Lecture 1: Social partner choices

Psychology 458/558
Judgment and Decision Making
Prof. Bertram Malle
Fall 1995

Lecture 1: Sept 26
Social partner choice

1. Facts about relationships today

28% of American couples report to have experienced at least one physically violent exchange during their marriage

14% of women report to have experienced at least one marital rape; 1/3 of them have experienced marital rape 20 or more times

50% of marriages in the U.S. end in divorces

40% of divorced people remarry ; they have a divorce rate even greater than 50%

There is evidence that "children (esp. women) of divorces" are getting divorces at a 2/3 higher frequency than children from intact homes

There is evidence that divorces markedly increase the incidence of child depression, adult reactive depression, loss of self-esteem, and suicide

2. Conscious choices

In light of the above facts, a decision-making perspective on current human relationships must address two main questions:

How can we improve our initial choices of a potential mate (e.g., a dating partner)?
How can we improve our choices of a long-term partner?

In particular, how can we learn not to stay together with someone?

The answer to both questions is: by making more conscious choices. That is, we need to learn about out preferences and beliefs and about the mechanisms (evolutionary/genetic, social) that guide our behavior. This does not guarantee good outcomes, but we can make informed, responsible decisions that reflect more accurately what we really want.

3. Initial processes in mate selection

Evolutionary influences on mate selection

Assumptions, predictions, and studies within Buss' evolutionary framework.

Genetic influences on mate selection

Lykken & Tellegen (1993)

Social influences on mate selection

The four major antecedents of liking and attraction:

Proximity: A sampling bias that can be avoided by consciously going outside one's physical boundaries.
Physical attractiveness: Typically unconscious influence on initial "weeding out" of nonviable mates; sometimes consciously considered in the short run; "matching" mechanism pairs up appropriately attractive partners.
Similarity: Effect on liking is stronger for value and interest similarity than for personality similarity; strong dissimilarity can be conflict-inducing; making oneself aware of one's central values and interests and choosing accordingly helps to avoid such conflicts.
Reciprocity: If one's personality allows it, giving people time to reciprocate liking or attraction might be a promising strategy; immediacy of infatuation is based on many factors (e.g., arousal, context) that are not predictive of long-term success.

4. Long-term partner choice

The choice of a long-term partner sometimes requires a decision not to stay with someone. This is an understudied, underappreciated decision that is very difficult to make for many people and therefore not practiced well. Rather than seeing all break-ups as "mini divorces" one could consider them as acts of preventing a divorce.

The difficulty of breaking up

People often stay in bad relationships even though they recognize their own dissatisfaction. Why?

Sunk costs: The more people invest in something (emotionally, financially, temporally), the less willing they are to give up that investment-in order to save their reputation of being "consistent," because admitting a lost investment makes them feel foolish, because they always hope it will get better (which would then make the overall investment seem worth it...)

Social exchange: People decide to leave a relationship only if their net rewards in that relationship are markedly lower than their subjective standard ("comparison level") and if there is an alternative. In early stages of relationships, alternatives are easily conceivable and often available (e.g., other dating partners). But with every further investment (living together, engagement, marriage, children) alternatives are less likely to be available and people therefore tolerate more discrepancies from their comparison level. Breakups become increasingly difficult, and if they finally happen, they are very painful and consequential for the partners and often for children.