The Annual Ziva Kunda Memorial Lecture

This year’s speaker will be Dr. John G. Holmes from the University of Waterloo.

The Structure of Interdependence Shapes Cognition in Relationships

Mutual responsiveness is necessary to sustain a close relationship, and to achieve it, people must protect their overall motivation to act in a caring way against the costs naturally arising from the challenges of maintaining interdependence. These challenges are universal and require solutions that constitute relatively automatic habit structures. The solutions allow people to “keep their eyes on the prize” and sustain their rewards without being distracted by the costs that occur along the way. For example, an obvious challenge involves partners’ behavior that interferes with one’s personal goals, by either pursuing their own interests first or failing to coordinate dyadic goals. The automatic response to such experiences in committed, trusting relationships is to rationalize the negative behavior by focusing on the partners’ positive features, to interpret motives as benign, or to misremember the non-responsive behavior. However, if people have the cognitive resources for deliberation, those whose broader goals are more self-protective rather than connective will overturn the pro-relationship impulses, to their ultimate detriment. Examples of three different types of automatic responses are presented from both experimental and daily diary research.

Dr. Holmes is Distinguished Professor Emeritus from UW.  His numerous awards include: Distinguished Career Award, International Association of Relationship Researchers; University Research Chair; Theoretical Innovation Award, Society for Personality and Social Psychology (SPSP); and a place on SPSP’s Heritage Wall of Fame.

Reception to follow in PAS 3026 (ABC Room).  All are welcome!

The Ziva Kunda Memorial Lecture is presented annually by the Department of Psychology to honour

the memory of Ziva as an outstanding scholar, friend, and mentor who passed away in February 2004.