Abstract
Understanding plays a cardinal role in relationships. People desire and need to understand their relationship partners and, importantly, they need to feel understood by others in daily life. In this chapter we suggest that these needs are reflected in people’s need to know and be known by others (understanding as knowledge) and their desire to be responsive to others’ needs and experience others as responsive to their needs (understanding as responsiveness). We review empirical findings showing that a lack of understanding has important ill-effects and that the presence of understanding has a multitude of beneficial effects for people in relationships, both for their personal and relational wellbeing.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages (from-to) | 316-363 |
| Number of pages | 48 |
| Journal | European Review of Social Psychology |
| Volume | 22 |
| Issue number | 1 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - 1 Jan 2011 |
| Externally published | Yes |
Funding
Correspondence should be addressed to Catrin Finkenauer, Clinical Child and Family Studies, VU University Amsterdam, Van der Boechorststraat 1, 1081 BT Amsterdam, The Netherlands. E-mail: [email protected] Part of this research was supported by a grant to the first author from the Netherlands Organisation for Scientific Research (No. 452-05-322).