Close Relationships

Pamela Regan

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2011
• ISBN:
  9781136851605
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Interpersonal Relations in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

This multidisciplinary text introduces the concepts, methodologies, theories, and empirical findings of the field of interpersonal relationships. Information is drawn from psychology, communication, family studies, marriage and family therapy, social work, sociology, anthropology, the health sciences, and other disciplines. Numerous examples capture readers' attention by demonstrating how the material is relevant to their lives.

Active learning is encouraged throughout. Each chapter includes an outline to guide students, key terms and definitions to help identify critical concepts, and exploration exercises to promote active thinking. Many chapters include measurement instruments that students can take and score themselves. A website for instructors features a test bank with multiple-choice and essay questions and Power Points for each chapter.

This text distinguishes itself with:

• Its focus on family and friend relationships as well as romantic relationships.
• Its multidisciplinary perspective highlighting the contributions to the field from a wide array of disciplines.
• Its review of the relationship experiences of a variety of people (of different age groups and cultures; heterosexual and homosexual) and relationship types (dating, cohabiting, marriage, friendships, family relationships).
• Its focus on methodology and research design with an emphasis on how to interpret empirical findings and engage in the research process.
• Cutting-edge research on "cyber-flirting" and online relationship formation; the biochemical basis of love; communication and social support; bullying and peer aggression; obsession and relational stalking; sexual violence (and marital rape); and grief and bereavement.

The book opens by examining the fundamental principles of relationship science along with the research methods commonly used. The uniquely social nature of humans is then explored including the impact relationships have on health and well-being. Part 2 focuses on relationship development—from attraction to initiation to development and maintenance as well as the factors that guide mate choice and marriage. The development of relationships in both friendships and romantic partnerships is explored. Part 3 examines the processes that shape our interpersonal experiences, including cognitive (thinking) and affective (feeling) processes, communicative and supportive processes, and the dynamics of love and sex. The book concludes with relationship challenges—rejection and betrayal; aggression and violence; conflict and loss; and therapeutic interventions.

Intended as a text for courses in interpersonal/close relationships taught in psychology, communication, sociology, anthropology, human development, family studies, marriage and family therapy, and social work, practitioners interested in the latest research on personal relationships will also appreciate this engaging overview of the field.

PART I
Principles of Relationship Science

This section of the text presents the guiding principles of relationship science. Chapter 1 presents the basic “facts” and key concepts of relationship science. Chapter 2 examines the research methods (designs, data collection methods, research settings, ethical principles) commonly employed by relationship scientists. Chapter 3 explores the fundamentally social nature of human beings, including the myriad ways in which the human infant enters the world innately predisposed to form relationships and the significant impact that interpersonal relationships have on human health and well-being.

Chapter 1
Basic Facts and Key Concepts

CHAPTER OUTLINE

Fact #1: Relationship Scientists Study Relationships

Interaction: The Basic Ingredient of a Relationship

Two Additional Ingredients

Establishing Interdependence

Fact #2: Relationship Scientists Study Certain Types of Relationship

Lovers, Family, and Friends

Close Relationships

Subjectively Close (Intimate) Relationships

Behaviorally Close (Highly Interdependent) Relationships

Fact #3: Relationship Science Is Not Easy

Societal Taboos Against the Study of Relationships

Relationships are Complex

Relationship Phenomena are Multiply Determined

Relationship Science is Multidisciplinary

Fact #4: Relationship Science is Important

Summary

Key Concepts

Exploration Exercises

This chapter introduces some of the basic “facts” and key concepts of the field of relationship science. We begin by considering exactly what scientists mean when they refer to the concept of “relationship” and how they typically determine whether two people actually are involved in one. We also discuss the specific kinds of relationship that typically are investigated, and we examine the various factors that affect how partners interact with one another and the outcomes they experience. As you will see, relationship science represents one of the most challenging and uniquely rewarding fields of inquiry.

FACT #1: RELATIONSHIP SCIENTISTS STUDY RELATIONSHIPS

This may seem like a silly—perhaps even stupid—statement to make at the beginning of a textbook called Close Relationships. But the truth is that one of the biggest challenges faced by early scholars in the field was finding a common definition of the concept “relationship” that everyone could agree on. Without a common vocabulary—a shared understanding of basic concepts—it was virtually impossible for scientists interested in exploring relationship topics to effectively communicate with each other and to share their theoretical and empirical findings. This, in turn, made it difficult for the field to progress and develop a cumulative and coherent body of knowledge. By the late 1970s, in fact, things were so messy that scientist Robert Hinde described the study of interpersonal relationships as an endeavor “where the complexity of material makes it difficult to follow the same path twice, and where the conceptual jungle chokes the unwary” (1979, p. 6).

These sorts of messy conceptual issues are not solely the bane of scientists and academicians. Most of us, in fact, have probably faced a similar situation at some point in our lives, finding (to our surprise and even chagrin) that our understanding of what it means to have, or to be in, a relationship does not entirely match that of our partner. In fact, psychologist Ann Weber (1998) observed that one of the most difficult issues for scientists who study romantic breakups (her own area of research) is that some people deny that their relationships actually ended because, in their minds, “there was no relationship to break up” (p. 272). Similarly, people who engage in extrarelational sex or infidelity (a topic we will discuss in Chapter 12) often justify their behavior by claiming that they did not have an actual “relationship” with the other party. Public examples of this phenomenon abound. In 2001, for instance, one politician excused his extramarital affair by arguing, “In my opinion, we did not have a relationship. It would probably be her definition of a relationship versus mine” (Isikoff & Thomas, 2001). On hearing the politician’s denial, the woman involved replied, “OK, what do you call a relationship? It’s like I don’t understand what he defines as a relationship” (“Flight attendant angered by Condit’s definition of ‘relationship,’” August 28, 2001). Definitions of what constitutes a “relationship” clearly differ among people in everyday use, and so it is no wonder that scientists have had an equally difficult time coming to terms with this concept.

Interaction: The Basic Ingredient of a Relationship

Fortunately, due to the pioneering efforts of several early social and behavioral scientists— including psychologist Harold Kelley and his colleagues, whose influential book Close Relationships (Kelley et al., 1983) provided much of the initial vocabulary of relationship science—there is now substantial agreement in the field about just what constitutes a “relationship.” Specifically, most scholars believe that the basic ingredient of a relationship is interaction, which provides two people with an opportunity to establish mutual influence or interdependence (Berscheid & Reis, 1998). Thus, the concept of relationship refers to a state of interdependence that arises from ongoing interactions, and two people are “in a relationship” or “have a relationship” to the extent that they interact and mutually influence each other—how one partner behaves (i.e., acts, thinks, or feels) influences how the other partner behaves (i.e., acts, thinks, or feels), and vice versa. Essentially, when two people are in a relationship, there is a “ping-pong” of influence back and forth between them such that each partner’s behaviors at a given point in time influence the other partner’s behaviors at a later point in time (see Figure 1.1). Because this oscillating rhythm of mutual influence occurs over time, relationships are inherently dynamic and temporal in nature—they are composed of a series of events that occur between partners over time (Reis, Collins, & Berscheid, 2000). It can sometimes be difficult to distinguish between an “interaction” and a “relationship,” but in general, an interaction episode involves an isolated exchange (or set of exchanges) that occurs within a limited span of

Fig. 1.1 An interaction between two individuals, P and O. As can be seen, not only are the affect (feeling), cognition (thinking), and action events within each person’s chain of events causally connected, but the two chains are causally interdependent (shown by arrows connecting p and o events). In other words, the behaviors of one partner influence the behaviors of the other. This pattern of mutual influence constitutes evidence of their relationship.

Source: Kelley, H. H., Berscheid, E., Christensen, A., Harvey, J. H., Huston, T. L., Levinger, G., McClintock, E., Peplau, L. A., & Peterson, D. R. (2002). Analyzing close relationships. In H. H. Kelley, E. Berscheid, A. Christensen, J. H. Harvey, T. L. Huston, G. Levinger, E. McClintock, L. A. Peplau, & D. R. Peterson (Eds.), Close relationships (pp. 20–67). Clinton Corners, NY: Percheron Press. (Original work published 1983.) Copyright © 2002 by Percheron Press. Figure 2.1 adapted with permission of Eliot Werner Publications, Inc.

time, whereas a relationship involves repeated interactions over a longer duration of time (see Hinde, 1979, 1997; Homans, 1979).

Interaction is a necessary condition for a relationship to exist. This means that if two people seldom interact they do not have much of a relationship, and if there is no interaction whatsoever then there is no relationship—regardless of what they themselves might say or wish to believe. Consider the case of John Hinckley Jr., the man who attempted to assassinate President Ronald Reagan in 1981 in order to impress the actress Jodie Foster. Hinckley firmly believed that he and Foster were involved in a romantic relationship, asserting that “I am with Jodie spiritually every day and every night … We are a historical couple … I am Napoleon and she is Josephine. I am Romeo and she is Juliet” (Taylor, 1982). Although Hinckley had attempted to contact Foster on multiple occasions, she had never met him and insisted that there was no relationship. A similar scenario involving actress Halle Berry occurred more recently. In court documents filed in 2004, Berry revealed that Greg Broussard, a man who had repeatedly threatened her and against whom she later obtained a restraining order, had “imagined a relationship wherein he and I are engaged to be married” but that she did not know him and no such relationship existed (Hall, 2004). Relationship scientists would side with Foster and Berry. With no history of sustained interaction, with no established pattern of mutual influence or interdependence, neither Hinckley nor Broussard had a relationship with the objects of their misguided affection—the association existed only in the delusional fantasies of those two lone individuals. It is certainly not unusual for people to fantasize about having intimate connections with celebrities or fictional characters in television, movies, and literature (see Derrick, Gabriel, & Tippin, 2008). Most, however, do not mistake their one-sided fantasies for the reality of an actual relationship.

Two Additional Ingredients

All relationships involve interactions and, as we have discussed, interactions are a necessary condition for the existence of a relationship. However, interactions are not a sufficient condition— interaction alone does not constitute a relationship. Two other conditions must be met before scientists would be comfortable concluding that two people are in a “relationship.”

The first condition is that the interactions must be unique in some way to the two people involved; that is, their interaction pattern must be different from the interaction patterns each has with other individuals and different from the interaction patterns of other sets of partners. In particular, their interactions cannot be role-based. In role-based interactions, each person’s behavior is influenced not by the partner’s behavior but by social norms and prescriptions that govern the behavior of all people who assume that particular role (Hinde, 1979). Many of our interactions are role-based. For example, the interaction between a patient and a physician, a customer and a cashier, a citizen and a police officer, or a student and a teacher is largely dictated by their respective roles—and their behavior tends to be the same regardless of who the two individuals are, when and where the interaction occurs, or what their transaction involves (i.e., what ailments are being described and treated, what items are being purchased, what material is being taught and learned). Whether the patient is you, me, or someone else; the physician is Rebecca, Andrew, or Jane; and the reason for the visit is the flu, allergies, or a broken toe, the interaction follows much the same course because the behaviors of both individuals are primarily determined by their group membership and occupancy of particular social positions (in this instance, doctor and patient). Interactions between two people who are fo...