PSYC18H3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 10: Empathy Gap, Sympathetic Nervous System, The Hospital For Sick Children
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Week 11 – Lecture #10: Thursday July 21, 2016
Emotions & Social Relationships
Today’s Lecture
1. Emotions in Intimate and Social Relationships
•What is intimacy?
- how do we distinguish an intimate from non-intimate relationship
•Emotions that promote intimacy
- emotions that strengthen intimacy
•Negative emotions in social relationships
- looking at flip side of coin
- how negative emotions can promote closeness in relationship and be good for it
2. Emotions and moral behaviour
•Are emotions good or bad for moral behaviour?
- temptations
- promote pro-social behaviour
•Predicting our behaviour in moral dilemmas
- are we effective predicting this?
- are our answer reliable and reflective of how we actually act; accuracy
Intimate Relationships
Differences between intimate & non-intimate relationship?
- several faucets that we can pinpoint
1. Knowledge:
•secret-sharing, confidential information
- info that you wouldn’t share w/ someone that don’t have intimate relationship
- intimate not limited to romantic relationship; can include friendship & etc.
2. Caring:
•affection, motivated by affiliation.
- motivated by one of our primary needs
- only displayed in intimate relationship (won’t hug someone you’re not close to –
awk)
3. Interdependence:
•strong, enduring impact on each other
- depend and trust each other
- if they betray you, it will really have a neg impact on you compare to your group
mem being late/not showing up (would only be annoyed)
4. Mutuality:
•“We” not “you and I”.
- see yourselves as a team, more for romantic relationship
5. Trust:
•“Etiquette” no longer applies.
- comfortable enough around person to not worry about etiquette and etc.
- they know you well enough not to make judgement about your character
on these trivial things
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6. Commitment:
•Presumed partnership.
•Emotional & monetary investment follows that expectation.
- move in, buy house tgt
- only gonna happen if you are committed and confidence in your relationship
Student Definitions of Intimacy
“Being understood while understanding the other’s emotions, thoughts or circumstances
while passing no judgment. A feeling of unconditional acceptance.”
“Unconditional acceptance and forgiveness. Knowing that your other will always listen,
understand and support you.”
“Feeling safe to talk about life problems that I would not be able to talk to anyone else
about.”
Knowledge
Trust
Commitment
Emotions that Foster Intimacy
- emotions that play romantic partners closer tgt
• Playfulness
- couples who are playful w/ each other during arguments, often have more
peaceful exchanges & happier in their marriage
- high martial satisfaction and peaceful exchanges
• Compassionate love
- ppl who have higher degree of compassion, they feel more commonality w/
others
- more generous and cooperative and punish ppl less
- economic decision making game (the Ultimatum game)
- P1 has decision to divide 10 coins btw themselves and the other player
- makes offer to P2, and P2 can accept/reject
- if offer is fair --> accept, and both get money
- if P2 don’t accept, then neither get money ($3 and under --> rejected)
- even tho is would make sense to accept $1
- if primary instinct is to punish each other instead of working it out, can have
consequences in the long term
• Forgiveness
- couple that forgive each other are happier in the long run
- important for relieving stress and lowers blood pressure
- not about forgetting; being doormat and letting everything slide
- accepts the fact that people makes mistakes
- if hold grudges, long term consequences for your health
Forgiveness & Relationship Well-Being - Tsang McCullough & Finchman (2006)
How do different facets of forgiveness predict relationship well-being?
- look at diff faucets of forgiveness
Study Design:
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Correlational, repeated measures design
- participants had to come into lab several times
- nth was manipulated; just looked at how certain measure predicted other measures
Method:
• 201 participants who had incurred interpersonal hurt at least 18 days prior to
study
- had to be in a romantic relationship and their partner did sth to them that was
hurtful
• Participants completed the TRIM – Transgressions Related Motivations Inventory
- list of questionnaires they had to complete
• 5 data collection time points: 1, 3, 5, 7 and 9 weeks after transgression.
- came in at week 1, week 3, and etc. got questionnaire @ each time pt
- did it 5 times
TRIM - Transgressions Related Motivations Inventory
- captures a number of things
• Avoidance of transgressor
- the extent to which you are trying to avoid the person that hurt you
• Motivation to seek revenge
- deals with punishment; extent you wanna get back at the person who hurt you
• Benevolence (e.g. Even though her actions hurt me, I still have goodwill for her)
- idea of forgiveness; diff from the other two
- forgive, but not forget, and move on
Relationship Well-Being Measures
- their dependent variable; how the three above predicts wellbeing
• Relationship closeness
• “How close you are to the person that hurt you right now?”
• Commitment
• “How committed you are to the person that hurt you right now?”
- wanna see how these 2 factors of relationship wellbeing were gonna be predicted by the
person’s reaction to having been hurt by partner, how they handle situation
Results
• Lower levels of avoidance and revenge = higher levels of commitment and
closeness
• Higher levels of benevolence = higher levels of commitment and closeness
Will You Be There For Me When Things Go Right? - Gable, Gonzaga & Strachman
(2006)
“For better or worse”… conventional focus on “for worse”.
- we think it’s important for partner to be there for us when things aren’t going go
Authors look at this in terms of “event disclosures”
- but want to look at how supportive partners are when things go right
Research question: How does partner’s response to negative/positive disclosures pertain
to intimacy and overall well-being?
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find more resources at oneclass.com