Lecture Notes
Chapter 13 Sex Attraction, Intimacy, and Love
Modified:
2007-05-18
Social psychologists have expended much effort in elucidating the
rules by which we become attracted to each other, allow intimacy, and
fall in love. Much of that work has taken place in spite of legal
barriers and criticisms by people outside of psychology.
- Attraction
- Matching phenomenon
- couples are more likely to match each other in
attractiveness than not
- Physical attractiveness
- "...men love those who they are attracted to..."
- "...women are attracted to those who they love..."
- Physical attraction is at least the first step in
attraction for both males and females
- Status and attraction
- hypergamy: women are more able to "marry up" in status
than males are, thus marriage to a higher status male is a
mechanism for status elevation for females.
- Lab studies
- political trouble (Senator Proxmire--"Golden
Fleece"
- love changes
- passion--6-30 months
- passion must change to intimacy and commitment for
relationship to last
- love and arousal--Schacter and Singer's bridge
experiment
- similar attitudes more conducive to love
- greater amount of contact conducive to love
- Playing hard to get
- selectively hard to get is best
- Attraction may be biological correlate of health
(sociobiological cue)
- Intimacy
- Defining intimacy
- intimacy includes: openness, honesty, mutual
self-disclosure, caring, warmth, protecting, helping, mutual
devotion, mutual attentiveness, mutual commitment, control
surrender, defense dropping, becoming emotional, feeling
distress at separation
- Intimacy and self-disclosure
- self-disclosure is another major component of
intimacy
- Measuring intimacy
- paper and pencil items used
- Theories of Love
- Sternberg's theory of love
- Components
- intimacy--confiding in others and sharing
feelings
- passion--erotic attraction, feeling in love
- commitment--intention to remain in relationship
- Triangular structure
- compare partners' structures
- Attachment theory of love
- Lovers are:
- secure
- avoidant
- ambivalent
- Chemistry of love
- passionate love produces endorphins
- Research on Love
- Defining love
- Greeks: eros, agape, philia, storge
- Modern: passionate love, companionate love
- Measuring love
- Gender differences
- Men more likely to view love as a requirement, to cling
to a relationship, and to have problems with broken
relationship
- Love and adrenaline
- Cross-cultural research
- individualism vs. collectivism
- romantic love valued in individualistic cultures
- similar status valued in collectivist cultures
(arranged marriages)
- independence vs. interdepedence
Back to Human Sexuality Home
Page