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Everyday in American society, relationships end, leaving romantic partners pondering over where things may have gone wrong. Psychologists have been searching for many years as to what may cause of romantic feelings to fade away. Looking at studies time and again, I see that many psychologists try to go down the same roads with their hypothesis, and often prove a certain study to be more accurate, as opposed to learning what many seek to discover. I chose a study, which caught my attention during a class discussion on compliments. The class discussion kept hitting on points that compliments are a key in two people forming physical attraction for someone, and also a mentally stable connection between the two. It has been shown in studies, that the positive effects of a compliment are much stronger from a stranger, as opposed to a compliment from a friend.
The reasoning for this is simple. If a complete stranger were to approach you and compliment you on how great you look, you are much more taken by surprise than if a friend were to do it out of kindness. You see, friends have already accepted you for who you are, so when they compliment you on something, it is nice to here, but does not really effect you in the way it use to when the two people had a relationship less entwined. The four qualities of interaction are all needed in order to keep a relationships stronghold intact. Whether it is frequency, Diversity, Duration, or Emotional impact, a relationship is very rarely able to work with the absence of any of the four. Well if this is true, than my question is, are compliments a key in keeping a relationship strong.
Does the absence of complimenting in a relationship, causes an emotional and attractive decline in the relationship, although the four qualities of interaction are still constant? Frequency is the influence needed for a relationship to hold strong. Thousands of people each year take shots at long distance relationships, trusting the saying, Absence makes the heart grow founder. Sadly, almost 99 % of the time these relationships will fail, for the reason that the couple does not have frequent time together as they would if they were geographically in the vicinity of each other.
The point just mentioned can be summed up in the saying, Out of sight, Out of mind. Everyone on Earth would love for the first saying to be true, but in reality the lack of frequent time together, and frequent conversation causes many relationships to end. Is it possible though that the opportunity for compliment is no longer there, which in turn causes a decline or emotion and love? Complimenting someone from an early standpoint will begin causing desires within the person for more frequent meetings, and conversations with you. This all seems very interesting, but what happens if the frequency of compliments is eliminated, but the frequency of time is still constant after the two people expand their relationship to a romantic one? The second quality of interaction is diversity.
Diversity is the process of influence on many aspects of life, not just one. In other words, diversity is how much one individual has in common, effects, or touches basis on his / her partners life. Compliments in a sense open up the possibility of diversity from the start, meaning the compliment will affect you in more ways than you know. From there the person will receive the possibility in most cases to increase the relationship, and become more of a dependant to their significant other, increasing the chance of a romantic relationship to take hold.
Complimenting does bring out a form of positive reinforcement, but is complimenting not bad in this case since it forms dependence, which in turn can cause interruptions in a persons life? Another quality of interaction is duration, which relates to how long an influence affects the person. If you compliment a random person and it has a huge affect on them, to the point were it boosts their confidence or cheers them up for more than average duration, they begin to look at you in better ways than they would if you never made the comment. Duration at an early occasion also can cause a phenomenon known as the halo effect. By a person really having a positive impact on you from the start, you will see them as having a good trait, which will in turn cause you to believe they must have a lot of other good traits. This will help lead to an enduring relationship.
As a result of complimenting, the halo effect will provide an extended duration, and really have the person thinking about you more than usual. This will stimulate the thought in their mind, I must like him / her if I like thinking about them so much. If two people were to get together because of this method of compliment, would it be necessary to keep the positive reinforcement active since you already know the person cares for you, and what they think of you? The last quality of interaction is emotional impact deals with the ability to bring out ones emotion.
Emotions are more frequent at the beginning of relationship. This can be a cause of the consistent complimenting of a person. You feel more emotional towards someone, when they can touch you on a personal level and be the cause of your confidence to rise. This is the only quality of interaction that could pose a problem for my theory, that complimenting is only affective to a point. It seems as if it would be hard to arouse someone to a love state, without some form of compliment. However when arousal occurs people have the tendency to look to the environment rather than looking for it in themselves, or their partner.
Where is complimenting a necessity if the four main influences on relationships can go without its use? Miguel Moya and others explain in their book Close relationships, Gender, and Career Salience that Several factor may affect a relationship. They listed three main topics that were responsible for keeping a relationship close, and roma...
Free research essays on topics related to: positive reinforcement, class discussion, compliment, interaction, emotional impact
Research essay sample on Necessity Of Compliments And Their Influence On Relationships
