Relationships

Relationships

Getting relationships started
1. Contact
  1. contact is essential in order for attraction to take place
  2. Relashionships were generaly formed between people who lived near each other
    1. Bossard (1932) found that more than half of 5,000 couples who applied to get married in Philidelphia lived a few minutes walk of each other
    2. Festinger(1950) compared friendships formed my students in halls of recidence and found people were far more likley to be friends with thoes who lived on the same floor or corridor than thoes from the floor above
2. Physical apperance
  1. Physical appearance plays some role in attraction
  2. A combination of architectural factors (facial features, body size, shape) and dynamic factors (dress sense,talks and their facial expressions)
    1. Important that the two people have a similar level of attractivness
    2. Murstein (1972) was one of the first to note this effect he termed the match hypothesis.Murstein argued that whilst we might desire the most physically attractive partner , in reality we know that we are unlikely to get or keep them so we look for someone of a similar level of attractiveness.This makes us likely to suffer rejection.
      1. Murstein studied 99 couples who were dating and compared them with randomly paired couples.He found that the real couples were consistently rated as more alike in levels of attractiveness
      2. Sivlerman (1971) supported these findings by rating couples in bars.The matching concept can also be applied to friends.McKillip and Riedel(1993) found that friend were also fairly closley matched in levels of physical attractivness
3. Similarity of attitudes and social backgrounds
  1. Once two people have started talking to each other,interests, hobbies and attitudes become important
  2. Byrne proposed the law of attraction, although some feel that he over estimated the importance of shared attitudes,there is nodoubt that they play a role in attraction
  3. communication is easier when to people share attitued and interests are important so spending time together is easy and rewarding
  4. conversely differences in attitudes can lead us to dislike people (Singh and Ho 2000)
  5. a similar social back ground is also important in terms of education and socio-economic class is important
    1. Kendel(1978) found that teenage pairs of close friends were simmilar in many respects including ethinc background, religion and economic background of their parents
    2. Peplau(1976) also found similarity of race, class and religion in dating couples and in pairs of friends
4. the study of relation formation identifies many factors which could be involvedd.However it can imply that we have no free will over relashionships; that they are determined by these various factors are out or our controll.As we have a strong sense of free will wen it comes to relashionships, this is a critisicsm of such a deterministic approach
The formation of relationships
1. Filter Model Kerckhoff and Davis (1962)
  1. relationships develop through three filters, Kerckhoff and davis refered to the field of availables as possible people that we could have a relationship with, then we filter out theese potential partners for different reasons and this is gradually snarrowed down to a field of desirables ( potential partners)
    1. The first filter involves social/demographic variables.this filter exerts its influence often with out us being aware of it. there is a fairly small amount of people who are from similar educational,economical,social back ground from which potential partners are chosen. individual characteristics play a small role at this stage
      1. second filter is simmilarity of attitudes and values after they start going out is belifes and ideas are simmilar easy to communicate if this is different relationship will not progress
      2. third filter complementary of emotional needs in long term relationship how 2 people fit together and meet each others needs

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	Created by mawadakarar11 over 10 years ago