Ch' 6 Social Development, Friendships and Mate Selection

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Ch. 6 Social Development, Friendships and Mate
Selection
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Love Attraction

• Factors influencing how people come together?
• Proximity
• Similarity
• Reciprocity
• Attractiveness.

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Love Attraction

• Additional factors to consider
• attachment styles (Ainsworth et al.)
• secure
• insecure-ambivalent
• insecure-avoidant
• Additional attachment styles (Bartholomew)
• Fearful-avoidant
• Dismissive-avoidant

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Theories of Love

• Types of love
• passionate v. companionate
• Process Theories
• process of developing attachments to someone
  takes time
• from intense excitement to an emotion regulation
• good to be calmed by partner, but not too calmed

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Benefits of Marriage

• Collaborative Cognition
• autobiographical memory (Dixon Gould)
• collaborative problem-solving (Berg, Marsiske)
• Health Well-being

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A good, long-lasting marriage

• Gottman Levensons work on marriage
• Key assumptions
• Conflict management is the key to successful
  marriage
• Declines in marital satisfaction PRECEDE
  decisions to separate and/or ultimately divorce
• cascade model (gottman)

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Cascade model
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The Method

• Day-long separation
• 3 15-minute conversations
• Are videotaped, and physiological measures are
  recorded
• Return the next day and rate their own emotional
  states during conversations
• Analyses focus on conflict conversation only.

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Typical Findings

• High Physiological Arousal Bad sign.
• Differences between Rs and Us
• behavior
• self-report

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Regulated Unregulated Couples
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Typical Findings, cont.

• Regulated Unregulated
• more than just marital satisfaction
• four horsemen - defensiveness, stubbornness,
  contempt, and withdrawal. To be avoided.
• Gender differences

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How to translate into real advice?

• Avoid escalating, withdrawing, and personal
  attacks
• BUT HOW????? (Clements, Markman, et al. )

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Age, Marriage, Life Events 2 patterns
Child-rearing...
Empty nest...
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Age Marriage

• Marital satisfaction shows a U-shaped curve over
  adulthood
• People tend to get increasingly alike as they get
  older

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Parenting in later adulthood

• Marital satisfaction increases when kids leave.
• Parents continue to give more than they get.
• 4/5 parents are happy with their adult children.

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Sexuality

• Images of older people and sexuality
• sexuality of old people, like the sexuality of
  adolescents, frightens most adults in between
• sex is for beautiful people

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Sexuality

• Are times changing?
• cultural stereotypes of the middle-aged women as
  gray-haired, frail and asexual have given way to
  images of strong, active and sexual women
  (Kingsberg, 2002, p. 431)
• Examples?

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Sexual Activity

• Duke longitudinal study (Palmore)
• No respondents claimed a total absence of sexual
  activity
• Those who were sexually active lived longer

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Sexual Activity

• Limitations due to
• - illness (e.g., arthritis, diabetes)
• - physical changes
• males changes in blood supply, connective
  tissue and muscle function, loss of libido
• females loss of libido, decrease in vaginal
  lubrication.
• - lack of opportunity