Psychology 3724F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Prefrontal Cortex, Mirror Neuron, Breakup

• School: Western University
• Department: Psychology
• Course: Psychology 3724F/G
• Professor: Lorne Campbell

Document Summary

Looking through eyes of love: reality versus illusion in intimate relationships. Judgment of partners and relationships seem to be systematically biased in + direction. Human judgments of important attributes in mating game (attractiveness, status, kindness, trustworthiness) assessed w/ reasonable accuracy. Love is both blind and firmly rooted in real world. Questions asked: can bias be rational. Participants seemed to crush doubt and maintain rose- tinted views by rewriting history/altering key relationship perceptions. Individuals who perceive more similarity b/w self and partner are happier w/ relationship. From assortative mating literature we know that couples are similar in many domains. Bias is a friend of accuracy rather than an enemy: can judgments be biased and accurate at same time. Two kinds of accuracy: directional bias and tracking accuracy. Objective benchmark criteria used to assess bias and accuracy included self-perceptions of target, behavioural ratings, prior reports of relationship, relationship dissolution, etc.