Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology2

308 Blackwell Handbook of Social Psychology: Interpersonal Processes Edited by Garth J. O. Fletcher, Margaret S. Clark Copyright © 2001, 2003 by Blackwell Publishers Ltd Chapter Twelve Emotional Experience in Close Relationships Ellen Berscheid and Hilary Ammazzalorso Close interpersonal relationships are the setting in which people most frequently experi-ence intense emotions, both the positive emotions, such as joy and love, and the negative emotions, such as anger and fear. No other context in which people customarily live their lives appears to be as fertile a breeding ground for emotional experience as close relation-ships are. Most emotion theorists recognize that emotions are most frequently and in-tensely experienced in the context of close relationships (see Ekman & Davidson, 1994). Lazarus, for example, states that “most emotions involve two people who are experiencing either a transient or stable interpersonal relationship of significance” (1994, p. 209). It is not surprising, therefore, that many of the questions people ask about close rela-tionships concern the emotions they experience in them. When young adults are asked to list the things they wish to understand about close relationships, for example, emotional phenomena invariably figure high on their lists (Berscheid, 1998). They often ask: “Can you both love and hate your partner?”; “Is it abnormal to feel jealous?”; “How can one prevent anger at outside sources from carrying over into anger at a relationship partner?”; “How can I get my partner to feel more passion?”; “Does separation increase passion and love?”; “Can the butterflies in the stomach and other feelings of love reoccur throughout the relationship, 10 or 20 years later?” Overview of Chapter This chapter addresses the strong connection between close relationships and emotional experience from the perspective of the Emotion-in-Relationships Model (ERM) (Berscheid, 1983, 1986, 1991; Berscheid, Gangestad, & Kulakowski, 1984). We begin by outlining how the infrastructure of a close relationship differs from that of casual and superficial relationships. Following a brief discussion of the nature of emotional experience and the Emotional Experience in Close Relationships 309 conditions that appear to trigger intense emotion, we discuss why these emotion triggers are often present in the infrastructure of close relationships but tend to be absent in super-ficial relationships. Evidence supporting ERM from a study of the emotional effects of separation of close romantic partners is presented next. Then, we differentiate between emotional experiences whose origins lie entirely within the relationship as opposed to emo-tional experiences occurring in association with the partner but whose precipitating sources lie outside the relationship; the latter is commonly referred to as “emotion spillover.” Fi-nally, we discuss some implications of ERM for the experience of jealousy and other nega-tive emotions in the relationship, as well as its implications for current therapeuticapproaches to the treatment of negative emotions that dissatisfied relationship partners frequently experience. The Infrastructure of a Close Relationship People sometimes wonder if their relationship with another is a close one. At times, they even wonder if they have any relationship at all. Unable to answer this question them-selves, some turn to their partner and ask, “Do we still have a relationship?” Other people simply assume that their relationships are close but later events force recognition that their partners did not share their view. As Weber observes in her analysis of breakups of non-marital romantic relationships: “Indeed, one partner’s ‘breakup’ is the other partner’s dead end: The latter may reasonably claim that, in his or her mind, there was no ‘breakup’ because there was no relationship to break up!” (1998, p. 272). Still other people assume their relationship is not close but when the relationship dissolves, they experience surpris-ingly intense emotions, causing them to wonder if the relationship wasn’t much closer than they ever realized. Relationship scholars, too, have questioned what relationship closeness means. Their efforts to conceptualize the construct of closeness resulted from their intuitive belief that differences in closeness would help explain many important relationship phenomena (see Clark & Reis, 1988), a belief now confirmed. Relationship scholars initially approached their task by recognizing that the term “close” is a descriptive adjective that modifies the noun “relationship”; that is, “closeness” simply refers to a property of a relationship. Thus before addressing the question of closeness, they first had to confront the even more basic question, “What is a relationship?” Relationship Most relationship scholars view the interaction that takes place between two people to be the living tissue of an interpersonal relationship (see Berscheid & Reis, 1998). Two people are “interacting” when the behavior of one influences the behavior of the other and vice versa. As this implies, the essence of a relationship is the oscillating rhythm of influence that appears in the partners’ interactions. If two people have never interacted, they do not have a relationship; if they seldom interact, they probably do not have much of a relation- 310 Berscheid and Ammazzalorso ship; but if they often interact, and if each partner’s behavior is influenced by the other partner’s behavior, then, from the perspective of most relationship scholars, they are in a relationship with each other. The concept of relationship thus refers to two people whose behavior is interdependent in that a change in behavior of one is likely to produce a change in behavior of the other. The relationship scholar’s view may not agree with the views of the relationship part-ners. One or both partners may believe that a close relationship exists when, from the relationship scholar’s perspective, it does not; that is, neither has appreciable influence on the other’s activities. “Parallel” or “empty-shell” marriages, where the partners move through time and space together but have little or no impact on the other, are an example. Con-versely, some partners may believe that they do not have a relationship with another al-though they do; that is, there exists a strong pattern of mutual influence in the partners’ activities. Partners who are in a relationship are most likely to believe they are not when they dislike each other (see Berscheid, Snyder, & Omoto, 1989). Closeness If the essence of a relationship lies in the partners’ interaction pattern, then it follows that the descriptor “close” must refer to some property, or collection of properties, of their interaction pattern. Most relationship scholars use the adjective “close” to refer to an inter-action pattern in which each partner’s behavior is highly dependent on the other partner’s behavior. Thus a close relationship usually is viewed as one in which the partners are highly interdependent. Although the partners may be highly interdependent, it is unlikely that their degree of dependence on each other is equal. Most relationships, even close relationships, are some-what asymmetrical in that one partner’s activities are more influenced by the other part-ner’s activities than vice versa. A parent–child relationship is an example of an asymmetrical relationship because the child is more influenced by the parent’s activities than the parent is influenced by the child’s activities (although mothers of “colicky” infants might disa-gree). Assessment of the closeness of a relationship, then, requires an assessment of the degree of dependence the partners exhibit in their interaction with each other. Kelley et al. (1983) observe that most relationship scholars regard at least four properties of the partners’ inter-action pattern to be indicative of high interdependence and thus closeness. First, the inter-action pattern reveals that the partners frequently influence each other’s behaviors; second, they influence a diversity of each other’s behaviors (i.e., they influence many different kinds of their partner’s activities, not simply their leisure activities, for example); third, the mag-nitude of influence they exert on their partner on each occasion observed is strong; and, finally, these three properties have characterized the couple’s interaction pattern for a rela-tively long duration of time. In sum, the infrastructure of a relationship refers to the recurrent patterns of influence that the partners exert on each other’s behavior, whether deliberately or unintentionally. The kinds of behaviors the partners influence may include: cognitive behaviors, such as thoughts and feelings; physiological behaviors, such as heart rate and blood pressure; as Emotional Experience in Close Relationships 311 well as more easily observable motor and verbal behaviors. Examination of the infrastruc-ture of a close relationship, as opposed to a less close or superficial relationship, will reveal that one partner’s behavior can be reliably predicted from the other partner’s behavior. It is this highly interconnected behavioral infrastructure that appears to be the soil in which the experience of intense emotion flourishes. Intense (“Hot”) Emotion In the early 1960s, Stanley Schachter and his associates experimentally demonstrated that emotional experience has both a physiological component and a cognitive component (e.g., Schachter & Singer, 1962). The physiological component refers to visceral arousal and the cognitive component refers to the individual’s cognitive interpretation of the in-ternal event of arousal and the external circumstances in which it occurs as an “emotional” experience. Schachter demonstrated that people are unlikely to report that they are experi-encing an emotion unless they also perceive that they are experiencing peripheral physi-ological arousal (e.g., a pounding heart, sweaty palms, and other physiological events usually associated with autonomic nervous system [ANS] discharge) and also have cognitively interpreted both the internal event of arousal and the external context in which it has occurred to mean that they are experiencing an emotion. Following Schachter’s studies, the topic of emotion experienced a renaissance in psy-chology (see Lewis & Haviland, 1993). In fact, since Schachter presented evidence sup-porting his “two-component” theory of emotion, the task of answering the many questions associated with human emotional experience seems to have attracted as many workers as the task of constructing the Tower of Babel did – and with much the same result: emotion theorists and researchers have had a great deal of trouble communicating with each other. Controversy clouds the answers to even the most fundamental questions about the ante-cedents and consequences of emotional phenomena (see Ekman & Davidson, 1994). Few emotion theorists and researchers even agree on just exactly what an emotion is (see Berscheid, 1990; Plutchik, 1994). As a result, those who wish to pursue a better under-standing of emotional experience in close relationships must choose among a bewildering variety of theoretical approaches to emotion but they have few guideposts to make their choice. Differing views of emotion Some theorists contend that there are certain “basic” emotions, whereas others, “constructionists,” repudiate that notion and believe that each emotional experience is formed afresh, or “on-line,” from the elements present in a particular situation. Because no situation is ever likely to repeat itself in all its particulars, constructionists thus take the position that there are innumerable emotional states which, although they bear similarities to each other, are never precisely the same from one occasion to the next. Even within these two opposing camps, there is disagreement. For example, those who 312 Berscheid and Ammazzalorso argue that some emotions are basic – and thus that other emotions are simply a “blend” of a smaller number of basic emotions – do not agree on precisely which emotions are basic nor, as this suggests, do they agree on how many basic emotions there are. Ortony and Turner (1990), for example, estimate that the number of basic emotions currently pro-posed by theorists who take the position that some emotions are more basic than others ranges from 2 to 18. Adding to the confusion is the fact that emotion theories frequently have different foci. For example, some theories focus on the expression of emotion once it is experienced (e.g., Ekman, 1982); some theories attempt to describe the neurological circuitry associated with emotional experience (e.g., Panksepp, 1994); some emphasize the coping behavior often associated with emotional experience (e.g., Lazarus, 1991); some emphasize the cognitive circuitry of emotion (e.g., Oatley & Johnson-Laird, 1987); and others highlight still other facets of emotion (e.g., its evolutionary history; Plutchik, 1980). Because emotion theories differ widely in the phenomena they address, and thus in many of their particulars, it is not surprising that they differ also in their definitions of emotion. When one attempts to impose some order on the plethora of views of what an emotion is, it becomes clear that they can be arrayed along a dimension of inclusiveness – or the range of events the theorist regards as instances of emotional experience. Inclusiveness. At the highly inclusive end of the dimension are those emotion theorists who regard an emotion to be any experienced state that carries positive or negative valence. For these emotion theorists, preferences (e.g., for vanilla over chocolate), values (e.g., lib-eral vs. conservative), as well as attitudes, appraisals, evaluations, and other cognitive states that carry positive or negative valence, are viewed as “emotional” states. Even boredom, lassitude, or ennui – usually regarded as negative states by the individual experiencing them – are regarded as emotional states by some theorists. At the other, more restricted, end of the spectrum are those theorists who argue that such inclusive definitions of emotion include far too much to be useful. They contend that by defining emotional events so broadly, virtually all of human experience becomes de-fined as “emotional” experience, a far too large and unwieldy array to provide special in-sight into the kinds of emotional events in which most people are interested (for a discussion of this point, see Mandler, 1997). Supporting their argument are the results of factor analytic studies of human language, which consistently reveal that affective valence (posi-tive–negative) is the primary dimension underlying people’s symbolic representations of the external world, including representation of animate and inanimate objects, events, and experiences (Osgood, Suci, & Tannenbaum, 1957). These theorists argue, then, that if the cognitive evaluations of all the objects, persons, and events that people typically encounter carry some degree of positive or negative valence, then people are always in some sort of “emotional” state. Thus, some theorists of emotion restrict the kinds of events they are willing to call an emotion. Many, for example, restrict emotion to events that are accompanied by ANS arousal. Although they recognize that several other physiological systems are involved in emotional experience, they believe that the experience of ANS arousal is a necessary condi-tion for people to perceive that they are experiencing an emotion (e.g., Schachter & Singer, 1962; Mandler, 1997). ... - tailieumienphi.vn