Psychology 137C Week 1 Lecture 2 01/16/11Intimate Relationships:Guiding Questions  Why are they important? What is the core experience? How do we define them?  Asking ‘the critical question’ (What makes relationships work?) An immediate problem …*This course will help you formalize how you think about relationshipsHow to answer the critical question?- Research methods – how do we collect data that is not solely based on our experiences? How do we impose scientific rigor to such phenomena? o Corresponds with the Chapter 2 Videoo On Thursday we’ll discuss TheoriesAre men and women mostly similar – or mostly different? – Real unconditional answerHash out conflicts –or let them be? – Depends on the magnitude and severity of the circumstancesDivorce – or stay together?o What’s best for the children? – It depends on how often you are arguing with your partners (Chapter 6)We need to collect good information to sort among different opinions. - Details: Chapter 2What is it about relationships that makes this difficult? They are: Private. Dyadic. – it takes two individuals Invisible.- either because it happens behind closed doors or because it happens in your own head (individual interpretation) Relationship histories are also invisible Dynamic. Complex. Interpersonal.*Current relationships affect future relationships*Relationships are fundamentally interpersonal and emotional, which makes studying relationships difficult as these interdependencies expand over years*Longitudinal studies are best to rely onNow What? We seek to move from impressions and opinions to something resembling facts – or principles.  To do so, we collect data … … using some kind of instruments … under specified conditions … from a specified population. Self-Report Methodso Inexpensive, valuableo Yields information quickly, on many topics.o BUT: Not very good at capturing what happens between the partnerso Can’t capture communication, or dyadic processeso *blue line- husband, red line- wifeo *dashed line – projection when conceived first childo *red line- day child was borno *blue line-1st birthday of child`oCool Finding Partners do not agree on relationship events.  Give partners separate lists of common events in relationships and ask: Did it happen in the last week? Match up the answers and: not much agreement!  Why? Partners do not always extract the same information from their lives asthey stream by. Even if they do they might label it differently.*Implication: Communication matters because partners’ psychological realities differ. Daily Diaries Ask subjects to report on one or more brief periods during a day, for several days. Enables study of interactions across many days in a relationship, as people perceive them. BUT: still requires self-report by subjects and does not permit direct analysisof interaction processes. Cool Finding Support need not be visible to be helpful.  Collect daily diary data from couples in the month before one takes the bar exam.  Examinee reports on distress and support receipt. Partner reports on support provision. Supported partners feel less distress -- especially if they do not notice it!*Implication: Obvious support attempts convey two messages: you are weak, and you owe me. But selflessness can be powerful.*When the other person’s interests is more important than your own, and you feel like that will be reciprocated eventually, your relationship will thriveSystematic Observation Can be done anywhere because cameras are so small, ex: home, etc Crucial for precise analysis of communication.  Accomplished with ‘coding systems’ and trained observers.  You can add up how many times someone was: sad, anxious, angry Allows you to quantify behaviors  BUT: typically constrains interaction to laboratory settings. Might be artificial. Expensive and time-consuming.Cool Finding Positive emotion neutralizes poor communication. Videotape newlyweds resolving a problem. One team is pulling out all of the emotional moments Another team is ignoring emotional moments and focusing on moments of quality communication To what extent were people imposing critical/bad/good solutions? Separately label the verbal skills and the specific emotion in each speaking turn.  Examine codes in relation to happiness. Positive emotions “offset” poor skills.*Implication: People base happiness judgments on the partner’s emotional tone.*Important note- Emotion mattersPhysiology and Hormoneso Physical health Procedures now permit sampling of a wide range of physiological and biological processes.  For example, we can now measure stress hormones from blood and saliva. These data enable analysis of links among stress, relationships, biology, and physical health. If we can figure out what those biological pathways are then we are able to link up these interpersonal processes with long-term health benefitsCool Findingo A good marriage is like having a reset button for your biological levels of stress.o Able to distinguish between bad and good marriageso Couples generally in their forties were studied o Collected cortisol (stress hormone), part of the flight or fight responseo Magnitude or nature of that correlation depends on the relationship you return to at the end of the dayo No matter how stressed you are at the end of the day, your cortisol level will decrease if you are in a good marriage, vice versa if you are in a bad marriageo *vertical dashed line at (0, 0.009) – bad marriageso *central line – good marriageso *black line is the averageWhat is the bigger agenda? We strive for an understanding of intimacy that is rich, rigorous, and relevant. Thoughtful use of various tools helps to achieve these goals. But how do we pull all the pieces together? Key idea is that we have to have strong theories and strong hypothesis Decisions about tools and methods are not made in the abstract but are guided by theories and hypotheses