Introduction
As we all know marriages and relationships can be very difficult to maintain, but has anyone ever wondered why? After two people stand before everyone important to them in the world and publicly declare that they love each other and intend to remain together for the rest of their lives, everything social psychology has learned about the stability of publicly declared opinions suggests that these will be the most stable opinions of all. Yet of course they aren’t. Despite the almost uniform happiness and optimism of newlyweds, most first marriages will end in divorce or permanent separation (Bramlett & Mosher, 2002), and the rate of dissolution for remarriages is even higher (Cherlin, 1992). In most cases, this represents a drastic and unwanted change in a highly valued belief, a change that is emotionally and financially costly to both members of the couple. Financial issues are one reason why people remain in unhappy and unhealthy relationships. Even in marriages that remain intact, newlyweds’ initially high levels of marital satisfaction tend to decline over time (VanLaningham, Johnson, & Amato, 2001). How can we account for this change? How is it that marital satisfaction declines so frequently, despite our best efforts to hold on to the positive feelings that motivate marriage in the first place? And what is it those couples that maintain their initial happiness are doing right?
According to Benjamin R. Karney, when couples in the early years of marriage
Patz opens the article with a personal anecdote and explanation of her interest behind this article, being a lecture given addressing high divorce rates and their roots, and her own experience with divorce. She directly discusses the emotions often felt early in a relationship and the euphoric nature of the marriage directly after the honeymoon. She specifically cites the indicator that the first two years of marriage directly correlate to the trajectory of the following marriage. Furthermore, she also later references specific examples from a long study on 56 different couples, in which couples that were in the ‘courting’ stage longer saw more successful results in creating a long and lasting marriage founded on love and respect. Her claim of the direct correlation between time and marital success is discussed frequently throughout the article, further underlining her message, and emphasizing ill-preparedness as a major factor in failing marriages.
The majority of people who join together with their significant other through the act of marriage hope and dream that marriage will surround them with infinite love and happiness; unfortunately that is not always the case. In fact, “according to data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2013 American Community Survey, 10 percent of Maine women and 11 percent of men in Maine are divorced.”1 Though 10 and 11 percent seem like fairly small percentages, 10 percent of Maine women is approximately 67,831 women, and 11 percent of Maine men is approximately 71,506 men, which truly are not small figures to take into consideration. Since marriages do not always have a happy ending
“Will Your Marriage Last?”, by Aviva Patz, is a cohesive article about marriage and divorce. Aviva Patz is the executive editor of Psychology Today. Patz narrates the story of Ted Huston, a professor at the University of Texas, who followed the lives of 168 couples for 13 years after their wedding date. She was then able to draw conclusions about what makes a couple stay together or end up filing divorce papers. Although marriages and divorce are the themes of this article, it is really about society’s pressure on young people to be perfect.
Drawing on examples from chapters 3, 4 and 8 of Investigating Psychology, examine and assess the extent to which psychological research is of value to society.
As stated in our text, various factors can bind married couples together, such as economic interdependencies, legal, social and moral constraints, relationship, and amongst other things. In the recent years some of these factors have diminished their strengths. The modern generation sees marriage in a different perspective altogether. Individuals today feel they are stable independently, they do not need to rely on their spouse for emotional or financial support. Many are career driven and soar to conquer their dreams over settling down with a family. Such untraditional views have increased divorce rates.
and in some cases enlist the help of a “confederate”, someone who appears to be a naïve part of
Psychodynamic Perspective- There is four major perspectives in psychology: Psychodynamic, Behaviorism, Humanistic, and Cognitive. Each theory represents a psychology approach to unlock the human mind. A psychology approach is known as a perspective; today there are many different approaches in psychology that contain specified beliefs about the mind and Human Behavior. Individually each perspective is different they have their strong points and weak points, however each perspective does represent important assumptions that were fundamentally researched with methods and questions that are used to answer inquiries in psychology regarding human behavior and the mental process.
This essay aims to explore and describe some of the key studies within Social Psychology and show why social psychology is still important within the science of psychology today. Social psychology was once described by Allport (as cited in Lindzey & Aronson, 1985, p.5) as, “the scientific study of how people’s thoughts, feelings and behaviours are influenced by the actual, imagined or implied presence of others”. One of the first psychologists to study social psychology was Kurt Lewin. Lewin is considered the “father of social psychology” by many as he took a stand against the dominant behaviourist approach during the 1920’s through his belief that interaction between the individual and their environment is key to affecting behaviour, rather than environment alone. His revolutionary ideas matured into the study of group dynamics, which is widely used by many organisations today (Collin, 2012).
Marriage requires effort and work. Many newlyweds come into a marriage thinking it is easy but do not consider the consequences of marriage that heavily rely on balances and partnership. Marriage is all about compromise. It is important to engage in a premarital program to allow both partners to learn what to expect within a marriage, how to face certain roadblocks, and to better communication when conflict is aroused so that divorce does not become an option. Gottman’s research (2009) has made a significant contribution to the study of relationship and marriage tying unity, harmony, and communication together to make relationship and marriage work. When a couple who does not have consummate love (intimacy, passion, and commitment), they often portray the six indicators of divorce: harsh startup, the Four Horsemen, flooding, body language, failed repair attempts and reflecting on bad memories (Gottman, 2009). Divorce often occurs within the first two years of marriages and almost half of divorces end within the first seven years (Bhutto-Ramirez, 2015).
The principles and theories of Social Psychology are important and useful in assessing behaviors in situations. These social psychological principles and their applications can be seen in fictional films which can also be attributed to everyday life. One such film that holds certain social psychological perspectives is Will Gluck’s 2010 production of Easy A. A film about high school student Olive Penderghast and how a sudden change in popularity and financial status, after an unintentional rumor about how she supposedly lost her virginity to a college guy spread through the entire her school. The film draws on the behavioral connections of pronounced hussy Olive Penderghast and her English class’s assigned reading of The Scarlet Letter.
In social psychology, social influence is a process where someone’s beliefs, thoughts and behaviour change by being exposed to beliefs, thoughts and opinions of others. It manifests in several forms, such as obedience, compliance and conformity. All these types of social influence have been studied by numerous researchers who investigated the reasons why people conform to social norms and obey to authorities, such as Milgram’s classic studies on obedience. His experiments support the popular idea of ‘banality of evil’ –Hannah Arendt (1963)’s famous phrase referring to the capability to accomplish dreadful things out of banal reasons–, revealing that people conform submissively and thoughtlessly to the orders that authorities deliver, no
What judgments do we make about others? Everyday we make judgments in our social interactions about why others act the way they do, which is known as
Modern, contemporary society’s mindset on marriage has shifted considerably over the years. Some research has noted the increase in early sexual experiences, greater acceptance of cohabitation and the increase in narcissistic tendencies, are complicating and muddying the ideals of what marriage means to people today. Research done on this subject resulted in several studies that found that spouses who did not believe that marriage would last forever, were less likely to commit to the relationship financially and were more likely to have extramarital affairs.
Social psychology, the study of how we think about, influence, and relate to another, can be used to explain many situations and phenomena that happen in the world. For instance, it can be used to explain why and how people react the way they do when they perform poorly in an act that they’re usually good at, also known as self-serving bias. It is blaming external factors when bad things happen, but contributing internal factors to the reason why good things happen.
The publishing site that you will use for publishing your blog (i.e., Wisepress, Weebly, etc.), including an explanation of why you chose this platform and how you will connect with an academic audience to facilitate the interaction within your blog