Glossary terms beginning with H
The plain-language glossary behind The Architecture of Intimacy — a field guide to 369 green flags of healthy relationships.
Terms beginning with H
- habituation
- The fading of a response to something once it becomes familiar — the same person or routine stirring less and less reaction the more often it repeats.
- handicap principle
- The idea that a signal is trustworthy precisely because it is expensive to produce, since only an honest signaler can afford the cost and faking it is too costly.
- harsh startup harsh start-up
- Opening a hard conversation with criticism, blame, or complaint instead of gently — a tense beginning that tends to set the tone for the rest of the talk.
- health-related social control negative social control · positive social control · pressuring social control · social control
- The strategies partners use to influence each other's health habits, ranging from gentle encouragement and reasoning to nagging, guilt-tripping, or coercion.
- heart-rate variability HRV
- Beat-to-beat variation in the heart's rhythm, used in research as a marker of how flexibly the heart and nervous system can adapt during stress.
- hedonic adaptation
- The human tendency to adjust to repeated pleasures until they stop feeling pleasurable, so a new car — or a relationship — becomes ordinary background over time.
- help-seeking
- Reaching outside the relationship for support with a problem; for a couple it is unusual because it depends on both partners agreeing, not just one person.
- heritability heritable
- The share of differences between people in a trait that is explained by their genes rather than by their environment — a partial influence, not all-or-nothing.
- high-context / low-context communication high-context · low-context
- Contrasting styles of expression: high-context speakers rely on tone, implication, and shared cues; low-context speakers rely on direct, explicit words. Partners can differ in which style they read best.
- high-context and low-context cultures high-context / low-context cultures · high-context culture · low-context culture
- Edward Hall's contrast: in high-context cultures much of a message's meaning lives in shared context and implication, while in low-context cultures meaning lives in the explicit words.
- highlight reel
- The edited best moments a person chooses to show publicly — the most photogenic slices of a life, with tedium, friction, and ordinary struggle left out.
- holding space
- Being fully present with someone and their emotional experience without trying to fix them or steer them, so they feel safe enough to feel what they feel.
- hope theory Snyder's hope theory
- C. R. Snyder's model of hope as goal-directed thinking rather than wishful feeling: the ability to see workable routes toward a goal, plus the motivation to move along them.
- horizontal collectivism horizontal collectivist
- A form of togetherness built on interdependence among equals — closeness shared side by side and sociably, rather than ranked by hierarchy, duty, or obligation.
- Humor Styles Questionnaire HSQ
- A research questionnaire that measures four distinct styles of humor — warm, self-enhancing, aggressive, and self-mocking — treating humor as different kinds rather than one single trait.
- hyperarousal
- A state of being stuck on high alert after a shock — tense, jumpy, easily startled, with the body primed for danger even when none is present.
- hyperpersonal hyperpersonal trap
- Describes screen-based sharing that runs faster and more intensely than it would face to face, because the medium lowers inhibition and hides immediate reactions.
- hyperpersonal model social information processing
- A view of text-based communication in which people make up for missing voice and face cues by loading words, punctuation, and emoji with warmth, sometimes building strong closeness.
- hypervigilance hypervigilant attunement
- Anxious, constant scanning of a partner for signs of danger — misreading neutral or ambiguous cues as threats, and feeling tense and certain rather than curious.