Interpersonal Relationships

Diana Dwyer

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781134644384
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: History & Theory in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

Interpersonal Relationships considers friendship and more intimate relationships including theories of why we need them, how they are formed, what we get out of them and the stages through which they go. Social and cultural variations are discussed as well as the effects of relationships on our well-being and happiness.
The book is tailor-made for the student new to higher-level study. With its helpful textbook features provided to assist in examination and learning techniques, it should interest all introductory psychology and sociology students, as well as those training for the caring services, such as nurses.

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Types of relationships

Introduction Research on interpersonal relationships Types of relationships

Introduction

Humans are essentially social beings. As countless novels, films, songs, plays and poems testify, our ultimate happiness and despair is founded in relationships. Satisfaction at work, at play and in family life depends largely on the quality of our friendships and loves. In a national survey, Campbell et al. (1976) found that most people consider it more important to have good friends and a happy family life than to have financial security. When Klinger (1977) posed the question ‘What is it that makes your life meaningful?’, almost all respondents mentioned being loved and wanted.

Research on interpersonal relationships

When studying interpersonal relationships, we are interested in trying to answer a great variety of questions. Why do we like some people and not others? What happens when we fall in love? What factors contribute to a successful marriage? What is a ‘successful’ marriage? How often do relatives keep in touch with each other? Can a relationship have an affect on your health? If so, how?

The list of questions is virtually endless, and this is one reason among many why no single method will suffice to provide all the answers. As with most aspects of social psychology, a variety of methods of research need to be employed when investigating interpersonal relationships, all of which have some advantages and some limitations. Answers will not come from a few studies; rather, our understanding of this area depends on the gradual accumulation of knowledge gleaned by many researchers looking at the same aspects of relationships in different ways. Let us now look at some of these methods.

Correlations

The method of correlation looks at whether there is an association between two variables. For example, we can measure the amount of attitude similarity between pairs of friends and the degree of satisfaction with the friendship (so, in this case, the variables are degree of attitude similarity and degree of relationship satisfaction). If we find that greater attitude similarity is associated with greater relationship satisfaction, there is a positive correlation between the two variables. This tells us that the more similar people are in their attitudes, the more satisfying they find the relationship. This is a useful piece of information in itself and can also be used as the basis for further investigations. However, correlational designs have a major disadvantage because they cannot tell us whether or not one variable causes another, and we are left with several unanswered questions about the reasons for the association. Do people choose friends because they have similar attitudes to themselves? This implies that attitude similarity causes friendship satisfaction. Alternatively, are people first attracted to someone and then, the more they like someone, the more they change their attitudes to match theirs? In this case, the implication is that friendship satisfaction causes attitude similarity. Yet another possibility is that people make friends with those from similar backgrounds because they are the people they meet in the course of their everyday lives, and people from similar backgrounds tend both to like each other and share similar attitudes. Unlike the first two possibilities, this one implies no direct cause and effect between the two variables but a third factor (similar background) that influences both of the other two.

Unfortunately, many people misinterpret the findings of correlational studies and jump to conclusions about cause and effect. Bear this in mind when you consider the research studies discussed in this text.

Experiments

The experimental method is the research tool that is ideally suited to establishing cause and effect. For example, we could ask people to complete a questionnaire about their own attitudes and then present them with various profiles of strangers and ask them to rate how positively they feel towards these people, based on the attitudes in the profile. The personal profiles can be varied by the experimenter on a scale ranging from very similar to very different attitudes from those of the participant. In this case, unlike the correlational design, we are manipulating one variable, called the independent variable (in this case, the extent of attitude similarity) while seeing what effect, if any, it has on the dependent variable (in this case, the degree of liking).

The major advantage of the experimental method is that it allows us to establish cause and effect. In our example we can see if attitude similarity causes liking. There are, however, many limitations to this design, especially with regard to research in interpersonal relationships. We cannot truly mimic how people relate to each other in real life. For example, everyday experiences of meeting someone new do not usually involve seeing a profile of them first and then consciously rating how we feel about them. Laboratory situations can never truly reflect the important factors in intimate relationships. For practical reasons we cannot, and for ethical reasons we should not, create love, jealousy and passion in the laboratory. With regard to interpersonal relationships, laboratory experiments are limited in that they can only really investigate fairly detached, emotionless interactions between strangers.

In essence then, correlational and experimental designs each have very different advantages and the two methods complement each other. Correlations allow us to look at real-life variables, such as love, sexual behaviour and commitment. This means that this method is likely to have ecological validity, that is, it can sample behaviour which exists in real life situations. However, it does not allow us to draw conclusions about cause and effect. The experimental design, in contrast, does allow us to establish causal factors but we can only study a very narrow range of behaviour associated with relationships, so this method is likely to lack ecological validity. This is precisely why we need to use more than one method.

Selection of participants

Another problem with which researchers in interpersonal relationships are faced is the selection of participants to take part in investigations. In an ideal world, we would look in detail at a large and representative sample of the population, drawn from all sorts of walks of life—people of all ages, from a wide variety of cultural and socioeconomic backgrounds. Unfortunately, obtaining such a sample is difficult and expensive. In addition to this, when investigating a very large number of people, it is difficult to obtain really detailed information from them. If, for example, a wide-scale survey were to be conducted, only a limited amount of information could be obtained from each participant. It is only feasible to obtain in-depth information from a relatively small number of participants.

As you will see as you read this book, a commonly used sampling method employed by researchers is to draw on those people who are readily available, such as students. Such an opportunity sample (or convenience sample) means that invariably the sample consists of a very narrow range of participants in terms of age, educational and socioeconomic status and cultural background. What we must bear in mind is that, in any psychological investigation, the results obtained only apply to people who have the same characteristics as the participants. Studies conducted on students cannot be generalised to the broader population.

The development of research in interpersonal relationships

It is reasonable to say that, until fairly recently, the research into interpersonal relationships was very restricted but it has changed considerably since these early, very limited beginnings. Duck (1995) has pointed out how inadequate and artificial were the early studies in this area which concentrated mainly on first impressions and the factors involved in what made one person attractive to another. The methods used were mainly laboratory studies in which samples of college students were asked for their almost immediate reactions to strangers, or responses to a bogus person who had completed an attitude questionnaire. In the latter case, absolutely no contact between real-life people ever took place. Alternatively, hapless students were paired in huge ‘blind date’ arrangements and information gleaned on how they rated their ‘date’ and whether they would choose to see them again (e.g. Walster et al., 1966). The limited information obtained was then used to formulate far-reaching theories about the basis of friendship or of relationship satisfaction. Duck (1995) complained that such research did not look at many of the run-of-the-mill interactions involved in everyday life, such as playfulness and joking, managing routines like cooking, cleaning and bathing the children, and the mutual understanding that derives from such ordinary interchange.

Nowadays, research into interpersonal relationships is far broader and presents a much more complex picture of human relationships. It includes not only the positive elements—the delights, laughter and joy of friendship, romance and family—but also the negative elements—the irritations and annoyances that we all recognise as part and parcel of relationships. It also tends to look at the course of real-life relationships over a considerable period of time and thereby investigates the factors that contribute to satisfaction, dissatisfaction and the means by which we deal with the changes in our feelings towards other people. Such research has a wide variety of practical applications and contributes greatly to our understanding of what makes us happy and what makes us profoundly miserable.

As with many areas of psychology, much of the research on relationships is limited to very few cultures. Moghaddam et al. (1993) point out that most research in this area has largely ignored those that are important in Eastern ‘collectivist’ societies and has been concerned almost exclusively with relationships that are important in Western, ‘individualistic’ cultures—those of initial attraction, friendship choices and mate selection. These relationships are those which are most important in the mobile, urban, Western world in which new acquaintances are made on an almost daily basis, the media flaunts sex and passion and the selection of a heterosexual partner is based on a belief in romantic love. The focus is very much on choice and on the buildup and breakdown of relationships which are regarded as temporary. In contrast, little attention has been paid to such relationships as kinship and community, the relatively permanent, compulsory relationships which are central to many Eastern, collectivist cultures in which group goals rather than personal goals are paramount. (These ideas are discussed in detail in Chapter 8.) Although some recent research, especially in Britain (e.g. Argyle and Henderson, 1986), has taken a cross-cultural approach and looked at both kinship and the norms and rules of relationships in a variety of cultures, the research has a long way to go before we can formulate any universal theories concerning all types of interpersonal and intergroup relationships.

Progress exercise

1 When researching interpersonal relationships, why are correlational methods likely to have greater ecological validity than experimental methods?

2 What is the main advantage of using experiments to investigate interpersonal relationships?

3 What are the problems associated with trying to obtain a representative sample of participants when researching interpersonal relationships?

4 What is the limitation of using an opportunity sample comprising university students?

Types of relationships

We experience a large number of relationships in our lives. For many of us, the first important ones will be those with our parents and other close relatives. As we grow up, other relationships become important: we make friends, we go to work, we have romantic liaisons—all of these everyday life events involve interpersonal interactions which greatly influence the quality of our lives. We will start by considering affiliation, our basic need to associate with others and then turn our attention to some...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Routledge Modular Psychology
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• 1 Types of relationships
• 2 Types of love
• 3 Factors determining relationship formation
• 4 Theories of interpersonal attraction
• 5 The maintenance and course of relationships
• 6 The dissolution of relationships
• 7 Components and effects of relationships
• 8 Individual, social and cultural variations in relationships
• 9 Study aids
• Glossary
• Bibliography
• Index