The Formation of Romantic Relationships

Reward/Need Satisfaction Theory

Byrne and Clore

• We are attracted to people who we find satisfying or gratifying to be with. 
• Most stimuli in our lives can be viewed as being rewarding or punishing in some way, and we are motivated to seek rewarding stimuli and avoid punishing stimuli. 
• The sort of things we found rewarding tend to meet our unmet needs so mutual relationships is when a person meets the other's needs. 
• Suggest that we enter relationships because individuals are directly associated with positive feelings which makes them more attractive (operant)
• Attracted to people we associate with positive experiences therefore positive experiences (classical)
• Balance of positive connotation must outweigh the negative to succeed. 

• Evidence for importance of reward - Griffit and Guay evaluated participants on creative tasks and found that they preferred the experimenter who had positively evaluated the…