hazan and shaver’s love quiz - support for the cotinuity hypothesis

Question 1

when and what did hazan and shaver decide to investigate?

Answer 1

in 1987, hazan and shaver decided to investigate these questions:
- are we really doomed to follow the same patterns in our relationships again and again?
- if we have a bad relationship with our parents, does that really set us up for failure in our future romantic relationships?

Question 2

to study their aim, what did hazan and shaver use?

Answer 2

• to study their aim, hazan and shaver used the self report method
• hazan and shaver used 2 questionnaires
• the first questionnaire asked participants questions about their romantic relationships and their attachment styles to their romantic partners
• the second questionnaire asked participants questions about their childhood relationships with their parents and their attachment style to their parents

Question 3

what happened in hazan and shavers study?

Answer 3

• hazan and shaver sent out these questionnaires in a local newspaper, which people reading the newspaper could choose to fill in and send back to the researchers.
• hazan and shaver were using volunteer sampling
• hazan and shaver conducted the study twice on 2 different samples. there first was a sample of 205 men and 415 omen between the age of 14-82 who were mainly heterosexual.
• the second sample was a sample of 108 students with 38 men and 70 women.
• once participants had sent back the questionnaires, hazan and shaver calculated the participants scores on both questionnaires to see if there was an association between their responses on the two questionaires
• in other words, hazan and shaver were testing whether there was a correlation between participant’s responses on the 1st questionnaire and participants’ responses on the second questionaire

Question 4

what did hazan and shaver find?

Answer 4

• the participants attachment style with their parents was correlated with their attachment style in romantic relationships as adults
• secure attachment to their parents tended to have secure, long-lasting, happy relationships with their romantic partners
• insecure avoidance or insecure resistant to their parents tended to not believe in acting love and saw themselves as underserving of love.
• insecure resistant reported the highest levels of loneliness

Question 5

what do hazan and shaver’s results indicate?

Answer 5

that people’s attachment styles with their parents do influence their romantic relationships as adults, supporting the continuity hypothesis.
- this also supports bowlby’s idea of the internal working model.

Question 6

hazan and shaver limitation - volunteer sample

Answer 6

• they used a volunteer sample. the participants consisted of people who actively volunteers to take part in the study.
• limitation of volunteer sampling - might not be representative of the general population. the type of people that go out of their way to fill in and take part in a love quiz might have a specific type of personality.
• for example, may all be interested in the psychology of relationships.
• so the responses of these participants might not generalise to how other people in the population with the same attachment style would of responded

Question 7

hazan and shaver limitation - self-report

Answer 7

the results were collected through self-report. two limitations of self-report are:
- people aren’t always very accurate and objective when they describe their own thoughts, feelings and behaviours.
- results can be influenced by social desirability bias as people wish to appear socially acceptable.

Question 8

hazan and shaver limitation - correlational study

Answer 8

• it was a correlational study.
  one limitation of correctional studies is that we cant establish a cause and effect relationship. this means we cant be sure that the attachment style that participants had with their parents caused the behaviours and attitudes that they have in their romantic relationship. maybe they were influenced by a third factor…. personality?