Psychology formation of relationships

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Psychology – formation of relationships

One theory is ‘The Matching Hypothesis’ which is a social psychological theory based on relationships, proposed by Goffman in 1952. It suggests that in order for a relationship to be a long and successful, both partners in the relationship must be equally matched in attractiveness. The reason for this is due to fear of rejection, therefore when searching for a life partner the main aim is to select someone who is similarly attractive.

 Walster et al (1966) carried out a study to test the Matching Hypothesis he did this by advertising a dance during  university fresher’s week in the United States. The total number participants were 752, 376 males and 376 females. When signing up for the dance, the judges rated the participants on physical attractiveness, and asked the participants to complete a questionnaire; the results were inserted into a computer database to pair the participants up for the dance.

However, the real purpose of the questionnaire was used later in the research to assess the similarity. By not informing the participants of the real purpose of the questionnaire this raises ethical issues such as deception and fully informed concent as the participants can not give fully formed consent to something if they are being decived and do not no the full extent of what is going on or what there questionnaire is being used for. The participants were paired randomly; however, it was made sure that the men were all taller than their female. The participants completed a second questionnaire during the dance about their partners. The results found that the more attractive the date they were more likely to liked by their date than less attractive dates.

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This study showed that physical attractiveness was the main characteristic in this experiment. However, this study may lack ecological validity because the interaction between the participants was very brief which may mean that any judgement would have been likely to have been of superficial characteristics. The short duration between meeting and rating their partner also reduced the chance of rejection.

Another theory is the social exchange theory. According to Homans (1961) in terms of relationships, he suggests that we consider the actual rewards and potential rewards in the future aswell as taking into account the costs before deciding whether ...

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