Relationship Essays

Reber 1925 primary, basic, long lasting. Secondary short lived limited interaction

Sociobiological: max reproductive success young, attractive women = healthy children, men wealth and support. Buss 1988 37 cultures women rank good financial prospect high. Howard at al 1987 women have had a much lower status than men, enhance status by marrying an older man. Family: individual's genes. Fellner & Marshall 1981, 86% kidney donors for own children, 67% for parents and 50% for siblings. Can’t explain why, cultural differences.

needs/ satisfaction theory. Foa (1975) claimed these rewards also include sex, status, love and money. Veitch and Griffit 1976 radio, good news made positive response and felt more attracted to the other participant on feelings & interpersonal judgement scale. Early stages of attraction, parent/child relationships

Social exchange theory Thibaut & Kelley 1959, max rewards, min costs, specific to attraction. Selfish. Equity, Hatfield 1979, rewards equal for both 
Factors, Physical attractiveness. Cunningham 1986, males with square jaws = maturity
Matching hypothesis sim attractive levels Walster and Walster in 1966 dance dated if sim levels. Bossard proximity 1932 5000 marriage licences in Philadelphia, married if closer, now technology helps disprove this. Ignores individual differences Rubin 1932

1982 Duck ToRD personal process starts when 1 becomes dissatisfied. Intrapsychic phase: unhappy 1 broods, dyadic: confrontation. Social family told of breakup, grave-dressing phase.
2001 phase mode: pre-existing doom, mechanical failure and sudden death. Makes sense, many situations, different relationship types but misses why.
Risk factors: Divorced parents, young marriages & diff backgrounds/ cultures. Internal initially overlooked e.g. poor social skills. External participate to breakup boredom

Lee 1984 Dissatisfaction: problem recognized. Exposure issues brought up, negotiation issues discussed resolution attempts to resolve. Termination. Lee 1984 100 premarital romantic break ups, success took the longest to work through the stages but doesn’t take into account marital relationships and misses the WHY,  ethnocentric

Levinger’s social exchange theory 1976 impacts of marriage survival: attractions to the relationship, barriers to leaving & resence of an attractive alternative. If R exceeds perceptions of 'good’ relationship = likely to withstand for longer, when this is higher the motivation to leave the relationship also increased as a result. 
Attachment theory develop basis of future R. Karney and Bradbury 1995 vulnerability-stress adaptation model vulnerabilities & ways of coping in stressful situations help us to adapt to processes that are deemed important in marital stability

Attachment encourages social development, emotional development and improves self-esteem. Bowlby maternal deprivation hypothesis which forms the basis for all future relationships. Hodges and Tizard 1989, after 2 years of age 0 formed attachment. By 8 adopted formed good adaptions, social development was also better than children who had been returned to their birth families, return to their original families formed weaker attachments. 

Marriage:happiness & emotional health: Bradburn 1969 38% of married women ‘very happy’, 35% married men ‘very happy’ 18% unmarried  men & women ‘very happy’ 
Glen & McLanhan 1982 stated marital satisfaction is subject to change with time U shaped curve & one off measure of marital happiness is not a reliable finding. Physical health, Lynch 1977 married people less likely to die from strokes, diabetes and TB, benefits larger in males
  Cochrane 1988 also found that the rates in admissions to mental institutions were generally lower in married people than singles; the results were as follows, 0.26% for married people, 0.77% for single individuals and 0.98% for widows and finally 1.4% for divorced people

Schwarzer and Leppin 1992 reviewed 70 studies and found an overall correlation of -0.22 between social support and depression = buffering hypothesis = social support is most effective in improving mental health in stressful conditions. 
Western Cultures, differences & focus on romantic R 

Western societies: romantic love others arranged. 
Shaver, Wu and Schwartz 1991 Chinese associate romantic love with sorrow, pain,choice in partner doesn’t have concern with romantic love. 1949 70% of marriages were arranged in China but in the 1990’s this had dropped down to just 10%. Divorce rates in arrange marriages are lower. Myers 2005 found that both arranged & non-arranged marriages had same satisfaction.
  Whyte women married for love felt better about marriage = stronger psychological wellbeing.
 Moore and Leung 2001, 212 Anglo Australian students compared to 106 Chinese Australian to see if romantic cultural differences were present. 61% the Anglo Australians were in a relationship compared to 38% of Chinese & the Chinese reported themselves as being lonelier

Friendships: individualistic =large groups. Collectivist = smaller groups but closer bonds. Salamon (1977) compared friendships between Japan and West Germany. Japanese fewer barriers = “Shin Yin” friendship

Homosexual relationships: Liberal Humanism was a term developed by Kitzinger and Coyle 1995 and holds the assumption that both homosexual and heterosexual relationships are almost the same, socially sensitive research. Same-sex weddings in England and Wales  from March 2014. homosexual relationships, culturally specific. difficult to find evidence that may not be subject to SD, low V & cultural bias 

Understudied relationships generally fall outside main areas of research,  usually investigate areas such as face-to-face romantic love in Western Cultures (Duck and Wood 1995) 

Electronic relationships: Non-verbal paralanguage may be more important than speaking. 

Parks & Floyd 1996 interviewed 176 members of an internet newsgroup. 61% reported forming a new relationship 98% communicated through email, 1/3 phoned each other and 1/3 had met in person, promoted further research, shy/ disabled able to form relationships. Reductionist & oversimplified. Western Cultures where technology is much more advanced

Bee in 1994 who stated that homosexual relationships are more like heterosexual ones in terms of their sexual behaviour than they are different, some key differences include: 

homosexuals are less likely to live together because of the perception neighbours &receive abuse & sexual exclusivity is less common in homosexual as they don’t have to commit

Blumstein and Schwartz in 1983 investigated the number of additional sexual partners in couples together for more than 10 years. 22% of wives, 30% of husbands, 43% of lesbians and 94% of gay men reported having sex with at least one other partner.