To What Extent Can Close Relationships Be Considered a Personal, Private Matter or Should Social Psychologists Engage with Aspects of Society in Order to Provide an Adequate Understanding? Make Use of One of the

To what extent can close relationships be considered a personal, private matter or should social psychologists engage with aspects of society in order to provide an adequate understanding? Make use of one of the interrogative themes in your discussion.

This essay will use the model of the diversity of family relationships to demonstrate the processes that social psychologists employ to study the complex intricacies from the social psychoanalytical and social cognitive perspectives of close relationships in sibling relationships and couples. It will acknowledge the conflicted psyche in dynamic relation with the external world in the social psychoanalytical perspective and the individual as an “information processor” within their social world from a cognitive social perspective, and discuss whether this is as a result of individual choice and agency indicating autonomy, or the societal pressures experienced and structures or forces of society that influence human behaviours. After reading the research papers, my inclination is to agree with Steve Duck suggestion (1999, cited in Sclater, 2007) that when considering close relationships it is necessary to take account of a multiplicity of factors in order to be able to make an evaluation. Close relationships are both formed by the individual as well as the social world around them and each is interwoven in their creation.

The ability to form and maintain close personal relationships is a fundamental part of human existence. From the moment we are born, our family generally become the most important influence on our future emotional and physical development into adults. The people we come into contact with during our developmental years, our friends, teachers, relatives and other social contacts will all contribute to sculpt the mature adults we will eventually become. The close relationships that we have throughout our lives can be complex however, and don’t always fit in with the normative views of society in general. The ideology of a “traditional”, normative heterosexual family no longer exists as such, with a change from the nucleus family – for example, the decline in marriage, increase in cohabitation and children born outside of marriage, the increase in divorce and trend of extended (blended) families and society’s gradual acceptance of gay and lesbian relationships/marriages/parenting. With such diversity in human relationships, it is therefore difficult for psychologists to generalise on what constitutes a family and aspects of relationships also the patterns and processes involved or to predict patterns of behaviour, but studies are still carried out to find out what makes people attracted to each other, why they fall in love, what causes people to stay together in a relationship and the type of problems that cause conflicts in relationships and whether this is brought about by the individual involved or through involvement of the social world that shape behaviours. The tensions of defining “family” emphasise the importance of the divergent courses of social psychology towards sociological social psychology (SSP) to study societal processes and people as part of the culture and structures they live within and psychological social psychology (PSP) highlights the important role of the family especially in child development and early socialisation.

People 's behaviours cannot exist in a vacuum and must be considered as positioned within the wider social, cultural, economic and political group that affects them and this will have different outcomes on relationships. For example, if a member of a social group starts a new close relationship be it personal or romantic, it will in turn be likely to affect their behaviour towards the group, and cause a ripple effect. The person will devote some of their time to the new relationship, their social system will also be a factor, and thus all the cogs of the machine will be potentially behaving differently as a result of the change.

It is interesting to consider how much agency we exert during developing years and how much we are governed by the rigid structures put in place by society and the expectations of our individual cultures. At school, we choose friends usually from within our classmates (propiquinity effect, Bersheid and Reis, 1998, cited in Day Sclater, 2007) but society, in the form of our teacher/school dictates which class we will be in, so interest lies in how much of this choice of friendship is agency and how much is dictated by the structure of our society.

Society’s structures influence personal choices, as demonstrated in Edward and Lucey’s (2006, cited in Lucey, 2007) research on five Bangladeshi sisters living in the UK. Azra, the eldest sister is held up as an example to her younger sisters of how they should live their lives, to achieve respect and approval from within their culture. The themes of individual-society and agency-structure dualism are both demonstrated as although the girls focussed on all have agency to make certain choices in their lives, they are very much guided by the structural forces and rules within their society and the strict Muslim cultural regime. Habiba, the second oldest sister describes how she doesn’t want to let Azra down by achieving bad exam results and feels pressured into studying hard to obtain success. The unconscious internalised processes of introjection (taking in) and projection (putting out) of Azra’s purity, kindness, goodness and good sense onto the younger sisters as a measure for their behaviour and achievement (‘internal policeman’) at the risk of her disapproval or disappointment in their failure is shown as especially important, and results in splitting, separating the good from bad, desirable attributes from undesirable ones. Individual-Society dualism knowledge reflects from the nature of the individual i.e. Azra, within her social setting and reflects the interaction between biological and social factors.

Sabina, the next eldest sister describes her reputation as ‘a family’, rather than describing herself as an individual. She considers the family as a whole to be her personal identity. These descriptions of teenage Asian girls are examples of situated knowledge as an interrogative theme, as cultures such as theirs have a very close knit community and live under close scrutiny of each other and so the need for approval would be greater. (Heinnink 1999, cited in Lucey, 2007) found that Asian teenage girls are more influenced by cultural traditions than British white girls and other young girls of this age. The girls’ choices are limited by both their unconscious selves and social forces, although they play and active role in their identity formation as individuals and as family and community members. There is a dynamic conflictual unconscious that assumes the existence of defences such as splitting, projection and projection identification to cope with anxieties and to productively resolve the active conflict experienced. A strong family bond is described between the Muslim family and the societal structures that enforce certain expectations of their culture. Mitchell (2003, cited in Lucey, 2007) argued the internalisation of siblings as ego-ideals, using the Asian girls, especially their unconscious projective identification with Azra as support for this, with her embodying all that is good.

Similarly, Esther’s relationship with her father, observed by Turp (2004, cited in Hollway, 2007) demonstrates the intersubjective social space between people and the social meanings available to them from a social psychoanalytic perspective. When Esther bumps her head and becomes upset, her father picks her up to calm her, asking her what happened and when Esther is able to show him by knocking her head again in the same place and then rubbing it to demonstrate the event to him, she turns a bad experience for her into the introjection of good internal objects as her father praises her cleverness at being able to show him exactly what had upset her at only eight months of age. Her parents’ response to her actions produces good internal objects for her, enabling her to build upon these developmentally. This would have the effect of increasing her internal self worth – her pleasure is generated from her father’s pleasure in her behaviours.

Steve Duck’s research (1999, cited in Day Sclater, 2007) demonstrates from a social cognitive perspective different studies in different populations to map processes and patterns of attraction, love, conflict and stability, quantifying and manipulating variables to generalise principles of each process or pattern, although he is keen to express that although some general principles in relationships operate, which are revealed through systematic research, controlled experiments and laboratory based studies, these can limit understanding on relationships when considered part of the real world experience and it may be better to study in a more realistic setting.

Long term relationship research on heterosexuals has been extended to include data on gay and lesbian relationships, although Duck acknowledges that much of the research focuses on young couples, excluding the trend for older individuals to remarry creating blended families, and he admits that the results may have been different had the older subjects been included, as factors such as courtship length are different from younger couples.

Duck’s research suggests that society considers relationships that endure to be a “success” and those that do not to be a “failure”, as seen with the celebration of lengthy relationships with ceremonious silver wedding parties and re-enactment of vows. Similarly, courtships that extend beyond the expected time frame of the particular societal group ‘norm’ are looked upon with scepticism of the relationship ever proceeding to the next level of commitment. Other research has indicated the success of a close relationship depends on fairly predictable global factors such as demographics, similarities in race, age, religion, economic background and intelligence. The alternative idea of S-V-R theory (stimulus-value-role) proposed by Murstein (1971, cited in Duck, 1999, cited in Day Sclater, 2007) agrees on the primary influence of stimulus features such as looks, background, etc, but subsequent matching of values and attitudes continues the success of the relationship and finally role behaviour determines whether the couple are suitably matched to enable the continuation of the relationship as a working unit.

Individuals look to the society that surrounds them for approval and acceptance of their relationship and in the case of gay, lesbian or bisexual relationships, often feel pressured to conceal their relationship through fear of upsetting or perhaps disappointing others. The forceful effect of societal structures and conventions over individual independent agency here is clear, free will or choice is suppressed. Similarly, young unmarried heterosexual couples in a sexual relationship may feel they would meet with disapproval from their social network of friends or parents if they sleep together when visiting parents or friends, again, society dictates expected behaviour from individuals.

Some researchers (Zeifman and Hazan, 1997; Ainsworth et al., 1978, cited in Duck 1999, cited in Day Sclater, 2007) suggest that childhood attachment theories also extend to adult relationships and that secure attachment (confident), avoidant attachment (lack of acceptance of others) and anxious/ambivalent attachment (dependency/insecurity) styles can also be seen in adult styles of loving. It could be argued that all of these attachment “labels” are as a result of the interaction of the individual with society.

Duck (1999, cited in Day Sclater, 2007) acknowledges that placing populations in different socio-cultural, political, geographical and economic contexts causes various effects on relationships. The individual processes the information available from the social world to interpret meaning, both from language and unspoken communication as in body language, which is in turn influenced by the unconscious.

This essay commenced with the discussion of Edwards and Lucey’s research (2006, cited in Lucey, 2007) on the Bangladeshi sisters and the social psychoanalytic approach to their close sibling relationship, emphasising the dynamic and inseparable nature of the individual to their surrounding social world and analysis of unconscious and conscious processes, defence mechanisms against the anxieties caused and the fact that it is interpreted qualitatively. It went on to discuss Turp’s social psychoanalytic observations (2004, cited in Hollway, 2007) of baby Esther and how her father’s pleasurable responses were internalised by her as a good base on which she can build developmentally. Finally, Duck’s (1999, cited in Day Sclater, 2007) cognitive social approach of the individual as an information processor, taking meaning from both spoken and unspoken communication, which also acknowledges the need to use situated knowledge (i.e. geographical, socio-cultural, etc.) in the exploration of social relationships using both real life as well as laboratory based experimentation, and concludes that many factors need to be taken into account to fully understand close relationships.

2005 words

References:
Day Sclater, S. (2007) ‘Close Relationships’ in D. Langdridge and S. Taylor, ‘Critical Readings in Social Psychology’, Milton Keynes, Open University Press.

Hollway, W. (2007) ‘Self´ in W. Hollway, H. Lucey and A. Phoenix (eds.) Social Psychology Matters, Milton Keynes, Open University Press.

Lucey, H. (2007) ‘Families’ in W. Hollway, H. Lucey and A. Phoenix (eds.) Social Psychology Matters, Milton Keynes, Open University Press.

References: Day Sclater, S. (2007) ‘Close Relationships’ in D. Langdridge and S. Taylor, ‘Critical Readings in Social Psychology’, Milton Keynes, Open University Press. Hollway, W. (2007) ‘Self´ in W. Hollway, H. Lucey and A. Phoenix (eds.) Social Psychology Matters, Milton Keynes, Open University Press. Lucey, H. (2007) ‘Families’ in W. Hollway, H. Lucey and A. Phoenix (eds.) Social Psychology Matters, Milton Keynes, Open University Press.