lecture 4- relationships Flashcards
why do researchers studying relationships face more challenges than other areas in social psychology
-many studies of relationship are not true experiments with random assignment of participants to different conditions, instead researchers use longitudinal methods to examine dynamics that unfold overtime in pre existing relationships.
methodological problems of self selection example
eg - couples who make a special effort to celebrate their wedding anniversary may be less likely to get divorced than couples who don’t, but its difficult to know if the failure to celebrate an anniversary is a cause of dicord or if people who arent getting along dont do it.
-Despite these methodological challenges,the social psychological literature on relationships is flourishing and revealing fundamental truths about the bondspeople the world over form with one another.
importance of relationships
-how do western cultures describe themself, how does it relate to relationships
-western cultures define themselves in independent, individualistic terms, focusing on how they are different and separate from others
-nevertheless, human nature is profoundly social, and a person’s identity and sense of self are shaped by social relationships
-the need to belong is biologically based, as evident in the evolutionary benefits and universality of human relationships and the negative consequences that result from their absence
importance of relationships
-argument for the need to belong Baumeister and Leary
-evolutionary basis of the tendency to seek out relationships
-long term romantic bonds evolved to facilitate reproduction and to raise offspring, who are vulnerable and dependent for many years
-parent offspring attachments help ensure that infants and children are protected and will survive until they can function independently
if relationships have have an evolutionary basis…..what does this mean for romantic, and friend etc relationships
if relationships have an evolutionary basis , then similar kinds of dynamics should exist between romantic partners, between siblings, and between friends in different cultures around the world
are patterns of social behaviour fairly universal?
-pioneers in the field of human ethology,who studied hunter gatherer groups in their natural environments, documented patterns of social behaviour that appear to be universal
-caregiving between mother and child , wrestling between siblings, flirtation by young people who are courting, affection between romantic partners, dominance displays between adolescent males (eibl-eibesfeldt 1989)
in western european cultures , college students tend to restrict their meaningful interactions to, on average, about ___ friends.
(Wheeler and nezlek 1977)
six
-Baumeister and leary noted that if the need to belong is truly a need , it should be satiable
what can happen if the need to belong isn’t satisfied in existing relationships
-eg observation in prisons
-if the need to belong isn’t satisfied in existing relationships, we’ll seek to satisfy it in other relationships
-eg observational studies in prisons, for example find that prisoners suffer great anguish at the loss of contact with their family and often form substitute families based on kinship-like ties with other prisoner’s (Burkhart, 1973)
evidence for the need to belong
-in animals
when the need to belong is not met over a long period of time , people tend to suffer profoundly negative consequences
-series of experiments by Harry Harlow(1958) showed that baby rhesus monkeys raised without contact to other monkeys and with access to only two ‘mother surrogates’ had negative consequences when they reached adolescence
-a natural experiment with elephants provides similar evidence, adolescent elephants that were left on their own after the death of their herd, were found to be highly antisocial and aggressive
evidence for need to belong in humans
-mortality rates are higher for divorced, unmarried, and widowed individuals (lynch,1979).
-admissions to hospitals for psychological problems are 3 to 23 times higher for divorced than married people , depending on the study and the nature of the psychological problems in question (Bloom et al 1979)
suicide rates are higher for single and divorced individuals , as are crime rates (Rothberg and Jones 1987)
-according to the so called marriage benefit , married people fare better than unmarried ones on various indices of well being (gove et al 1990)
-Same for LGBTQ+ relationships as well, with partnered individuals scoring higher on well-being than their non-partnered counterparts (Wienke & Hill,2009)
Having support from others also contributes to good health, by strengthening the cardiovascular ,immune, and endocrine systems( Oxman & Hull, 1997)
different ways of relating to others
-two different types of relationships
-Margaret Clark and Judson Mills argue that two fundamentally different types of relationships, communal and exchange relationships , arise in different contexts and are governed by different norms (lark 1992; clark and mills,1979,1993)
communal relationships
-in a communal relationship, the individual feels a special responsibility for one another and often expect their relationship to be long term, based on a sense of oneness and family like sharing of common identity
communal relationships are based on the principle of need, with individuals giving and receiving according to who has the most pressing need at any given time
exchange relationships
-exchange relationships are trade based, often short term and the individuals feel no special responsibility towards one another
-giving and receiving in exchange relationships are governed by concerns about equity and reciprocity
cultural differences, do they prefer communal or exchange relationships
-notable cultural differences, with east asian and latin american societies to prefer a communal approach and european and commonwealth countries tending to prefer an exchange approach
-there are also differences among western nations with people from catholic countries being more likely to take a communal stance than people from protestant countries
rewards and the social exchange theory
-reward framework
-psychologists beleive that even the most intimate relationships are based (to a certain extent) on rewards of some sort
-according to the reward framework, people tend to like those who make them feel good (clore and byrne 1974)
-rewards dont have to be tangible or immediate or have to come from direct interaction
