Relationships

Sexual selection.

Cross-cultural support for sex differences due to anisogamy & universality. Buss surveyed over 10,000 adults in 33 different countries about partner preference. Found females valued resources & males fertility. 

Support from lonely hearts research. Women tended to offer physical attractiveness and indicators of youth, and sought resources and men offered resources and sought youth and physical attractiveness.

Cultural beta bias/ outdated. Women's role in the workplace has greatly changed & so they are now less resource orientated (Bereczkei). Limited explanation.

Self Disclosure

Much of supporting research is correlational.  We can’t assume the relationship is a causal one so only limited support for the theory.

Real life applications. 57% of gay men and women reported that open and honest self disclosure was a maintenance strategy. Couples used to ‘small talk’ can be encouraged to increase self disclosure and deepen their own relationships. 

Culture bias. People in individualist cultures e.g. US self disclose more significantly than people in collectivist cultures like China. This is a weakness as it suggests the theory is not generalisable to all cultures.

Attractiveness 3 neg

Individual differences – Towhey found those who scored highly on sexism scale were more likely to be affected by physical attractiveness

Contradicted by online dating research. – daters sought partners more attractive than themselves.

Gender – beta-bias - Meltzer found men rate long-term relationships more satisfying if physically attractive whereas it didn’t have a significant impact on women's ratings

Filter theory 3 neg 1 pos

Lacks temporal validity. Dating world has changed, increasingly online, and so social demography has taken on less importance, e.g. the likelihood of dating somebody outside of our culture has increased. Theory now has low validity.

Causality - Anderson (2003) found in a longitudinal study that cohabitating partners became more similar in their emotional responses over time, a phenomenon they called emotional convergence.

Good face validity- states that key factors in a relationship change over time. This is a strength as it agrees with most people’s experience of romantic relationships.

Social Exchange Theory 1pos 2 neg

A strength is that the theory has real life application. Unsuccessful marriages report a lack of positive behaviour exchanges with their partner.

A further limitation is that the theory deals with concepts that are hard to quantify. Rewards and costs are difficult to define and are subjectively judged

•Fails to distinguish between 2 types. Explains exchange relationships i.e. work not communal i.e. romantic. = Theory is based on fault assumption.

Equity theory 3 limitation

A limitation is that it does not apply to all cultures. A psychologist found that US students prefer equity but European students prefer equality

A further limitation is that there are individual differences. Some are happy to contribute more than what they get and others

A final limitation is that equity theory may not apply to all relationships. Clark and Mills suggest a need to distinguish between types of relationships eg romantic ones and business ones

Rusbults Investment Model 2 pos 1 neg

A strength of the model is that it can explain abusive relationships

A further strength is that its supporting evidence is based on self-report techniques. - relationships ARE subjective

A limitation of the model is that it is deterministic. It suggests that people have no choice but to stay in a relationship if there are significant investments

Ducks phase model 1 pos 2 neg

A strength of the theory is that it has practical application as it helps people to reverse the process of breakdown

A limitation of the model is that it is incomplete - doesnt explain the leadup to breakdown

A limitation of the model is that much of the research is based on individualist cultures. Relationships in collectivist cultures are harder to end due to a wider family involvement

Virtual relationships 2pos 1 neg

A strength of this theory is that there is research support for absence of gating. - people express themselves more freely online

 Low temporal validity - as emojis developing are much more expressive than the 90s

A strength of this theory is its supporting research. Whitty and Johnson (2009) found supporting evidence for both hyper honest and hyper dishonest online disclosure

Parasocial relationships. 2 neg 1 pos

A limitation of the absorption addiction model is that it lacks explanatory power.  It describes characteristics but does not explain why the different forms develop.

•A strength is that there is an absence of culture bias. Similar levels of parasocial relationships are seen in both individualist and collectivist cultures, increasing its validity. - study with harry potter

A limitation is that methodological issues limit the validity of the research. - uses self report techniques to collect supporting data