Relationships and Emotions

Relationships

Interpersonal Relationship

(Wiki) (Outlines of Relationships)

• Definition:
  • Based on Time. An association between 2 or more people that range from fleeting
    • to enduring.
  • Based on nature of interaction: limerence, love, solidarity, business
    • interactions, socials commitment.
• 5 Stages of Development
  • Acquaintance – Dependence on previous relationships, physical proximity, first impressions, etc.
  • Buildup – Trust and care for each other begins. The need for intimacy, compatibility and such filtering agents as common background and goals influence continued interaction.
  • Continuation – Long, relative stable period of mutual commitment to a long-term friendship, romantic relationship, or marriage. Mutual trust is important.
  • Deterioration – Boredom, resentment, and dissatisfaction may occur, and individuals communicate less and avoid self-disclosure. 2 possible outcomes: Loss of trust and betrayals may eventually end the relationship or some way to resolve the problems and reestablish trust.)
  • Termination – Either by death in the case of a healthy relationship, or by separation.

Flourishing Relationships

• Definition: Interpersonal relationships that are happy, with intimacy, growth and resilience allowing dynamic balance between focus on the intimate relationships and other social relationships
• Adult Attachment: Internal set of expectations and preferences regarding relationship intimacy that guide behavior. Low attachment-related avoidance and anxiety. Within safe, secure attachments, people can pursue optimal human functioning and flourishing.
• Love: Brings people closer, makes people think expansively about themselves and the world.
  • Passion: or physical attraction
  • Intimacy: Feelings of closeness
  • Commitment: decision to initiate and sustain a relationship
• Confucianism
• 5 Minding Relationship Components (Reciprocal knowing process involving nonstop interrelated thoughts, feelings and behaviors of persons in a relationship)
  • Knowing and being known: seeking to understand the partner
  • Making relationship-enhancing attributions for behaviors: giving the benefit of the doubt
  • Accepting and respecting: empathy and social skills
  • Maintaining reciprocity: active participation in relationship enhancement
  • Continuity in minding: persisting in mindfulness
• Magic Ration and Culture of Appreciation (5+: 1- interactions for successful marriage - John Gottman )
  • Negative (Therapy aims for change)
    • Criticism
    • Contempt
    • Defensiveness
    • Stonewalling
  • Positive
    • Complaint
    • Appreciation
    • Acceptance of responsibility
    • Self-soothing
• Capitalization (Sharing good news) Benefits
  • increased positive emotions
  • Subjective well being
  • Esteem
  • intimacy
  • Commitment
  • trust
  • liking
  • closeness
  • stability

Intimate Relationships

(Wiki)

• Types
  • Friendships/ Dating/ Spiritual/ Marital
  • Emotional Vs Physical Intimacy
• Characteristics
  • Enduring behavioral interdependence
  • Repeated interactions
  • Emotional attachment
  • Need Fulfillment
• Stages
  • Beginning or Development (Attraction and dating)
  • Relational Maintenance and repair (forgiveness)
  • Relational stressors (Betrayal and conflict)
  • Relational termination (Models of dissolution)
• Definition of Intimacy:
  • Feeling of being in close personal association and belonging together by bonds formed through knowledge and experience of the other
  • As Verb: To state or make known
• Genuine Intimacy Requirements
  • dialogue
  • transparency
  • vulnerability
  • reciprocity
• Sustenance of Intimacy Requirements
  • Well-developed emotional and interpersonal awareness
  • Self Differentiation: Ability to be both separate and together participants in an intimate relationship
  • Self Knowledge: Connection with an emotional range involving robust conflict yet intense loyalty
  • self-disclosure and candor.
• Poor Skills in Intimacy can result in
  • Getting too close too quickly
  • Struggling to find boundary and sustain correction
  • Being poorly skilled as a friend
  • Rejecting self-disclosure
  • Rejecting friendships and those who have them.
• 12 Steps of Sexual Intimacy by Desmond Morris) relationships rushed through steps or skipped steps most likely to break-up
  • Eye to Body
  • Eye to Eye
  • Voice to Voice
  • Hand to Hand
  • Arm to Shoulder
  • Arm to Waist
  • Mouth to Mouth
  • Hand to Head
  • Hand to Body
  • Mouth to Breast
  • Hand to Genitals
  • Sexual Intercourse

History of Intimate Relationships

Ancient Times to 1880s (Philosophical Analysis)

• Aristotle's 3 Types of Relationships
  • Based on Utility: Provides Assistance and sense of belonging
  • Based on Pleasure: Attraction to feelings of pleasantness and engagement
  • Based on Virtue: Attraction to virtuous character where each was liked for themselves.

1880s - 1900s (Conceptual Analysis)

• Freud's Parent-child relationships and effect on personality development
  • Childhood experiences transferred into adult relationships by feelings and expectations
  • Individuals usually seek marital partners
    • who are similar to opposite-sex parent
• William James's self concept
  • self concept is defined by relationships we endure with others
• Dirkheim's extermination of social isolation and alienation
  • Socially isolated was key antecedent of suicide
• Simmel's Dyads
  • dyads require consent and engagement of both partners to maintain relationship but can be ended by initiation of one partner.

1898 (Rise of Empiricism)

• Monroe's traits and habits of childhood friend selection
  • Attributes: Kindness, Cheerfulness and honesty
  • Same age, sex, size and light features
  • Did not engage in conflict, kind to animals and humans
  • Honest
  • Least Important: Wealth and religion

1960s and 1970s (Experimental Method in Labs)

Relationship Breakup

(Wiki)

• 5 Stages leading to breakup by L. Lee
  • Dissatisfaction – one or both partners grow dissatisfied with the relationship
  • Exposure – both partners mutually become aware of the problems in the relationship
  • Negotiation – both partners attempt to negotiate a solution to problems
  • Resolution and transformation – both partners apply the yield of their negotiation
  • Termination – proposed resolution fails to rectify issues and no further solutions are accepted or applied
• Uncoupling Theory by Diane Vaughan
  • During dynamics of breakup, exists turning point (that is only noted in hindsight)
  • Followed by transition period where one partner unconsciously knows the relationship is going got end by holds on to it for an extended period (sometimes for number of years)
• Phases of Grief by Susan J. Elliott
  • Shock and Disbelief
  • Review and Painful Relinquishment
  • Reorganisation
  • Integration
  • Acceptance

Feelings and Emotions

Emotion Frameworks (See Spreadsheet)

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_emotions

• Robert Plutchik's Basic and Opposites
• Robert Plutchik's Wheel of Emotions
• Parrot's Emotions by Groups
• EARL's 48 Emotions for AI

3 Divisions of Mind and Psychology

• Modern
  • Cognitive
  • Conative
  • Affective
• Classical
  • Affect
  • Behavior
  • Cognition

Conation

(Wiki)

<to be completed>

Affect and the Affective Domain

(Wiki)

• Definition:
  • Experience of feeling or emotion
  • Differences between Emotion, Feeling and Moods
  • Key part of the process of an organism's interaction with stimuli. (affect display: "a facial, vocal, or gestural behavior that serves as an indicator of affect"
  • one of the three divisions described in modern psychology: the cognitive, the conative, and the affective or classically as the "ABC of psychology", "affect", "behavior", and "cognition"

Theories

• Precognitive (Robert B. Zajonc 1980):
  • Instinctual Reaction to Stimulation before cognition and formation of complex emotion
  • Dominant reaction for lower organisms
  • Occurs without extensive perceptual and cognitive encoding.
• Post Cognitive (Lazarus 1982, Brewin 1989):
  • Affect such as liking/dislike, evaluation, pleasure/displeasure Elicited only after cognitive processing of information where content discriminations are made and features are identified, examined for value and weighted for contributions.
• Both Pre and Post Cognitive (Lerner and Keltner 2000, Damasio 1994)
  • Thoughts produced by initial emotional response and further affect enables more rational modes of Cognition
• Non-Conscious Processes (Prewired Dispositions) (Brewin 1989)
  • select from total stimulus array the stimuli that are causally relevant suach as perceptual salience, spatiotemporal cues and predictive value in relation to data stored in memory
• Automatic (Subconsious processes) (Brewin 1989)
  • Rapid, relatively inflexible and difficult to modify.
  • Activated without intention or awareness
• Emotions Vs Affect
  • Emotions are complex chains of events triggered by certain stimuli. No way to completely descrive emotion by knowing some of its components.
  • Affective responses are more basic and easier to assess.
• Affect Theory (Wiki) (Silvan Tomkins)
  • Branch of Psychoanalysis that organise affects into discrete categories and connect them with typical response. (see Spreadsheet)
  • Implications
    • Prescriptive: 9 affects used as blueprint for optimal mental health. Relationships as agreements mutually work toward maximizing positive affect and minimizing negative affect.
    • Descriptive: Optimisation of affect motivates social behaviors such as adoption of religion.
• Affect Consciousness (Wiki)
  • To be completed.

Affect and Influences

• temperament
• cognitive development,
• socialization patterns
• idiosyncrasies of one's family or subculture
• Geopolitics, Urban life and material culture
• Preferences, attitudes, impression formation, and decision making.
• Recognition memory (Old-New Judgements)
• Organism and environment: Emotions supporting Anticipated, experienced or imagined outcome as adaptation to environment
• Affect and Cognition

Non Conscious Affect and Influences

(Sensing and processing of preferences and discriminations) together with perception and cognition are influenced by

• Attentional tendencies
• Affective primacy (Zajonc 1980)
• Evolutionary constraints (Shepard, 1984; 1994)
• Covert perception (Weiskrantz, 1997)
• Affect and Arousal (Basic physiological response to presentation of stimuli)
  • When arousal occurs, 2 non-conscious affective control mechanisms takes place
    • Mobilizing:
    • Immobilizing:
  • Mechanism: amygdala regulates instinctual reaction initiating arousal process by freezing individual or accelerating mobilization
  • Example: Reward systems that control food-seeking behavior (Balleine 2005)
    • Learning and modulatory processes present when encoding and retrieving goal values
    • When organism seeks food, there is a greater reward than just food itself. (anticipation of reward based on environmental events is another influence on feed seeking separate from reward of food itself.)
    • Anticipating reward and earning reward are separate processes and create a hyper excitatory influence of reward-related cues.
  • Affect and Mood
  • Emotion and Moods are affective states.
  • Emotion has clear focus (Cause is self-evident) while mood is more unfocused and diffused.
  • Mood involves tone and intensity and structured set of beliefs about general expectations of a future experience of pleasure or pain. (Batson, Shaw, Oleson 1992)
  • Affect and Emotion come from instant reactions and change with expectations of future pleasure or pain. Moods are harder to cope and can last for long time (even years!) (Schucman 1975)
• Affect Display and Social Interaction
  • Emotions are dynamic prcesses that mediate individual's relation to a continually changing social environment
  • Emotions serve to Establish/ Maintain/ Disrupt relation between organism and environment on matter of significance to the person
  • Interactions are multiagent systems. Repeated interactions occur between multiple individuals over time. Outcomes of individual agents' behaviors are interdependent and each agent's ability to achieve its goals depend on what it does and what other agents do.
  • Emotions are main source of interaction that influence the emotions/ Thoughts/ Behaviors of others.
  • Emotions operate in cycles that involve multiple people in an endless cycle and process of reciprocal influence.
  • Agent's emotions have effects on 4 factors
    • Emotions of other persons
    • Inferences of other persons
    • Behaviors of other persons
    • Interactions and relationships between agent and other persons
  • Emotions also affect third parties who observe agent's emotion. Serve as message to influence group emotions, attributions and ensures behaviors of others and evokes feedback process to original agent.
  • 2 mechanisms Agents' feelings evolke feelings in others
    • Emotion Contagion – people tend to automatically and unconsciously mimic non-verbal expressions.[13] Mimicking occurs also in interactions involving verbal exchanges alone.[14]
    • Emotion Interpretation – an individual may perceive an agent as feeling a particular emotion and react with complementary or situationally appropriate emotions of their own. The feelings of the others diverge from and in some way compliment the feelings of the original agent.
• Art

Psychometric Measurement

• PANAS: Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (N. American setting)
  • Lexical measure of 20 Single word items
  • Positive: excited, alert,
  • Negative: upset,guilty, and jittery
• PANAS-SF (International)
  • two 5-item scales with internal reliability, cross-sample and cross-cultural factorial invariance, temporal stability, convergent and criterion-related validities.
• IPANAT: Implicit Positive and Negative Affect Test (Quirin, Kazén, & Kuhl, 2009).
  • Circumvent self reports as
    • Verbal reports of feelings inaccurate as people do not know exactly what they feel or face several different emotions at same time.
    • People may hide feelings
    • Those who believe public and private events do not coincide exactly
    • Words for feelings are ambiguous than words for objects or events

Limerence

(Wiki)

<to be completed>