FRS 002 — Sec. 027 — (2 unit) — CRN 53969 —T 4:10-5:30 PM — 166 Young
Attachment Theory and Close Relationships

Instructors: Phillip Shaver and Omri Gillath, Department of Psychology, College of Letters & Science

Description: The seminar will expose students to a particular contemporary theoretical approach to close social relationships (e.g., parent-child, romantic love, marriage, middle-aged adult taking care of an aging parent). The approach is called attachment theory. It was first proposed by a British psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist, John Bowlby, in lectures and books published between 1960 and 1990. The most famous of these books form a trilogy, Attachment and Loss, Vols. 1, 2, and 3. The first deals with attachment or "emotional bonding"; the second with separation anxiety and anger; the third with loss and grief. In the late 1980s, one of us (Shaver) extended this theory to the realm of romantic and marital relationships. Since then, a huge scientific literature has been generated by this extension of the theory. The other of us (Gillath) conducted much of his doctoral research in this area and is now working here as a postdoctoral fellow. Fortunately for courses like the one we're proposing, some colleagues of ours (Feeney and Noller) published a small paperback textbook for undergraduates, Adult Attachment, which summarizes the research on "romantic attachment" up through 1995. We can use this book as a common foundation for seminar students and supplement it with oral reports on subsequent studies, many of them conducted by one or both of us. We can also get students involved in one or two simple research projects so that they can get a feel for psychological research, data summaries, and interpretation of results. At the end of the seminar, students will have better understanding of psychological research goals and methods, as well as valuable knowledge about how relationships work and how they have a lasting impact on personality and emotions.

Format: The seminar has several goals: (1) to involve students actively in learning about themselves and the field of psychology (especially its social, developmental, and clinical aspects); (2) to help students integrate their own experiences and observations with theories and research findings in scientific psychology (many of our hypotheses have been based partly on intuition and personal experiences or observations, so we are very respectful toward students' own ideas); (3) to help students conduct one or two simple research projects, for example by interviewing friends or family members according to a simple questionnaire we construct, and/or by conducting a simple closed-ended, computerized survey whose results can be analyzed and discussed in class (with the respondents remaining anonymous, of course); (4) to help students learn to give oral reports about psychological theories and research studies; (5) to help students improve their understanding of their own relationships, something that research shows will serve them well all through life. Class will consist of a 2-hour meeting each week. For each class students will be asked to complete assigned readings. Every week, one or two students will be asked to give oral presentations of the readings. Grading: The grade will be based on oral presentations of theoretical and research articles (30% of the grade), involvement in class discussions (40% of the grade), and research projects (30% of the grade).

About the Instructors: Phil Shaver is Distinguished Professor of Psychology and Chair of the Department of Psychology at UC Davis. He has also taught at Columbia University, New York University, the University of Denver, and SUNY at Buffalo. He is associate editor of Attachment and Human Development, a member of the editorial boards of Personal Relationships and Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, and past member of grant review panels at NIMH and NSF. He has received numerous research grants; published several books, including Measures of Personality and Social Psychological Attitudes and Handbook of Attachment: Theory, Research, and Clinical Applications; and published more than 175 scholarly journal articles and book chapters. His current research focuses on emotions, close relationships, and personality development, especially from the perspective of attachment theory. In 2002, he received the Distinguished Career Award from the International Association for Relationship Research.
Omri Gillath is a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Psychology. He received his PhD in psychology from Bar-Ilan University in Israel and has been conducting research with Professor Shaver on attachment, human sexuality, and the brain here at UC Davis for the past two years. He has published articles and book chapters on attachment theory, compassion, and altruism. He has attended special training workshops on positive psychology (i.e., approaches to psychological topics that stress human strengths and virtues) and the use of virtual reality technology to produce realistic “worlds” to serve as stimulus situations in psychology experiments. He is an expert on web-based survey questionnaire design and statistical methods for analyzing psychological and brain-imaging data. He currently works with several graduate and undergraduate researchers in the Department of Psychology.