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I N T E R P E R S O N A L R E L AT I O N S H I P S
Mo nda y, Jan uary 9, 20 17
WHAT IS A RELATIONSHIP?
Relationship factors
1. Frequency of
contact
2. Duration of contact
3. Diversity of
interactions
4. Direction of
influence (uni- vs.
Universal
Powerful
Affect our health and physiology
Example: fMRI study women were scanned and strapped to an electric shocker (a small zap
randomly administered)
Longevity of relationships
o Divorce rates seem to be increasing in recent years
Why do relationships change?
o We fall madly in love, but this feeling does not always last. Why?
N e ed f o r A ffi l iat io n
Vari ab le s a nd Re l at io ns hips
Variables: characteristics or conditions that change or have different values for different individuals
o Examples: weather, health status, gender, and age
Construct: an abstract idea (e.g. love, satisfaction) cannot physically measure directly
o How do we study love: operationalize the construct of love (operational definition)
Hypothesis:
o A statement that describes or explains a relationship between variables: best guess
o A hypothesis can lead to several different observable and measurable predictions
o Independent variable: what the researcher has full control over
o Dependent variable: gets manipulated, and is the result of the independent variable (the data that you
collect)
Examples
Dile mm a
St e ps
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
Coronary bypass surgery patients preferred the company of those who had survived the surgery and not the
company of those who were about to undergo the surgery: ratio 4 to 1
Seems that spending time with someone who survived such an ordeal helps us cope with the uncertainty
Too much of one will push people to seek the other, and vice versa
Motivates us to seek out deeper relationships that are not driven by fear and uncertainty
People high on need for intimacy:
1. Put more emphasis on depth of few relationships compared to people high on need for affinity (having
a lot of friends)
2. Are more trusting and confiding in relationships
3. Happier with their jobs and more satisfied with their marriages than those low on this need (McAdams
and Vaillant, 1982)
Shows a need to seek out positive relationships, and not just because of negative stimuli in the environment
(need for affiliation)
1 ) Sup po rt f o r Be lo ng ing ne ss
2 ) So cio lo g y ex p lan at io n
George Homans (1961) proposed that we form relationships based on 4 principles
1. People with equal status are more likely to interact
2. Over time, people interact with others who are similar to them
3. More interactions = more liking
4. More interaction and more liking = more likely to become a friendship
Till recently, an intimate relationship was defined as one between a heterosexual male and female, often in the
context of a marriage
Marriage: prior to industrial revolution, most families were a man and woman with 10-15 kids
o Industrial revolution: movement from farms to cities (division of labour between male being the
breadwinner and mother being the parental figure in the home)
M arr iag e s t o d ay
More inclusive: gay rights movements in many countries have resulted in marriages being legalized for gay
men and women
People get married much later in life
Most families are dual-income
Increases in divorce have resulted in more stepfamilies
Sing le s
Since 1970, roughly 28% of people were divorcees, widowers, or were single
By 2002, roughly 40% of people were considered single (stats from US)
M od e rn re l at io ns hips
Scie nt i fi c Me t hod
Q: How does one study something intangible? (e.g. love, being in love, jealousy, happiness, satisfaction, etc.)
o Compare with tangible things like weight, height, etc.
Intangible concepts are defined as constructs (i.e. humans have constructed these abstract ideas)
Ex e rcis e
N o o ne me t hod f o r s t ud yi ng re l at io ns hips
Scie nt i fi c Me t hod
Example: we may choose to study how often divorce is depicted in popular media
Researcher must decide
o Sampling strategy and which medium is being sampled
e.g. go to libraries, look in certain set of years, look for mentions of divorce
o What kind of coding will be used
o Establish inter-rater reliability
o Analyze the data
e.g., review old TV shows and take a frequency count of divorces in the shows
CONS:
o Little control over objectivity and accuracy of the data
o Data may be incomplete or missing
o Difficult to determine causality
N at ur alis t ic o bs e rv at io n
Advantage: participants are unaware of the researcher and thus behave naturally
o Good external validity
Problem: very little control of the environment or the variables, which reduces confidence in findings
L ab ob s e rvat io ns
PROS:
o Naturalness is persevered (if unaware that theyre being recorded)
o Control of environment
CONS:
o Causality cannot be established easily (cannot say that what was observed is a result of the
manipulation)
Psychological findings indicate that subjects are not very good at understanding their own behaviours
Confounds
o E.g. weather has been shown to affect responses to questionnaires
o When its sunny, people tend to focus on positive experiences; vice versa with gloomy weather
o Schwartz and Clore: found that the difference in relationship satisfaction differed by 15% between the
2 weather conditions, with the sunny weather producing more satisfaction!
Wording of questions
Leading questions: what do you think of the crap that Trump has been saying vs. what do you think of the
great things that Trump has been saying
Halo Effect: answers to the first few questions can colour your responses to
Research designs
subsequent questions
Cross-sectional
Challenging task
Longitudinal
Interpretation of the Data
For the most part, the relationship between variables is studied through
correlations
Experiments
Control
Random
assignment
Comparison
Qs: who were the participants? Were they religious folk or typical
party animals? What were the conditions in the experiment?
Dat a co lle ct io n
1.
Speed-dating: controlled but realistic environments (increase external validity of experimental approach)
Online data collection tools: SurveyMonkey, Mechanical Turk (Amazon) database of potential participants
worldwide, labs websites host experiments
Meta-analysis: Essentially, review of current findings from many scientific articles
o Cohens d effect size will tell you if something is significant or not (may be important for research
paper)
o http://rpsychologist.com/d3/cohend/