ABSTRACT

Human beings live most of their lives in close relationships; throughout time, our survival, reproduction, joys, and sufferings have been primarily in the context of these relationships, which entail very basic motivations and needs (e.g., Baumeister & Leary, 1995; Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2000). Thus, the human brain evolved in a relationship context and is therefore likely to be in no small part a relational brain.