and interviewed them extensively, and they

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concluded that the subjective quality of the sexual experience—including psychological involvement, responsiveness to the needs and desires of the partner, and enjoyment of each aspect of the sexual experience—was actually greater for gays and lesbians than it was for heterosexuals. Same-sex sex was better sex. One advantage of the sexual interactions shared by gays and lesbians was that both participants were of the same sex; knowing what they liked themselves, gays and lesbians could reasonably predict what their partners might like, too. However, Masters and Johnson argued that the primary foundation for more rewarding same-sex relations was good communication. Gays and lesbians talked more easily and openly about their sexual tastes than hetero- sexuals did. They would ask each other what was desired, provide feedback on what felt good, and generally guide their lovers on how to please them. In contrast, hetero- sexual couples exhibited a “persistent neglect” of open communication and a “poten- tially self-destructive lack of intellectual curiosity about the partner” (Masters & Johnson, p. 219).

Importantly, if heterosexuals honestly tell each other what they like and don’t like and how each of them is doing, they’re more likely to have superb sex, too. This sort of discussion is very intimate, and couples who engage in a lot of it not only enjoy more sexual satisfaction but feel more contented overall in their relationships as well (Blumenstock et al., 2020).

Better communication can also help us manage situations in which we do not want to have sex and our intentions are being misunderstood. You may have already learned the hard way that women and men often interpret sexual situations differently (Ambrose & Gross, 2016), and frustration or antagonism can result. Men have stronger sexual desires than women do, and they’re literally thinking about sex more often than women are, so they may read sexual interest into innocent behavior from women who have no sexual intentions (Lee et al., 2020). This was first demonstrated in a classic study by Antonia Abbey (1982), who invited men and women to get acquainted with each other, chatting one-on-one, while another man and another woman observed their conversa- tion. Both the men participating in the interactions and those watching them tended to interpret friendliness from the women as signs of sexual interest, even when the women doing the talking had no wish to be sexually provocative and the women look- ing on saw no such conduct. The men literally perceived signs of sexual flirtatiousness that were not intended and that probably did not exist.

This sort of thing isn’t rare; most men (54 percent) have misperceived a woman’s intentions at least once (Jacques-Tiura et al., 2007). Undoubtedly, some of these errors were innocent mistakes; sometimes, a woman’s behavior may be reasonably taken to be either flirtatious or just friendly (Hall, 2016), and because men are less sensitive than women to nonverbal nuance, they can easily form the wrong impression in such cases (Lindgren et al., 2012). Along those lines, it’s interesting that when men tried to judge the sexual interests of 81 different women and received feedback about their accuracy along the way, they started attending more to the women’s facial expressions (and less to their physical attractiveness), and the quality of their judgments improved (Treat et al., 2016).

Importantly, though, misperceptions of women’s interests are more likely from some men than from others. Men who reject traditional gender roles and value equal- ity of the sexes make fewer of these mistakes (Farris et al. 2008), whereas macho men

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who consider sex to be an exploitative contest make more of them (Wegner & Abbey, 2016). These latter guys, who actually don’t like women very much, are the men who are most likely to engage in sexual coercion (Woerner et al., 2018), particularly when they’re drunk (Cowley, 2014) and/or horny (Rerick et al., 2020). A man’s sociosexual orien- tation is also a key influence; unrestricted men tend to be routinely on the prowl for sexual opportunities, and they’re more likely than other fellows to perceive mutual interest in the women they encounter (Lee et al., 2020). Explicit, unambiguous communication is some- times needed to set such men straight—and the best refusals are assertive, consistent, and persistent (Yagil et al., 2006). Don’t be coy or playful when it’s time to make your feelings known; plainly state your disinterest, and repeat as necessary.

There will also be times even in loving, respectful relationships when one simply isn’t in the mood for sex. Your partner will be disappointed when you turn them down (Dobson et al., 2020), but they’ll be less dissatisfied if you do so kindly than if you do so curtly (James et al., 2018). Instead of pretending not to notice your partner’s

She’s being honest and straightforward, but he’ll be less dejected if she is less brusque. Both partners stay more satisfied when sexual rejections are warmer and more considerate.

Scott Hilburn/www.cartoonstock.com

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advances, just saying “no,” or—even worse—displaying annoyance, both of you will profit if you communicate your recognition of and responsiveness to your partner’s desire. Consider acknowledging your partner’s interest, reassuring them of your love, offering some replacement cuddling, and then offering to make it up to them in the future (James et al., 2018).

In the end, once a couple starts living together, men’s overestimates of women’s sexual interest are less common (Dobson et al., 2018). In fact, in a Canadian study, husbands tended to underestimate the sexual desire of their wives—and instead of being a nuisance, this pattern was associated with greater marital satisfaction for the wives (Muise et al., 2016c). There could be several things going on here—it’s another interest- ing point to ponder—but if husbands routinely feel that they need to woo their wives, their wives may be more content.

Sexual Satisfaction and Relationship Satisfaction

Finally, let’s note that sexual satisfaction does not occur in a vacuum; we’re unlikely to be satisfied with our sex lives if we’re dissatisfied with our relationships with our partners. Sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction go hand-in-hand (Quinn-Nilas, 2020). Whether they are married or cohabiting, heterosexual or not, the most gratify- ing sex is enjoyed by couples who are satisfied with, and committed to, their relation- ships (Byers & Cohen, 2017).

One reason sexual satisfaction and relationship satisfaction are linked is that they are subject to similar influences. Similarity and perceived partner responsiveness12 are two examples. We generally like those who are similar to us, and spouses are more content when they (think that they) share similar levels of sexual desire (de Jong & Reis, 2015) and similar sexual histories. The larger the difference in the number of past sexual partners a husband and wife have had, for instance, the less happily mar- ried they are likely to be (Garcia & Markey, 2007). Furthermore, being valued and accepted by an attentive partner is associated with increased desire for that partner (Birnbaum et al., 2016); responsiveness from one’s partner is not only deeply reward- ing, it’s sexy, too.

Most importantly, however, we tend to be more satisfied in intimate relationships in which there’s good sex because fulfilling sex makes a partnership more gratifying (Kashdan et al., 2018), and love for a partner makes sex more rewarding in turn (Debrot et al., 2017). Pleasing sex with a partner reduces stress and improves one’s mood in a way in which a solitary orgasm through masturbation does not. Then, that positive mood leads to increased satisfaction with the relationship (Maxwell & McNulty, 2019) which, in turn, makes subsequent sex even better (Vowels & Mark, 2020). Sexual satisfaction thus increases relationship satisfaction, and vice versa.

What’s more, this pattern persists throughout life. A study of elderly couples married for an average of 43 years found that, even though they had less of it than they used to, sex continued to be an inf luential component of their marital satisfac- tion (Hinchliff & Gott, 2004). Overall, then, studies of sexual satisfaction find that it emerges from a rewarding relationship in both heterosexual (Fisher et al., 2015)

12This one’s on page 272.

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and same-sex (Chatterji et al., 2017) partnerships. Sex isn’t some kind of magical ingredient that automatically makes a relationship fulfilling. The best sex seems to depend on:

• each person having his or her needs met by a partner who understands and respects one’s specific sexual desires,

• valuing one’s partner and being devoted to the relationship, and • enjoying being with each other, in bed and out of it.

SEXUAL COERCION

These desirable ingredients are absent when one partner intentionally cajoles, induces, pressures, or even forces another to engage in sexual activities against his or her will. These actions can take various forms (DeGue & DiLillo, 2005). The type of pressure that is applied can range from (a) mildly coercive verbal persuasion (that may involve

Attachment and Sexuality

People who are anxious about abandonment are needy, and people who want to avoid inti- macy keep their distance, and both of these dimensions of attachment are closely tied to sexual behavior. Perhaps because sex is often a very intimate act, avoidant people have less fre- quent sex with their romantic partners (Favez & Tissot, 2017), and more frequent sex with casual, short-term partners (Kim & Miller, 2020), than secure people do. They tend not to have sex to foster closeness with, and to cele- brate their intimacy with, their lovers. On the contrary, in order to “get some space” and to maintain their freedom, men with a dismissing attachment style fantasize about extradyadic sex more often (Mizrahi et al., 2018) and are more likely than secure men to cheat on their partners ( Schmitt & Jonason, 2015).

By comparison, people who are high in attachment anxiety have more passionate, needier sex that springs from their desire to feel accepted by their partners (Davis et al., 2004). Passion is great, but it’s tinged with desperation in anxious people; to avoid dis- pleasing their partners, they are also less likely to use condoms and to refuse to do

things they don’t want to do (Strachman & Impett, 2009). And with their endless appe- tites for reassurance, people who are high in anxiety also have more casual sex (Busby et al., 2020b) and extramarital affairs than secure people do (Fish et al., 2012).

Moreover, people with high levels of ei- ther anxiety or avoidance are less likely than secure people are to be honest and open in discussing their needs and desires with their partners (Davis et al., 2006). It shouldn’t sur- prise us, then, that they’re less satisfied with their sex lives. And their partners often are, too; people with avoidant spouses wish their sex was less detached and distant (Conradi et al., 2017).

All things considered, whether they’re gay or straight (Starks & Parsons, 2014), the greatest sexual self-confidence, best communi- cation, and most satisfaction with sex are en- joyed by people with secure attachment styles. Secure people are more playful and open to exploration in bed, and they more happily and readily commit themselves to faithful, monog- amous intimacy (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2013). Great lovers tend to be secure lovers.

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false promises, guilt induction, or threats to end the relationship); to (b) plying some- one with alcohol or drugs to weaken his or her resistance; and on to (c) the threat of—or actual use of—physical force to compel someone’s submission (Kern & Peterson, 2020). The unwanted sexual behavior that results can range from touching and fondling to penetration and intercourse.

Take a look at Figure 9.4, which portrays these two dimensions. Together, they depict four different broad types of sexual violation. The boundaries between them are not exact—they blend from one to the other depending on the specific circum- stances—but they still make useful distinctions. The first category, in quadrant 1, includes interactions in which one person coaxes and cons another to submit to touching that he or she doesn’t want. Because the violations that result are relatively less severe, you may not consider them to be a form of sexual coercion; many of us still expect sex to be a competition in which men and women are adversaries—with women holding a prize that men seek to win through guile, persistence, and superior might—so interactions in which men ignore women’s disinterest and “cop a feel” whenever possible may seem unremarkable (Krahé et al., 2007). However, because they are unwanted, these actions are not innocuous. They disrespect one’s partner, and when they are directed at women, they are most likely to be enacted by men

FIGURE 9.4. Four broad types of sexual violation. Two different dimensions—the type of pressure that is applied and the behavior that results—com- bine to delineate four different broad types of sexual misconduct. In all cases, the sexual contact is unwanted, and consent is either coerced or never given—and thus, a violation occurs.

11 2

43

Fondling

Unwanted Sexual

Behavior that

results

Type of Pressure that is applied

Verbal Coercion

Intercourse

Physical Force

Source: Adapted from DeGue, S., & DiLillo, D. (2005). “’You would if you loved me’: Toward an improved con- ceptual and etiological understanding of nonphysical male sexual coercion.” Aggression and Violent Behavior, 10, 513–532.

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who quietly hold hostile attitudes toward women and who believe that all women would secretly like to be raped (Hoyt & Yeater, 2011). They also have a corrosive effect on relationships, being associated with lower sexual and relationship satisfac- tion (Katz & Myhr, 2008).

In quadrant 2, verbal manipulation and/or intentional intoxication lead to penetra- tion of the genitals. If a woman does not actively and strenuously protest this behavior, a lot of people will consider her to share the responsibility for the act (Cohn et al., 2009), so these behaviors are rarely prosecuted. Quadrants 3 and 4 involve various degrees of physical force (or a drug-induced stupor that leaves the victim unable to resist), and the behaviors there are more likely to seem patently illegal. Many legal jurisdictions would prosecute the actions in quadrant 4 as “forcible rape” if they became known.

Most men and women never direct any of these forms of sexual coercion toward anyone (Brennan et al., 2019; Spitzberg, 1999). Nevertheless, they are scarily common. Specific counts depend on the precise definitions employed, but most American women (73 percent) have encountered some form of sexual victimization since they turned 16 (Turchik & Hassija, 2014), and twenty-five percent of them have, through pressure or force, had intercourse with someone against their will (Axinn et al., 2018). Overall, men use more physical force than women do—they are more likely to be the perpetra- tors than the victims in quadrants 3 and 4—and most of the men who engage in such behavior do so more than once (Zinzow & Thompson, 2015). But women are just as likely as men to verbally coerce reluctant partners to have unwanted intercourse (Stem- ple et al., 2017; about 25 percent of both men and women have done so (Spitzberg, 1999), and many men (43 percent) have experienced sexual coercion, too (French et al., 2015).

These actions are certainly not compassionate and loving, and they’re not even well-intentioned. The people who enact them tend to have belittling, unsympathetic, and surly attitudes toward their targets (Bouffard et al., 2016). The men and women who behave this way tend to be callous and manipulative; they have little regard for consent (Hermann et al., 2018), think people secretly want to be raped (Trottier et al., 2020), lack remorse (O’Connell & Marcus, 2016), and tend to think of their targets as animals or objects (Bevens & Loughnan, 2019). They do damage, too: Women who have been forced or frightened into unwanted sex have poorer mental and physical health thereafter (Kelley & Gidycz, 2019), especially if they are victim- ized more than once (Perilloux et al., 2012), and the wounds that result tend to be even greater when they are inflicted by an intimate partner than by a stranger or an acquaintance (Impett et al., 2014).

So the prevalence of sexual coercion, whatever its form, is very distressing. What can be done to reduce its frequency? I have several suggestions. First, beware of potential partners who view sex as a contest. They are unlikely to have your best interests at heart. Second, beware of intoxication in either you or your partner; it increases the chances that one will behave inappropriately (Testa et al., 2019), and indeed, most episodes of sexual coercion involve alcohol or drugs (Cleere & Lynn, 2013). Third, resolve to assertively resist unwanted advances; women who decide in advance to rebuff sexual misconduct are less likely to passively submit if such a situ- ation develops (Gidycz et al., 2008). Fourth, reduce the need for such assertion by

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setting sexual boundaries with frank, direct discussion before you start an intimate interaction. (At a minimum, tell your partner, “If I say no, I’m gonna mean no.”) Miscommunication and misunderstanding are often at work in interactions involving sexual coercion, and the distinction between right and wrong is clearer when the ground rules are laid out in advance (Winslett & Gross, 2008). Finally, consider the value of thinking of your lover as an equal partner whose preferences and pleasure are as important as your own. Not only is such respect and thoughtfulness incompat- ible with sexual coercion, if you and your lover both feel that way, you’re likely to have great sex (Fisher et al., 2015).

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Chad was in love with Jennifer. He felt a lot of sexual desire for her, and he always enjoyed having sex with her, but he still felt something was missing. She was usually glad to have sex, and she seemed to enjoy it, too, but she rarely took any initiative and he typically did all the work. She usually just lay there, and he wanted her to be more active and take the lead now and then. He wished that she would be more inventive, and he wanted her to work him over occasionally. Nevertheless, he didn’t say anything. Their sex was good, if not great, and he worried that any complaints would make things worse, not better, between them.

Having read this chapter, what do you think the future holds for Chad and Jen- nifer? Why?

KEY TERMS

hookups............................................ p. 344 sexual double standard................... p. 344 extradyadic sex................................  p. 354 sociosexual orientation................... p. 355 good genes hypothesis.................... p. 357 sperm competition..........................  p. 358 consensual non-monogamy............  p. 359 open relationship............................  p. 359 swingers............................................  p. 359

polyamory.........................................  p. 359 sex drives..........................................  p. 360 cybersex............................................  p. 363 illusion of unique invulnerability.... p. 364 alcohol myopia................................. p. 365 pluralistic ignorance........................  p. 365 stealthing..........................................   p. 366 sexual growth beliefs.......................  p. 370 sexual destiny beliefs....................... p. 370

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Sexual Attitudes

Attitudes about Casual Sex. People’s attitudes about sex have become more permissive over time, but many of us are ambivalent about hookups. Most people tolerate unmarried sex if the partners care for each other, but a sexual double standard may still lead us to judge women’s sexuality more harshly than men’s.

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Attitudes about Same-Sex Sexuality. Americans dislike gays or lesbians if they think sexual orientation is a choice. Nevertheless, times have changed, and most Americans now approve of gays’ and lesbians’ marriages.

Cultural Differences in Sexual Attitudes. Sexual attitudes in the United States are relatively conservative compared to those in many other countries.

Sexual Behavior

Sex for the First Time. Almost all of us have sex before we marry, and the first time usually involves a steady close relationship. If the partners aren’t close, some regret typically follows.

Sex in Committed Relationships. People have sex for diverse reasons, and their relationship status, age, and sexual orientation all influence the frequency with which sex occurs. Couples who have sex once a week are just as happy, on average, as those who have sex more often.

Infidelity. Men cheat more than women do, and they are more likely than women to have an unrestricted sociosexual orientation. The good genes hypothesis suggests that women cheat in order to have healthy offspring, and sperm competition may have evolved to counteract such behavior.

Consensual Non-Monogamy. Some partners agree to have more than one sexual or romantic relationship at the same time in open relationships, as swingers, or in polyamory. It’s not for everyone, but those who practice CNM enjoy higher sexual satisfaction than monogamous folks do.

Sexual Desire. Men have higher sex drives than women do. This may lead to annoyance as heterosexual couples negotiate their sexual interactions.

Safe, Sensible Sex. Most college students have had hookups, sometimes having intercourse without condoms. Condom use is influenced by underestimates of risk, faulty decision making, pluralistic ignorance, inequalities of power, abstinence education, low self-control, and concerns about intimacy and pleasure. Men who engage in stealthing are twice as likely as other men to have an STI.

Sexual Satisfaction

The best sex is motivated by approach goals and fulfills basic needs, but traditional gender roles tend to undermine women’s choice and control in bed. Endorsement of sexual growth beliefs supports the creative collaboration that can sustain sexual satisfac- tion over time.

Sexual Communication. Direct and honest sexual communication is associated with greater sexual satisfaction. Because gays and lesbians discuss their preferences

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more openly than heterosexuals do, they enjoy better sex. Good communication may also avoid misperceptions of sexual intent and minimize partner’s hurt when one doesn’t want to have sex.

Sexual Satisfaction and Relationship Satisfaction. Partners who are satisfied with their sex lives tend to be more satisfied with their relationships, with each appearing to make the other more likely.

Sexual Coercion

Various forms of pressure and behavioral outcomes describe four broad types of sexual violations. These are distressingly prevalent, but several strategies may make them less common.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Share yourself with others thoughtfully because you want to, not because they want you to.

• Be open: Tell your partner what you want and how you want them to do it. • Strive to understand and respect your partner’s desires and expectations. • Be giving: Pursue your partner’s pleasure as well as your own. • Be game: Strive to have fun in your sexual interactions. • Be smart: Use contraception and have safe sex. • Eschew drunken sex. • Try something new. • Don’t cheat.

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395

C H A P T E R 1 0

Stresses and Strains

Perceived relational value ♦ Hurt Feelings ♦ Ostracism  ♦ Jealousy ♦ DecePtion and Lying ♦ Betrayal ♦ Forgiveness  ♦ For Your Consideration ♦ Key terms ♦ chaPter summary 

♦ suggestions for satisfaction ♦ references

Let’s take stock. So far, we’ve encountered adaptive and maladaptive cognition, good and bad communication, and rewarding and unrewarding social exchange. We’ve been evenhanded in considering both beneficial and disadvantageous influences on close relationships. But that won’t be true here. This chapter focuses on various pitfalls, stumbling blocks, and hazards that cause wear and tear in relationships (with just one bright spot at the end). And importantly, the stresses and strains I cover here—hurt feelings, ostracism, jealousy, lying, and betrayal—are commonplace events that occur in most relationships somewhere along the way. We’ve all had our feelings hurt (Malachowski & Frisby, 2015), and sooner or later, almost everyone lies to their inti- mate partners (DePaulo et al., 2009). Even outright betrayals of one sort or another are surprisingly widespread and hard to avoid (Baxter et al., 1997).

However, the fact that these incidents are commonplace doesn’t mean they’re inconsequential. Negative events like these can be very influential. They help explain why most of us report having had a very troublesome relationship within the last 5 years (Levitt et al., 1996). And despite their idiosyncrasies, all of these unhappy events may share a common theme (Leary & Miller, 2012): They suggest that we are not as well liked or well respected as we wish we were.

PERCEIVED RELATIONAL VALUE

Fueled by our need to belong,1 most of us care deeply about what our intimate partners think of us. We want them to want us. We want them to value our company and to consider their partnerships with us to be valuable and important. As a result, according to theorist Mark Leary (Leary & Acosta, 2018), it’s painful to perceive that our relational value—that is, the degree to which others consider their relationships with us to be valu- able and important—is lower than we would like it to be.

When our relational value is high, others value our company and prioritize their partnerships with us, and we feel appreciated, respected, and accepted by them. In

1Need a reminder about the human need to belong? Revisit page 4, way back in chapter 1.

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contrast, when our relational value is low, others do not seek us out or choose us for their teams, and they’re not much interested in who we are and what we have to say; so, we feel unwanted.

Some of the people in our lives value us more than others do, so we routinely encounter various degrees of acceptance and rejection in our dealings with others. Take a look at Table 10.1. Sometimes we enjoy the strongest possible acceptance, called maximal inclusion: Others are eager to be with us, and if they want to host a party (for instance), they’ll change the date or just cancel if we can’t come; we are that important to them. (Maximal inclusion may be pretty rare; when was the last time you were that important to someone?) More often, we encounter active inclusion, which occurs when others make sure to invite us to their parties and are disappointed if we can’t come, but have the parties anyway if we’re unavailable. We’re important to them, but not so important that they can’t go on without us. We experience passive inclusion when oth- ers don’t invite us to their parties but are content to let us in the door if we hear about the gatherings and just show up; they don’t dislike us and it’s nice to see us, but we’re a low priority for them, and we can join their parties only when there’s room.

And then there’s ambivalence, which occurs when others are neither accepting nor rejecting; they genuinely don’t care one way or the other whether we show up or not. If we want others to like us and value their relationships with us, noncommittal ambiv- alence from them may be bad enough, but things can get worse. We encounter passive exclusion when others ignore us and wish we were elsewhere, and we suffer active exclusion when others go out of their way to avoid us altogether. However, the most complete rejection occurs when, in maximal exclusion, others order us to leave their parties when they find us there. In such instances, merely avoiding us won’t do; they want us gone.

Our emotional reactions to such experiences depend on how much we want to be accepted by particular others, and just what their acceptance or rejection of us means. On occasion, people exclude us because they regard us positively, and such rejections are much less painful than are exclusions that result from our deficiencies or faults. Consider the game show Survivor: Contestants sometimes try to vote the most skilled,

TABLE 10.1. Degrees of Acceptance and Rejection

Being accepted or rejected by others is not an all-or-nothing event. People can desire our company to greater or lesser degrees, and researchers use these labels to describe the differ- ent extents to which we may be included or excluded by others.

Maximal inclusion Others seek us out and go out of their way to interact with us. Active inclusion Others want us and welcome us but do not go to lengths to be

with us. Passive inclusion Others allow us to be included. Ambivalence Others do not care whether we are included or not. Passive exclusion Others ignore us but do not avoid us. Active exclusion Others avoid us, tolerating our presence only when necessary. Maximal exclusion Others banish us, sending us away, or abandon us.

Source: Adapted from Leary, M. R. (2001). “Toward a conceptualization of interpersonal rejection.” In M. R. Leary (Ed.), Interpersonal rejection. Oxford University Press, 3–20.

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most able competitors off the island to increase their personal chances of winning the game. Being excluded because you’re better than everyone else may not hurt much, but rejection that suggests that you’re inept, insufficient, or inadequate (Çelik et al., 2013)— or simply less desirable that others (Deri & Zitek, 2017)—usually does.

In addition, it’s not much of a blow to be excluded from a party you didn’t want to attend in the first place. Exclusion is much more painful when we want to be accepted by others than when we don’t much care what they think of us (Vanhalst & Leary, 2014). Indeed, it’s also possible to be accepted and liked by others but be hurt because they don’t like us as much as we want them to. This is what unrequited love is often like (see page 326). Those for whom we feel unrequited love may be fond of us in return, but if we want to be loved instead of merely liked, their mildness is painful.

All of these possibilities suggest that there is only a rough connection between the objective reactions we receive from others and our feelings of acceptance or rejection that result, so we will focus on the perception that others value their relationships with us less than we want them to as a core ingredient of the stresses and strains that we’ll inspect in this chapter (Leary & Miller, 2012). We feel hurt when our perceived rela- tional value for others—that is, the apparent importance that others attach to their relationships with us—is lower than we want it to be.

HURT FEELINGS

In fact, the feelings of acceptance or rejection we experience in our dealings with oth- ers are related to their evaluations of us in a complex way: Maximal exclusion doesn’t feel much worse than simple ambivalence does (Buckley et al., 2004). Take a careful look at Figure 10.1. The graph depicts people’s reactions to evaluations from others that vary across a 10-point scale. Maximal exclusion is described by the worst possible evaluation, a 1, and maximal inclusion is described by the best possible evaluation, a 10; ambivalence, the point at which others don’t care about us one way or the other, is the 5 at the midpoint of the scale. The graph demonstrates that once we find that others don’t want us around, it hardly matters whether they dislike us a little or a lot: Our momentary judgments of our self-worth bottom out when people reject us to any extent (that is, when their evaluations range from 4 down to 1).

On the other hand, when it comes to acceptance, being completely adored doesn’t improve our self-esteem beyond the boost we get from being very well-liked. Instead, we appear to be very sensitive to small differences in regard from others that range from ambivalence at the low end to active inclusion at the high end. As people like us more and more, we feel better and better about ourselves until their positive regard for us is fully ensured. This all makes sense from an evolutionary perspective (Leary & Cottrell, 2013); carefully discerning degrees of acceptance that might allow access to resources and mates is more useful than monitoring the enmity of one’s enemies. (After all, when it comes to reactions from potential mates, there are usually few practical differences between mild distaste and outright disgust!)

So, mild rejection from others usually feels just as bad as more extreme rejection does. But decreases in the acceptance we receive from others may be even worse, particularly

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when they occur in that range between ambivalence and active inclusion—that is, when people who liked us once appear to like us less now. Leary and his colleagues demonstrated the potent impact of decreases in acceptance when they manipulated the evaluations that research participants received from new acquaintances (Buckley et al., 2004). As young adults talked about themselves to another person over an intercom system, they received intermittent approval ratings on a computer screen (see Figure 10.2); the ratings suppos- edly came from their conversation partner, but they were actually controlled by the exper- imenters, who provided one of four patterns of feedback. Some people received consistent acceptance, receiving only 5’s and 6’s, whereas others encountered constant rejection, receiving only 2’s and 3’s. It’s painful to be disliked by others, so of course, those who were accepted by the unseen acquaintance were happier and felt better about themselves than those who were rejected. But other people received evaluations that changed over time, starting poorly and getting better, or starting well and getting worse. In the latter case, over a span of 5 minutes, the research participants received successive ratings of 6, 5, 3, 3, and 2. Apparently, as the new acquaintance got to know them better, the less the acquaintance liked them.

The pattern of decreasing acceptance was particularly painful, causing more nega- tive reactions than even constant rejection did (Buckley et al., 2004). Evidently, it’s

1 3 5 8 10 Maximal

Exclusion

St at

e Se

lf- Es

te em

In ve

nt or

y

90

78

65

53

40

Rejection–Acceptance

Ambivalence Maximal Inclusion

Source: Data from Leary, M. R., Haupt, A. L., Strausser, K. S., & Chokel, J. T. (1998). “Calibrating the soci- ometer: The relationship between interpersonal appraisals and state self-esteem,” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1290–1299.

FIGURE 10.1. Reactions to acceptance and rejection. This curve describes how our momentary feelings about ourselves map onto the treatment we receive from others. Self-esteem increases sharply as people move from being ambivalent about us to wanting us around, but any rejection at all causes our self-esteem to bottom out. When people prefer to ignore us, we feel nearly as bad about ourselves as we do when they order us to leave or throw us out.

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especially awful to experience drops in our perceived relational value—that is, relational devaluation, or apparent decreases in others’ regard for us—and it causes a variety of unhappy emotions. When their partners turned against them, people felt sad, angry, and hurt, with the latter emotion being a particular sensation that is uniquely associated with losses of relational value (Leary & Acosta, 2018). Hurt feelings have much in common with real pain; when people suffering from romantic rejection are placed in fMRI scanners and asked to study pictures of the ex-lovers who broke up with them, some areas of their brains respond as if they were experiencing physical pain (Eisenberger, 2013). Rejection really hurts. And remarkably, the pain reliever acet- aminophen reduces the pain of social rejection just as it does a headache:2 After a week-and-a-half of daily doses of acetaminophen, college students had fewer hurt feel- ings at the end of the day than did other students who were taking a placebo (DeWall et al., 2010). Marijuana blunts3 social pain, too (Deckman et al., 2014). Obviously, psychological wounds can cause real distress, and the sense of injury that characterizes hurt feelings—the feeling that relationship rules have been broken (Malachowski & Frisby, 2015) and that one has been damaged, shattered, cut, or stabbed—makes hurt feelings a distinct emotional experience (Ferris et al., 2019).

When relational devaluation occurs, some people experience more hurt than oth- ers do. As always, attachment styles are influential: People who have high levels of

2Acetaminophen, the active ingredient in the product known to Americans as Tylenol, is called paracetamol in most places outside North America. 3No pun intended.

Not at all Moderately Very much

When told to begin, please start talking about yourself and do not stop until instructed to do so.

At one minute intervals, you will receive the other participant's answer to the question, "How much would you like to get to know the person who is speaking?," on the scale below.*

*Low ratings will indicate that the other participant is not at all interested in getting to know you. *High ratings indicate that the other participant is very interested in getting to know you.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

FIGURE 10.2. Relational devaluation in the lab. Imagine that as you describe yourself to someone in another room, one of these numbers lights up every 60 seconds, and you receive evaluations that start high but get worse and worse over time. After 5 minutes, the other person is giving you a “2” that indicates that he or she is quite uninterested in meeting you. How would you feel?

Source: Buckley, K. E., Winkel, R. E., & Leary, M. R. (2004). “Reactions to acceptance and rejection: Effects of level and sequence of relational evaluation.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, 40, 14–28.

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anxiety about abandonment experience more hurt in response to drops in perceived relational value than those with lower anxiety do. (As you can imagine, their nervous dread that others don’t love them magnifies the hurt they feel.) And people who are high in avoidance of intimacy experience less pain when others withdraw; exclusion hurts less when you don’t much want to be close to others to begin with (Shaver & Mikulincer, 2013). People’s levels of self-esteem also matter ; people with low self- esteem get their feelings hurt more easily than those with higher self-regard do (Ford & Collins, 2010).

In fact, self-esteem is an important predictor of how people respond to potent experiences of rejection, such as ostracism. Let’s see what happens when people get their feelings hurt by being ignored and getting the “silent treatment.”

OSTRACISM

A specific form of rejection that often occurs even in close relationships is ostracism, in which people are given the “cold shoulder” and ignored by those around them. When the silent treatment is intentional, ostracizers deliberately refrain from responding to others, sometimes pretending that their targets are not even present. Most of us have experienced this unpleasant treatment; in one broad survey, 67 percent of Americans admitted that they had given an intimate partner the cold shoulder, and 75 percent reported that they had been ostracized by a loved one (Williams, 2001).

Why do people sometimes intentionally ignore their partners? Ostracizers usually justify their actions as an effective way to punish their partners, to avoid confrontation, or to calm down and cool off following a conflict, and they usually believe that the ostracism was beneficial in helping them achieve their goals ( Sommer et al., 2001). But by its very nature, ostracism often leaves its targets wondering why they are being ignored. Only rarely is an explanation offered when a partner remains silent, and the victims of ostracism often have no idea why it is happening. As a result, the targets of ostracism typically do not consider their partners’ withdrawal to be a kind or effective way to behave, and they usually believe that the ostracism has damaged their relation- ships (Arriaga et al., 2014).

Ostracism can be potent and painful because it threatens basic social needs (Wesselmann & Williams, 2013). It’s dehumanizing (Bastian & Haslam, 2010). The silent treatment threatens our need to belong, damages our feelings of self-worth, and reduces our perceived control over our interactions. It can undermine our sense that life has mean- ing (Chen et al., 2020), and our initial reactions to such threats usually involve confused, unhappy disarray ( Wesselmann et al., 2012). A “cold shoulder” feels cold: When people feel excluded, they think the room is cooler and that warm food and drink are more desir- able than they do when they have not been rejected (Zhong & Leonardelli, 2008). Our bodies show signs of stress; our adrenal glands dump cortisol, a stress hormone, into our blood (Dickerson & Zoccola, 2013). Time seems to pass more slowly, too; in one study in which they were asked to estimate how much time had passed during a 40- second interval, people who felt accepted by others offered an average (and quite accurate) estimate of 42 seconds, whereas those who were rejected believed that 64 seconds had passed (Twenge et al., 2003).

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What happens next seems to depend on which of a person’s needs are in the most peril (Wesselmann & Williams, 2013). When belongingness is threatened, people who are being ostracized may work hard to regain their partners’ regard, being compliant and doing what their tormentors want, especially when they think the relationship—and their relational value—can be repaired (Richman & Leary, 2009). However, they may also start looking for new, less punishing partners. After an experience with exclusion, people are often especially eager to make new, kinder friends (Maner et al., 2007).

More antagonistic reactions may occur when ostracism seems illegitimate and unjust and threatens people’s feelings of control or self-worth (Tuscherer et al., 2015). When ostracized people get angry, they dismiss the opinions of those who are ignoring them as unfounded, unfair, and dim-witted, and they become more surly and aggressive (even toward innocent bystanders) than cowed and compliant (Poon & Wong, 2019), especially when they are high in avoidance of intimacy (Liu et al., 2018). In fact, instances of ostracism or romantic rejection precede most of the awful cases in which students take guns to school and shoot innocent classmates (Leary et al., 2006). Those who ostracize others are just as likely to frustrate and anger them as to shame or instruct them (Hales et al., 2016).

Researchers who study ostracism have developed a variety of ingenious procedures to create potent experiences of rejection in the lab. After short introductions to strangers, people have learned that no one wanted to work with them (Leary, 2005), and others have been ignored in face-to-face discussions or Internet chat rooms run by research assistants (Williams, 2001). But an inspired procedure created by Kipling Williams and his colleagues that involves a simple game of catch is especially nefarious. If you encoun- ter this procedure, you’ll find yourself sitting for 5 minutes with two other people who begin playfully tossing and bouncing a racquetball back and forth. You’ve all just met, and you’re all just passing time, waiting for an experimenter to return; so, the first min- ute of play, in which you frequently receive the ball, is pretty lighthearted. But then things

Ostracism is confusing and obnoxious, but it can elicit compliance from others on occasion. But it may also engender hostility instead.

©Iakov Filimonov/Shutterstock

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change. Over the next 4 minutes, nobody tosses you the ball. The two other people gleefully toss the ball between themselves and completely ignore you, neither looking your way nor acknowledging any protest. It’s as if you have ceased to exist.

Researchers have even conducted studies of ostracism online, and thousands of people around the world have now encountered a variation of the ball-tossing procedure on the Web (Hartgerink et al., 2015). In this version, people believe that they are online with two other people represented by screen icons who are sending a Cyberball back and forth by clicking each other’s icons. What happens next is all controlled by the computer program and there really aren’t any other people involved, but as in real life, after a few warm-up throws, participants are partially or fully excluded from the “toss- ing” of the ball. What’s striking is that this Internet ostracism is quite painful even when it is (apparently) dispensed by strangers one will never meet. In fact, even after people learn that their exclusion is controlled by the computer and that no real inter- personal evaluation is even remotely involved, they still get their feelings hurt when the computer program fails to toss them the ball (Zadro et al., 2004)! Ostracism even hurts when it is dispensed by groups we despise, such as the Ku Klux Klan (Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2007). Our species seems to be quite sensitive to even the merest hint of social rejection (Hwang et al., 2020).

So, ostracism is an obnoxious, unpleasant experience that can be just as likely to engender hostility as compliance. And people with high self-esteem are relatively unlikely to put up with it. When they are ignored by others, people with high self-regard are more likely than those with lower self-esteem to end their relationships with their ostracizers and to seek new partners who will treat them better—and perhaps as a result, they get the silent treatment less often. In comparison, people with low self-esteem experience more ostracism, and they are more likely to carry a grudge and to ostracize others in return (Sommer & Rubin, 2005). Instead of leaving those who ostracize them, people with low self-regard are more likely to hang around but be spiteful.

In sum, then, we are likely to feel sadness, hurt, or anger when others ostracize us, and a core ingredient in such experiences seems to be the perception that those others do not value their relationships with us as much as we wish they did. Let’s turn now to the special kind of threat to our relational value that occurs when we believe that a romantic rival is luring a beloved partner away.

JEALOUSY

A different kind of negative emotional experience results from the potential loss of a valued relationship to a real or imagined rival. Jealousy can involve a variety of feelings, ranging all the way from sad dejection to actual pride that one’s partner is desirable to others, but the three feelings that define jealousy best are hurt, anger, and fear (Guerrero et al., 2005).4

Hurt follows from the perception that our partners do not value us enough to honor their commitments to our relationships, and fear and anxiety result from the dreadful

4Jealousy is sometimes confused with envy, but the two are quite different (DelPriore et al., 2012). We envy someone when we wish we had what they have; envy is characterized by a humiliating longing for another person’s possessions. In contrast, jealousy is the confused state of hurt, anger, and fear that results from the threat of losing what we already have, a relationship that we do not wish to give up.

A Point to Ponder

Is getting your partner just a little jealous every now and then an acceptable thing to do? Why or why not?

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prospect of abandonment and loss. But the unique element in jealousy is the romantic rival who threatens to lure a partner away (Chung & Harris, 2018): “To be jealous, one must have a relationship to lose and a rival to whom to lose it” (DeSteno & Salovey, 1994, p. 220). It’s being cast aside for someone else that gets people angry, and that anger is usually directed both at the meddlesome rival and at the partner who is begin- ning to stray (Schützwohl, 2008b). Sometimes that anger turns violent; 13 percent of all the murders in the United States result from one spouse killing another, and when that occurs, jealousy is the most common motive (Buss, 2019).

Obviously, jealousy is an unhappy experience. But here’s an interesting ques- tion: How would you feel if you couldn’t make your lover jealous? Would you be disappointed if nothing you did gave your partner a jealous twinge? Most people probably would be, but whether or not that’s a sensible point of view may depend on what type of jealousy we’re talking about, why your partner is jealous, and what your partner does in response to his or her jealousy. Let’s explore those issues.

Two Types of Jealousy

Reactive jealousy occurs when someone becomes aware of an actual threat to a valued relationship (Buunk & Dijkstra, 2006). The troubling threat may not be a current event; it may have occurred in the past, or it may be anticipated in the near future (if, for instance, your partner expresses the intention to date someone else), but reactive jeal- ousy always occurs in response to an actual, realistic danger. A variety of behaviors from one’s partner can cause concern; just fantasizing about or flirting with someone else is considered “cheating” by most young adults in the United States (Kruger et al., 2013). Unfortunately, there may be a lot to be jealous about. In one sample of American adults, 98 percent of the men and 80 percent of the women said they had had extradyadic sexual fantasies in the past 2 months (Hicks & Leitenberg, 2001). And in two surveys of over 800 American college students, lots of young adults reported having dated, kissed, fondled, or slept with a third party while they were in a serious dating relationship with someone else (Brand et al., 2007). Half of the women and two-fifths of the men said they had kissed or fondled an extradyadic interloper, and a fifth of both men and women said they had had intercourse with that person (most of them more than once).

In contrast, suspicious jealousy occurs when one’s partner hasn’t misbehaved and one’s suspicions do not fit the facts at hand (Buunk & Dijkstra, 2006). Suspicious jealousy results in worried and mistrustful vigilance and snooping as the jealous partner seeks to confirm his or her suspicions, and it can range from a mildly overactive imagination to outright paranoia. In all cases, however, suspicious jealousy can be said to be unfounded; it results from situations that would not trouble a more secure and more trusting partner.

The distinction between the two types of jealousy is meaningful because almost everybody feels reactive jealousy when they realize that their partners have been unfaithful (Buss, 2000), but people vary a lot in their tendencies to feel suspicious jealousy in the absence of any provocation. Nevertheless, the distinction between the

change. Over the next 4 minutes, nobody tosses you the ball. The two other people gleefully toss the ball between themselves and completely ignore you, neither looking your way nor acknowledging any protest. It’s as if you have ceased to exist.

Researchers have even conducted studies of ostracism online, and thousands of people around the world have now encountered a variation of the ball-tossing procedure on the Web (Hartgerink et al., 2015). In this version, people believe that they are online with two other people represented by screen icons who are sending a Cyberball back and forth by clicking each other’s icons. What happens next is all controlled by the computer program and there really aren’t any other people involved, but as in real life, after a few warm-up throws, participants are partially or fully excluded from the “toss- ing” of the ball. What’s striking is that this Internet ostracism is quite painful even when it is (apparently) dispensed by strangers one will never meet. In fact, even after people learn that their exclusion is controlled by the computer and that no real inter- personal evaluation is even remotely involved, they still get their feelings hurt when the computer program fails to toss them the ball (Zadro et al., 2004)! Ostracism even hurts when it is dispensed by groups we despise, such as the Ku Klux Klan (Gonsalkorale & Williams, 2007). Our species seems to be quite sensitive to even the merest hint of social rejection (Hwang et al., 2020).

So, ostracism is an obnoxious, unpleasant experience that can be just as likely to engender hostility as compliance. And people with high self-esteem are relatively unlikely to put up with it. When they are ignored by others, people with high self-regard are more likely than those with lower self-esteem to end their relationships with their ostracizers and to seek new partners who will treat them better—and perhaps as a result, they get the silent treatment less often. In comparison, people with low self-esteem experience more ostracism, and they are more likely to carry a grudge and to ostracize others in return (Sommer & Rubin, 2005). Instead of leaving those who ostracize them, people with low self-regard are more likely to hang around but be spiteful.

In sum, then, we are likely to feel sadness, hurt, or anger when others ostracize us, and a core ingredient in such experiences seems to be the perception that those others do not value their relationships with us as much as we wish they did. Let’s turn now to the special kind of threat to our relational value that occurs when we believe that a romantic rival is luring a beloved partner away.

JEALOUSY

A different kind of negative emotional experience results from the potential loss of a valued relationship to a real or imagined rival. Jealousy can involve a variety of feelings, ranging all the way from sad dejection to actual pride that one’s partner is desirable to others, but the three feelings that define jealousy best are hurt, anger, and fear (Guerrero et al., 2005).4

Hurt follows from the perception that our partners do not value us enough to honor their commitments to our relationships, and fear and anxiety result from the dreadful

4Jealousy is sometimes confused with envy, but the two are quite different (DelPriore et al., 2012). We envy someone when we wish we had what they have; envy is characterized by a humiliating longing for another person’s possessions. In contrast, jealousy is the confused state of hurt, anger, and fear that results from the threat of losing what we already have, a relationship that we do not wish to give up.

A Point to Ponder

Is getting your partner just a little jealous every now and then an acceptable thing to do? Why or why not?

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two isn’t quite as sharp as it may seem. A jealous reaction to a partner’s affair may linger on as suspicious jealousy years later when trust, once lost, is never fully regained (Zandbergen & Brown, 2015). And people may differ in their judgments of what con- stitutes a real threat to their relationship (Huelsnitz et al., 2018). Knowledge that a partner is merely fantasizing about someone else may not trouble a secure partner who is not much prone to jealousy, but it may cause reactive jealousy in a partner who is insecure. So, the boundary between them can be vague, and as we explore individual differences in susceptibility to jealousy in our next section, I’ll ask a generic question that refers to both types of jealousy.

Who’s Prone to Jealousy?

On the whole, men and women do not differ in their jealous tendencies (Buunk, 1995), but some people nevertheless feel jealous more readily and more intensely than other people do. One obvious precursor of jealousy is dependence on a relationship (Rydell et al., 2004). When people feel that they need a particular partner because their alter- natives are poor—that is, when people have a low CLalt—any threat to their relationship is especially menacing. In contrast, people who have desirable alternatives tend to be less jealous because they have less to lose if the relationship ends.

Jealousy also increases with feelings of inadequacy in a relationship (White, 1981). People who worry that they can’t measure up to their partners’ expectations or who fret that they’re not what their lovers are looking for are less certain that their relation- ships will last, and they are more prone to jealousy than are people who feel certain they can keep their partners satisfied (Redlick, 2016). Self- confidence in a relationship is undoubtedly affected by a person’s global sense of self-worth, and people with high self-esteem do tend to be less prone to jealousy than those with low self-esteem (DeSteno et al., 2006). However, a person’s perceptions of his or her adequacy as a partner in a specific relationship are especially important, and even people with gener- ally high self-esteem can be prone to jealousy if they doubt their ability to fulfill a particular partner.

One of the ingredients in such doubt is a discrepancy in the mate value each person brings to the relationship (Redlick, 2016). If one partner is more desirable than the other, possessing (for example) more physical attractiveness, wealth, or talent, the less desirable partner is a less valuable mate, and that’s a potential problem. The less desirable partner is likely to be aware that others could be a better match for his or her lover, and that may cause a sense of inadequacy that does not exist in other areas of his or her life (or with other partners). Here is another reason, then, why matching occurs with people pairing off with others of similar mate value (see chapter 3): Most of us want the most desirable partners we can get, but it can be threatening to realize that our partners could do better if they really wanted to.

In any case, consider the perilous situation that faces people who feel both depen- dent on and inadequate in their current relationships: They need their partners but worry that they’re not good enough to keep them. It’s no wonder that they react strongly to real or imagined signs that a romantic rival has entered the scene.

Of course, attachment styles influence jealousy, too. To some extent, people with a preoccupied style routinely find themselves in a similar fix: They greedily seek

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closeness with others, but they remain chronically worried that their partners don’t love them enough in return. That’s a recipe for jealousy, and sure enough, preoccupied people experience more jealousy than do those with the other three styles (Miller et al., 2014). The folks who are least affected when a relationship is threatened are typi- cally those with a dismissing style of attachment. Feeling self-sufficient and trying not to depend on others is apparently one way to stay relatively immune to jealousy (Meuwly & Davila, 2019).

Finally, personality traits are also involved. People who are high in negative emo- tionality, who tend to worry about a lot of things, are particularly prone to jealousy. On the other hand, agreeable people, who tend to be cooperative and trusting, are less likely than others to become jealous (Buunk & Dijkstra, 2006). And through no fault of their own (except, perhaps, in their poor choice of mates), the partners of people who are high in the Dark Triad traits of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and/or psy- chopathy are probably jealous more often than the rest of us: High scorers on each trait tend to be faithless cheaters (Jones & Weiser, 2014), and psychopaths, in particu- lar, are more likely to try to get their partners jealous in order to increase their power and control over their partners (Massar et al., 2017). (See what I mean about a poor choice of mates?)

Who Gets Us Jealous?

We become jealous when our partners are interested in someone else, but not all rivals are created equal. It’s particularly obnoxious when our friends start horning in on our romantic relationships; rivalry from a friend is more upsetting than is similar behavior from a stranger (Bleske & Shackelford, 2001). It’s also especially painful when our partners start expressing renewed interest in their former lovers (Cann & Baucom, 2004). But no matter who they are, romantic rivals who have high mate value and who make us look bad by comparison are worrisome threats to our relationships, and they arouse more jealousy than do rivals who are milder competition.

And what kind of rivals are those? Everybody likes lovely lovers (Eastwick & Finkel, 2008), so attractive competitors evoke more jealousy in both men and women than homely rivals do (but with women being even more threatened by a rival’s good looks than men are) (Pollet & Saxton, 2020). The good news is that our rivals are usually not as attractive to our partners as we think they are, so our fears are usually o verblown—but the bad news is that we do make such mistakes, overestimating the desirability of our competition and thereby suffering more distress than is warranted (Hill, 2007).

What Gets Us Jealous?

Evolutionary psychology has popped up here and there in this book, and here’s another place it’s pertinent. In this case, an evolutionary perspective suggests that jealousy evolved to motivate behavior designed to protect our close relationships from the inter- ference of others. Presumably, early humans who reacted strongly to interlopers—being vigilant to outside interference, fending off rivals, and working hard to satisfy and fulfill their current partners—m aintained their relationships and reproduced more

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successfully than did those who were blasé about meddlesome rivals. This perspective thus suggests that because it offered reproductive advantages in the past, jealousy is now a natural, ingrained reaction that is hard to avoid (Buss, 2000). More provoca- tively, it also suggests that men and women should be especially sensitive to different sorts of infidelity in their romantic partners.

Remember (from chapter 1) that men face a reproductive problem that women do not have: paternity uncertainty. A woman always knows whether or not a particular child is hers, but unless he is completely confident that his mate hasn’t had sex with other men, a man can’t be certain (without using some advanced technology) that he is a child’s father. And being cuckolded and raising another man’s offspring is an evolutionary dead end; the human race did not descend from ancestors who raised other people’s children and had none of their own! Indeed, the potential evolutionary costs of failing to detect a partner’s infidelity are so great that sexual selection may have favored men who were too suspicious of their partners’ faithfulness over those

Stresses and Strains on Social Media

Along with their amazing reach to friends near and far, social media make possible an impressive variety of new ways to get our feelings hurt. Sooner or later, we’re likely to be disappointed or stung when others ig- nore or deny a friend request, remove our messages or photo tags, or simply don’t “like” our clever posts with the frequency they deserve (Tokunaga, 2011). We also learn of gatherings we missed (or to which we weren’t invited) and see a lot of conclusive photographic proof that everybody else is having more fun than we are (Krasnova et al., 2015). Because they connect us to a lot of acquaintances who, in truth, don’t value their relationships with us all that much (Miller et al., 2014), threats to perceived re- lational value abound on Snapchat, Insta- gram, and Facebook.

Difficulties don’t disappear in our more intimate partnerships. In developing relation- ships, the partners have to decide when (if?) to go “Facebook official” by announcing their relationship to the world. Everybody as- sumes that a new status of “in a relationship” signals that the members of a couple now feel some commitment to each other (Seidman et al., 2019), but women tend to assume that

that status is more meaningful, entailing stronger feelings and more exclusivity, than men do (Fox & Warber, 2013). Annoyance and dissatisfaction can result, particularly when one partner feels that he or she is “in a relationship” and the other does not (Papp et al., 2012). This is not a problem your grandparents faced 40 or 50 years ago.

And if you’re prone to suspicious jeal- ousy, social media are full of torment and peril. You can find old photos of your part- ner smiling alongside a prior partner, fret that there aren’t enough pictures of you on his or her site, and stew over any of his or her new friends who are unfamiliar to you (Utz et al., 2015). Indeed, when they’re feel- ing jealous, women spend more time snooping—for instance, monitoring their partner’s Facebook activity—particularly when they’re anxious about abandonment (Muise et al., 2014). (Men are less likely to do this, but then they tend to respond to jealousy differently than women do, as we’ll see on page 411). Overall, despite their won- derful capabilities, social media have their hazards. If you find yourself snooping a lot, and worrying needlessly as a result, you may want to step away from your screens.

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who were not suspicious enough (Haselton & Galperin, 2013). Unwarranted doubt about a partner’s fidelity is divisive and painful, but it may not be as costly and danger- ous to men in an evolutionary sense as being too trusting and failing to detect infidel- ity when it occurs. Thus, today, men have more extramarital affairs than women do (Tafoya & Spitzberg, 2007), but it’s men, not women, who are more accurate at detect- ing sexual infidelity in a cheating partner (Andrews et al., 2008). And vigilance is sometimes sensible; as we saw in chapter 9, about 2 percent of the world’s children are being raised by men who do not know that the children were fathered by another man (Larmuseau et al., 2016).

For their part, women presumably enjoyed more success raising their children when they were sensitive to any signs that a man might withdraw the resources that were supporting the care and feeding of their children. Assuming that men were com- mitted to them when the men in fact were not would have been risky for women, so sexual selection may have favored those who were usually skeptical of men’s declara- tions of true love. Unfairly doubting a man’s commitment may be obnoxious and self- defeating, but believing that a mate was devoted and committed when he was not may have been more costly still. In our ancestral past, women who frequently and naïvely mated with men who then abandoned them probably did not reproduce as successfully as did women who insisted on more proof that a man was there to stay. Thus, modern women are probably the “descendants of ancestral mothers who erred in the direction of being cautious,” who tended to prudently underestimate the commitment of their men (Haselton & Buss, 2000, p. 83).

As a result of all this, an evolutionary perspective suggests that men should experi- ence more jealousy than women do at the thought of sexual infidelity in their mates, whereas women should react more than men do to the threat of emotional infidelity, the possibility that their partners are falling in love with someone else. Either type of infidel- ity can provoke jealousy in either sex, of course, but they differ in their evolutionary implications. For a man, it’s not a partner’s love for someone else that’s the bigger threat to his reproductive success, it’s the sex; his children may still thrive if his mate loves another man, but he certainly does not want to raise the other man’s children. For a woman, it’s not a partner’s intercourse with someone else that’s more dangerous, it’s the love; as long as he continues to provide needed resources, her children may still thrive even if he impregnates other women—but if he falls in love and moves out entirely, her kids’ future may be imperiled.

This reasoning led David Buss and his colleagues (Buss et al., 1992, p. 252) to pose this compelling question to research participants:

Please think of a serious committed romantic relationship that you have had in the past, that you currently have, or that you would like to have. Imagine that you discover that the person with whom you’ve been seriously involved became interested in someone else. What would distress or upset you more (please pick only one):

(A) Imagining your partner forming a deep emotional attachment to that person.

(B) Imagining your partner enjoying passionate sexual intercourse with that other person.

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Which one would you pick? Most of the men—60 percent—said the sex would upset them more, but only 17 percent of the women chose that option; instead, a sizable majority of the women—83 percent—reported that they would be more distressed by a partner’s emotional attachment to a rival. Moreover, a follow-up study demonstrated that men and women differed in their physiological reactions to these choices (Buss et al., 1992). Men displayed more autonomic changes indicative of emotional arousal when they imagined a partner’s sexual, rather than emotional, infidelity, but the reverse was true for women.

These results were consistent with an evolutionary perspective, but they engen- dered controversy (Carpenter, 2012), with critics suggesting that they were less con- vincing than they seemed. One straightforward complaint was methodological. The use of a “forced-choice” question in which research participants had to pick one option or the other may have exaggerated a subtle and relatively minor difference between the sexes (DeSteno, 2010). If men found sexual infidelity only slightly more threatening than women did, a forced-choice question could yield the striking results Buss et al. (1992) obtained even if the actual difference in men’s and women’s

His sexual infidelity is painful. But would she prefer that he was just in love with the other woman instead? Probably not.

©Sidney Harris/www.cartoonstock.com

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outlooks is rather trivial. And in fact, when they were allowed to simply indicate that they would find both types of infidelity equally upsetting, both men and women often did (Lishner et al., 2008).

More subtly, the two types of infidelity may mean different things to women than they do to men (DeSteno & Salovey, 1996). Because men are more accepting of casual sex, women may routinely assume that a man’s sexual infidelity is just that: casual sex. His emotional infidelity, however, may mean that he’s having sex with someone else and is in love with her, which would make emotional infidelity the more serious threat. For their part, men may assume that women often love someone without having sex, but usually love those with whom they do have sex, and that would make her sexual infidelity more momentous. In fact, men and women do generally hold such views (Whitty & Quigley, 2008). We tend to think that a cheating spouse is more likely to be emotionally attached to the illicit lover when the cheater is a woman rather than a man (Sprecher et al., 1998). Thus, because we assume that sex and love are more closely connected for women than for men,5 a choice between the two types of infidelity probably does mean different things for men than for women.

So, consider this: You’ve discovered that your partner has fallen in love with someone else and is having great sex with him or her. Both emotional and sexual infi- delity have occurred. Which aspect of your partner’s faithlessness, the sex or the love, bothers you more? This scenario answers the criticism that, individually, they mean different things to the different sexes, and in the United States, Korea, and Japan, more men than women chose sexual infidelity as the more hurtful insult (Buss et al., 1999). (In the United States, 61 percent of the men chose sexual infidelity as the more alarm- ing threat, but only 13 percent of the women did.) In addition, the same sex difference is routinely (e.g., Edlund et al., 2018) obtained when people rate their distress in response to the two infidelities instead of just picking the one that bothers them most, so the pattern doesn’t depend much on how you ask the question.

At bottom, most men and women do appear to be differentially sensitive to the two types of threat. When the possibility exists, men are quicker to assume that sexual infidel- ity is occurring than women are, whereas women decide that emotional i nfidelity is occurring faster than men do (Schützwohl, 2005). If they discover incriminating messages on Snapchat, men are more troubled by evidence of sexual infidelity but women are more distressed by emotional infidelity (Dunn & Ward, 2020). And if they find suspicious text messages on their partner’s phone, men spend more time studying the sexual messages than women do, and women spend more time inspecting the emotional messages than men do (Dunn & McLean, 2015). Thereafter, men ruminate more about the threat of their mate’s sexual infidelity, whereas women fret more about their partner’s emotional infidelity (Schützwohl, 2006). And if they interrogate their partners, men are more likely than women to inquire about the sexual nature of the illicit relationship, whereas women are more likely than men to ask about its emotional nature (Kuhle et al., 2009). This pattern is evident on the TV show Cheaters, which allows viewers to eavesdrop as unfaith- ful partners are confronted with evidence of their infidelity by their jealous partners; careful coding of 55 episodes of the show revealed that jealous men were usually more

5This assumption, you’ll recall, is correct. On average, sex and love are more closely connected for women than for men. Look back at our discussion of sociosexual orientation that begins on page 355.

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keen to find out if sex had happened, whereas women more often wanted to know if their men had fallen in love with their rivals (Kuhle, 2011; see Figure 10.3). And if their suspicions turn out to be unfounded, men are more relieved to learn that sexual infidel- ity has not occurred, whereas women are more relieved to find that their partners do not love someone else (Schützwohl, 2008a).

Finally, the sex difference disappears, and men and women are similarly threatened by the two types of infidelity, when the cheating carries no risk of conceiving a child—that is, when their partners cheat with someone of the same sex in a gay or lesbian affair (Sagarin et al., 2003). Subtract paternity uncertainty from the mix, and men no longer dread sexual infidelity more than women do. And sure enough, gays, lesbians, and bisex- uals of both sexes don’t differ from each other in their responses to a partner’s infidelity; they all find emotional infidelity to be more worrisome than sexual infidelity is (de Visser et al., 2020).

So, the different forms of faithlessness elicit different reactions only from hetero- sexual men and women—and, interestingly, not from all of them. Unlike fellows who expect their partners to be monogamous, men who practice consensual non-monogamy are not more threatened by sexual infidelity; they judge emotional infidelity (of either a primary or secondary partner) to be equally worrisome (Mogilski et al., 2019).

In the end, then, our responses to the dreadful prospect of a partner’s infidelity are complex, and men and women don’t differ all that much: If it’s forbidden, we tend

0

20

40

60

80

“Did you have SEX with him/her?”

“Do you LOVE him/her?”

The Wounded Partners’ Primary Focus

Pe rc

en ta

ge o

f C as

es

Men Women

FIGURE 10.3. What do jealous victims of infidelity want to know? When they confronted their cheating partners, men were more likely than women to ask if their partners had had sex with an interloper. Women were more interested in whether their partners had fallen in love with someone else.

Source: Kuhle, B. X. (2011). “Did you have sex with him? Do you love her? An in vivo test of sex differences in jealous interrogations,” Personality and Individual Differences, 51, 1044–1047.

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to get angry at the thought of a lover’s sexual infidelity, and we’re hurt by the prospect of an emotional affair (Green & Sabini, 2006). Clearly, the most reasonable conclusion from all of these studies is that everybody hates both types of infidelity, and here, as in so many other cases, the sexes are more similar to each other than different. Still, to the extent that they differ at all, heterosexual women are likely to perceive a partner’s emotional attachment to a rival as more perilous than heterosexual men do, whereas the men are more threatened by extradyadic sex—and evolutionary psychology offers a fascinating, if arguable, explanation of these reactions.

Responses to Jealousy

People may react to the hurt, anger, and fear of jealousy in ways that have either ben- eficial or destructive effects on their relationships (Dindia & Timmerman, 2003). On occasion, jealous people lash out in ways that are unequivocally harmful, retaliating against their partners with violent behavior or verbal antagonism (Davis et al., 2018), or with efforts to make them jealous in return (Wegner et al., 2018). On other occasions, people respond in ways that may be intended to protect the relationship but that often undermine it further: spying on their partners (Vogels & Anderson, 2020), restricting their partners’ freedom, or derogating or threatening their rivals (Reynolds et al., 2018). There are times, however, when people respond positively to jealousy by straightfor- wardly expressing their concerns and trying to work things out with their partners or by making themselves or their relationships more desirable (by, for instance, improving their appearance or doing more housework) (Guerrero et al., 2005).

Attachment styles help determine what people will do. When they become jealous, people who are relatively comfortable with closeness—those with secure or preoccupied attachment styles—are more likely to express their concerns and to try to repair their relationships than are those with more avoidant styles ( Guerrero, 1998). By compari- son, people who are dismissing or fearful are more likely to avoid the issue or deny their distress by pretending nothing is wrong or by acting like they don’t care.

Men and women often differ in their responses to jealousy, too, with consequences that can complicate heterosexual relationships. Imagine yourself in this situation: At a party, you leave your romantic partner sitting on a couch when you go to refill your drinks. While you’re gone, your partner’s old boyfriend or girlfriend happens by and sits for a moment, and they share a light kiss of greeting just as you return with the drinks. What would you do? When researchers showed people videotapes of a scenario like this and measured their intentions, men and women responded differently (Shettel- Neuber et al., 1978). Women said they would react to the rival’s interference by seek- ing to improve the relationship; they intended to put on a show of indifference but compete with the rival by making themselves more attractive to their partners. In con- trast, men said they would strive to protect their egos; they planned to get drunk, confront and threaten the rival, and pursue other women. Whereas women seemed to focus on preserving the existing relationship (Aylor & Dainton, 2001), men considered leaving it and salving their wounded pride with conquests of new partners.

Sex differences such as these have also been obtained in other studies (Miller & Maner, 2008), and one thing that makes them worrisome is that women are more likely than men to try to get their partners jealous (White, 1980). When they induce

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Mate Poaching

The good news with regard to romantic rival- ries is that most of us want to settle down with a mutually monogamous sexual partner at some point in our lives (e.g., Fairbrother et al., 2019). We expect to (try to) be faithful to one special person sometime down the road. However, the bad news is that mate poaching, behavior that is intended to lure someone away from an existing relationship at least for one night, is commonplace. Around the world, most men (54 percent) and quite a few women (34 percent) have tried to poach someone else’s partner (Davies et al., 2007), and about four-fifths of them have succeeded at least once (Schmitt et al., 2004). Moreover, about 70 percent of us have encountered a poacher’s efforts to lure us away from our partners (or just into bed), and most men (60 percent) and half of all women who have been pursued have succumbed to a poaching attempt (Schmitt et al., 2004). And on average, poachers who are already our friends usually succeed in under- mining our commitment to our existing rela- tionships (Lemay & Wolf, 2016).

What sort of person pursues someone else’s mate? In general, mate poachers are horny, extraverted people who are low in agreeableness and conscientiousness and who approve of adulterous promiscuity (Schmitt & Buss, 2001); they also tend to be high in all three of the Dark Triad traits (Kardum et al., 2015), so they are callous, manipulative, and disinterested in trusting intimacy with others. Instead, they’re moti- vated to poach by the challenge and the ego boosts they experience when they’re success- ful (Davies et al., 2010). None of this is very loving, and poachers sound like lousy long- term mates! Nevertheless, the more attractive

they are, the more successful their poaching attempts tend to be (Sunderani et al., 2013), and their success may lie in the fact that those who succumb to poaching attempts tend to resemble their pursuers; they also do not much value sexual fidelity (Schmitt et al., 2004), and tend to be manipulative, avoidant, and dishonest (Mitchell et al., 2019).

The poaching tactics used by men and women tend to differ. When they are trying to entice someone else’s mate, women ad- vertise their good looks and sexual availabil- ity, whereas men publicize their power and their willingness to provide their lovers de- sirable resources (Schmitt & Buss, 2001). Similar strategies are used when people want to be poached and wish to communi- cate their availability to potential poachers. In such cases, women flaunt their beauty, promise access to sex, and complain about their current partners, whereas men offer compliments and are overly generous to their targets (Schmitt & Shackelford, 2003).

In the long run, those who succumb to poaching usually don’t do themselves any fa- vors. Relationships that result from mate poaching inevitably begin with betrayal, and the partnerships that follow are not as satisfy- ing and committed, on average, as those in which poaching does not occur. Poachers are untrustworthy, and, people tend to get poached because they are looking around for novelty, excitement, or something better, and everybody involved tends to keep looking around even after they start a new relation- ship. Having been unfaithful once, they tend to be unfaithful again (Belu & O’Sullivan, 2020). Poachers certainly aren’t perfect partners.

jealousy—usually by discussing or exaggerating their attraction to other men, some- times by flirting with or dating them—they typically seek to test the relationship (to see how much he cares) or try to elicit more attention and commitment from their partners (Fleischmann et al., 2005). They evidently want their men to respond the

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way women do when they get jealous, with greater effort to protect and maintain the relationship. The problem, of course, is that that’s not the way men typically react. Women who seek to improve their relationships by inducing jealousy in their men may succeed only in driving their partners away.

Coping Constructively with Jealousy

An unhappy mixture of hurt, anger, and fear occurs when you want your partner but aren’t sure you can keep him or her from preferring a rival. It may be a natural thing for humans to feel, but it’s often an ugly, awful feeling that results in terribly destructive behavior (Buss, 2019). Someday you may find yourself wishing that you could feel it less intensely and limit its effects. What can be done?

When jealousy is justified and a rival is real, the experts suggest that we work on reducing the connection between the exclusivity of a relationship and our sense of self-worth (Salovey & Rodin, 1988). Finding that someone we love is attracted to a rival can be painful—but we react irrationally when we act as though our self-worth totally depended on a particular relationship. Endless rumination about the injustice that’s been done is useless (Elphinston et al., 2013); we should strive instead to main- tain a sense of self-confidence about our abilities to act and to survive independently, with or without our present partners.

When people are unable to do that on their own, formal therapy can help. Clinical approaches to the treatment of jealousy usually try to (a) reduce irrational, catastrophic thinking that exaggerates either the threat to the relationship or the harm that its loss would entail; (b) enhance the self-esteem of the jealous partner; (c) improve communication skills so the partners can clarify their expectations and agree on limits that prevent jealous misunderstandings; and (d) increase satisfaction and fairness in the relationship (Pines, 1998). Most of us don’t need therapy to cope with jealousy. But it might help some of us if romantic relationships came with a warning label:

WARNING: It may be dangerous to your and your partner’s health if you do not know beyond doubt that you are a valuable and worthwhile human being with or without your partner’s love.

DECEPTION AND LYING

Other sources of stress and strain occur much more often than jealousy does. Indeed, the hazards I’ll consider next, lying and other forms of deception, occur so often in social life that they are commonplace (whether we realize it or not). As we’ll see, deception of some sort or another occurs regularly even in intimate relationships that are based on openness and trust.

Deception is intentional behavior that creates an impression in the recipient that the deceiver knows to be untrue (Vrij et al., 2010). Outright lying in which people fabricate information and make statements that contradict the truth is the most straight- forward example of deceptive behavior, but there are various other ways to convey

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misleading impressions without coming right out and saying things that are untrue (Buller & Burgoon, 1994). For instance, people may simply conceal information and not mention details that would communicate the truth, or they may divert attention from vital facts, abruptly changing topics to avoid the discussion of touchy subjects. On other occasions, they may mix truthful and deceptive information into half-truths that are misleading. I’ll focus on lies because they have been studied much more exten- sively than other forms of deception, but we’ll only be scratching the surface of the various ways intimate partners mislead each other.

Lying in Close and Casual Relationships

There’s a lot of lying in everyday life. On any given day, lots of us—60 percent in the United States, but only 24 percent in the United Kingdom—tell no lies at all. And most of the lies we do tell are small white lies of convenience, so it’s fair to say that most of us are pretty honest most of the time. Nevertheless, on average, most of us tell one meaningful big lie each week, and about 7 percent of us are prolific liars who tell three big lies each day6 (Serota & Levine, 2015).

Most lies are self-serving, benefitting the liar and warding off embarrassment, guilt, or obligation, or seeking approval or material gain. For instance, we expect others to lie online about their appearance—and even their gender—at least occasion- ally (Markowitz & Hancock, 2018), and most of us have, at one time or another, lied about the number of people with whom we’ve had sex (Horan, 2016). Men are more likely than women to misrepresent their ambition and income, and women are more likely than men to cry out in fake pleasure (Brewer & Hendrie, 2011) and to fake orgasms during sex (Cooper et al., 2014). Both men and women, as you can see, tell lies that are designed to appeal to the other sex (Buss, 2017).

Still, one-fifth of all lies are told to benefit others, protecting their feelings or advancing their interests (Cantarero et al., 2018), and we’re especially likely to misrep- resent the truth when brutal honesty would hurt the feelings of someone who is highly invested in the issue at hand. For instance, imagine that you really dislike a painting but are describing your feelings about it to an art student who may have painted it. Would you be totally honest? In just such a situation, no one was (DePaulo & Bell, 1996). People typically admitted that the painting wasn’t one of their favorites, but they were much less critical than they had been in prior written evaluations of the piece.

Lies that are undertaken to promote polite, friendly interaction with others seem less deceptive and more acceptable to most of us than greedy, consequential lies do (Dunbar et al., 2016), and they can even seem more ethical than admissions of painful truths would be (Levine & Schweitzer, 2014). And most lies in close relationships are benevolent, small lies like these (DePaulo & Kashy, 1998). Partners may (try to) com- municate more affection to each other than they really feel (Trask et al., 2020), and claim that they find each other more attractive than they really do (Lemay et al., 2013). Fewer self- serving, greedy lies—and fewer lies overall—are told to lovers and friends than to acquaintances and strangers.

6Watch out for these folks. Compared to the rest of us, they are nine times more likely to have been fired from a job and four times more likely to have lost a relationship as a result of their dishonest behavior. And yet they keep lying (Serota & Levine, 2015).

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This may make lying sound rather innocuous in close relationships. But people still tell a lot of lies to their intimate partners—in one study, 97 percent of the partici- pants admitted that they had lied to their lovers within the last week (Guthrie & Kunkel, 2013)7—and when they do tell serious lies about topics that could destroy their reputa- tions or relationships, they tell them more often to their closest partners than to anyone else (DePaulo et al., 2004). The biggest deceptions we undertake occur more often in our intimate relationships than anywhere else.

In addition, lies can be consequential even when they go undetected. In general, people consider interactions in which they tell a lie for any reason to be less pleasant and less intimate than interactions in which they are totally honest, and lying to a close partner makes them particularly uncomfortable (DePaulo & Kashy, 1998). Moreover, lying in close relationships undermines the liar’s trust in the partner who receives the lie (Sagarin et al., 1998). This is a phenomenon known as deceiver’s distrust: When people lie to others, they often begin to perceive the recipients of the lies as less hon- est and trustworthy as a result. This seems to occur both because liars assume that other people are just like them—so they assume that others share their own deceitful motives—and because they feel better about themselves when they believe their faults are shared by others (Sagarin et al.). In either case, lying can sully a relationship even when the liar is the only one who knows that any lying has taken place.

Liars are also likely to think that their lies are more harmless and inoffensive than the recipients do (Kaplar & Gordon, 2004). This is a common pattern when someone misbehaves in a partnership, and we’ll see it again four pages from now in our discus- sion of betrayals: The recipient (or victim) of a partner’s wrongdoing almost always considers it more informative and influential than the perpetrator does (Warach et al., 2019). Thus, what liars consider to be a small fib may be considered to be a harmful and duplicitous deceit by others if the lie becomes known. But that begs the question, how often do liars get caught? As we’ll see, the answer is, “it depends.”

Lies and Liars

Even if we aren’t prolific liars, some of us do lie more than others do. Those of us with insecure attachment styles, for instance, tell more lies than secure people do (Gillath et al., 2010). But practice does not make perfect; frequent liars are not neces- sarily more successful liars. A liar’s performance depends, in part, on the level of motivation (and guilt and fear) with which he or she enacts the lie. Lies are typically shorter and less detailed than truths are (Burgoon, 2018) unless the lie is important and the liar can prepare in advance and is highly motivated to get away with the lie; when liars care enough to send their very best, they create scripts that are more con- vincing than those authored by liars who are less highly motivated (DePaulo et al., 1983). However, when they deliver their lies, motivated liars do a poorer, more suspi- cious job than do those who have less to lose and who are more spontaneous and relaxed (Forrest & Feldman, 2000). People who really want to get away with a lie tend to be more obvious than they would be if they didn’t care so much because strong emotions are harder to conceal than mild feelings are ( Porter et al., 2012).

7And the other 3 percent may have been lying when they said they hadn’t. That’s ironic, isn’t it?

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What goes wrong when lies are detected? Most of us assume that liars look shifty, avoiding eye contact, fidgeting, and generally looking nervous, but that’s not necessar- ily true at all. If anything, people are more animated when they’re telling the truth than when they’re lying and preoccupied, trying to keep their story straight and work- ing hard to seem sincere (Burgoon et al., 2015). With the exception of a few folks who are just very transparent, really lousy liars (Kenny, 2020), those who are lying can appear to be cool and calm, and those telling the truth can fidget, and there’s no reliable relation between any particular pattern of nonverbal behavior and lying (Vrij et al., 2019). Really, there is nothing that people do, “not a single verbal, non- verbal, or physiological cue [that is] uniquely related to deception” (Vrij, 2007, p. 324); “there are no clear-cut guaranteed clues to deceit” (Frank & Svetieva, 2013, p. 139). However, careful attention to what people are saying—not just how they are saying it—can alert us to inconsistencies in their statements (Reinhard et al., 2011), and there may be discrepancies between their verbal and nonverbal behavior that give them away. A fascinat- ing frame-by-frame analysis of television coverage of people who were emotionally plead- ing for the return of a missing relative was able to distinguish the liars (who, as it turned out, had actually murdered the missing person!) from those who were telling the truth (and who were genuinely upset); these were high-stakes lies, and the liars could not fake entirely convincing sadness and completely conceal their secret pleasure (ten Brinke & Porter, 2012). Their faces didn’t seamlessly match what they were saying, but the discrepancies were subtle and hard to detect. And there wasn’t any particular thing that the liars were always doing that indicated that they weren’t telling the truth.

So, How Well Can We Detect a Partner’s Deception?

The problem is that the specific reactions that indicate that a person is lying can be quite idiosyncratic. People differ in their mannerisms. Some of us speak hesitantly most of the time, whereas others are more verbally assertive; some people engage in frequent eye contact, whereas others rarely look us in the eye. Lying is usually apparent in changes in a person’s ordinary demeanor, but to notice those changes, one may need some prior familiarity with the person’s style (Vrij et al., 2019). People can learn to detect deception in others: When research participants get repeated opportunities to judge whether or not someone is lying—and are given continuing feedback about the accuracy of their judgments8—they do become better judges of that person’s truthful- ness. However, their improvement is limited to that particular person, and they’re no better at detecting lying in anyone else (Zuckerman et al., 1984)!

Intimate partners have personal, idiosyncratic knowledge of each other that should allow them to be sensitive judges of each other’s behavior. But they also trust each other (or their relationship probably isn’t very intimate), and that leads them to exhibit a truth bias in which they assume that their partners are usually telling the truth (Clare & Levine, 2019). As a result, intimate partners often make very confident judgments of each other’s veracity, but their confidence has nothing whatsoever to do with how accurate they are (DePaulo et al., 1997). This means that people are

8Researchers can provide feedback like this in a lab procedure, but it doesn’t often happen in real relation- ships. How often do you get exact and accurate feedback about your judgments of a lover’s truthfulness?

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sometimes certain that their partners are telling the truth when their partners are actually lying.

Now, if anyone routinely knows when your intimate partner is lying, you probably do. But any belief that our partners are completely transparent to us is probably mis- placed. People tend not to be very skilled lie detectors: A sprawling meta-analysis of studies involving 24,483 research participants demonstrated that we correctly distin- guish truths from lies 54 percent of the time (Bond & DePaulo, 2006)—but because we’d be right 50 percent of the time just by flipping a coin, that’s not very good. So, despite our considerable experience with our close friends and lovers, we usually do a poorer job of distinguishing their fact from fancy than we realize (Elaad et al., 2012). In fact, if the listener doesn’t actively interrogate the liar (Levine et al., 2014), not many lies in close relationships are detected at the time they’re told; if the truth comes out, it’s usually later on, when information from others, physical evidence, and the occasional confession come into play (von Hippel et al., 2016).

Thus, people tell lots of lies, even in close relationships, and they get away with most of them. However, don’t pat yourself on the back if you’re currently deceiving a partner. You’re probably not as good at it as you think you are (Grieve & Hayes, 2013). And consider the big picture. People tell fewer lies in the relationships they find most rewarding, in part because lying violates shared expectations of honesty and trust. Keeping secrets isn’t easy. And even if your lies go undetected, they may be poisonous: “Every time we lie in a relationship, it has an effect, even if the lie goes unnoticed by the recipient. We know we’re being deceptive, and somehow that dis- honesty just weighs on the relationship” (Robert Feldman, quoted in Siegel, 2018). You also run the risk that if (or when?) your lies are detected, they may seem to your partner to be a despicable example of our next topic: betrayal of an intimate partner.

BETRAYAL

People don’t always do what we want or expect them to do. And even our intimate partners occasionally do harmful things (or fail to do desirable things) that violate the expectations we hold for close confidants. Such acts are betrayals, disagreeable, hurtful actions by people we trusted and from whom we reasonably did not expect such treachery. Sexual and emotional infidelity and lying are common examples of betrayal, but any behavior that violates the norms of benevolence, loyalty, respect, and trustworthiness that support intimate relationships may be considered treasonous to some degree. People who reveal secrets about their partners, gossip about them behind their backs, tease in hurtful ways, break important promises, spend too much time elsewhere, or simply abandon a relationship can all be considered to have betrayed their partners (Fitness, 2012).

All of these actions involve painful drops in perceived relational value. When we are victimized by intimate partners, their betrayals demonstrate that they do not value their relationships with us as much as we had believed, or else, from our point of view, they would not have behaved as they did (Fitness, 2012). The sad irony is that for losses of relational value of this sort to occur, we must have (or think we have) a

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desired relationship that is injured; thus, casual acquaintances cannot betray us as thoroughly and hurtfully as trusted intimates can (Jones & Burdette, 1994). We’re not always hurt by the ones we love, but the ones we love can hurt us in ways that no one else can (Miller, 1997).

In fact, when our feelings get hurt in everyday life, it’s usually our close friends or romantic partners who cause us distress (Leary & Leder, 2009). Those partners are rarely being intentionally malicious—which is fortunate because it’s very painful to believe that our partners meant to hurt us ( Vangelisti & Hampel, 2010)—but they often disappoint us anyway. Almost all of us have betrayed someone and have been betrayed by someone else in a close relationship at some time or another.

Because caring and trust are integral aspects of intimacy, this may be surpris- ing, but perhaps it shouldn’t be. Most of us are close in some way to more than one person, and when people try to be loyal simultaneously to several different relationships, competing demands are inescapable. And when obligations overlap, occasional violations of the norms in a given relationship may be unavoidable (Baxter et al., 1997). If two of your close friends schedule their weddings in differ- ent cities on the same day, for instance, you’ll have to disappoint one of them, even without wanting to. Moreover, we occasionally face competing demands within a given relationship, finding ourselves unable to appropriately honor all of the respon- sibilities of a caring friend or lover. I once learned that the ex-wife of a good friend was now sleeping with my friend’s best friend. Honesty and openness required that I inform my friend of his other friend’s—and, arguably, his ex-wife’s—betrayal. How- ever, caring and compassion suggested that he not be burdened with painful, embar- rassing news he could do nothing about. It was a no-win situation. Seeking to protect my friend’s feelings, I decided not to tell him about his other friend’s

betrayal—but a few months later, when he learned the truth (and realized that I had known), he was hurt and disappointed that I had kept such a secret from him. Perceived betrayals sometimes occur when peo- ple have the best intentions but simply cannot honor all of the overlapping and competing demands that intimacy and interdependency may make (Peetz & Kammrath, 2011).

Individual Differences in Betrayal

Nevertheless, some of us betray our partners more often than others do. Using an Interpersonal Betrayal Scale (see Table 10.2), Warren Jones found that betrayal is less frequent among those who are older, better educated, and religious (Jones & Burdette, 1994). More importantly, those who report repeated betrayals of others tend to be vengeful, suspicious, manipulative people who score higher than the rest of us on the Dark Triad traits of Machiavellianism, psychopathy, and narcissism (Jones & Paulhus, 2017). They don’t trust others much, perhaps because they wrongly attribute to others the same motives they recognize in themselves (Couch & Jones, 1997).

Men and women do not differ in their tendencies to betray others, but they do differ in the targets of their most frequent betrayals (Jones & Burdette, 1994). Men

A Point to Ponder

Imagine that you discover your lover cheating on you with your best friend. Who do you think has committed the greater betrayal? Why?

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are more likely than women to betray their romantic partners and business associates, whereas women betray their friends and family members more often than men do. Whether one is at particular risk for betrayal from a man or woman may depend on the part one plays in his or her life.

The Two Sides to Every Betrayal

Those who betray their intimate partners usually underestimate the harm they do. As we saw in chapter 4, it’s normal for people to be self-serving when they consider their actions, but when it comes to betrayal, this tendency leads people to excuse and min- imize actions that their partners may find quite harmful (Adams, 2016). Betrayers often consider their behavior to be inconsequential and innocuous, and they are quick to describe mitigating circumstances that vindicate their actions (Warach et al., 2019). However, their victims rarely share those views. Those who are betrayed routinely judge the transgression to be more severe than the betrayers do (Warach et al., 2019).

These two different perspectives lead to disparate perceptions of the harm that is done. People who are betrayed almost never believe that such events have no effect on their relationships; 93 percent of the time, they feel that a betrayal damages the partner- ship, leading to lower satisfaction and lingering suspicion and doubt (Jones & Burdette, 1994). In contrast, the perpetrators acknowledge that their behavior was harmful only about half the time. They even think that the relationship has improved as a result of their transgression in one of every five cases. Such judgments are clearly ill-advised. We may feel better believing that our occasional betrayals are relatively benign, but it may be smarter to face the facts: Betrayals almost always have negative, and sometimes lasting, effects on a relationship (Niehuis et al., 2019). Indeed, they are routinely the central complaint of spouses seeking therapy or a divorce (Amato & Previti, 2003).

Why Revenge Isn’t Such a Good Idea

When they’ve been wronged, victims of both sexes may feel that they want to get some payback and exact a little revenge, doing some intentional harm to those who have harmed them (Jackson et al., 2019). But that’s ordinarily a destructive motive and a bad idea, for several reasons. A first problem with revenge stems from the different perspectives of perpetrator and victim, who rarely agree on the amount of retribution

TABLE 10.2. An Interpersonal Betrayal Scale: Some Example Items

How often have you done these things?

1. Snubbed a friend when you are with others you want to impress.

2. Gossiped about a friend behind his or her back.

3. Told others information given to you in confidence.

4. Lied to a friend.

Source: Data from Jones, W. H., & Burdette, M. P. (1994). “Betrayal in relationships.” In A. L. Weber & J. H. Harvey (Eds.), Perspectives on close relationships. Allyn & Bacon, 243–262.

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that’s just: When victims inflict reciprocal injury that seems to them to be equal to the harm they suffered, their retribution seems excessive to the original perpetrators (who are now the new victims). And if I seem to you to have been meaner to you than you were to me, you then need to hurt me again to balance the scales, and a cycle of vengefulness continues (Yoshimura & Boon, 2018). We also tend to excuse actions of our own that we judge to be blameworthy in others. Self-serving perceptions like these were evident in a remarkable study (Buunk, 1987) of dozens of Dutch couples in which both partners had cheated, having extradyadic sex: Almost everybody thought that their faithlessness had been relatively innocuous and meaningless but that their partner’s infidelity had been a gross betrayal. If it’s okay when I do it but wrong when you do it, revenge is impossible to calibrate so that genuine justice is served.

A second problem is that we routinely expect revenge to be more satisfying than it turns out to be. When you nurse a grudge, rehearsing an injury and plotting your revenge, you keep your wounds fresh and delay any healing. As it turns out, those who are given an opportunity for revenge typically stay distressed and surly longer than those who are wronged but then just have to move on and get over it (Carlsmith et al., 2008). We do ourselves no favors when we prolong an injury by thirsting for revenge. In addition, retaliation is usually fulfilling only when those who have wronged us meant to hurt us (Strelan et al., 2020) and they connect the dots, understand why they’re now being harmed in return, and see the error of their ways; revenge is actually

A Practical Guide to Getting Away with It

Deception is corrosive and forgiveness is good for people, so I hesitate to offer advice about how to get away with betraying someone. Nev- ertheless, I’m here to present relationship sci- ence to you as objectively as possible, so here goes. Relationships are more adversely af- fected, and forgiveness is harder to obtain, if our partners catch us in an act of betrayal or learn of it from some third party than if we tell them of it ourselves when they ask (Afifi et al., 2001). (The least damaging mode of discov- ery, if our partners do learn of our betrayal, is for us to admit our wrongdoing without being asked, but that’s not the point of this box.)

So, admitting a wrong is better than being caught red-handed, but just what we say is important, too. When you’re asked about a transgression you’ve committed, you shouldn’t deny it outright, because your bold lie will compound your sins if (when?) the truth comes out. Instead, equivocate (Rycyna

et al., 2009). Make your response as truthful as possible, and don’t contradict the truth. A crafty strategy is to confess to a less serious offense; a partial confession often seems more trustworthy than a claim of complete innocence, and it avoids the harsher conse- quences of admitting the more serious wrong (Peer et al., 2014).

I’m not encouraging you either to be- tray or to deceive your partners. If you follow the guidelines presented here, you will be behaving disreputably. And you may not be doing yourself a favor. We continue to main- tain guilty secrets when we offer only partial confessions, and we may end up feeling worse than we would have if we’d made a full confession. In the end, “true guilt relief re- quires people to fully come clean” (Peer et al., 2014, p. 215). Seems to me, though, the best thing to do is to not misbehave in the first place.

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less satisfying than doing nothing at all when the original perpetrator fails to see that he or she had it coming (Funk et al., 2014). And how often does your partner say, “Yes, dear, you’re right, I see that I deserved that because of my prior misbehavior”?

Finally, people who are prone to vengeance tend to be pretty sour folks who are high in negative emotionality low in agreeableness, and generally less happy with life than those of us who are less vengeful (Rey & Extremera, 2014). All three of the Dark Triad traits are associated with higher vengefulness, too (Brewer et al., 2015). So, they’re greedy and manipulative and definitely not a fun bunch.

So, when partners have been betrayed, they do sometimes take hurtful action by, for instance, destroying a partner’s possessions, cheating, and defaming their partners to others (Yoshimura & Boon, 2018). But spite is costly, both to one’s partnership and to oneself. So, let’s end our look at painful stresses and strains by considering the alternative: the healing process that can help a relationship survive a partner’s wrongdoing.

FORGIVENESS

If a relationship is to continue to thrive after a painful betrayal, forgiveness may be necessary (McCullough, 2008). Forgiveness is “a decision to give up your perceived or actual right to get even with, or hold in debt, someone who has wronged you” (Markman et al., 1994, p. 217). It’s a process in which “harmful conduct is acknowl- edged” and “the harmed partner extends undeserved mercy” to the one who has misbehaved (Waldron & Kelley, 2008, p. 19). When you forgive someone, you give up your grudge and discard the desire to retaliate; you don’t condone—or forget—a

Here’s a handy measure of vengeful inclinations: the Voodoo Doll Task. People are asked to imag- ine that the doll is a partner who has wronged them; then, they’re provided a basket of pins and invited to “discharge negative energy” by stabbing the doll with as many pins as they wish. The number of pins people use does a good job of assessing their motivations to do real harm to their partners (DeWall et al., 2013). Think back to the last time someone upset you and consider: How many pins would you use? Where would you stick them?

©Stephen Yoshimura

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partner’s misbehavior, but you do communicate your “willingness to exit from a poten- tial cycle of abuse and recrimination” ( Fincham & Beach, 2002, p. 240). Forgiveness doesn’t necessarily mean that you regain positive feelings toward the offender—getting past your negative feelings and letting go of your ire and antipathy is the key (Fincham & Beach, 2013)—but it does make reconciliation more likely.

It’s not always easy to forgive someone, and it comes more readily to some of us than to others. Attachment style matters: Anxiety about abandonment and avoidance of intimacy both make people less forgiving (Hirst et al., 2019). In particular, secure people are more forgiving because they engage in less angry rumination that keeps an injury fresh in their minds (Burnette et al., 2007). Those who are high in agreeableness also forgive others relatively easily (Riek & Mania, 2012), but negative emotionality impedes forgiveness (Braithwaite et al., 2016); people who are prone to negative emo- tions can sometimes maintain grudges for years (Maltby et al., 2008). And finally, self-control promotes forgiveness (Pronk et al., 2019). Those of us who are better able to manage our motives and control our impulses find it easier to set aside a desire for retribution.

Still, no matter who we are, forgiveness comes more readily when some impor- tant ingredients exist. The first is genuine, sincere contrition (Zhang et al., 2019). Victims are more likely to forgive those who betray them when the offenders offer a meaningful apology by acknowledging their wrongs, accepting responsibility for their actions, offering genuine atonement by expressing shame, regret, and remorse for their misbehavior, and promising better conduct in the future (Lewicki et al., 2016). Forgiveness is less likely to occur when excuses are given or when an apology seems half-hearted. If you have misbehaved and a relationship is suffering, you might do well to recognize that your behavior was harmful, and apologize—and to do so sincerely (Schumann, 2018).

A second component to forgiveness is a desire to continue the relationship on the part of the victim. Forgiveness is easier to attain when one is committed (Karremans et al., 2011) to (what has been) a rewarding relationship (Smith et al., 2020), in part because a history of satisfying, warm connection leads partners to employ lenient, sympathetic attributions that offer benevolent interpretations of the offender’s miscon- duct (Walsh & Neff, 2020). Continuing trust is important in this regard (Strelan et al., 2017); to the extent victims are able to convince themselves that their partner’s trans- gression was a onetime mistake that won’t happen again, forgiveness becomes more likely (Donovan & Priester, 2017).9

Finally, forgiveness is less likely to occur when victims brood about their partners’ transgressions and remain preoccupied with the damage done by their misbehavior (Karremans et al., 2020). We let go of anger and resentment when we forgive someone, but rumination about our hurt or our partners’ flaws tends to keep our umbrage alive, and that makes forgiveness harder to attain (Ysseldyk et al., 2007).

It’s desirable, when you forgive someone, to be explicit, telling them of your deci- sion and inviting discussion of the event and its consequences (Merolla et al., 2017). Making light of the event, shrugging it off, or—even worse—not mentioning it at all doesn’t do justice to your feelings or provide the offender appropriate guidance. It’s

9One hopes, of course, that victims who come to think this way aren’t fooling themselves.

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also useful for you to demand change and to offer clear instruction about the conduct you’ll find to be acceptable in the future; your partner may be annoyed by such rules (Merolla et al., 2017), but you’ll likely feel better, and your partner may behave better, too (Russell et al., 2018).

Indeed, done well, forgiveness can protect the relationships in which it occurs (Kato, 2016). Retribution rarely gets our partners to reform and behave better, but forgiveness can; when people are forgiven, they are often grateful and, as a result, more repentant and less likely to repeat the offense (Mooney et al., 2016). Forgiveness also reduces conflict and encourages communication that can decrease declines in satisfac- tion and commitment (Braithwaite et al., 2011).

But perhaps even more significantly, people who are able to forgive their intimate partners usually enjoy more personal well-being—that is, more self-esteem, less hostility, less distress and tension, and more satisfaction with life—than do those from whom forgiveness is less forthcoming (Hojjat & Ayotte, 2013). They also enjoy better physical health (Weir, 2017). Forgiveness reduces our hurt and pain, replacing anger with equa- nimity, and whereas vengefulness increases our blood pressure, forgiveness reduces it (Hannon et al., 2012). There’s no question that, within intimate relationships, forgiveness is more desirable and beneficial to those who wield it than is vengeance.

Forgiveness has its limits. It won’t transform a selfish scoundrel into a worthy partner, and no one is suggesting that you doggedly continue to forgive a faithless partner who repeatedly takes advantage of you. Forgiveness that is offered in the absence of genuine contrition may be perceived to be a license to offend again; after all, why should I behave better if I’m certain to be forgiven no matter what I do? Forgiveness is advantageous when a partner misbehaves rarely and deserves to be forgiven (Strelan et al., 2016), but it can actually be detrimental, eroding your self- respect (Luchies et al., 2019) and delaying any resolution to your problems (McNulty, 2011) when your partner is unrepentant. In one study, forgiveness was associated with higher marital satisfaction when spouses rarely misbehaved, but it was associ- ated with lower satisfaction when one’s spouse was frequently disrespectful (McNulty & Fincham, 2012).

So, forgiveness is good for us and our relationships—when our partners and our relationships are worthy of it. When in doubt, choose forgiveness. The stakes are higher in intimate partnerships. It’s more painful when our partners misbehave, but there’s more reason to work to repair any damage that is done. Intimacy does open the door to excruciating costs, but it also offers the potential for invaluable, irreplaceable rewards.

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

When Ann returned from her business trip, she described her weekend as pretty dull and uneventful, so Paul was surprised when he saw pictures on her phone of a raucous dinner at which she and some guys had obviously been drinking and carrying on. A selfie of her sitting at a table beaming with pleasure as two good-looking men hugged her and kissed her cheeks really rattled him. Stung and unhappy, he became sullen and distant. He started giving her the cold shoulder and began to ponder how to “pay her back.” Ann knew that she had been too flirtatious, but she was secretly titillated

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by one of the guys in the picture who was now e-mailing her with veiled suggestions about their next meeting. In addition, Ann wasn’t sure what Paul knew or suspected, but she was beginning to resent his petulance.

Having read this chapter, what do you think the future holds for Ann and Paul? Why?

KEY TERMS

relational value ............................ p. 395 perceived relational value .......... p. 397 relational devaluation ................. p. 399 ostracism ...................................... p. 400 jealousy ......................................... p. 402 reactive jealousy .......................... p. 403

suspicious jealousy ...................... p. 403 deception ...................................... p. 413 deceiver’s distrust ........................ p. 415 truth bias ...................................... p. 416 betrayals ........................................ p. 417 forgiveness .................................... p. 421

CHAPTER SUMMARY

Hazards are surprisingly common in close relationships.

Perceived Relational Value

We encounter various amounts of acceptance and rejection from others that inform us of our relational value to them. Our perception that they value their relation- ships with us less than we want them to is a core ingredient of the stresses and strains covered in this chapter.

Hurt Feelings

Drops in perceived relational value known as relational devaluation cause hurt feel- ings that leave us psychologically wounded and despondent. The hurt caused by social rejection has much in common with physical pain.

Ostracism

People sometimes ignore their partners in order to achieve some goal, but the recipients of such ostracism often resent it. People with high self-esteem tend not to put up with such treatment.

Jealousy

People experience the fear, anger, and hurt of jealousy when they face the potential loss of a valued relationship to a real or imagined rival.

Two Types of Jealousy. Reactive jealousy occurs when people get jealous in response to a real threat, whereas suspicious jealousy occurs when one’s partner has not misbehaved and one’s suspicions do not fit the facts at hand.

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Who’s Prone to Jealousy? Needing someone but worrying that you’re not good enough to keep that person is a recipe for jealousy. Personality traits and attachment styles influence jealousy, too.

Who Gets Us Jealous? Rivals who have high mate value and are attractive to our partners are particularly threatening.

What Gets Us Jealous? Men are more likely than women to consider sexual infi- delity to be more distressing than emotional infidelity. This finding has engendered criticism, but it has also been replicated around the world.

Responses to Jealousy. Attachment styles influence responses to jealousy, and men and women often differ in their responses, too.

Coping Constructively with Jealousy. People who succeed in reducing unwanted jealousy maintain a sense of self-worth with or without their present partners.

Deception and Lying

Deception is intentional behavior that creates an impression in the recipient that the deceiver knows to be untrue.

Lying in Close and Casual Relationships. There’s a lot of lying in everyday life. Lies engender deceiver’s distrust, which leads liars to perceive the recipients of their lies as untrustworthy.

Lies and Liars. No single cue always indicates that people are lying. Instead, discrepancies in their nonverbal behavior and statements usually do.

So, How Well Can We Detect a Partner’s Deception? Intimate partners have detailed knowledge of each other, but they also exhibit a truth bias that leads them to assume that their partners are being honest with them. Most lies are not detected at the time they’re proffered.

Betrayal

Betrayals are hurtful actions by people we trusted and from whom we did not expect such misbehavior.

Individual Differences in Betrayal. Frequent betrayers tend to be unhappy and maladjusted people who are resentful, vengeful, and suspicious of others.

The Two Sides to Every Betrayal. Betrayers often consider their behavior to be inconsequential and innocuous, but their victims rarely share those views.

Why Revenge Isn’t Such a Good Idea. Revenge is usually less satisfying than peo- ple think it will be, and it usually seems excessive to its targets, thus engendering further dispute.

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Forgiveness

Forgiveness entails giving up the right to retaliate for others’ wrongdoing. It occurs more readily when the betrayers apologize and the victims want to continue the rela- tionship. When one’s partner is repentant, forgiveness usually improves the relation- ships in which it occurs.

SUGGESTIONS FOR SATISFACTION

• Ostracism is confusing, hurtful, and often counterproductive. Don’t ostracize others.

• Intentionally inducing jealousy in a partner is a clumsy and divisive way to test the relationship or to get attention. Ask your partner for what you want instead.

• Lie less. • Recognize the harm you do when you betray your partner. • When your partner misbehaves, address it. Express your feelings, describe your expectations, and, if you are able to provide it, communicate your forgiveness.

• Vengefulness is burdensome and toxic. Forgive whenever you can.

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