Interpersonal Relationships: Communication

Question 1

What are relationship enhancing patterns?

Bradbury and Fincham

Answer 1

• Researchers found that couples that are in happy relationships engage in relationship enhancing patterns when there is disagreement - they don’t blame their partner or assume that the partner did things on purpose
• Negative behaviours are attributed to situational factors

Question 2

What are distress-maintaining patterns?

Bradbury and Fincham

Answer 2

Unhappy couples blame their partners for what happens and don’t give them credit for positive events

Question 3

What are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Gottman

Answer 3

1. Critisism: Criticising the partner’s personality and character, rather than the behaviour
2. Contempt: Criticism with the intention of psychologically abusing and insulting the partner. (name-calling, sarcasm, rolling eyes)
3. Defensiveness: Denying responsibility, making excuses or returning their partner’s complaint with their own
4. Stonewalling: Removing oneself from the conversation, by refusing to speak, removing eye contact, monosyllabic responses or changing the subject

Question 4

What are the ways to resolve the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Gottman

Answer 4

1. Criticism: “I” statements
2. Contempt: Respect
3. Defensiveness: Accepting responsibility
4. Stonewalling: Taking a break

Question 5

Gottman - Background

Answer 5

• The ways in which couples deal with conflict can largely predict the likelihood of the termination of the relationship
• During an argument, there are “four horsemen” that must be avoided and replaced by other techniques to demonstrate respect and love towards the partner, instead of aggression and negativity

Question 6

Gottman - Aim

Answer 6

To create and test models of causes of relationship dissolution as well as investigate what makes marriages last

Question 7

Gottman - Procedure

Answer 7

• 200 couples were followed for 20 years
• Couples were interviewed about their frequency of fights, types of conflicts etc
• Couples were observed in “love labs” before and after discussing common conflict areas in the relationship, where facial expressions, physiological responses (pulse, sweating), tone of voice, what was said was recorded. The time spent in positive and negative interaction was measured.

Question 8

Gottman - Findings & Conclusion

Answer 8

Findings:
* 3 Styles of problem solving were found in healthy marriages:
1. Validating: Couples communicate and compromise to calmly work out their problem to mutual satisfaction
2. Volatile: Recurrent conflicts with passionate disputes, tend to view each other as equal, individuality is important, passionate and exciting marriages
3. Conflict avoiding: Agreeing to disagree, no confrontation
* The ratio of positive interactions to negative interactions must be 5:1 (ie. for every insult, 5 compliments must be given) The marriage was likely to be stable if this ratio was maintained
* Ways of communicating including the 4 horsemen often predicted relationship breakdown

Conclusion:
* Conflict styles contribute the the changing and ending of relationships

Question 9

Gottman - Evaluation

Answer 9

Strengths:
* Triangulation (interviews, observations): higher internal validity
* Real couples and large sample
* Longitudinal study: able to understand and observe the trajectory of the relationship, not just a snapshot within a time period

Limitations:
* Low ecological validity: interviews and discussions were done wearing heart rate monitors and sweat rate monitors, in addition to the participants being watched

Question 10

Bradbury and Fincham - Aim

Answer 10

To examine the attributions or explanations that spouses make for marital events

Question 11

Bradbury and Fincham - Procedure

Answer 11

• Participants were married couples living together, and had not had marriage counseling
• Participants were asked to fill out a survey to determine their level of marital satisfaction and individually fill in a questionnaire to determine what the greatest problems were in the marriage
• Researchers chose a common problem from the questionnaires and then asked each participant questions about the cause and who was responsible for the problem
• They were also each asked about a problem that was identified in their questionnaire which their spouse did not identify as a problem
• After the individual session, they were brought together and instructed to discuss a possible solution to the problem that they had both identified
• The observation took place in a laboratory setting and was videotaped
• 2 trained researchers independently coded the videotape to identify relationship enhancing and distress maintaining patterns of communication

Question 12

Bradbury and Fincham - Findings & Conclusion

Answer 12

Findings:
* Couples that reported lower levels of marital satisfaction had more frequent distress maintaining patterns of communication – they were more likely to attribute marital problems to the partner and have a greater tendency toward seeing the partner as behaving intentionally and with selfish motivation
* The interaction between such couples was rated as more hostile and rejecting of the positive approaches of the partner

Conclusion:
* Attributions for marital problems are related to the behaviours that spouses exhibit in problem-solving discussions
* Spouses’ attributions are related to the behavioural responses they make to specific partner behaviours

Question 13

Bradbury and Fincham - Evaluation

Answer 13

Strengths:
* Researchers used researcher triangulation in the coding of the observation, increasing the reliability of the data

Limitations:
* As the results are only correlational, there is the problem of bidirectional ambiguity - we cannot know if distress-maintaining communication is the cause or the result of marital dissatisfaction
* There could be other variables that influenced the results - ie. depression or other forms of mental illness were not measured and may have played a role in the communication style
* Not all of the problems that were discussed were of the same level of seriousness – the distressed couples discussed issues that were more difficult to resolve than those discussed by non-distressed couples
* Administration of the questionnaire before the interaction may have interfered with the behaviour in the observation - the study was not counterbalanced to prevent order effects
* Sampling bias – all of the couples were from a Western culture - so this may have had an effect on the communication styles used in a marital relationship
* The study used a cross-sectional design, so it is not possible to observe change over time