BulletPointsummary of Intimate Relationships by Miller - 9th edition

What are the building blocks of relationships? - BulletPoints 1

• Intimate relationships differ from more superficial and casual relationships in seven different ways: knowledge, interdependence, care, trust, responsiveness, reciprocity and commitment. People have an internal need to belong in intimate relationships, which results in us wanting regular social contact with those we feel connected to.
• In recent decades, there have been dramatic changes in the cultural context in which we shape our intimate relationships. Therefore, the norms that influence our intimate relationships are changing and differ from those held by previous generations. The rise of technology, individualism and economic changes underlie changing norms.
• Every person is characterized by a global orientation style toward relationships. We call this the attachment style. Bartholomew (1999) has proposed in research that there are four different attachment styles: secure, a preoccupied, a fearful and a rejecting attachment style. These four attachment styles are usually still leading today.
• Human character traits vary to an extreme degree. Normal distributions describe the frequencies in which certain levels of a particular character trait occur in groups of people. Most people are around the average value of the normal curve. We can study differences between men and women by superimposing the normal curves of men and women and examining the overlap.
• Gender differences refer to the biological differences between men and women that are the direct result of physical differences. On the other hand, gender differences refer to social and psychological differences that result from formation through culture and upbringing.
• Personality also has a major influence on how people shape their relationships throughout their lives. The central five character traits influence human behavior in their relationships over the life course.
• Close ties with another person give us support and care, but also make us vulnerable if people are not loyal. 
• Cultural influences determine whether evolved behavior patterns are adaptive or not. Cultural change occurs much faster and more rapidly than evolution.
• The final building block of relationships concerns the interaction between the two partners in a relationship.
• There are both costs and benefits to a relationship. Yet most people do take this risk because humans are a social species and need other people in their lives.

What research methods can we use to study intimate relationships? - BulletPoints 2

• Today, relationship sciences make extensive use of diverse samples, study different types of relationships, study these relationships longitudinally, study both the pleasant and unpleasant aspects of relationships, use sophisticated technologies and study relationships in the natural setting. 
• The first step in any scientific study is to formulate an appropriate research question.
• Relationship researchers recruit participants in two different ways. They collect a convenience sample or a representative sample to participate in the study.
• A research design can be either correlational or experimental.
• We can obtain data in a scientific study in several ways, through self-reports, observational measurements, physiological measurements and archival research.
• Relationship science is inextricably linked to a constant concern for the well-being of the participants in a study.
• Statistical analyses can determine the likelihood that results were found by mistake by calculating the significance.

What is the functionality of attraction? - BulletPoints 3

• One theory of attraction states that interpersonal attraction occurs when someone's presence is rewarding to us. We distinguish two types of rewards, namely direct rewards and indirect rewards.
• Usually, relationships are more rewarding for us when the people in the relationship are both physically and psychologically close. Proximity already determines how easily we meet our partner. Generally speaking, most relationships and friendships develop between people who live and/or are close to each other.
• Physically attractive individuals tend to be interesting and social individuals with success in both their professional and personal lives. We can see that people all have roughly the same guidelines when evaluating another person's beauty. Relationship scientists are convinced that physical attractiveness has an evolutionary basis. 
• The potential desirability of becoming a partner depends on the interaction between someone's physical attractiveness and the likelihood that that person will accept you as a partner.
• Similarity, the degree to which a partner is similar to us, is a major factor in attraction, although there are exceptions to this as well. Complementarity refers to behavior in a partner that is a good match for our own behavior. Complementarity is a big factor in the creation of attraction.
• Globally, we can identify three factors or themes that we look for in our search for a partner, namely warmth and loyalty, attraction and vitality and status and resources. Men and women generally have similar desires and dislikes in their partners.

Which role does social cognition play in intimate relationships? - BulletPoints 4

• The assessment and opinion we form of others after a brief initial encounter has tremendous staying power. Stereotypes automatically and often unconsciously influence us. Confirmation bias is the phenomenon that people look for information that confirms their first impression of another person and do not focus on the information that disproves their first impression of someone.
• One way we have optimistic perceptions of our partners is by greatly emphasizing their virtues and minimizing their faults. Attributions pinpoint the cause of an event, emphasize the influence of some factors and minimize the influence of others. We can attribute internal factors or external factors as the cause of an event. The actor/observer effect is the phenomenon that people give different interpretations to the same behavior, depending on whether their partner is doing it or they themselves. Our perceptions of current events in our relationships are also influenced by our memories of past events. People enter relationships with fixed ideas about how relationships work or should work. Self-fulfilling prophecies give us an example of the power of perception. Events take place purely because people expect them to take place. Our self-concept involves all our beliefs and feelings about ourselves. Implicit beliefs are non-intentional and automatic associations that influence our judgments and opinions.
• Impression management is the phenomenon whereby people unconsciously or consciously try to influence the impressions others have of us. There are several strategies of impression managemen like ingratiation, self-promotion, intimidation and supplication.
• Our perceptions of our partner are not fully representative of who our partners actually are. When accurate perceptions of your partner cause you stress, you are motivated to adopt inaccurate perceptions of your partner.

Which role does communication play in intimate relationships? - BulletPoints 5

• The interpersonal gap is the space in which the intentions of the sender differ from the effect on the receiver.
• Nonverbal communication serves vital functions in a human life, such as providing information, regulating interactions, and determining the kind of relationship two people have with each other. Nonverbal communciation consists of several components like facial expressions, stare, body movement, touch, interpersonal distance, smell, paratal, and a mixture of these various factors. Unhappy husbands or wives, but mainly men, are generally not good at nonverbal communication.
• The degree of self-disclosure is an essential part of intimacy within a relationship. According to social penetration theory, the more a relationship develops, the broader and deeper the communication between the partners becomes. Men lean on women for emotional warmth and intimacy more often than women lean on men for this because women generally have a lot of intimacy and openness in the communication between them. Women are more expressive in verbal language and men are often more instrumental in their verbal language.
• Miscommunication can occur within an intimate relationship in a variety of ways. It is important to speak to and listen to your partner in an active and respectful way.

In which way does interdependence play a role in intimate relationships? - BulletPoints 6

• Interdependence occurs when we need others and they need us to achieve some interpersonal goal.
• Social exchange means that each partner in a relationship wants something and can offer something to his or her partner. Returns are the rewarding aspects of a relationship and costs are the punishing components of a relationship. The net gain of an interaction, the returns minus the costs, is called the outcome of a relationship. When the outcomes people expect are higher than their comparison level for alternatives, they feel that they cannot get better and are dependent on their partner.
• The degree to which our relationship has approach and avoidance determines relationship satisfaction. The self-expansion model of human motivation states that we are attracted to relationships that enrich our interests, skills and experiences.
• The relational turbulence model states that new relationships often experience a temporary upswing in which partners must get used to their new status as a married couple. After this temporary upswing, satisfaction with the marriage usually goes down during the first few years of marriage.
• Exchange relationships are guided by an immediate fulfillment of favors, while in joint relationships the focus is on altruism. According to the fairness theory, or equity theory, people dislike dishonesty.
• Commitment refers to the desire to continue a relationship and the willingness to maintain the relationship. The investment model states that satisfaction, the quality of alternative options and the degree to which a person has invested in a relationship affect commitment.

How do friendships develop? - BulletPoints 7

• Our friendships are a source of joy and support. Close friendships are sincere and intimate relationships between people with affection, association and companionship. Friendships differ from our romantic relationships in that they are less intimate and have less commitment. Friendships are characterized by several factors like respect, trust, capitalization, social support and responsiveness.
• Over the life course, friendships change dramatically in quality and in quantity.
• Friendships between women tend to have a high degree of emotional sharing and self-disclosure. Friendships between men tend to be more about shared activities, comradeship and competition. In addition, there are some individual differences in friendship.
• Shyness and loneliness can lead to difficulties in the process of forming friendships.

How does love develop and what does it serve for? - BulletPoints 8

• Different societies throughout history have had very different perspetives on love. Only very recently has love been associated with marriage. Our perspectives on love have been tremendously variable in four different dimensions throughout history like cultural value, sexuality, sexual orientation and marital status. 
• The triangular theory of love distinguishes intimacy, passion and commitment as the three components of a relationship. Different combinations of these three factors lead to eight different possibilities of types of relationships: non love, like love, frenzied love, empty love, romantic love, companion love, foolish love and consuming love. We distinguish six themes of love experiences that are correlated with the different love relationships: eros, ludus, storge, mania, agape and pragma. Aron and Tomlinson's (2019) self-expansion model states that love causes our self-concepts to grow and change at the same time that our partner brings us new experiences and roles in life.
• The two-factor theory of passionate love states that our thoughts and beliefs are responsible for arousal.
• Love tends to be very much the same worldwide and is experienced in a similar way. Nevertheless, there are individual and cultural differences in love.
• Romance and passion are about fantasy, novelty and excitement and each of these factors diminishes the longer you know someone.

What role does sexuality play in intimate relationships? - BulletPoints 9

• The double standard of sex describes how we condemn the sexual behavior of women much more than that of men. Men who have had many bed partners we find tough, while we see women who have had many bed partners as slutty. 
• Extradyadic sex refers to any sex that people have with someone else outside of their relationship without their partner's consent. People may also do swinging, polyamory or have an open relationship.
• Refusal of condom use is influenced by underestimation of risk, taking wrong decisions, pluralistic ignorance, unfair distribution of power, education about sexual abstinence, low self-control and concerns about reduced intimacy or pleasure because of using a condom.
• The best sex occurs through approximate goals and fulfills our basic needs of autonomy, competence and commitment. Good communication can prevent misperceptions of sexual consent when our partner does not actually want to have sex. Partners who are satisfied with their sex life are generally more satisfied with their relationship as well.
• Different forms of sexual pressure and the resulting behavior can be categorized into four different types of sexual coercion.

How do stress and tension affect intimate relationships? - BulletPoints 10

• We experience some degree of rejection and some degree of acceptance in our relationships with others. The balance between these two factors informs us about our relationship value. We distinguish a spectrum ranging from active inclusion, to passive inclusion, maximum inclusion, to ambivalence, to passive exclusion, to active exclusion to maximum exclusion. A dale perceived relationship value is called a relationship devaluation.
• Ostracism refers to the situation where people are ignored by their environment. Sometimes this "silence treatment" is intentional, meant to punish your partner or avoid a confrontation.
• Reactive jealousy takes place when people become jealous of a substantial threat. Distrustful jealousy takes place when we suspect our partner has misbehaved, but are not yet certain about this. Men are more likely than women to perceive sexual adultery as more hurtful than emotional adultery.
• Deception refers to intentional behavior that creates the impression in the recipient that the cheater is intentionally not honest with him or her. Intimate partners have detailed knowledge of each other, but on the other hand also suffer from the trust bias that makes them assume that their partner is always honest with them.
• Cheating consists of all the hurtful behaviors that we do not expect from the people we trust.
• Forgiveness involves giving up the right to take back and punish others for their wrongdoing. Forgiveness is a good strategy at the time when our partner rarely commits a transgression, but can be incredibly damaging to our self-esteem when our partner has a pattern of lying and cheating.

How does conflict arise and which role does it play in our intimate relationships? - BulletPoints 11

• Interpersonal conflict occurs when people have to give up something they want because of their partner's influence. The frequency of conflict within a relationship is associated with the degree to which the partners in a relationship score high on negative emotionality and low on friendliness
• We distinguish four different categories of events that can cause conflict: criticism, unwarranted demands, rejection, and cumulative irritation. 
• We distinguish four different responses to dissatisfaction in intimate relationships: expression, loyalty, neglect, and leaving. Accomodation occurs when partners respond with calmness to their partner's provocation. We distinguish four types of partner couples in terms of how they argue: inspired partners, validators, avoiders and hostile partners. 
• We distinguish five different possible outcomes in which a conflict can end: separation, dominance, compromise, integrative agreement and structural improvement. However, arguing can also be very good and beneficial for a relationship.

In which way do power and violence play a role in some relationships? - BulletPoints 12

• Interpersonal conflict occurs when people have to give up something they want because of their partner's influence. The frequency of conflict within a relationship is associated with the degree to which the partners in a relationship score high on negative emotionality and low on friendliness
• We distinguish four different categories of events that can cause conflict: criticism, unwarranted demands, rejection, and cumulative irritation. 
• We distinguish four different responses to dissatisfaction in intimate relationships: expression, loyalty, neglect, and leaving. Accomodation occurs when partners respond with calmness to their partner's provocation. We distinguish four types of partner couples in terms of how they argue: inspired partners, validators, avoiders, and hostile partners. 
• We distinguish five different possible outcomes in which a conflict can end: separation, dominance, compromise, integrative agreement and structural improvement. However, arguing can also be very good and beneficial for a relationship.

When do relationships end and how do we deal with this? - BulletPoints 13

• Interpersonal conflict occurs when people have to give up something they want because of their partner's influence. The frequency of conflict within a relationship is associated with the degree to which the partners in a relationship score high on negative emotionality and low on friendliness
• We distinguish four different categories of events that can cause conflict: criticism, unwarranted demands, rejection and cumulative irritation. 
• We distinguish four different responses to dissatisfaction in intimate relationships: expression, loyalty, neglect, and leaving. Accomodation occurs when partners respond with calmness to their partner's provocation. We distinguish four types of partner couples in terms of how they argue: inspired partners, validators, avoiders and hostile partners. 
• We distinguish five different possible outcomes in which a conflict can end: separation, dominance, compromise, integrative agreement and structural improvement. However, arguing can also be very good and beneficial for a relationship.

How do we maintain and repair our intimate relationships? - BulletPoints 14

• Through a better understanding of intimate relationships, people become better able to prevent some problems and overcome others. Relationship maintenance mechanisms are strategic actions people can take to maintain their partnership.
• Cognitive maintenance mechanisms include cognitive interdependence, positive illusions, perceived superiority, a lack of attention to alternatives, and a deviation from tempting alternatives. 
• Behavioral maintenance mechanisms include a willingness to sacrifice, prayer, the Michelangelo phenomenon, accommodation, self-control, play, enjoyment, rituals and forgiveness.
• Regular maintenance helps to keep a relationship in good shape.
• Professional therapists can apply different types of marriage therapy: behavioral relationship therapy, cognitive-behavioral relationship therapy, integrative behavioral relationship therapy, emotion-focused relationship therapy and insight-oriented relationship therapy.