Studies

Question 1

Buss

Answer 1

• Surveyed over 33 countries and 10,000 adults
• Asked questions about age and attributes that the evolutionary theory predicts about partner preference
• Women= greater value on resource related characteristics
• Men= valued reproductive capacity in terms of good looks and younger mates
• Reflects the idea of anisogamy

Question 2

Clark and Hatfield

Answer 2

• Male and female volunteers to approach opposite sex students, asking ‘I’ve noticed you around campus. I find you attractive. Will you go to bed with me tonight?’
• 75% of males agreed but not a single female did

Question 3

Penton-Voak et al

Answer 3

• Females mate preferences change across the menstrual cycle

- Preferred masculine features during fertile period, but feminised features for a long term mate

Question 4

Chang et al

Answer 4

-Compared partner preferences in China over 25 years and found some changes

Question 5

Altman and Taylor

Answer 5

• Gradually revealing emotions and listening to reciprocal sharing, people gain a greater understanding of each other and display trust
• As they increasingly disclose more, they ‘penetrate’ more into each others lives

Question 6

Reis and Shaver

Answer 6

• In order to develop a relationship there needs to be a reciprocal element to disclosure as well as an increase in breadth and depth
• Balance of self-disclosure between partners

Question 7

Sprecher and Hendrick

Answer 7

-Studied hetrosexual couples and found that as self-disclosure increased, so did relationship satisfaction

Question 8

Laurenceau et al

Answer 8

• Asked ppts to write diary entries about relationship progress
• Found that self-disclosure and perception of disclosure led to greater feelings of intimacy

Question 9

Tang et al

Answer 9

• Men and women in USA tended to disclose more sexual thoughts than romantic partners in China
• However there level of relationship satisfaction was high in both cultures

Question 10

Shackelford and Larsen

Answer 10

• People with symmetrical faces are rated as more attractive
• Shows an honest sign of genetic fitness
• Neotenous features (baby face) are also rated favourably

Question 11

Dion et al

Answer 11

-Attractive people are consistently rated as successful, kind and sociable when compared with unattractive people

Question 12

Walster (theory)

Answer 12

• Matching hypothesis
• A person’s partner choice is a balance between desire to have the most physically attractive person possible and their wish to avoid being rejected by someone who is ‘way out of their league’

Question 13

Palmer and Peterson

Answer 13

• Asked ppts to rate attractive and unattractive people in terms of how politically competent and knowledgeable they are
• Found that attractive people were consistently rated higher on these characteristics compared to unattractive ones

Question 14

Towhey

Answer 14

• Asked male and female ppts to rate how much they would like a target individual based on their photo and some biological info
• Ppts also had to complete the MACHO scale designed to measure sexist attitudes
• Found ppts who scored highly on the scale were more likely to be influenced by the physical attractiveness when making judgements about likeability

Question 15

Feingold

Answer 15

• Meta-analysis of 17 studies
• Found a correlation in rating of attractiveness between partners
• Supports meta-analysis

Question 16

Walster et al (study)

Answer 16

• US uni students invited to attend a dance party and were randomly matched to a partner, and secretly judged on attractiveness
• During intervals at the party, 4 months and 6 months later, students were asked if they found their partner attractive
• Original research for matching hypothesis failed to confirm it

Question 17

Taylor et al

Answer 17

-No evidence that online daters were driven by their own or their potential partners physical attractiveness

Question 18

Kerckhoff and Davis

Answer 18

• Filter theory
• Studied student couples and discovered several criteria people use to choose a partner
• They call these filters, as they help people sift through potential partners to choose the right one
• The filters assume greater/ lesser importance at different stages of a relationship
• These are;
  1) Social demography
  2) Similarity of attitudes
  3) Complementarity
• They also set the cut off point for short term relationships at 18 months

Question 19

Winch

Answer 19

• Found that similarity of interests, attitudes and personality traits were very important for couples in the beginning of relationships
• Complementarity had more impact on long term relationships

Question 20

Newcomb

Answer 20

• Offered ppts free accommodation for a year
• Assigned a roommate, and found that a stable friendship developed if roommates had a similar background and attitudes to life

Question 21

Levenger

Answer 21

• Claims that it is difficult to replicate Kerckhoff and Davis’ study due to the difficulty in correlating length and depth of relationships
• And of determining what constitutes short and long term relationships

Question 22

Thibault and Kelly

Answer 22

• Describes romantic relationships using the economic terminology of profit (rewards) and loss (costs)
• They claim that partners strive to maximise rewards and minimise costs
• The costs and rewards are subjective and change over time
• They proposed 2 levels of comparison
  1) Comparison Level
  2) Comparison level of alternatives
• They also proposed 4 stages of a relationship
  1) Sampling stage
  2) Bargaining stage
  3) Commitment stage
  4) Institutionalisation stage

Question 23

Sprecher

Answer 23

• Conducted a longitudinal study with 101 US uni couples

- Found that Comparison Levels for alternatives were a strong predictor of commitment in a relationship

Question 24

Argyle

Answer 24

• Argues that people rarely start assessing their relationships before they feel unsatisfied with them
• Eg being unhappy may make them question if they are getting more rewards than costs

Question 25

Walster et al

Answer 25

• Equity theory
• For fairness in the relationship the level of profit should be the same for each partner (rewards:cost ratio)
• A person who gets more benefits from a relationship than they put in will feel guilt= These people are over-benefited
• Those who put a lot in but get very little back will be angry and resentful= These people are under-benefited

Question 26

Utne et al

Answer 26

• Carried out a survey of 118 recently married couples, measuring equity with 2 self-report scales
• The husbands and wives were between 16 and 45 years old and had been together for more than 2 years before marrying
• Found that couples who consider their relationship equitable were more satisfied than those who saw themselves as over/under benefiting

Question 27

Huseman et al

Answer 27

• Suggests that some people are less sensitive to equity
• They describe some partners as ‘benevolents’= prepared to contribute more to the relationship than they get out of it
• Some are described as ‘entitleds’ who believe they deserve to be over benefited and accept it without guilt

Question 28

Aumer-Ryan

Answer 28

• Suggested that there’s cultural differences in the link between equity and satisfaction
• Couples from individualist cultures considered their relationship most satisfying when it was equitable
• Couples from collectivist cultures were most satisfied when they were over benefiting
• This was consistent for both men and women

Question 29

Rusbult et al

Answer 29

• Investment model, which developed the Social Exchange Model
• They developed SET further as many couples stay together despite the costs outweighing the rewards
• They found 3 factors which maintain commitment;
  1) Satisfaction level
  2) Comparison with alternatives
  3) Investment size
• He also said that there was 2 types of investment= intrinsic (Things we put directly into the relationship like money) and extrinsic (Things brought into people’s life like children)
• He also identified maintenance mechanisms that partners use to keep relationships going= accommodation, willingness to sacrifice, forgiveness, positive illusions and ridiculing alternatives

Question 30

Rusbult and Maltz

Answer 30

• In their study of ‘battered women’
• found that women who were most likely to return to an abusive partner who those who reported making the greatest investment n the relationship and they didn’t have have any appealing alternatives

Question 31

Le and Agnew

Answer 31

• Conducted a meta-analysis of 52 studies from the late 1970s to 1999, featuring 11,000 ppts from 5 countries
• Discovered that satisfaction, comparison for alternatives and investment greatly contribute to commitment= which is a feature of long term relationships
• These outcomes were true for both men and women, across all cultures and for homosexual and heterosexual relationships

Question 32

Agnew and Goodfriend

Answer 32

• Suggested that there’s more to investment than just the resources that you have already put into the relationship
• They extended Rusbult’s original model by including the investment romantic partners make in their future plans
• They extended Rusbult’s original model by including the investment romantic partners make in their future plans
• With many motivated to commit as they want their future plans to work

Question 33

Duck

Answer 33

• Suggested that ending a relationship is not a one-off event but a process
• Each phase is marked by 1 partner, reaching a ‘threshold’
• Break up beings from dissatisfaction
• He proposed 4 stages;
  1) Intra-psychic stage
  2) dyadic
  3) social phase
  4) ‘grave-dressing’

Question 34

Rollie and Duck

Answer 34

• Suggested that the original model is over simplified
• Adding a 5th stage resurrection phase, where ex-partners turns their attention to future relationships, using the experiences gained from their ended one

Question 35

Tashiro and Frazier

Answer 35

• Supported the resurrection stage

- Found that ppts (undergrads) reported experiencing personal growth as a result as well as emotional distress

Question 36

McKenna and Bargh

Answer 36

• Proposed the idea of absence of gating
• a gate= anything that could get in the way of a relationship developing such as appearance and anxiety
• Face to face relationships are gated, whereas virtual aren’t, which is a huge advantage as it allows relationships to progress faster
• The distance forces people to refocus on self-disclosure, rather than something else
• This means that people are allowed to create the kind of person they want to be

Question 37

Walther

Answer 37

• Hyperpersonal model
• Online relationships can be more personal and involve greater self-disclosure.
• These relationships develop quickly as self-disclosure happens earlier, and are more intense and intimate
• They also end more quickly because the high excitement level of the interaction isn’t matched by the level of trust between the partners = boom and bust phenomenon (Cooper & Sportolari)
• The sender of the message has more time to manipulate their image than they would FtF = selective self-presentation

Question 38

Cooper & Sportolari

Answer 38

-Online relationships end more quickly because the high excitement level of the interaction isn’t matched by the level of trust between the partners = boom and bust phenomenon

Question 39

Bargh et al

Answer 39

• importance of anonymity
• When you’re aware the other people do not know your identity, you feel less accountable for your behaviour, and so may disclose more to a ‘stranger’ than someone you know - strangers on a train effect.

Question 40

Sproull and Kiesler

Answer 40

• Reduced cues theory
• CMC (computer-mediated communication) relationships are less effective than FtF ones because they lack many of the cues we normally depend on including our physical appearance.
• CMC particularly lacks cues to our emotional state, e.g. facial expressions
• Lack of cues leads to de-individuation because it reduces people’s sense of identity, in turn encourages disinhibition in relating to others
• Virtual relationships more likely to involve blunt and aggressive communication

Question 41

Rosenfeld and Thomas

Answer 41

• Showed the importance of internet in helping people to make and maintain relationships
• studied 4000 US adults and found that individuals with internet access at home were more likely to be in romantic relationships
• Of these individuals, 72% of those who had internet access at home had a romantic partner, whereas this figure was much lower (36%) for those without internet access.
• Even after controlling variables such as age and gender, individuals with internet access were still twice as likely to have a romantic partner

Question 42

Walther and Tidwell

Answer 42

• They point out that non-verbal cues aren’t missing in CMC, but instead are different
• Such as style and timing of their messages.
• Furthermore acrostics, emoticons and emojis, are used as effective substitutes for facial expressions and tone of voice.

Question 43

McKenna and Bargh

Answer 43

• Looked at CMC used by lonely and socially anxious people
• Found that such people were able to express their ‘true selves’ more than in FtF relationships=
• Of the romantic relationships that initially formed online, 70% survived more than two years
• This is a higher proportion than for relationships formed in the offline world

Question 44

Maltby 1

Answer 44

• Identified 3 levels of parasocial relationships;
  1) Entertainment-Social
  2) Intense-Personal
  3) Borderline pathological

Question 45

McCutcheon et al (Theory)

Answer 45

• developed the Celebrity Attitude Scale
• She also proposed the Absorption-Addiction model to explain parasocial relationships
• Where people form parasocial relationships because of deficiencies in their own lives, e.g. lack of fulfillment in everyday relationships, and this allows escape or a way of finding fulfillment
• Someone who initially has an E-S orientation to a certain celebrity may be triggered into more intense involvement by a personal crisis
• Absorption= Seeking fulfillment in celebrity worship motivates the individual to focus their attention on the celebrity - becoming preoccupied
• Addiction= Needs to sustain commitment to relationship by feeling a closer involvement with the celebrity

Question 46

McCutcheon et al

Answer 46

• examined the correlation between attachment type and celebrity worship levels using 229 participants
• no link between insecure-resistant attachment and more intense levels of parasocial relationships was found

Question 47

Maltby 2

Answer 47

• Linked types of personality to levels of parasocial relationships
• He found links between the entertainment-social category with extraverted personality

Question 48

Maltby et al

Answer 48

• They measured the relationship between celeb worship and body image in teens
• Found young girls who were at the intense-personal level tended to have a poor body image, especially if they admired a celebrity’s physical appearance
• Suspected that this link may be a precursor to the development of eating disorders