ABSTRACT
Though the bill may be correct and the change exact, it matters how the cashier in the supermarket handles our purchases: a grumpy interaction may not colour the whole day, but it will certainly affect the probability of our return. And the more important the relationship, the more important the qualities of the interactions: use of the label “loving” for a relationship depends on the qualities as well as on the content of the interactions, and there is clear evidence that being a good parent is not just doing the right things. For example, Ainsworth (1979) and her colleagues found that how a mother held her baby (i.e. tenderly and carefully or briskly and awkwardly) was more closely related to other properties of the mother–infant relationship, and especially to how the infant responded to close bodily contact, than was how much she held it.
