Critically consider the extent to which relationships have been shown to be different in Western and non-Western cultures

Levine’s study supported by a study by Dion and Dion (1988). They questioned college students from 11 countries. They were asked, “If a man or a woman had all the qualities you desired, would you marry them, even if you weren’t in love?” Those from individualistic societies indicated that love was more important. This suggests that those from individualistic societies see love as more important in a marriage than those from collectivist societies. However, this research lacks validity because of the sample group. It was only undertaken on college students, therefore the results are not representative of all ages cannot be generalised to older people. If the experiment had been undertaken on older people, the results may have been different because they have different views on relationships and love – for example, they may see love in the long term whereas younger people see it in the short term. Also, the question may have led to experimenter bias and therefore the participants may have lied and so the results are not reliable. It is also an artificial question, as if a person did have all the qualities you desired, the chances of you not being in love with them are small; therefore it lacks external validity.

Yelsma and Athappily (1988) researched into the difference in happiness of the couples in either arranged or love marriages. They compared Indian arranged marriages with Indian and North American love marriages and they found no difference in the amount of happiness. However, this was only based on two cultures, India and North America, and therefore cannot be generalised to the rest of the population. This study is weakened by Shaver, Wu and Swartz (1991) who found that most Chinese people associated romantic love with sorrow, pain and unfulfilled affection. The Western view of marriage was that it should be based on love. This is probably due to the fact that Chinese marriages are mainly arranged and so they don’t get to pick their partners and be with the person who they want to be with. This study can be criticised because it was only based on one collectivist society, and not all collectivist societies act the same. For example, not all collectivist societies have arranged marriages so other countries may a happier view of love. Therefore the results cannot be generalised to countries outside of China.

A general criticism of all of the studies mentioned is that they use biased sample groups, for example, only students. Sears (1986) found that students react differently to other sections of the population when participating in psychological research, so the results cannot be generalised to the whole population. There is also an observer bias of how the experimenter interprets data. This is because it is based on the experimenter’s own culture, for example in Britain female circumcision is seen as wrong but in other parts of the world it is seen as necessary. Finally, psychological tools used to measure people such as IQ tests and questionnaires about relationships are designed for one culture, and therefore the same questions and tests may not apply to other cultures or they may have different meanings.