Relationships ao3 Flashcards
Social exchange theory evaluation
– Inappropriate assumptions, economic metaphor, fails to distinguish between exchange and communal relationships, constant monitoring of costs does’t apply to communal relationships
– Direction of cause and effect, dissatisfaction would set in before measuring costs and rewards and considering alternative, Miller study, people who rated themselves in committed relationship spent less time looking at images of attractive people
– Ignores equity, this has been shown to play a role in relationships so SET can’t account for a significant portion of findings on relationships, limited
–Artificial, two participants plays ‘partners’, given scenario of distributed costs and rewards, know nothing about each other and their ‘relationship’, more realistic studies are less supportive of SET
Equity theory evaluation
+ Supporting research, Mary Utne study on recently married, found that those who found relationship more equitable were more satisfied
– Cultural difference, collectivist cultures are more satisfied when over benefiting
– Individual differences, benevolents care less about underbenefitting, others believe they are entitled to over benefit
– Theory doesn’t account for different types of relationship, equity doesn’t play as much of a role in communal relationships
Rusbults investment model evaluation
+ Supporting research evidence, meta analysis found that satisfaction, comparison with alternatives and investment size all predicted relationship commitment, this is universal
+ Explains abusive relationships, Rusbult and Martz
–Oversimplification, more to investment than resources put into relationship, investment in future plans for early stages of a couple
+ Methodological strengths, self report techniques, perceptions are what matter
Duck’s phase model evaluation
– Incomplete model, fifth phase was added, the resurrection stage, going through stages isn’t linear like the model suggests
– Methodological issues, research is retrospective, early stages of breakdown ignore
+ Useful real life applications, counselling for reversing breakdown
–Cultural bias, relationships in collectivist cultures come to an end less due to wider family being involved and more obligatory feelings
Virtual relationships evaluation
–Lack of research support for reduced cues, nonverbal cues aren’t completely missing, emojis
+ Research support for hyper personal model, research on questions asked online found to be more direct and intimate
–Different types of CMC relationships, people share more on Facebook then they do on an online e-commerce
– Relationships are multi model, not either/or
