WHAT IS LOVE?

WHAT ENABLES CLOSE

RELATIONSHIPS?

tabernilla, frenalyne b.
ba- psychology

What Is Love?
What is this thing
called love? Can
passionate love
endure? If not, what
can replace it?

Loving is more complex than

liking and thus more difficult to
measure, more perplexing to
study.
People yearn for it, live for it, die
for it. Yet only in the last couple of
decades has loving become a
serious topic in social psychology.

Attraction and Intimacy

Most attraction researchers have studied
what is most easily studiedresponses
during brief encounters between
strangers.
The influences on our initial liking of
anotherproximity, attractiveness,
similarity, being liked, and other
rewarding traitsalso influence our longterm, close relationships.
So first impressions are important.
Nevertheless, long-term loving is not
merely an intensification of initial liking.

Passionate Love
We have ways to measure
aggression, altruism, prejudice, and
likingbut how do we measure
love?
Psychologist Robert Sternberg
(1998) views love as a triangle
consisting of three components:
passion, intimacy, and
commitment.

 Some elements of love are

common to all loving
relationships: mutual
understanding, giving and
receiving support, enjoying the
loved ones company while some
elements are distinctive.
If we experience passionate love,
we express it physically, we
expect the relationship to be

 Passionate love is emotional,

exciting, intense. Elaine Hatfield
(1988) defined it as a state of
intense longing for union with
another .
If reciprocated, one feels fulfilled
and joyous; if not, one feels
empty or despairing.

passionate love
A state of intense longing for
union with another.
Passionate lovers are absorbed
in each other, feel ecstatic at
attaining their partners love,
and are disconsolate on losing it.

Robert Sternbergs (1988)

Conception of Kinds of
Loving as Combinations
of Three Basic
Components of Love

 Romantic love (intimacy + passion)

Passion (infatuation)
Fatuous love (passion +
commitment)
Decision/commitment (empty love)
Companionate love (intimacy +
commitment)
Consummate love (intimacy +
passion + commitment)
Intimacy (liking)

Social Relations
Passionate love is what you feel
when you not only love someone
but also are in love with him or
her.

A THEORY OF PASSIONATE
LOVE
An emotion involves both body and
mindboth arousal and the way we
interpret and label that arousal.

 Proponents of the two-factor theory of

emotion, developed by Stanley
Schachter and Jerome Singer (1962),
argue that when the revved-up men
responded to a woman, they easily misattributed some of their own arousal to
her.
ACCORDING to this theory, being aroused
by any source should intensify passionate
feelingsprovided that the mind is free
to attribute some of the arousal to a
romantic stimulus. Once again, physical
arousal accentuated romantic responses.

two-factor theory of emotion

Arousal X its label = emotion.

Researchers report that

sustained eye contact, nodding,
and smiling are indicators of
passionate love.
Research by social psychologist
Arthur Aron and his colleagues
(2005) indicates that passionate

VARIATIONS IN LOVE: CULTURE

AND GENDER
There is always a temptation to
assume that most others share our
feelings and ideas. Studies of men
and women falling in and out of love
reveal some surprises.
Most people, including the writer of
the following letter to a newspaper
advice columnist, suppose that
women fall in love more readily but
finding said that it is actually men

 Men also seem to fall out of love

more slowly and are less likely than
women to break up a premarital
romance.
Once in love, however, women are
typically as emotionally involved as
their partners, or more so.
Women are also somewhat more
likely than men to focus on the
intimacy of the friendship and on
their concern for their partner, while
men are more likely than women to
think about the playful and physical

This Is Your Brain on Love

MRI scans from young adults
intensely in love revealed areas,
such as the caudate nucleus,
which became more active when
gazing at the loved-ones photo
(but not when gazing at the photo
of another acquaintance).

Companionate Love
Although passionate love burns
hot, it eventually simmers down.
If a close relationship is to
endure, it will settle to a steadier
but still warm afterglow that
Hatfield calls companionate
love.
Unlike the wild emotions of
passionate love, companionate

companionate love
The affection we feel for those
with whom our lives are deeply
intertwined.
Unlike passionate love,
companionate love can last a
lifetime

 Compared with North Americans, Asians

tend to focus less on personal feelings and
more on the practical aspects of social
attachments.
Asians are also less prone to the selffocused individualism that in the long run
can undermine a relationship and lead to
divorce.
Nevertheless, for those married more than
20 years, some of the lost romantic
feeling is often renewed as the family nest
empties and the parents are once again
free to focus their attention on each other.

 If the relationship has been

intimate, mutually rewarding,
and rooted in a shared life
history, companionate love
deepens.

WHAT ENABLES CLOSE

RELATIONSHIPS?
What factors influence the ups
and downs of our close
relationships? Lets consider
three factors: attachment
styles, equity, and selfdisclosure.

Attachment
Love is a biological
imperative. We are social
creatures, destined to bond
with others.
Our need to belong is
adaptive.

 Our infant dependency strengthens

our human bonds.
As babies, we almost immediately
prefer familiar faces and voices. We
coo and smile when our parents give
us attention. By around 8 months, we
crawl toward mother or father and
typically let out a wail when
separated from them. Reunited, we
cling. By keeping infants close to
their caregivers, strong social
attachment serves as a powerful

 Deprived of familiar attachments,

sometimes under conditions of
extreme neglect, children may
become withdrawn, frightened, silent.
Researchers have compared the
nature of attachment and love in
various close relationshipsbetween
parents and children, between
friends, and between spouses or
lovers.

 Some elements are common to

all loving attachments: mutual
understanding, giving and
receiving support, valuing and
enjoying being with the loved
one.
Passionate love is, however,
spiced with some added
features: physical affection, an
expectation of exclusiveness,

 The intense love of parent and

infant for each other qualifies as
a form of passionate love.
Attachment, especially to
caretakers, is a powerful
survival impulse.

ATTACHMENT
STYLES
Secure Attachment
- Attachments rooted in trust and
marked by intimacy.
- About 7 in 10 infants, and nearly
that many adults, exhibit secure
attachment

One instance that show secure

attachment is when one, placed as
infants in a strange situation (usually
a laboratory playroom), they play
comfortably in their mothers
presence, happily exploring this
strange environment. If she leaves,
they become distressed; when she
returns, they run to her, hold her,
then relax and return to exploring
and playing

Preoccupied Attachment
- Attachments marked by a sense of
ones own unworthiness and
anxiety, ambivalence, and
possessiveness.
- People with the preoccupied
attachment style (also called
anxious-ambivalent ) have positive
expectations of others but a sense
of their own unworthiness.

 Instance that show preoccupied

attachment, one strange situations is
an anxious-ambivalent infants are
more likely to cling tightly to their
mother. If she leaves, they cry; when
she returns, they may be indifferent or
hostile.
As adults, anxious-ambivalent
individuals are less trusting, and
therefore more possessive and jealous.
They may break up repeatedly with
the same person.

Dismissive Attachment
- An avoidant relationship style
marked by distrust of others.

Fearful Attachment
- An avoidant relationship style
marked by fear of rejection.

 People with negative views of others

exhibit either the dismissive or the
fearful attachment style; the two styles
share the characteristic of avoidance.
Although internally aroused, avoidant
infants reveal little distress during
separation or clinging upon reunion.
As adults, avoidant people tend to be less
invested in relationships and more likely
to leave them. They also are more likely
to engage in one-night stands of sex
without love.

EQUITY
- A condition in which the
outcomes people receive from a
relationship are proportional to
what they contribute to it. Note:
Equitable outcomes neednt
always be equal outcomes.

 Strangers and casual

acquaintances maintain equity by
exchanging benefits: You lend me
your class notes; later, Ill lend you
mine. I invite you to my party; you
invite me to yours.
They feel freer to maintain equity
by exchanging a variety of benefits
and eventually to stop keeping
track of who owes whom.

LONG-TERM EQUITY
long-term relationship are
unconcerned with short-term equity.
Margaret Clark and Judson Mills
(1979, 1993; Clark, 1984, 1986)
have argued that people even take
pains to avoid calculating any
exchange benefits.

 When we help a good friend, we do

not want instant repayment. If
someone invites us for dinner, we
wait before reciprocating, lest the
person attribute the motive for our
return invitation to be merely paying
off a social debt. True friends tune
into one anothers needs even when
reciprocation is impossible
Similarly, happily married people
tend not to keep score of how much
they are giving and getting.

PERCEIVED EQUITY AND

SATISFACTION
In one Pew Research Center (2007b) survey,
sharing household chores ranked third
(after faithfulness and a happy sexual
relationship) among nine things that people
saw as marks of successful marriages.
Those who perceive their relationship as
inequitable feel discomfort: The one who
has the better deal may feel guilty and the
one who senses a raw deal may feel strong
irritation.

Thank you!