Psychology 137C:

Final Exam Review Session

June 5, 2017

Emma E. Bright, M.A.

Please submit your evaluations!
 Exam Format
Not cumulative
50 questions
Multiple choice
Yes, read the book!
 Week 6
Conflict arises when one person
pursues his or her goals and in doing so
interferes with the other persons goals.
Responses to this interference can vary in
many ways.

How to study conflict?

Self-reports dont work that well
Observations
 Week 6
Talk table: Partners are asked to rate the
intended impact of their message with dials
ranging from very positive to very negative.
The partner rates the perception of the
message using the same dials.
Cross-validation: a predictive solution taken
from one dataset and applied to another
dataset (See Box 8.2 - pp. 281)
 Week 6
Attachment style and sensitivity to conflict
Secure attachment
Skilled problem solvers
Unlikely to feel threatened by conflict
Anxious attachment
Threatened by conflict because it interferes with approval
Assume the worst about conflicts
Avoidant attachment
Perceptions of people as unavailable
Conflict causes feelings of vulnerability to arise
Minimize conflict or create distance during conflict
 Week 6
Intimate Partner Violence
Situational couple violence
Intimate terrorism
How is it studied?
Family sociological perspective
Data from large national surveys
Advocacy perspective
Data from national crime surveys
Data collected directly from battered women at shelters,
emergency rooms, and police stations
 Week 7

Intimacy Process Model from Reis & Patrick, 1996, p. 537

 Week 7
Belief is an idea or theory about what the
world is actually like
Value is an idea about what a person wants or
what they think the world should be like
Where do beliefs and values come from?
Culture
Media
Personal experience

pp. 300
 Week 7
Implicit relationship theories personal
constructs or nave assumptions about
relationships that help guide how people
perceive and interpret relationships (lay
relationship theories)
 Week 7
Perceptual confirmation if you expect people
to behave in a certain way, youre more likely to
perceive that they behaved in that way (pp. 315)
Behavioral confirmation our beliefs and
expectations shape our experience by affecting
our behaviors toward others (pp. 316)
Self-fulfilling prophecy individuals act to bring
about the experiences they expect to happen
(pp. 317)
 Week 7
Accommodation existing beliefs change to
integrate new information
Assimilation new information is integrated
into existing beliefs without changing the
original beliefs

pp. 352
 Week 7
Social comparison the process of using
information about others as a gauge for our
own abilities and attitudes (pp. 362)
Downward
Upward
 Week 7
Cognitive restructuring
Reinterpretation
Refutation
Week 7
 Week 7
Cognitive complexity the extent to which a
persons thoughts about a particular subject
are well-integrated and take multiple
dimensions into consideration (pp. 366)
Less complex knowledge structures are more
fragile
 Week 7
Commitment calibration hypothesis people
engage in processes like derogation of the
alternatives when they feel that their
relationship is threatened
 Week 8

Specific
Relationship
Problems
Relationship
Stress Satisfaction
Processi
ng
Strategi
es
 Week 8
Main effects model

Social Support Health

 Week 8
Stress buffering model

Social Support

Stress Health
 Week 8
Health behaviors
Reductions in binge drinking
Better adherence
Small weight gains
Reductions in physical activity
 Week 9
Primary prevention before it happens
Premarital counseling
Secondary prevention before it gets worse
Seminars, self-help books
Tertiary prevention before it is too late
Couples therapy
 Week 9
Efficacy vs. effectiveness
Laboratory studies of interventions
Field studies of interventions
 Week 9
Emotion models
Unified Detachment: Helping couples to step back from
patterns and see their behavior in an unemotional way.

Empathic Joining: Having partners express their

emotions and feel closer because of it.
Get beyond the hard feelings to the vulnerable
feelings
Reflect how painful those feelings are
Reframe those feelings in a relationship-enhancing
way
 Week 9
Sociometric testing a method for quantifying
the social standing of individuals within a
group
Thank you!