Another study by Gupta and Singh (1982) investigated the effect of type of marriage, the duration and gender on love and liking. The research also took place in India, where the emphasis, as seen in the study by Umadevi, is placed on the ties and responsibilities to family. They looked at 100 profession couples; 50 arranged marriages and 50 love marriages. Using Rubin’s Linkert 9 point scale they found that as time passes by, in ‘love’ marriages love and liking decreases whereas it the opposite was found in arranged marriages. This study therefore shows that the type of marriage, duration and gender does play an important role in love and liking in different cultures.
There some major problems with this study as it is subjective as love and liking may be different across cultures. Furthermore, the scale used for this was developed in the USA. It’s devised for American Individualists and therefore there is an element of cultural bias as measuring tools that have been developed in one culture cannot always be applied to relationships in another culture. Also, although they focused the study in collectivist cultures, they compared it to another type of marriage which allows us to see any differences.
The study supports the idea that relationships differ across cultures because it investigates different types of marriages. We know that the research from Moghaddam (1993) shows that in Collectivist cultures, marriages are seen as a union between cultures rather than individuals, whereas in individualistic cultures they are based on love. The findings from this study alongside to Umadevi’s also support this notion. However, the sample of participants contains different generations. This may have a direct impact on the results as different generations may have different concepts on love and liking. Therefore, the research could be reductionist because they haven’t explored the differences in age. This could affect the results because formation of relationships may have been different to how it was a few years back, for example internet dating in Collectivist cultures is becoming increasingly popular.
Moving onto research in Individualist cultures, Zaidi and Shuraydi (200) investigated the attitudes towards arranged marriages in a group of second generation Pakistani, Muslin women who were brought up in Canada. 20 women, aged between 16-30 were interviewed. The results showed women preferred Westernised marriage practices, in which there was a greater amount of partner choice.
However, there are some drawbacks as there is also an element of SDB in this study. As these women live in an Individualist culture they may feel they have to agree with the social norms of the country. Also it could also be prone to demand characteristics (DCs) as those who know a little about the nature of the research could potentially figure out the answers the researcher wants and will provide them with it. Moreover, the sample wasn’t representative as only 20 participants were used. Due to this the study lacks PV so the results may be unreliable and so can’t compare them with other studies.
An additional study was conducted by Moore and Leung where they tested if love was a Western concept. They compared Anglo-Australian (AA) students with Chinese-Australian (CA) students. They found that 61% of AA students were in romantic relationships compared to 38% of CA students. This suggests support for cultural differences as in Chinese culture; relationships outside marriage are frown upon. This may be why there is a significant difference of the percentages of both groups of students. However, both groups had a positive view of romance, which suggests that love and romance are important in all cultures. This further indicates that Collectivist cultures do feel love and romance but don’t act upon their feelings as they don’t want to be disrespected by family members due to their actions.
The sample is too small so it diminishes the support it provides as it lacks PV due to unrepresentative samples. However, there is physical evidence provided by Bartles and Zeki that shows love exists. They found this though the FMRI scans given to participants. A ‘functionally specialised system’ in an area of the brain was activated for people in love which indicates that people from all cultures should love. Although less Chinese students were in romantic relationships, it doesn’t necessarily mean it was due to their own personal attitudes. They may have simply been conforming to their culture’s beliefs and norms.
One last study looked at the variation in perception of romantic love in different cultures. Dion and Dion in 1993 asked university students from 11 countries: ‘If a man/women had all the qualities you desired, would you marry them even if you didn’t love them?’. 14% of men and 9% of women said yes. The research was primarily done in Individualistic cultures to show that love is considered essential when associated with marriage.
The research shows that the perception of love is culturally specific and is perceived and expressed differently. It’s a wide sample that was spread across different countries so it makes the results more significant and reliable. However, the study could be discredited when using it to show differences in relationships across cultures as they didn’t include Collectivist cultures. Due to this we don’t know if love is essential or not in all relationships.
From all these studies, we can conclude that there are differences in relationships across cultures. The contrasting research Dion and Dion’s study and Gupta and Singh demonstrated that relationships are culturally specific. It gathers that Collectivist focus on ‘we’ rather than ‘me’ whereas Individualists focus on ‘I’ rather than ‘we’.
All these studies have one thing in common: they are culturally biased. There is a tendency to assume that the way things are done in one’s own culture is normal. As it is difficult for a researcher to avoid their own cultural bias, research may be better carried out by those who belong to the specific area that is being studied. None of these psychologists belong to the area they have studied which increases the level of cultural bias in their findings.
However, there is contradictory evidence to all these studies. The study carried out by Moore and Leung supports the evolutionary approach (EA) as there were little cultural differences in terms of people’s attitudes to love and romance. In conjunction with this study, Bartles and Zeki’s study also supports the EA. It provides evidence that our brains have evolved to make us feel love and romance.
Additionally Janowiak and Fischer argued that love is still universal. They studied non Western tribal societies and found clear evidence of romantic love in 90% of the 166 cultures studies. This again supports the EA as despite of the fact that the reasons for marriage and exchanges within a relationship are different to those we find in Western culture, love is still present across all cultures.
If the EA is correct, then one would expect the need for romantic love to be universal and not culturally driven. However there are more studies providing evidence for clear differences of romantic relationships across cultures. We have seen this in the variation of opinions of arranged marriages in Individualistic and Collectivist cultures.
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