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| The Basics of
Behavior Analysis
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| Parents
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| Love & Sexuality
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| Employees & Bosses
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| OneScience
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Intimacy and Loneliness
A Behavioral Explanation
Intimacy. It develops when someone reinforces behavior that is typically
punished in social settings. This is a phenomenon we are all intimate with,
but most of us are not aware of the mechanics of how intimacy develops between
two people.
Normally we conceal the things about ourselves that are likely to be criticized
by other people. Once in a while, though, we come across someone to whom
we reveal personal information and they make us glad we did. They respond
in a way that makes us want to tell them more about ourselves. This is the
beginning of intimacy. The degree to which intimacy develops between two
people depends on how much this process occurs (rate, frequency, intensity)
and on the value placed on the particular behavior being reinforced. Rate
and value combined determines the strength of the relationship, that is,
the likelihood that the two people will continue to interact with each other
when certain variables change (such as when one of them moves away).
We all engage in some amount of socially functional behavior. We are taught
from infancy to navigate our world by engaging in these behaviors. These
behaviors include things like talking to a clerk at a store, telling someone
our phone number or deciding what movie to see. We don't care too much if
someone criticizes the way we engage in these activities because they are
not the behaviors by which we identify ourselves. They are not the behaviors
we would call "our own."
The behaviors that are "our own" would be more appropriately identified
as the behavior that occurs within our skin. It is our inner verbal behavior:
our thoughts and feelings. Since these behaviors occur within us, it is
easier for us to observe these behaviors without detecting the antecedents
that led to them. We look to these behaviors to determine our identities
and personalities, thus we place a high value on these behaviors and it
matters a lot more when someone criticizes this part of ourselves. Plus,
since the antecedents that lead to these behaviors are not apparent and
not shared by other people, these are the behaviors that tend to receive
the most punishment in social settings.
Loneliness is the condition in which we find ourselves when we are not enjoying
the process of intimacy-building. Loneliness is where we are when our private
behaviors have been punished enough that we usually keep them private.
Since these private behaviors occur within our skin, we can either display
them in social settings (by talking about them) or we can keep them covert.
Even though these behaviors are the most valuable to us and the most susceptible
to interpersonal punishment, we can't resist attempting to display these
inner behaviors to the outside world. The reason for this is that if we
display these behaviors and someone happens to reinforce them, then we enjoy
intimacy and we are not alone.
We ensure the resilience of our relationships in many ways. Here are a few
of them:
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What's really going on between two people?
Are we defined by what we do...in private? |
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