CULTURAL INFLUENCES - created from Mind Map

Seite 1

VOLUNTARY/NON-VOLUNTARY

WESTERN: urban, easy geographical/social mobility. Interact with many people daily so high degree of choice.

NON-WESTERN: fewer urban centers, less mobility, less choice about who they interact with, rare interactions with strangers, frequently tied to family & economic resources.

divorce rates are low & in most cases spouses report to have fallen in love with each other. Others found no differences in marital satisfaction between marriages in the US & India.

divorce rates may be lower than in western cultures simply because they have more mobility, so they can easily find another compatible partner, this may not be so easy in less urbanised cultures

increase in urbanisation may have caused the sharp increase in divorce rates in India, despite it being a collectivist culture. Most being divorced are from India's thriving middle class, could suggest that their aspirations & attitudes to relationships are very different from those of their parents.

Decline in arranged marriages in China. Study found that women who had married for love felt better about their marriage, regardless of duration, than women who experienced arranged marriages.

INDIVIDUAL/GROUP

WESTERN: rights, freedom, pleasure of individuals are important. Individualist culture.

NON-WESTERN: group is of primary concern. Collectivist culture. Formation of relationships may have more to do with concerns of family/group. Encouraged to be interdependent.

relationships based on love are expected to produce more compatible matches, but parents may judge compatibility in the long-term better while young people can be blinded by love & not notice personal incompatibility that will be apparent in the future.

Opposing study has found freedom of mate choice appeared to promote marital stability rather than instability.

contrary to the assumption that those in arranged marriages are unhappy with choice of partner and have no influence in the process, research has found that families often use similar criteria to what individuals themselves would use if they had free choice.

research often involves bias on the part of the researchers as they can see arranged marriages as inferior to free choice.

IMPORTANCE OF LOVE

Levine: asked whether they would marry someone with all the desired characteristics but whom they didn't love. US respondents were reluctant to marry in the absence of love but figures in collectivist cultures were higher, so higher proportion of people in these cultures were prepared to marry in the absence of love. Suggests extended family is of greater importance & love is a comparative luxury.

Contrary to this stereotypical view, a study found that positive attitudes to romantic love were endorsed by both western & non-western born individuals.

Love may be seen as universal among humans as an adaptation to enhance survival. Research has shown that romantic love is not exclusive to Western cultures. One study searched for evidence of love in non-western tribal societies and found evidence in 90% of 166 tribes studied. This disagrees with the theory's predictions of where love would be found.

LONELINESS

promoting strong desire for romantic relationships will influence feelings of romantic loneliness in young people not involved in one. More likely to occur in Western cultures.

Study found US students reported significantly higher levels of loneliness than did Koreans. Suggests that a strong emphasis on importance of romantic relationships in Western cultures may amplify individuals' feelings of loneliness.

IDA: Cultural bias in representations of the perfect relationship in US romantic comedies. Presents culturally biased view of romance to teens in the UK. Can have adverse effects on satisfaction with their own relationships.

When describing beliefs/expectations, fans of films such as 'My Best Friend's Wedding' were more likely to have views reflecting the themes of those films.

relationship research may be culturally bias in the measures of 'love' and 'satisfaction' that it uses that have been developed in Western cultures which would't apply to other cultures.This can invalidate any conclusion from a cross-cultural study

should develop more indigenous psychologies i.e. explanations/methods designed for one specific culture, to study aspects of relationships seen as important/meaningful within a specific culture rather than imposing aspects from our own culture.

CULTURAL INFLUENCES