Chapter 8

Question 1

What kind of questions did Finlay and Eatough ask people? What did they focus on?

Answer 1

What is the experience of making a meaningful connection does its others? They focused on people’s descriptions of similar experiences.

Question 2

What kind of questions do phenomenologists ask?

Answer 2

Distinctive research questions about people’s experience of the world (to find commonalities in structure).

Question 3

What are phenomenologists interested in?

Answer 3

People’s own experiences (not our interpretations) in sociology-cultural lifeworlds.

Question 4

Why has attraction and the forming of relationships recently become a focus of research again?

Answer 4

Social change in the west - technology, dating apps etc.

Question 5

Because the literature on attraction and relationship formation is fragmented, Finkel and Eastwidk attempted to integrate three meta theoretical principles. What do these have in common?

Answer 5

Satisfy needs/goals.

Question 6

What are the three theoretical principles that Finkel and Eastwick tried to integrate?

Answer 6

Domain-general reward perspectives (e.g. Pleasure, belonging, self-esteem, consistency); domain-specific evolutionary perspectives; attachment perspectives.

Question 7

According to Finkel and Eastwick, what is the purpose of relationships?

Answer 7

Instrumentality (other people are used as a means to an end/achieve goals).

Question 8

What are two problems with Finkel and Eastwick’s research?

Answer 8

Used American undergraduate SS, the assumption of instrumentality guided the data rather than emerging from the data (so problems of validity).

Question 9

What do phenomenologists need to do before they explain?

Answer 9

Describe and gain insight into meaning.

Question 10

Why do phenomenologists bracket out theory?

Answer 10

So data can speak for itself (rather than preconceptions).

Question 11

What five facets did Finlay and Eatough find in their participants’ experiential accounts? What evidence of instrumentality was there?

Answer 11

Bonding, fellowship, destiny, chemistry, love. No evidence of instrumentality.

Question 12

What is phenomenological reduction?

Answer 12

No preconceptions, biases. Avoid abstracting, theorizing, generalizing. Gain access to ‘the things themselves’ (don’t define experience for participants beforehand).

Question 13

What is the first epoché?

Answer 13

No natural scientific thinking, no lens but on its own terms.

Question 14

In the second epoché, do we return to the natural attitude?

Answer 14

No.

Question 15

In the second epoché, what do we focus on?

Answer 15

Focus on how something is subjectively experienced and its meaning in a person’s lifeworld.

Question 16

What does phenomenological analysis involve?

Answer 16

Systematic readings, empathic immersion, iterative, emergent understandings.

Question 17

According to Ihde, what are three processes which can help achieve phenomenological reduction?

Answer 17

Description (don’t use existing theories); horizontalisation (treat everything as equally important, don’t impose hierarchy of meaning/importance); verification (constantly check back with person to see if that was what was really meant).

Question 18

Why would phenomenology be different to, for example, psychoanalysis?

Answer 18

Phenomenology stays close to the data whereas psychoanalysis approaches data from a specific theoretical framework/lens.

Question 19

Do phenomenologists believe it is possible to obtain a ‘god’s eye view’?

Answer 19

No but still need to limit/bracket preconceptions as much as possible.

Question 20

How do phenomenologists collect data?

Answer 20

Usually interviews but also written protocol where asked to write down as much detail (uncensored descriptions of concrete experiences, not opinions) as possible. This is usually followed by a semi-structured interview.

Question 21

What does it mean to say that intentionality involves a relational context?

Answer 21

Anything focused on needs to be examined as a part of a whole context. This lifeworld is shared by others but perceived differently by everyone.

Question 22

Why is love good for understanding the lifeworld?

Answer 22

Because its definition and the experience of it vary depending on context. It is culturally and temporally variable.

Question 23

Even if different experiences of love share the same essence (underlying features), how must they be understood? What does this focus on the lifeworld allow one to do?

Answer 23

In the context of a particular life in a broader sociocultural lifeworld. This allows a focus on subjective individual experience and how the sociocultural world influences this.

Question 24

How did Langdridge et al investigate romantic jealousy?

Answer 24

Used memory-work; a group of researchers produced and analyzed own memories.

Question 25

What did Langdridge et al discover about jealousy?

Answer 25

Disruptor moment, embodied, visceral, threat to self-image, challenges idea of predisposition to jealousy, challenges idea that polyamorous relationships always produce jealousy.

Question 26

What did Eatough and Smith find out about anger?

Answer 26

Intensely felt emotion, transformed into a different person, embodied, heat/redness in the body, complex and not unidimensional.

Question 27

What is interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA)very similar to?

Answer 27

Thematic analysis (and criticized for the similarity).

Question 28

What is the aim of IPA?

Answer 28

Understand lived experiences and how people make sense of them.

Question 29

What is the analytic method of IPA?

Answer 29

Steps which need to be followed to produce themes.

Question 30

What are the dimensions of the lifeworld?

Answer 30

Temporality, spatiality, sociality, embodiment.

Question 31

What is the significance of temporality?

Answer 31

Lived experience of time (phenomenological time) versus clock time.

A concrete experience is a now which is related to a past and a future.

Question 32

What is the significance of spatiality?

Answer 32

We can examine our relationship to objects in our space and how they structure our lives.

Question 33

What is the significance of sociality (aka intersubjectivity or relationality)?

Answer 33

We exist in relation to others and construct our identities in relation to others even when alone.

Question 34

What is the significance of embodiment?

Answer 34

The ‘body-subject’ is interrelated. Consciousness is located in our flesh and blood. Bodies are objects and parts of our subjective understanding. Help create an identity (ethnic, gender, sexuality, ill).

Question 35

What does phenomenology help challenge?

Answer 35

A lot of assumptions which are taken for granted in other research.

Question 36

Many of our assumptions about the grieving process come from whose model?

Answer 36

Kübler-Ross

Question 37

What are the stages of Kübler-Ross’ model?

Answer 37

Denial and isolation, anger, negotiation, depression, acceptance.

Question 38

What has the presentation of Kübler-Ross’ model made people think?

Answer 38

That people follow the stages in order.

Question 39

What are some criticisms of K-R’s stage model?

Answer 39

That it is limited, simplistic, restrictive, there aren’t distinct stages, that the acceptance stage is problematic for understanding adaptation to grief.

Question 40

How can the K-R model influence our experience of grief?

Answer 40

We understand our own experience via this model which shows the power of models to construct rather than describe.

Question 41

What was Spaten et al’s study? What has previous research on this area shown?

Answer 41

Phenomenological analysis looking at men’s experiences of grief. Interview three men whose partners had died from cancer. Previous research had shown that it is harder for men to adapt to loss.

Question 42

What did the Spaten et al study show?

Answer 42

Rupture in lifeworlds, continuing material time versus stopping of own psychic world, emptiness and grief, zombie-like experiences, deeply embodied, worse than physical pain, anger, injustice, interplay of emotions, loss of planned future, meaning to life returned after time, remake identity, value friends and family, incorporate loss into story of self. Overcome adversity and make life meaningful. Therefore complex and multifaceted, unpredictable and not stage

Question 43

What does looking at experience as it is lived help us do?

Answer 43

Learn more about the human condition.