Y2 Chapter 5 Relationships Flashcards
Outline what’s meant by anisogamy and how it relates to sexual selection
- Differences between male and female sex cells
- Male - common, no energy expense, small; female is the opposite
- These differences give rise to different mating strategies
Outline preferred mating strategies for males and females and the resulting partner preferences
- Males
- Intra sexual selection (mate competition)
- compete with other males for access to females
- Quantity over quality - males to most interested in young, fertile females- Females
- Inter-sexual (mate choice)
- Women invest more - choosey - choose a male based on a given trait which indicates genetic fit-ness
- Will choose males who can provided resources, protection ect
- Females
Outline what is meant by “the runaway process” and “the sexy sons hypothesis”
- Women choose a mate based on a given trait that indicates genetic fitness
- This trait will then be passed on to offspring until over generations this trait will become more common
- Females choose the fittest male, and will then be produced the fittest offspring
- The offspring will then mate with the fittest over the opposite sex
Outline research support for inter-sexual selection
- Russell Clark and Elaine Hatfield (1989) - Showed female choosiness
- Students were approached on campus and asked if they wanted to have sex
- No female said yes while 75% of males said yes
- Supports sexaul selction as it shows that women are choosier than men
Outline two evaluation points that supports sexual selection.
- Waynforth & Dunbar
- Studied lonely hearts adverts
- Women advertised physical attractiveness and indicators of youth
- Men offered resources
- Supports the theory as it shows women deem resources important and men look for youth and fertility- Buss
- Surveyed over 33 and 10,000 adults
- Questioned on attributes that evolutionary theory predicts should be important for partner preference
- Women place greater relevance on resources while males valued reproductive capacity
- This shows the universality of the theory
- Buss
Outline a weakness of sexual selection
- Doesn’t take into account for social and cultural differences
- Social norms of sexual behaviour change quicker than evolutionary time scales and come about due to cultural changes
- Women in the workplace do not rely on men for resources (Bereczkei)
- Mate preferences may be a result of evolution and cultural influences
Briefly explain what is meant by self-disclosure and the role it play in attraction
- The process of slowly revealing more information about yourself to your partner
- These self-disclosures strengthen bonds between partners
Self-disclosure is an important part of social-penetration theory. Describe the theory
- Altman & Taylor (1973)
- The gradual process of revealing your inner self to another
- In a romantic relationship it involves the reciprocal exchange of information
- When we’re revealing sensitive information about yourself displays trust
- Having trust reciprocated allows for the advance of the relagtionship
- Revealing more and more sensitive information allows them to “penetrate” further into each others lives
- This will result in a greater understanding of each other and an increased attraction
Explain what is meant by the length and breadth of self-disclosure
- These are both important elements of self-disclosure
- As they increase partners become more committed to each other- We disclose a lot at first
- Superficial, low risk information
- Breadth is narrow at first
- A lot of topics are of limit and we don’t want to scare people off
- As the relationship develops, self-disclosure deepens, encompassing a greater range of topics, culminating in the revealing of intimate high-risk information
- We disclose a lot at first
Why is reciprocity important in self-disclosure?
- There needs to be a balance of self-disclosure between partners
- This increases feelings of intimacy
- Once you’ve disclosed something hopefully your partner will respond in a way that is rewarding (empathy, equally intimate, etc)
Outline a weaknesses of the matching hypothesis
- Taylor et al (2011)
- Monitored activity on dating sites and found people tended to go for people more attractive than themselves
- This finding challenges the predictions of the matching hypothesis
Outline a weakness of physical attractiveness research
- Individual differences
- Emphasis on physical attractiveness differs
- Towhey (1979)
- Created the MACHO scale
- Higher scores on this scale were more influenced by physical attractiveness
- Show physical attractiveness can be moderated by other factors
- This challenges the importance of physical attractiveness
Outline some strengths of physical attractiveness
- Cunningham et al (1995)
- The neotenous features have been rated attractive by males from many ethnic backgrounds- Wheeler and Kim (1997)
- Found the halo effect to be just as strong in individualist cultures as collectivist
- Evolutionary factors in physical attractiveness
- Palmer and Peterson (2012)
- Physically attractive people were rated as more politically knowledgeable and competent
- Has obvious implication
- This effect has been found to be prevalent in many areas
- Wheeler and Kim (1997)
Outline some key terms in filter theory
- Field of availables
- The entire set of available partners that we could realistically form a relationship with- Field of desireables
- From the field of availables, those who are attractive to us
- Law of attraction
- The idea that we find similarity of attitudes attractive
- Complementarity
- Similarity becomes less important as a relationship develops, and is replaced by the need for your partner to balance your traits with opposite ones of their own.
- Homogamy
- The idea that you are more likely to form a relationship with someone who is socially or culturally similar to you
- Field of desireables
Outline filter theory
- We narrow down our list of available partners by putting people through a set of filters
- Social demography
- A wide range of factors that increase the chance of people meeting (education, class, ethnic group, religion)
- Although we meet people from far away our most meaningful interactions are usually with people nearby
- Accessibility is key - requires less effort
- Anyone who is too different will be discounted, this leads to homogamy
- Similar attitudes
- Sharing important belief and attitudes
- Similarity in attitudes is important especially within the first 18 months
- Byrne (1997) - law of attraction
- Complimentarity
- The ability to meet each others needs - Have trits the other lacks
- The need for complementarity is more important in long term relationships
- Opposites attract in later stages of a relationship
- Also gives partners the feeling of forming a whole
- Social demography
Outline a strength of filter theory
- Winch (1958)
- Found that similarity of personality, interests and attitudes between partners is typical in the first year
- Between happily married couples of 7 years complementarity was more important than similarity
Outline the weaknesses of filter theory
- Filter theory assumes that attraction is based of similarity in various ways
- Cohabiting partners became more similar in attitudes and emotional responses over time
- This suggests that filter theory may have the direction of causality the wrong way around- Many relationships now start online
- It is suggested that since a relationship starts online filter theory doesn’t work in the same way e.g. proximity is now less important
- The theory may no longer be valid
- Lack of replication
- Levinger (1974)
- Could be down to social changes and difficulty defining the depth of a relationship
- Originally it was assumed that 18 months was the cut of point between a long and a short relationship
- This may no longer be the case in all cultures today
- Brings into question the generalisability of the theory
- Many relationships now start online
Social exchange theory assumes that relationships are guided by the minimax principle - explain this
- Thibaut and Kelley (1959) - Relationships are and exchange of goods
- Satisfaction is judged in terms of profit and cost
- Partners are driven to maximise the profit whilst minimising costs
- Profitable relationships will succeed whilst unprofitable ones will not
What does social exchange theory mean by comparison level?
- It is a judgement of he reward level we expect in a relationship, determined by past relationship experiences and social norms
- Generally we seek a relationship with a high CL (people with low self-esteem will seek a relationship with a low CL)
What are the 4 stages of a relationship according to social exchange theory?
- Sampling - exploring rewards and cost through experimentation and observation
- Bargaining - start of relationship, where rewards an cost are negotiated
- Commitment - relationship becomes more stable and the cost and rewards increase
- Institutionalisation - partners are settle as the norms of a relationship are established
Outline the limitations of social exchange theory
- Clark and Mills (2011)
- Exchange relationships may be based on profit and loss but communal relationships are focused on giving and receiving rewards, without thinking about profit
- At the start of a relationship tallying of exchanges may be seen as disrepectful
- SET might not be a suitable explanation for all types of relationships- Direction of causality in SET
- Assumed that dissatisfaction occurs when the cost outweigh the rewards or when the alternatives seem more attractive
- Miller (1997) found that people who said they were in a committed relationship spent less time looking at attractive people
- Spending less time looking at attractive people was a good indicator of the relationship continuing
- It could be that we do not consider the profit in a relationship until we become dissatisfied
- SET deals with things that are hard to quantify
- Studies tend to operationalise rewards specifically e.g. money
- However, in reality it is much hard to quantify
- They are subjective
- We also don’t know what the values for CL and CLalt have to be before dissatisfaction occurs
- The inability to accurately define key concepts of SET make it difficult to produce valid research support
- Direction of causality in SET
Outline the role of equity in relationships
- Most people have a need for equity in a relationship
- Walster et al argues that equity is more important than a balance between cost and benifits
- Both over and under benefiting can lead to dissatisfaction. Under-benefiting can lead to anger and resentment while over-benefiting can lead to shame and discomfort
- Equity is all about the ratio of rewards and cost and not the amount of each.
Outline a strength a of equity theory
- Research support
- Utne et al. Newly weds who considered their relationship to have equity were more satisfied than those who over or under benefited
- Appears that profit is not the key issue in judging a relationship
- This supports predictions and gives validity to the theory- Cross cultural application
- Aumer-Ryan et al. In collectivist cultures people were most satisfied when over or under benefiting
- Cross cultural application
Outline the limitations of equity theory
- Lack of cross cultural application
- Aumer-Ryan et al. In individualist cultures people were most satisfied when there was equity but in collectivist cultures people were most satisfied when over or under benefiting.
- The assumption that equity would apply in all cultures was not supported
- This is a limitation of the theory as it means that it isn’t applicable to all romantic relationships- Individual differences
- Huseman et al. Some people are more sensitive to inequity than others
- Some partners are happy to contribute more than they get
- Others are happy to overbenefit and don’t feel guilty for it
- This is a weakness of the theory because it hasn’t accounted for individual differences
- Failure to support predictions
- Berg and McQuinn found equity doesn’t increase over time
- The theory also fails to distinguish between successful and failed relationships
- The theory should be able to predict breakups
- Other factors seem to be more important (e.g. self-disclosure)
- Individual differences