Beverley Fehr

• PhD
• Professor (Full) at University of Winnipeg

Compassionate love, generally defined as giving oneself for the good of another, has been receiving increased attention, especially in the context of romantic relationships. The purpose of the present research was to examine compassionate love “where it begins,” namely, in the family. Seven studies were conducted to test the hypothesis that compass...

People report positive moods and enhanced well-being when they socialize with friends and other close ties. However, because most people routinely have more encounters with acquaintances and strangers (social connections known as weak ties) than with close friends or kin (strong ties), we deemed it important to examine whether interaction with weak...

The authors reviewed the literature on the meaning and experience of friendship for members of underrepresented groups (sexual orientation and gender diversity, race and ethnicity). It is argued that many of the variables that contribute to friendship formation among mainstream groups (found in past research) also apply to underrepresented groups (...

This study examined the role of growth and security expectations in shaping people's judgments of relational boredom and conflict (for discriminant validity). In Studies 1 and 2, the type of expectation gaps (growth vs. security) in hypothetical relationships (as well as the occurrence of a gap in Study 2) was manipulated, and people's judgments of...

According to interpersonal script models, people’s responses to relational events are shaped by the reaction they expect from a close other. We analyzed responses to dissatisfaction in close relationships from an interpersonal script perspective. Participants reported on how a close friend or romantic partner would react to their expressions of dis...

Cambridge Core - Social Psychology - The New Psychology of Love - edited by Robert J. Sternberg

The hypothesis that people experience greater friendship satisfaction when their friendship matches the prototype of intimacy interactions was tested. Consistent with this hypothesis, both women and men reported the greatest satisfaction when their “real world” friendship matched the prototype of intimacy interactions. This relation was even strong...

Recently, there has been an increase in prejudice toward some groups such as immigrants. In response, governments and citizens have called for compassion. In four studies, we tested the hypothesis that people who are high in compassionate love would express less prejudice than those who are low. We found that people high in compassionate love had m...

Compassionate love has been identified as one of the major types of love experienced in relationships (Berscheid, 2010), but one that has been overshadowed by the study of romantic love. In this article, we review research on compassionate love, a relative newcomer to the close relationships field, and present findings that more fully flesh-out the...

Past research has identified several communication strategies that are used to end relationships (e.g., Baxter, 1982). The present study extends this research by considering how young adults’ propensity to experience compassionate love for a romantic partner is associated with their reported use of breakup strategies. A sample of US university stud...

A reaction time study showed that the concept of emotion is more like a prototypically organized concept than a classically defined one. Emotion terms rated as better examples of “emotion” (such as anger) were verified as emotions faster than were terms rated as poorer examples (such as awe).

Boredom has been described as a major obstacle to maintaining lasting love (Aron & Aron (1986). However, empirical research on this important challenge to relationship maintenance has been hampered by the lack of an agreed-upon definition of the construct. We tested the hypothesis that relational boredom is amenable to a prototype conceptualization...

The goal of this research was to create a self‐report measure of relational boredom using a prototype approach. In the first study, 2 samples (participants in dating relationships and in marital relationships) generated features of the concept of relational boredom. In Study 2, these features were rated for prototypicality by 2 samples (dating and...

This article charts the life cycle of friendship, namely the formation, maintenance, deterioration, and dissolution stages. First, research on the environmental (e.g., residential proximity), situational (e.g., frequency of contact), individual (e.g., social skills), and dyadic (e.g., similarity) factors that promote friendship development is prese...

This study examined attachment security as a possible contributor to compassionate love for a romantic partner among young adults. Attachment was assessed dispositionally and to a specific romantic partner. A secure dispositional attachment style was associated positively with compassionate love for partner, whereas an avoidant— dismissing attachme...

The goal of this research was to examine relational boredom using a script approach Dating individuals (N = 99, Study 1) and married individuals from the community (N = 62, Study 2) generated causes of boredom in their relationship, associated feelings, and coping strategies Boredom was seen as caused by a lack of novelty and stimulation and was as...

In the first part of the chapter, I present basic research on this prosocial kind of love (Berscheid, 2006). The specific aims are to understand the meaning of compassionate love, paint a profile of the kind of person most likely to experience or express this kind of love, identify sociocultural factors that influence its expression, and identify t...

Abstract Social scientists are turning their attention to compassionate love, arguing that this kind of love may promote the greatest social good. The central thesis of this research was that compassionate love might be best understood as a prototype rather than a classically defined concept. Six studies were conducted with in Canada and the United...

When people are asked what gives their lives meaning or what gives them joy or happiness, friends are invariably near the top, if not at the top of the list (see Fehr, 1996). When people's day-to-day interactions are tracked and they are asked, at random times, to report on what they are doing at the moment, with whom, and how they feel, it is time...

Models of Love and CommitmentThe Experience of Love and Commitment in Close RelationshipsSummary and Conclusions

Several theoretical perspectives in the social psychology literature on helping suggest that people forecast the benefit that they will receive as a result of helping others, and help only if they determine that it is rewarding to do so. One type of self-benefit that can be received from helping is an enhancement of positive mood. The major hypothe...

Compassionate love may be the type of love that leads to the most social good for those who are its recipients. However, self-benefits may also occur as a result of experiencing compassionate love for others. Three studies were conducted in which people were asked to recall a specific experience of compassionate love and to indicate how they were a...

The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships serves as a benchmark of the current state of scholarship in this dynamic field synthesizing the extant theoretical and empirical literature, tracing its historical roots, and making recommendations for future directions. The volume addresses a broad range of established and emerging topics including...

When people compare their own performance across domains, the comparison may be based on differences in their absolute (objective) performance and/or on diffrences in their performance relative to others Differential sensitivity to the interpersonal (relative) and intrapersonal (absolute) comparison information was examined as a function of the clo...

A compassionate love scale was developed that can be used, in alternative forms, to assess compassionate or altruistic love for different targets (e.g., close others and all of humankind). Using three samples (total N= 529), the Compassionate Love scale was developed and piloted. Three studies (total N = 700) were then conducted to provide validati...

Empirical work on love has focused mainly on romantic/passionate love. Recent research suggests that other kinds of love, such as friendship love and familial love, may be more salient to laypeople (Fehr & Russell, 1991). One purpose of this research was to offer a more complete picture of how laypeople conceptualize love by exploring a broad range...

Three studies tested predictions derived from interpersonal theory regarding the relations among gender, personality, and conceptions of love. It was predicted that women would conceptualize love in terms of its nurturant varieties, namely companionate kinds of love, whereas men would conceptualize love in terms of non-nurturant varieties, namely p...

Two studies examined the relationship between self-construals and active versus passive strategies for dealing with dissatisfaction in romantic relationships. In Study 1, chronic differences in self-construals were measured and in Study 2, self-construals were manipulated via a priming technique. In both studies, an independent self-construal was r...

We propose that the study of emotion in close relationships may be advanced through an integration of the emotion-in-relationships model (ERM) with interpersonal script models. In two studies, we tested the hypothesis that people experience emotion when expected patterns of relating are disrupted. We also predicted that the kinds of events that are...

How does interpersonal cognition work? Interpersonal cognition scholars assume that people form concepts to represent their interpersonal experiences and that these concepts influence the interpretation of relationship events and guide behavioral responses. But exactly how is this information represented? Do people develop clear-cut categories to r...

A prototype interaction-pattern model of intimacy expectations was proposed. The central tenet of this model was that people develop knowledge of the patterns of relating that are likely to produce intimacy in a same-sex friendship. Further, it was posited that these interaction patterns are structured as prototypes, such that some patterns of rela...

Four studies examined the dimensions of relationship quality. In Study 1, based on a principal components analysis, four dimensions underlying the prototype of relationship quality were identified: intimacy, agreement, independence, and sexuality. The four–factorial structure was replicated both with a German sample (Study 2) and a Canadian sample...

The authors conducted an analysis of anger scripts in close relationships from a relational schema perspective focusing on the interpersonal experience of anger and on the sequencing of anger events. The amount of anger elicited by various instigating events was found to differ for women and men. More important, there was evidence of an interperson...

The author conducted 8 studies to elucidate the content and structure of lay conceptions of commitment. Studies 1 to 5 revealed that laypeople regard commitment to close relationships (e.g., friends, family, spouse) as central to the concept, whereas they consider nonclose (e.g., commitment to a neighbor) and noninterpersonal varieties (e.g., one's...

The author conducted 8 studies to elucidate the content and structure of lay conceptions of commitment. Studies 1 to 5 revealed that laypeople regard commitment to close relationships (e.g., friends, family, spouse) as central to the concept, whereas they consider nonclose (e.g., commitment to a neighbor) and noninterpersonal varieties (e.g., one’s...

“Everywhere and in all ages people have formed this very same tie with each other—this tie that is not based on the binding forces of kinship, marriage, or romance” (Brenton, 1974, p. 14). The tie to which Brenton refers is friendship. Friendship has been described as the most voluntary relationship (e.g., Brenton, 1974; Rose, 1984; Wiseman, 1986)....

The purpose of this investigation was to identify the factors associated with the distress experienced after the breakup of a romantic relationship, both at the time of the breakup (assessed retrospectively) and at the time the questionnaire was completed. Four categories of variables were examined as possible correlates of post-breakup distress: v...

This chapter reviews research on the breakup (vs the stability) of marriages and other close relationships. In the 1st section, the authors describe types of dissolution. In the 2nd section, they review the causes of relationship (in)stability, both from the researcher's perspective and from the perspective of those who suffer through a breakup. In...

Attachment working models were conceptualized from the perspective of current social-cognitive theory. In Studies 1 and 2, most people reported experience with multiple styles of relating; at the same time, the general attachment style they endorsed was related to (a) the percentage of their significant relationships fitting different attachment-st...

Friends are an integral part of our lives---they sometimes replace family relationships and often form the basis for romantic relationships. This book] examines how friends give meaning to our lives and why we rely so heavily on them. The book is process oriented and research based with each phase of the friendship process documented by empirical r...

We examined the stability of ratings on the Hazan and Shaver (1987) single-item attachment style scale in a number of data sets, gathered by us and other researchers. Approximately 30% of subjects overall changed their attachment style classifications over a relatively short time span (ranging from 1 week to several months). The highest rate of ins...

This article argues that the concept of anger is not well characterized from the classical perspective. Instead, its membership is graded, its borders are fuzzy, and its subcategories fail to form a true class-inclusion hierarchy. Ss rated potential anger subcategories (fury, jealousy, annoyance, etc.) and remembered instances of their own anger as...

It is proposed that the cognitive mechanisms underlying attachment styles are expectations about interaction with significant others. Two studies are described that assessed these relational schemata. The first study revealed that individuals of different attachment styles do have different expectations about likely patterns of interaction with a r...

This chapter reviews Machiavellianism literature between 1975 and 1985.

Even if superordinate concepts (such as "fruit," "vehicle," "sport") are prototypically organized, basic-level concepts (such as "apple," "truck," "hockey") might be classically defined in terms of individually necessary and jointly sufficient features. A series of 6 studies examined 1 basic-level concept in the domain of emotion, "love," and found...

Two studies examined the notion that negative affectivity (Watson & Clark, 1984) is associated with more accurate perceptions of conveyed impressions in social interactions. In Study 1 (n = 160), low self-esteem (LSE) and high self-esteem (HSE) subjects were paired with either an LSE or an HSE partner. After a 15-min interaction, they rated themsel...

Analyzed lay conceptions of love and commitment from a prototype perspective. In Study 1, Ss listed the features of love and/or commitment. In Study 2, centrality (prototypicality) ratings of these features were obtained. In Study 3, central features were found to be more salient in memory than peripheral features. In Study 4, it was shown that it...

Analyzed lay conceptions of love and commitment from a prototype perspective. In Study 1, Ss listed the features of love and/or commitment. In Study 2, centrality (prototypicality) ratings of these features were obtained. In Study 3, central features were found to be more salient in memory than peripheral features. In Study 4, it was shown that it...

We are not the extremists Ekman and O'Sullivan (1988) assume. Much, but not all, of the apparent disagreement evaporates once misunderstandings are cleared up. They offer no alternative explanation for our findings, which thus remain a challenge to those who think of the perception of emotion in facial expressions as accurate and absolute rather th...

We are not the extremists Ekman and O'Sullivan (1988) assume. Much, but not all, of the apparent disagreement evaporates once misunderstandings are cleared up. They offer no alternative explanation for our findings, which thus remain a challenge to those who think of the perception of emotion in facial expressions as accurate and absolute rather th...

The same facial expression will be seen as expressing different types and degrees of emotion, depending on what other faces are seen. A relatively neutral face seems sad when presented alongside a happier face, happy alongside a sadder face. A relatively unhappy face seems sad when presented alongside an angrier face, angry alongside a sadder face....

this introductory chapter reviews the existing literature on the development of intimate relationships / we concentrate our attention here on past conceptual approaches / in doing so, we cite research for illustrative purposes, but we do not attempt a comprehensive review of empirical evidence we first ask: what is intimacy / why is it important...

According to the popular song, “Love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage, you can’t have one without the other.” Literally, of course, this is not true; but, as the song implies, most people believe that love and marriage augment each other. Both are better together than either is separately.

Reports 7 studies that explored the possibility that the concept of emotion is better understood from a prototype perspective than from a classical one. Specifically it is argued that membership in the concept of emotion is a matter of degree rather than all-or-none (that the concept has an internal structure) and that no sharp boundary separates m...

Discusses wife assault as deindividuated violence, which implies that normative control over behavior has broken down, in terms of P. Zimbardo's (see record 1971-08069-001) analysis of proscribed emotional, sexual, and aggressive behavioral expression and contrasts it with other theories on the causes of wife assault. Zimbardo's analysis different...

research on laypersons' knowledge of love and related concepts, conducted from a prototype perspective, are presented / key questions to be addressed include: what does the everyday person have in mind when asked about love / how do people differentiate love from related concepts such as liking, being in love, and commitment / do conceptions of lov...