Relationship Beliefs & Values

Question 1

Media and relationships

Answer 1

• Media is one means where beliefs and values are transmitted to individuals
• • Intimate relationships are fundamental to human experience -> media often involves these relationships and their related messages and themes
• Media represents an important source of information about relationships -> powerful influence on how people think about their own relationships
• How relationships are portrayed in media affect what people believe about relationships in general (how people evaluate their own relationships and how they behave)
• Exposure to media messages does not necessarily mean that we believe them

Question 2

Malamuth and Check study: sexual violence in the media

Answer 2

• How do images of sexual violence affect men’s/women’s attitudes towards sexual violence against women in the real world?
• Men/women assigned randomly to watch one of two popular films
• • First pair – sexual behaviour in romantic relationship with no sexual violence / aggression
• • Second pair – sexual violence / aggression with positive consequences: resist at first and fall in love with aggressor
• Several days later, completed a survey about attitudes that had items about acceptability of sexual violence
• • Films had an effect on men (Compared to men who had watched the nonviolent films, men who watched the violent films were more likely to agree with statements like “being roughed up is sexually stimulating to many women”)
• • Women were slightly less likely to agree with these statements

Question 3

Collins et al study: sexual content on TV

Answer 3

• explored sexual content of broad range of TV shows -> looked at association to adolescent reports of the TV shows they watched and their sexual behaviour over a year
• • influence of media is not limited to general beliefs
• • Teens who watched the most TV with sexual content are twice as likely to have sex during the next year compared to peers who watched TV shows with less sexual content
• • Learn from TV when they are expected to have sex -> helpful to have conversations about whether that’s accurate

Question 4

educating people about media messages

Answer 4

• People are not merely passive recipients of media messages -> they think about what they read, watch, and can reject negative messages if they have the basis to do so
• Educating people about the effects of media messages has an influence on their resistance to being persuaded by messages
• • Not everyone is educated about the media, so it remains a powerful and at times unreliable source of information about intimate relationships

Question 5

what is a belief?

Answer 5

• an idea or theory about what the world is actually like; simple descriptions about the world (ex. Couples who fight a lot are probably unhappy)
• Most of our knowledge about relationships takes the form of beliefs
• there can be overlap between beliefs and values

Question 6

what is a value?

Answer 6

• an idea about what a person wants or what the world should be like; expresses an opinion or attitude (ex. You should leave a relationship if your partner cheats on you)
• there can be overlap between beliefs and values

Question 7

3 possible targets of beliefs and values

Answer 7

• Ourself in a relationship
• Opinions about our partner(s)
• Our relationship with our partner

Question 8

Lay relationship theories

Answer 8

• Distinguish informal beliefs and values that laypeople accumulate from explicit theories and empirical data gathered by people who study relationships
• Advice about relationships takes the form of general lay theories (ex. never go to bed angry)

Question 9

General vs. specific beliefs/values

Answer 9

• General beliefs and values: about all relationships in general
• Specific beliefs and values: about particular relationships we are in or have previously experienced (ex. romantic relationships, friendships, family, etc.)
• Ex. The Break-Up: general value → reciprocity should be a part of the relationship; specific belief → I’m doing the giving and he’s doing the taking

Question 10

2 popular general beliefs

Answer 10

• passionate love is important in a relationship (90% of societies)
• • ex. Loving someone means loving everything about them, only one suitable partner exists for every person, love can overcome all challenges, possible to fall in love at first sight
• relationships grow and change over time
• • ex. relationships are not set in stone, they can evolve
• note: these ideas are independent of one another (beliefs about passion may have nothing to do with beliefs about growth and change in relationships)

Question 11

expectations

Answer 11

• prediction about what is likely to happen in the future for a particular relationship; often (but not always) based on general beliefs about how relationships function
• • Ex. think passion/romance is important, but don’t experience it in their current relationship
• fall under the umbrella of specific beliefs about relationships

Question 12

locus of control

Answer 12

• ability of partners to bring about desired changes within their relationships
• Internal locus of control: power to achieve goals lies within themselves
• External locus of control: successes and failures due to forces outside of themselves
• important part of expectations

Question 13

Miller et al study: locus of control

Answer 13

• examined couple’s beliefs about degree to which they can affect desired outcomes within their marriage
• Couples with internal locus of control believe they can bring about change and are responsible for the outcomes they experience in the marriage
• Couples with external locus of control believe that their own actions are not effective and have little responsibility for what happens in the marriage

Question 14

attitudes

Answer 14

• another name for a general value
• People have specific attitudes that capture what they value in their own relationships
• • Don’t just observe; express our perception as evaluative judgments (ex. “She is passionate”; “he is moody”)
• • Have specific attitudes about every aspect of the relationship (appearance, time spent together, division of responsibility, relationship satisfaction)

Question 15

standard

Answer 15

• minimum set of qualities and attributes partners require to be satisfied with the relationship
• What a person would settle for or the lower limit for how satisfied we are in a relationship
• If an attitude is an expression of an evaluation, a standard is the yard stick for making the evaluation

Question 16

ideal

Answer 16

• represents what a person wishes for (maximum hopes and dreams)
• Upper limit for how satisfied we are in our relationship

Question 17

Fletcher’s findings about our evaluations of relationships & relationship satisfaction

Answer 17

• Fletcher & Thomas: the match between people’s specific theories about their own relationship and their general beliefs about how relationships work helps them to figure out whether they are in a good relationship or not
• Fletcher & Kininmonth: the association between relationship satisfaction and perceptions of an aspect of the relationship was dependent on a person’s belief about that aspect (ex. sex)

Question 18

ideal standards model

Answer 18

• Amount of discrepancy between values for relationships in general and perceptions of the current relationship determine whether an individual will be satisfied
• The greater the discrepancy between partner’s ideals and their perceptions, the lower their overall rating of the relationship

Question 19

Knee’s findings about evaluating our relationships (university students)

Answer 19

• university students asked to describe their beliefs about successful relationships - either a product of hard work or destiny
• Results: if they believe good relationship is a product of destiny and they were less satisfied in relationship → believed it was destined to fail, ended relationship; whereas if they were more satisfied in relationship → believed destined to succeed, stayed together

Question 20

how do we interpret relationship events? what are the 2 main ways?

Answer 20

• Tendency to use existing ideas to interpret ambiguous behaviours; interpretations are probably consistent with the ideas we already have
• includes perceptual confirmation and behavioural confirmation

Question 21

perceptual confirmation

Answer 21

• Expect people to behave a certain way; more likely to perceive they have behaved that way
  Important mechanism for how beliefs and expectations can affect intimate relationships
• Ex. Robyn cleans kitchen every morning; partner creates expectation that she’ll do it, issues may be created if she stops doing it

Question 22

behavioural confirmation

Answer 22

• Our beliefs and expectations can also shape the way we experience the world by affecting our behaviour towards others
• Our beliefs lead to behaviours that promote what we value in relationships
• How someone expects to be treated affects how the person treats other people (ie. intimacy)

Question 23

healthy ways to think about relationships

Answer 23

• Positive expectations and high standards (capitalize on relationship strengths and minimize weaknesses)
• lowering expectations: Develop moderate expectations and reasonable standards
• • avoids disappointment when we realize than relationship is less than perfect
• • Excessively high standards related to emotional reactions that harm relationships → couples who score higher on measures of unrealistic relationship beliefs report lower relationship satisfaction

Question 24

Murray et al study about positive expectations/high regard

Answer 24

• couples reported on relationship for 21 days
• Look at how events from 1 day were associated with thoughts and feelings on subsequent days
• If believed they were highly regarded by their partner → behaved constructively after a serious argument
• If doubted their partner’s feelings for them → behaved negatively after a serious argument