The need to affiliate is increased by intense fear or stress and decreased by social anxiety. Attachment is an emotional bond to someone representing a safe haven from threat and a secure base to engage with the world. People vary in their attachment orientations as secure, anxious/ambivalent or avoidant. We tend to be attracted to people in close physical proximity, who are physically attractive, whom we perceive as similar to ourselves and with whom interactions are rewarding. Intimacy is characterized by reciprocal self-disclosure and equity in social exchange, and conscious of one’s investment in the relationship. According to the Michelangelo principle, intimate partners in a long-term relationships influence each other’s personality characteristics, interests, and aspirations. Romantic love includes varying degrees of passion, intimacy, a decision that it’s love and a commitment over time, and may be seen as an attribution to an aroused state. The dissolution of a relationship may depend on the anticipated costs and rewards of leaving it and on the anticipated costs and rewards of staying within it. Loneliness refers to perceived deficiencies in relationships.

KEYWORDS: attachment, attachment orientaiton, intimacy, investment and commitment, loneliness, Michelangelo phenomenon, need to affiliate, proximity effect, relationship dissolution, self-disclosure, similarity-attraction, triangular model of love

1. Research shows that misery loves company which is equally miserable.

2. According to research data, people generally act on the principle that ‘you can’t judge a book by its cover’ with respect to attractiveness.

3. The physical attractiveness effect is found primarily with regard to adult heterosexual attraction, and rarely with children.

4. People tend to seek out others who are highest possible in attractive characteristics, regardless of their own characteristics.

5. Apart from similarity, attractiveness or other factors, interaction by itself can affect liking.

6. When we anticipate having to interact with someone who is obnoxious, we tend to dislike that person more.

7. Argyle and Dean show that, as self-disclosure increases or personal distance decreases, other reactions such as eye contact also increase.

8. Males tend to be more realistic or pragmatic in their attitudes towards romantic love.

9. Research shows that perceivers can readily recognize cues for attractiveness that are related to health and reproductive fitness.

10. Males tend to suffer more adverse effects from divorce than females.

1. T

2. F

3. F

4. F

5. T

6. F

7. F

8. F

9. T

10. T 

MCQ's for Chapter 9

1. How may attachment styles influence relational schemata?

2. Apart from sexual attraction, how can the influence of physical attractiveness upon attraction be explained?

3. Outline three explanations for the relationship between similarity and attraction.

4. How is the equity principle applied to social exchange in both the early stages of a relationship and later in a committed relationship?

5. What does illusion have to do with how people perceive their partners?

6. What steps do people take in order to maintain a close and satisfying relationship over time?

7. What is the triangular model of love, and how do males and females differ in how they experience romantic love?

8. What is the relationship between passionate love and attributions? Include some experimental evidence in your answer.

9. How do couples who stay together differ from those who separate? Why do some people stay in unsatisfactory relationships? 

1. What is intimacy and how does it develop? How important is the failure to achieve or maintain intimacy as a cause of the breakdown of relationships?

2. Steinberg considers consummate love to be the ideal type of love in marriage. Do you agree with him? Why or why not? Is a marriage which lacks this type of love necessarily unsatisfactory? Give reasons for your answer