Non western cultures such as the Chinese value their heritage and ancestry and suspicious of change. American culture emphasises change is seen as important and inevitable. This is consistent with the types of marriages in these cultures. E.g. China values continuity and a therefore permanent relationship s which is reflected in their divorce rate of less than 4%. The US favours change and discontinuity and therefore temporary relationship which is reflected in their divorce rate of 40-50%.
Attitudes towards romantic love differ between cultures. Levinet et al 1999 asked the question: “if a man/woman had all the qualities you desired, would you marry this person even if you were not in love with them?” He found around 50% of young people in Pakistan said ‘yes’ and around 3.5% in the USA and 7.3% in the UK said ‘yes’.
In western cultures, people are increasingly saying it is important to love someone before marrying them. Goodwin 1999 found that Asian students were more logical and less romantic that black and white US students. Hong Kong Chinese students were found to be more logical and less romantic than British students. This research shows that the more collectivist a culture is, the more likely it is to marry without love.
Monogamy is the dominant style of marriage is the dominant style of marriage in the west. In non western cultures this may not be the case due to the economic pressure. E.g. in Tibet where there are harsh living conditions and women may marry two or more brother (polyandry) this results in more resources and all parents have a genetic link with the children. Sometimes one man can have several wives (polygamy) in conditions where resources are plentiful and its beneficial for women to share a husband and childcare duties.
To evaluate, evidence suggests that arranges marriages work well which reflects there low divorce rate and spouses often report they have fallen in love. Gupta and Singh found that those who married for love reported diminished feeling after five years whereas arranged marriages reported more love. ‘Arranged’ relationships may be more common in the west than we may think e.g. dating agencies and through friends.
Many non western cultures are changing by becoming less collectivist and more individualistic. E.g. the Israeli Kibbutz families have changes from their extended family set up to one couple, their children and possibly one parent.
Research suggests that recently non western cultures are becoming more non permanent in their relationships. Past divorce rates have been low e.g. 2 per 100 women in 1960 to 12 per 1000 in 1988. This however may be due to increased urbanisation.
Our ideas about romantic love are the result of socialisation in a western culture where there are strong media influences e.g. songs and films. This is seen as “Hollywood Style love” and is absent from many non western cultures.
Although monogamy is the norm in the west and polygamy in the non west, there are still examples of non monogamy in western culture e.g. extra marital affairs and bigamy.
Cross cultural research is useful for making comparisons between cultures and gaining insight into relationships of different cultures. It is important to remember that many western cultures such as Britain have many sub cultures with non western backgrounds and will have relationships based on these factors. Cross cultural research is also useful for finding out human behaviours that may be universal. However we must be careful not to generalise research collected from small samples as this may not be representative.
