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Introduction to Qualities of Romantic Relationships in Adolescence and Adulthood Adulthood Karina Weichold Department of Developmental Psychology Psychology,, University of Jena Jena, Germany E-mail:
[email protected] and Bonnie L. Barber School of Psychology Psychology,, Murdoch University Perth, Western Western Australia, Australia E-mail:
[email protected] Romantic relationships offer opportunities for some of the most joyful and fulfilling moments in life, as well as some of the most miserable. Research is growing on both of these aspects of partnerships, and their roles in development. What is perhaps more neglected is the consideration of the role of culture in the study of how romantic relationships facilitate or hinder healthy development. This issue of the newsletter brings together scholars from all corners of the globe in our search to understand diverse qualities of romantic relationships in adolescence and adulthood, and how those are linked to development. We lead off with a North American feature focused on the developmental contributions of romantic relationships to key psychosocial tasks in adolescence. The second feature highlights some of the darker sides of romantic relationships for young adults in India. The third article underscores the challenges and opportunities in romantic relationships for sexual minority youth. The final feature considers the spousal experiences and meaning of marriage in Africa. Our two commentaries, from distinguished scholars in Israel and Germany, expand on these themes, and suggest important new considerations for future research. All of the authors highlight the centrality of romantic bonds to our social experiences, offering insights into the growing breadth of research on developmentally crucial features of relationships. Offering fresh approaches to research in this area are two “Reports from the Lab.” Articles in this section report on scholars’ everyday working conditions or collaborations within a research setting that may be unusual or challenging. In this case, we have one paper from a research group in Finland investigating spousal relationships. The data were collected using a diary method via mobile phones to capture daily family dynamics. A second report focuses on the initiation of romantic relationships and the establishment of committed relationships in American young adults. Data here were collected through online assessments. Both papers introduce modern ways of collecting prospective longitudinal data in the field of exploring romantic relationships and they summarize advantages and difficulties experienced by applying such modes of data collection.
The contributors to the Special Section features, commentary, and lab stories include scholars who are international leaders in research focused on romantic relation onsships. We are grate tefful for the con onttributions of these scholars who have reminded us of the diversity of experiences in romantic partnerships.
Adolescent Romantic Relationships: Beginning Beg innings, s, Endin Endings, gs, and Psych Psychosoci osocial al Challenges Jennifer Connolly and Caroline McIsaac Department of Psychology, York University, Toronto, Canada E-mail:
[email protected] Romantic relationships first develop in the adolescent years and their emergence forever changes the nature of young people’s interpersonal and intrapersonal functioning. Relationships with a romantic partner are fundamentally different from any other relationship that an adolescent may have had up to that point because of their potential to meet sexual needs as well as social and personal ones. These relationships have also been posited to make important contributions to the development of intimacy, sexual identity and autonomy throughout adolescence. Yet it has only been in recent years that these relationships have been recognized by developmental psychologists (Collins, 2003) as “dating” was previously viewed as an activity not
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worthy of serious theoretical or empirical concern. This state of affairs has changed dramatically in the last decade or so and there is now a substantial body of theory and research on adolescent romantic relationships and their developmental significance. Our interest in the study of romantic relationships grew out of a research agenda focused on adolescents’ peer relationships. Studying adolescents’ peer networks and their interactions with friends showed that there were important relationships which were not being fully accounted for. In particular, there were significant relationships with other-sex peers, some of whom were boyfriends or girlfriends, embedded in their social networks which were not being modeled (Connolly & Johnson, 1996). These initial findings inspired a compelling curiosity to better understand these relationships and created a research agenda broadly focused on their development. Together with my graduate students, we have been pursuing three central research themes over the past decade. These topics can be summarized in the following way: 1) understanding how and why adolescents’ romantic relationships begin and end; 2) examining intimacy and autonomy in romantic relationships, and finally; 3) exploring the developmental and contextual predictors of precocious entry into romantic relationships. We have approached this research from a developmental-contextual perspective in which we understand romantic relationships as unfolding within a broader social context made of up peers, family and ecological systems. Within this approach we are cognizant that romantic relationships are themselves a context for the navigation of salient developmental tasks (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999). In this article, we summarize some of our findings, focusing on how they advance our understanding of adolescents’ romantic relationships and also noting areas for future study. Firs Fi rst, t, it is im impo port rtan antt to si situ tuat atee ou ourr re rese sear arch ch ge geog ogra raph ph-ically and methodologically. Our research is largely conducted in the “field” that is, in middle schools and high hi gh sc scho hool olss in th thee so sout uthh-ce cent ntra rall reg egio ion n of Ca Cana nada da.. Th This is is a ty typ pic ical allly Nort rth h Am Ameeri riccan co con nte text xt,, cl clo ose serr in valu luees and an d st strruct ctu ures to Ame merric icaa th thaan to Eur uro ope or oth theer part rtss of the world. Canada, and especially Toronto, is very diverse culturally and a wide range of ethno-cultural grou gr oups ps ar aree re repr pres esen ente ted d in ou ourr sa samp mple les. s. Th This is di dive vers rsit ity y ha hass alllow al oweed us to explo lorre fac aceets of rom omaanti ticc rela lati tio onsh shiips acro ac ross ss cu cult ltur ural al li line nes, s, wh whic ich h we be beli liev evee is cr crit itic ical al to un unde derrstand sta ndin ing g ro roman mantic tic re rela latio tions nshi hips ps an and d th thee con contri tribu butin ting g ro role le of co cont ntex extt in th thei eirr de deve velo lopm pmen ent. t. Tur urni ning ng to ou ourr me meth thod ods, s, we typically use self-report surveys completed by stude stu dent ntss in sch school ool.. Con Consci scious ous of th thee li limit mitati ation onss ass associ ociate ated d with these samples of convenience, we have devised numer num erous ous st strat rateg egie iess to max maximi imize ze st stude udent nts’ s’ pa parti rticip cipati ation on in our research, and our samples typically include upwa up warrds of 70 pe perrce cent nt of th thee el elig igib ible le st stud uden ents ts (M (McI cIsa saac ac,, McKe Mc Kenn nney ey,, & Co Conn nnol olly ly,, 20 2007 07). ). Ou Ourr re rese sear arch ch is mo most st of ofte ten n coll co llec ecte ted d lo long ngit itud udin inal ally ly ov over er pe peri riod odss ra rang ngin ing g fr from om on onee year ye ar to ov over er ei eigh ghtt ye year ars. s. In ad addi diti tion on,, we ha have ve us used ed ob obse serrvational methods to study the internal dynamics of adol ad oles esce cent nts’ s’ re rela lati tion onsh ship ipss wi with th th thei eirr ro roma mant ntic ic pa part rtne ners rs,, espe es peci cial ally ly in th thee st stud udy y of co confl nflic ictt an and d ne nego goti tiat atio ion. n. As wi with th ourr sc ou scho hool ol-b -bas ased ed re rese sear arch ch,, ou ourr ob obse serv rvat atio iona nall st stud udie iess ar aree alsso col al olllect cteed “i “in n si sittu” u”,, th thrrou oug gh visi sitts to ad ado olesc sceents ts’’ home ho mess. These mul ulttip iplle meth tho ods all llo ow us to gai ain n a mo morre
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nuanced nuance d un unde derst rstan andi ding ng of you youth th re rela latio tions nshi hips ps in di dive vers rsee settings.
Beginnings of Romantic Relationships One of our primary concerns has been to understand how and when romantic relationships begin. This undertaking is more complex than it might appear at first glance as there is considerable fluidity in the boundaries that define adolescents’ romantic relationships. At any one point in time, roughly half of adolescents report that they are currently in a romantic relationship. But it would be incorrect to assume that the other half of adolescents have no romantic involvements. Findings from our lab suggest that they are most likely involved in romantic activities that are part of a continuum leading from mixed-gender involvements to actual romantic relationships (Connolly, Craig, Goldberg, & Pepler, 2004). In a study of 1284 adolescents in grades 5 through 8, we tabulated the kinds of romantic involvements students reported over the course of a school year. Our results document three types of romantic activities: mixed-gender affiliations, dating in groups, and dyadic romantic relationships. We also found that these romantic activities were sequentially organized in stages that led adolescents progressively away from associating only with same-gender friends to having a boyfriend or girlfriend. Dating in groups appeared to be a key activity along this progression because it bridged lower and higher levels of romantic involvement, functioning as the activity that most often preceded the formation of a romantic couple as well as the most frequent romantic activity following the termination of a relationship. We We also found that dating in groups was more commonly reported than dyadic relationships, consistent with the emergent and fluid nature of romantic relationships in adolescence. The importance of group dating was also highlighted in a study of 180 high school students whom we followed from grade 9 to 11 (Connolly, Furman, & Konarski, 2000). We found that their mixed-gender peer groups comprised the most proximal social context for forming romantic relationships. This continuity can be attributed to their shared base in meeting affiliative needs. As such, within the North American context in which adolescent peer connections are encouraged, group dating is the point of intersection for romantic interests and the world of peers.
Endings of Romantic Relationships While developmentally important and phenomenologically salient, romantic relationships tend to be shortlived, often lasting less than six months to a year (Connolly & Johnson, 1996). It is almost inevitable then that most young people will experience a romantic break-up at some point during their adolescence (Shulman & Kipnis, 2001). Despite being a normative aspect of romantic experience, very little is known about these dissolutions or why they occur. In our lab we have embarked on some initial investigations of romantic dissolutions, focusing on mapping these experiences and their normative functions. In two studies of young people ranging in age from 11 to 25 (total N = 1357) we have obtained information on their
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Table 1. Romantic Relationship Dissolution Experiences Across Adolescence and Emerging Adulthood
Age range Experience with dissolutions
11–13 14–16 17–19 20–25
Had a break-up No Yes
54% 46%
30% 70%
23% 77%
6% 94%
Number of break-ups 1–2 3–5 >5
65% 17% 18%
71% 21% 8%
56% 28% 16%
38% 33% 23%
Break-up in past 12 months Yes No
78% 22%
72% 28%
66% 34%
48% 52%
Break-up initiator Self Mutual Partner
40% 44% 16%
41% 40% 19%
42% 38% 20%
45% 35% 20%
Note. For 11–13 n = 533,14–16 n = 409, 17–19 n = 223,20–25 n = 192.
relationship turnovers over the course of a year, (Connolly & McIsaac, 2003; 2004). These results, shown in Table 1, support the view that relationship terminations are common throughout adolescence. Moreover, the number of youths who have had a termination increases steadily with age, as well as the total number of terminations that they have had. Also varying with age is the likelihood of having had a recent breakup, with younger adolescents being more likely to report a breakup in the last 12 months, compared to late adolescents and emerging adults. This is most probably due to the increased capacity for older youths to sustain more enduring relationships which are less vulnerable to rapid dissolution. Constant across age, adolescents told us that their relationships more often ended because of their own or shared dissatisfaction rather than being rejected by their partner. Although the retrospective nature of our data do not allow us to draw firm conclusions about what actually transpired at the time of the break-up, our findings nonetheless suggest that adolescents continue to think about their failed relationships. Studying their dissolution accounts, even after the event, may provide a window into the psychosocial needs which were not met in that relationship. From a developmental perspective, the unmet needs that lead to break-ups may be very similar to the social needs which motivate adolescent involvement in relationships in the first place. One direction that we are pursuing in our research is to employ prospective data to explore whether these needs can be framed in terms of adolescents’ struggles with key psychosocial tasks.
Romantic Relationships and Psychosocial Tasks Based on our research, as well as that of others, it is our view that romantic relationships in adolescence provide an
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important opportunity for learning about how to connect with a significant other while simultaneously maintaining some degree of autonomy in their thoughts, behaviors and self-perceptions (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999). Several theorists (Blatt & Blass, 1996; Shulman & Knafo, 1997) have conceptualized the balance between connectedness and individuality as a life span challenge of close relationships and we have found this view helpful in conceptualizing adolescent romantic relationships. In our view, the ways in which connectedness and autonomy are expressed in a romantic relationship emerges progressively, as adolescents gain experience with romantic partnerships and also as their relationships deepen emotionally. Initially, romantic relationships are motivated by a need for connectedness which is cumulatively expressed through passionate attraction, affiliative bonding, and emotional intimacy (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999). These interwoven forms of connecting with a partner are apparent in adolescents’ concepts of the motivational appeal of romantic relationships. In a study of 1755 young adolescents, perceptions of the unique features of romantic relationships were evaluated with an open-ended response format. Using content analysis to code their responses, we found a clustering of connectedness functions which included affiliation, sexuality and emotional intimacy. Affiliation was the most commonly reported connectedness feature, a finding which supports our work on the importance of companionship and shared activities in romantic development for adolescents. A multi-level understanding of connectedness was evident, despite the young age of the participants and their relative lack of experience with a romantic partner. Consistent with this, intimacy functions continued to be fundamental to romantic relationships throughout adolescence. At the same time there is increasing capacity to actualize these forms of intimacy with age. Older adolescents, by virtue of their expanding experiences with romance, are able to sustain longer-term relationships within which intimacy can flourish (Connolly & Johnson, 1996; SeiffgeKrenke, 2003). In contrast, we know less about the expression of autonomy with a romantic partner. This may be due to the traditional empirical focus on the parent-child relationship as the central context for the resolution of autonomy tasks and the difficulty of generalizing these findings to the romantic domain (Collins, Laursen, Mortensen, Leubker, & Ferreria, 1997). Further complicating matters, autonomy issues are not always apparent in adolescents’ romantic relationships because the need to differentiate the self from the partner only arises when high levels of intimacy threaten personal boundaries. These issues typically come to the forefront in the latter stages of romantic development when age and experience combine to lead to more committed relationships. Consistent with this developmental view, our study of the romantic concepts of young adolescents did not reveal any recognition of the potential autonomy components of romantic relationships (Connolly, Craig, Goldberg, & Pepler, 1999). Similarly, in a study of 230 mid- and late adolescents, we found that comfort with independent decision-making was associated with intimacy only in longer-term romantic relationships (Taradash, Connolly, Pepler, Craig, & Costa, 2001). Girls in this study, in contrast to the boys, showed more ease with asserting their own ideas and decisions in their romantic
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relationships, a finding that echoes girls’ more advanced fluency in dyadic relationships. We have continued to look at how boys and girls negotiate autonomy in their relationships with each other in an observational study of conflict management in romantic couples at age 16 (McIsaac, Connolly, McKenney, Pepler, & Craig, manuscript under review). Conflict is an interpersonal situation which demands self-expression and so is ideally suited to the study of autonomy processes. In analyzing the dynamics between boyfriends and girlfriends, we found that couples who managed conflict successfully showed both a capacity for the respectful self-expressions of their differences and an acceptance of the independence of their partners. The reciprocity was largely dependent on the girl’s actions in the relationship as her facility with conflict negotiation set the tone for the autonomous expression of both herself and her partner. Of particular interest, we also found that girls who were restrictive in their management of conflict also influenced their boyfriends, but in a negative direction. A future direction of our research program is to better understand gendered styles of interaction and how they may lead to differential success in the balancing of autonomy with intimacy.
Early Timing of Romantic Relationships Our studies of romantic development reveal typical patterns of romantic activities and romantic relationships across early, middle and late adolescence. Yet viewed through a different lens, these findings can reveal patterns of romantic activity that are atypical. We have been especially interested in early entry into romantic relationships because precocity in the heterosexual domain is a risk factor for depression, school problems, and externalizing behaviors (Bingham & Crockett, 1996; Neeman, Hubbard, & Masten, 1995). In our longitudinal study of young adolescents, we found that having a boyfriend or girlfriend before the age of 13 was linked to specific peer and family dynamics (Friedlander, Connolly, Pepler, & Craig, in press). In particular we found that atypical romantic patterns were associated with involvement in peer groups with high levels of dating and delinquent activities, as well as low supervision in the family. We have also studied how early adolescent romantic trajectories may be influ enced by problematic peer behaviors. During the middle-school years, peer harassment expands to opposite-sex targets (McMaster, Connolly, Pepler, & Craig, 2002) and this may create non-optimal conditions for emerging romantic relationships. Our study of middle-school youth found that early adolescents who bullied their peers were more likely than non-bullies to report high levels of conflict and physical aggression with their partner (Connolly, Pepler, Craig, & Taradash, 2000). At first glance these studies of young adolescents may lead to the conclusion that romantic involvement at this age is harmful. We caution against this interpretation and suggest that when studying potential risks, one must be attentive to the level of involvement and the type of activity. In fact, our staging studies show that casual affiliative attractions are highly normative for early adolescents and other researchers have shown that these activities are linked to positive perceptions of the self (Darling, Dowdy, Van Horn, & Caldwell, 1999).
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Conclusions Our research on the stages, tasks and timing of romantic relationships paints a holistic picture of these interactions, highlighting their developmental underpinnings as well as their responsiveness to contextual variation. Disconfirming earlier views that romantic relationships are unknowable and unimportant, our research suggests that they unfold systematically and serve multiple psychosocial functions. This view reinforces the notion that romantic relationships are a critical social context for preparing youth for successful relationships in later life.
References Bingham, C.R., & Crockett, L.J. (1996). Longitudinal adjustment patterns of boys and girls experiencing early, middle, and late sexual intercourse. Developmental Psychology, 32, 647–658. Blatt, S.J., & Blass, R.B. (1996). Relatedness and selfdefinition: A dialectic model of personality development. In G. Noam & K. Fischer (Eds.), Development and vulnerability in close relationships (pp. 309–338). NJ: Erlbaum. Collins, W.A. (2003). More than myth: The developmental significance of romantic relationships during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 13, 1–24. Collins, W.A., Laursen, B., Mortensen, N., Luebker, C., & Ferreria, M. (1997). Conflict processes and transitions in parent and peer relationships: Implications for autonomy and regulation. Journal of Adolescent Research, 12, 178–198. Connolly, J., Craig, W., Goldberg, A., & Pepler, D. (1999). Conceptions of cross-sex friendships and romantic relationships in early adolescence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 28, 481–493. Connolly, J., Craig, W., Goldberg, A., & Pepler, D. (2004). Mixed-gender groups, dating and romantic relationships in early adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 14, 185–207. Connolly, J., Furman, W., & Konarski, R. (2000). The role of peers in the emergence of heterosexual romantic relationships in adolescence. Child Development, 71, 1395–1408. Connolly, J., & Goldberg, A. (1999). Romantic relationships in adolescence: The role of friends and peers in their emergence and development. In W. Furman, B. Brown, & C. Feiring (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 266–290). NY: Cambridge University Press. Connolly, J., & Johnson, A. (1996). Adolescents’ romantic relationships and the structure and quality of their close interpersonal ties. Personal Relationships, 3, 185–195. Connolly, J., & McIsaac, C. (2003). Developmental-contextual analysis of adolescents’ attributions for romantic relationship dissolution. In J. Connolly & W. Furman (Chairs), Understanding romantic relationship break-ups in adolescence. Paper symposium presented at the biennial meeting for the Society for Research in Child Development, Tampa, FL. Connolly, J., & McIsaac, C. (2004). Romantic dissolutions in adolescence: Negative affect, attributions, and romantic confidence. In J. Connolly & C. Feiring (Chairs), Positive
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and negative processes within romantic relationships . Poster symposium presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Baltimore, MD. Connolly, J., Pepler, D., Craig, W., & Taradash, A. (2000). Dating experiences of bullies in early adolescence. Child Maltreatment, 5, 299–310. Darling, N., Dowdy, B.B., Van Horn, M.L., & Caldwell, L.L. (1999). Mixed-sex settings and the perception of competence. Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 28, 461–481. Friedlander, L., Connolly, J., Pepler, D., & Craig, W. (in press). Biological, familial, and peer influences on dating in early adolescence. Archives of Sexual Behavior. McIsaac, C., Connolly, J., McKenney, K.S., Pepler, D., & Craig, W. (manuscript under review). Conflict negotiation and autonomy processes in adolescent romantic relationships: An observational study of interdependency in boyfriend and girlfriend effects. Journal of Adolescence. McIsaac, C., McKenney, K.S., & Connolly, J. (2007). “To Participate or Not Participate?”: Adolescents’ Response to Strategies Targeting Increased Participation . Poster presented at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Child Development, Boston, MA. McMaster, L., Connolly, J.A., Pepler, D., & Craig, W. (2002). Peer to peer sexual harassment in early adolescence. Development and Psychopathology, 10, 25–56. Neemann, J., Hubbard, J., & Masten, A.S. (1995). The changing importance of romantic relationship involvement to competence from late childhood to late adolescence. Development and Psychopathology, 7, 727–750. Seiffge-Krenke, I. (2003). Testing theories of romantic development from adolescence to young adulthood: Evidence of a developmental sequence. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 27, 519–531. Shulman, S., & Kipnis, O. (2001). Adolescent romantic relationships: A look from the future. Journal of Adolescence, 24, 337–351. Shulman, S., & Knafo, D. (1997). Balancing closeness and individuality in adolescent close relationships. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 21, 687–702. Taradash, A., Connolly, J., Pepler, D., Craig, W., & Costa, M. (2001). The interpersonal context of romantic autonomy in adolescence. Journal of Adolescence, 24, 365–377.
Romantic Relational Aggression and Psychosocial Adjustment among Adolescents Sunil Saini Department of Applied Psychology, Guru Jambheshwar University of Science and Technology, Hisar, Haryana, India E-mail:
[email protected] The early adolescent years are a critical transitional period because it is during this time that boys and girls progress from same-sex to other-sex relationships, including involvement with romantic partners (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999). Romantic relationships are an integral feature of adolescent development. These relationships
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typically begin around 14 to 15 years of age, initially as an extension of involvement in mixed gender peer groups (Feiring, 1996). The romantic relationship is associated with both positive mental health such as the provision of social support, the enhancement of self-esteem, preparation for adult relationships, and the development of intimacy (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999) and negative mental health such as feelings of depression, especially among adolescent girls (Davila, Steinberg, Kachadourian, Cobb, & Fincham, 2004). Not much literature is available on how romantic relational aggression and victimization affects psychosocial functioning in adolescence. Linder, Crick, and Collins (2002) found that college students who reported using relational aggression within their romantic relationships were less trusting of their current or most recent partner, and more frustrated, jealous, and clingy in their romantic relationships. Bagner, Storch, and Preston (2007) also found similar results indicating that romantic relational aggression was related to poor psychosocial functioning.
Aggression in Romantic Relationships Aggression in romantic relationship can be broadly defined across a range of behaviours, including physical assault, kidnapping, acid throwing, rape and even murder. However, it is also important to consider the less physical, but still hurtful, relational aggression in romantic relationships. Examples include flirting with others to make a romantic partner jealous, threatening to break up with a partner if the partner will not comply, or giving a partner the silent treatment when angry. Media has highlighted many such cases in the capital of India and other metro cities. Although research has been conducted on romantic relational aggression in Western cultures, little research has examined romantic relational problems in India. Therefore, the present research is focused on romantic relational aggression and psychosocial functioning among Indian youths. Relational aggression in romantic relationships is of great concern due to its negative individual and societal impact. It has been found that adolescents who date, particularly those who experience stress in their romantic relationships, report higher levels of depressive symptoms than their non-dating peers (Davila et al., 2004). Specifically with regard to romantic relational aggression, evidence suggests that men and women experience romantic relational aggression at similar rates and that romantic relational aggression predicts a negative perception of relationship quality and depression (Bagner et al, 2007; Linder et al., 2002; Morales & Cullerton-Sen, 2000). In view of such findings, it is especially critical t o identify relational aggression in romantic relationships and associated personal and social risks. There is a strong relation between romantic relational aggression and relational victimization. Some of the roots of these issues may manifest in earlier peer relationships. Relational aggression toward peers and being the target of relational aggression in the peer group are associated with loneliness, depression, and peer rejection (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). Friendships of relationally aggressive children have higher levels of exclusivity and jealousy than the friendships of non-relationally aggressive children (Crick & Grotpeter, 1995). Further, relationally victimized children
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report lower levels of friendship quality and satisfaction than non-relationally victimized children (Grotpeter, Geiger, Nukulkij, & Crick, 2001). Such early links of relational aggression to relationship quality highlight the need for the study of relational aggression in romantic relationships, particularly as it may be linked to the psychosocial adjustment areas of social anxiety, loneliness, depression, and alcohol use.
Romantic Relationships and Psychosocial Adjustment Social anxiety means the fear of being negatively evaluated by others. These evaluative concerns lead to unwanted anxious feelings, thoughts, and sensations in (real or anticipated) situations. To limit contact with these unwanted experiences, socially anxious people exert a great deal of effort to avoid and control anxiety and the situations that might induce it (Hayes, Wilson, Gifford, Follette, & Strosahl, 1996). Socially anxious people are more socially isolated, less likely to be married or in romantic relationships, and have unsatisfactory social relationships (Wittchen, Fuetsch, Sonntag, Muller, & Liebowitz, 2000). There is minimal work on romantic relational aggression and social anxiety. In a recent study, Bagner et al. (2007) found that romantic relational aggression was positively related with social anxiety in females. Loneliness is a state of emotional distress arising from a discrepancy between one’s desired and achieved level of social interaction (Peplau & Perlman, 1982). It is distressing particularly in romantic relationships. Previous research has asked participants whether or not they are lonely, calculated percentages, and computed correlations with personality or other demographic variables. Loneliness as a maladjustment within romantic relationships has been mostly overlooked in romantic relationship research literature. The present study examined loneliness as the consequence of aggression in romantic relationship in Indian youths. Studying sources of depression in romantic relationships is of much interest because depression is the most prevalent problem during adolescence (particularly for girls) and is associated with romantic dysfunction at later ages (Whisman, 2001). Symptoms of depression and social anxiety are common characteristics of adolescence (Birmaher et al., 1996; La Greca & Lopez, 1998) and may be risk factors for impairment in adulthood (Aalto-Setaelae,
Marttunen, Tuulio-Henriksson, Poikolainen, & Loennqvist, 2002). Symptoms of depression and social anxiety may also be precursors to more severe psychopathology, including major depressive disorder and social anxiety disorder, which are chronic disorders that often originate in adolescence and continue into adulthood (Birmaher et al., 1996). It is likely that relational aggression is related to levels of depression experiences within relationships. Studying the impact of romantic relationship aggression on psychosocial adjustment is very important because youths may be more vulnerable to negative outcomes due to their inexperience and lack of close supervision. Studies have shown that more than 25 % of adolescents are victims of dating aggression (Wolfe & Feiring, 2000) resulting in romantic break-ups which in turn, lead to drinking, suicidal ideation, attempts and completion (Brendt et al., 1993; Joyner & Udry, 2000; Monroe, Rhode, Seeley, & Lewinsohn, 1999). Peer pressure further facilitates the perpetration of aggressive acts in romantic relationships. Thus, by understanding the relationship between aggression in romantic relationships and adjustment difficulties, more effective interventions for these individuals can be implemented.
The Present Research The following three hypotheses guided this study: (i) there would be a significant gender difference in aggression in romantic relationship and experience of romantic relational victimization among youths (ii) romantic relational aggression would be significantly associated with romantic relational victimization (iii) romantic relational aggression and victimization would be positively correlated with social anxiety, loneliness, depression and alcohol use. Adolescents from the age group of 16–22 years from Guru Jambheswar University of Science and Technology, Hisar were surveyed. Romantic relational aggression was assessed by using scale developed by Morales, Ruh, and Werner (2002). Social anxiety was measure by using La Greca and Lopez (1998). Loneliness was measured by using Jha’s (1997) loneliness scale. Similarly, depression was measure by The Beck Depression Inventory Second Edition developed by Beck, Steer, and Brow (1996). Alcohol problems were assessed by seven items related with alcohol-related behaviors and consequences associated with alcohol use and dependence. Results are summarized in Table 1 and Table 2.
Table 1. Means and Standard Deviations of Romantic relational aggression, Romantic relational victimization and Social Anxiety, Loneliness, and Depression
Total sample (N = 183)
Male (N = 73)
Female (110)
Dependent variable
Mean
(SD)
Mean
(SD)
Mean
(SD)
Romantic Relational Aggression Romantic Relational Victimization Social Anxiety Loneliness Depression
10.50 9.24 75.37 95.48 12.70
(7.1) (7.2) (14.6) (14.7) (10.9)
12.8 11.8 76.95 91.39 15.67
(7.13) (6.68) (10.08) (14.7)0 (12.0)0
8.90 7.50 74.32 98.19 10.73
(6.6) (7.0) (16.8) (14.1) (9.0)
*p < .05; **p < .01.
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Gender
t 3.69** 4.11** 1.19** 3.13** 3.16**
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Table 2. Pearson product-moment correlations among Romantic Relational Aggression and Social Anxiety, Loneliness, and Depression (N = 183)
1. 2. 3. 4. 5.
Romantic Relational Aggression Romantic Relational victimization Social Anxiety Loneliness Depression
1
2
3
4
5
1.00** .79** .21** .25** .39**
1.00** .25** .16** .31**
1.00* .16* .08*
1.00** .24**
1.00
*p < .05; **p < .01 (2-tailed).
Findings reveal a significant gender difference in romantic relational aggression. This is inconsistent with past research (Bagner et al., 2007; Linder et al., 2002) that has not found gender differences in romantic relational aggression. The gender differences indicate that males report both more relational aggression and victimization. There are different possible explanations for this. First, males may have higher self-esteem, and larger egos than females, and are perhaps therefore more sensitive to provocation and loss of respect by others (Fischer, Rodreiguez, & Mosquera, 2001). Further, males get more angry when their partner does not pay attention to them. This might be due to cultural differences and developmental issues. For example, girls in the Indian socio-cultural context, are “supposed to” be quiet, calm and show more refined behavior in comparison to males (Saini & Trama, in press). Therefore, it is possible that socialization practices and modelling may inhibit the emergence of relational aggression among girls when compared to the western cultures studied in previous findings. My second hypothesis was to examine the association between romantic relational aggression and romantic relational victimization. There is a high relation between romantic relational aggression and victimization, suggesting that relationships characterized by these behaviours have some reciprocal aggression. However, it is also important to note that use of self-report may not accurately reflect levels of victimization. Males simply may be more likely than females to report being victims of aggression, including romantic relational aggression. Therefore, it is suggested to use other methods such as having both partners in the relationship report to confirm this result. The final aim of the study was to examine correlations between romantic relational aggression, victimization, and psychosocial functioning. The findings show that romantic relational aggression was significantly and positively related to social anxiety, loneliness and depressive symptoms. Individuals who reported using romantic relational aggression reported being more socially anxious, lonely and depressive. Results are consistent with previous findings on romantic relational aggression and depressive symptoms (Davila et al., 2004; Kashdan, Jeffrey, Volkmann, Breen, & Han, 2007). La Greca and Harrison (2005) also found that negative interactions with a best friend (e.g. conflict, exclusion) predicted adolescents’ depressive symptoms, even after controlling for other aspects of social functioning (rejection, victimization). Individuals who reported being victimized in romantic relationship were similarly more socially anxious, lonely,
and depressed. Results are consistent with previous findings (Graham, & Juvonen, 1998; Linder et al., 2002). Graham and Juvonen (1998) found that peer victimization in adolescents was associated with internal distress, including feelings of loneliness, social anxiety, and low self-worth. Both overt and relational victimization have been related to adolescents’ reports of depression, loneliness, and low selfesteem (Prinstein, Boergers, & Vernberg, 2001). Prospero (2007) in a study of mental health symptoms of partner violence also found significant relationships between partner violence victimization and anxiety, depression, hostility and somatization.
Conclusion In sum, the associations between romantic relational aggression, victimization and psychosocial functioning are consistent with previous findings, i.e. higher levels of romantic relational aggression and victimization are associated with maladjustment and poor psychosocial functioning. These relationships are independent of gender and play an important role in development of social anxiety, loneliness and depressive symptoms. No association was found between romantic relational aggression and alcohol use. Only ten boys and two girls reported alcohol use. It might be due to the participants’ socioeconomic background. Limitations of the study should also be noted. First, the participants were university students in India, limiting generalizability and therefore conclusions cannot be made about romantic relational aggression in other populations. Second, there was a big gender difference in the sample. Third, the present findings yielded evidence of concurrent associations between romantic relational aggression and victimization and depressive symptoms, but they are unable to allow us to infer which, if either, preceded the other. Fourth, students did not report any alcohol use. It might be that they have underreported these behaviors. Despite these limitations, the results of the present findings have several practical and clinical implications. Most importantly, the present findings have important implications in school/college/university setting where such relationships are very common and health care providers can be aware of risk factors involved with romantic relational aggression and victimization so that students at risk could be identified and necessary services could be provided. Additionally these findings demonstrate that knowing about an individual’s use of relational
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aggression against one’s romantic partner is also an indicator of victimization in the relationship and his/her psychosocial functioning.
References Aalto-Setaelae, T., Marttunen, M., Tuulio-Henriksson, A., Poikolainen, K., & Loennqvist, J. (2002). Depressive symptoms in adolescence as predictors of early adulthood depressive disorders and maladjustment. American Journal of Psychiatry, 159, 1235–1237. Bagner, D.M., Storch, E.A., & Preston, A.S. (2007). Romantic Relational Aggression: What about Gender? Journal of Family Violence, 22, 19–24. Beck, A.T., Steer, R.A., & Brown, G.K. (1996). Beck Depression Inventory manual (2nd ed.). San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corporation. Birmaher, B., Ryan, N.D., Douglas, E.W., Brent, D.A., Kaufman, J., Dahl, R.E., Perel, J., & Nelson, B. (1996). Childhood and adolescent depression: A review of the past 10 years. Part I. Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, 35, 1427–1439. Brendt, D.A., Perper, J.A., Moritz, G., Baugher, M., Roth, C., Balach, L. et al. (1993). Stressful life events, psychopathology, and adolescent suicide: A case control study. Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior, 23, 179–187. Carver, K., Joyner, K., & Udry, J.R. (2003). National estimates of adolescent romantic relationships. In P. Florsheim (Ed.), Adolescent romantic relationships and sexual behavior: Theory, research, and practical implications (pp. 291–329). New York: Cambridge University. Connolly, J., & Goldberg, A. (1999). Romantic relationships in adolescence: The role of friends and peers in their emergence and development. In W. Furman, B.B. Brown, & C. Feiring (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 266–290). New York: Cambridge Press. Crick, N.R., & Grotpeter, J.K. (1995). Relational aggression, gender, and social-psychological adjustment. Child Development, 66, 710–722. Davila, J., Steinberg, S.J., Kachadourian, L., Cobb, R., & Fincham, F. (2004). Romantic involvement and depressive symptoms in early and late adolescence: The role of preoccupied relational style. Personal Relationships, 11, 161–178. Fischer, A.H., Rodreiguez, & Mosquera, P.M. (2001). What concerns men? Women or other men. Psychology, Evolution and Gender, 3, 5–25. Graham, S., & Juvonen, J. (1998). Self-blame and peer victimization in middle school: An attributional analysis. Developmental Psychology, 34, 587–538. Grotpeter, J.K., Geiger, T.C., Nukulkij, P., & Crick, N.R. (2001). Friendships of relationally and physically victimized children: With friends like these, who needs enemies? Unpublished manuscript. Hayes, S.C., Wilson, K.G., Gifford, E.V., Follette, V.M., & Strosahl, K. (1996). Experiential avoidance and behavioral disorders: A functional dimensional approach to diagnosis and treatment. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 64, 1152–1168. Jha, P.K. (1997). Loneliness scale manual. Agra, India: National Psychological Cooperation. Joyner, K., & Udry, J.R. (2000). You don’t bring me anything
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but down: Adolescent romance and depression. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 41, 369–391. Kashdan, T.B., Volkmann, J.R., Breen, W.E., & Han, S. (2007). Social anxiety and romantic relationships: The costs and benefits of negative emotion expression are context-dependent. Journal of Anxiety disorder, 21, 475–492. La Greca, A.M., & Harrison, H.M. (2005). Adolescent peer relations, friendships, and romantic relationships: Do they predict social anxiety and depression? Journal of Clinical Child and Adolescent Psychology, 34, 49–61. La Greca, A.M., & Lopez, N. (1998). Social anxiety among adolescents: Linkages with peer relations and friendships. Journal of Abnormal Child Psychology, 26, 83–94. Linder, J.R., Crick, N.R., & Collins, W.A. (2002). Relational aggression and victimization in young adults’ romantic relationships: Associations with perceptions of parent, peer, and romantic relationship quality. Social Development, 11, 69–86. Magdol, L., Moffitt, T.E., Caspi, A., & Silva, P.A. (1998). Developmental antecedents of partner abuse: A prospective-longitudinal study. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 107, 375–389. Monroe, S.M., Rohde, P., Seeley, J.R., & Lewinsohn, P.M. (1999). Life events and depression in adolescence: Relationship loss as a prospective risk factor for first onset of major depressive disorder. Journal of Abnormal Psychology, 108, 606–614. Morales, J.R., & Cullerton-Sen, C. (2000, March). Relational and physical aggression and psychological adjustment in adolescent peer and romantic relationships. Poster presented at the Biennial Meetings of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Chicago, IL. Morales, J.R., Ruh, J., & Werner, N. (2002). Adult aggression/victimization measure. Unpublished manuscript. Peplau, L.A., & Perlman, D. (1982). Perspectives on loneliness. In L.A. Peplau & D. Perlman (Eds.), Loneliness. A sourcebook of current theory, research and therapy (pp. 1–18). New York: Wiley. Prinstein, M.J., Boergers, J., & Vernberg, E.M.(2001). Overt and relational aggression in athletes: Social-psychological adjustment of aggressors and victims. Journal of Clinical Child Psychology, 30, 479–491. Prospero, M. (2007). Mental health symptoms among male victims of partner violence. American Journal of Men’s Health, 1, 269–277. Saini, S., & Trama, S. (in press). Gender difference in anger, hostility and aggression. Asian Journal of Social Psychology. Wittchen, H.U., Fuetsch, M., Sonntag, H., Mueller, N., & Liebowitz, M. (2000). Disability and quality of life in pure and comorbid social phobia: Findings from a controlled study. European Psychiatry, 15, 46–58. Wolfe, D.A., & Feiring, C. (2000). Dating violence through the lens of adolescent romantic relationships. Child Maltreatment, 5, 360–363.
2008 NEWSLETTER
Same-Sex Romantic Relationships in Adolescence and Adulthood Lisa M. Diamond Department of Psychology, University of Utah Salt Lake City, Utah, USA E-mail:
[email protected] The 1983 publication of Blumstein and Schwartz’s American Couples marked a turning point in research on same-sex relationships. During the 10 years prior to the publication of this volume, which reported the most detailed and thoroughgoing comparisons to date between heterosexual and same-sex couples, fewer than 50 books, chapters, or articles in the psychological literature had focused specifically on same-sex couples. In the 10 years after the book’s publication, the number of publications increased 5-fold, and nearly doubled again during the next 10 years. These are welcome changes: Rigorous investigations of same-sex romantic relationships from adolescence to adulthood make a number of important contributions to relationship research more generally. First, such investigations diversify our fundamental knowledge base about romantic relationships. Historically, most academic scholarship on romantic relationships has focused exclusively on heterosexual couples. Hence, comparing the relationship processes and experiences of same-sex and heterosexual couples allows researchers to explore a broader range of process-oriented theories about romantic relationship functioning and the factors that promote relationship stability and satisfaction across different contexts and within different populations. Second, examining same-sex relationships allows for more complex investigations of the role of gender in relationship functioning. Most romantic relationship research takes for granted that every romantic couple includes one male and one female. Yet by directly comparing male-female couples to female-female and male-male couples, researchers can begin to disentangle how different combinations of genderlinked attitudes, skills, and expectations influence relationship functioning. Finally, investigating same-sex romantic relationships reveals critically important information about sexual-minority (i.e., non-heterosexual) individuals and the ways in which their social and developmental experiences are unique.
The Social Context of Same-Sex Romantic Relationships Typically, same-sex romantic relationships are described as lesbian/gay/bisexual relationships, but this is not entirely accurate. Not all individuals involved in same-sex relationships consider themselves lesbian, gay, or bisexual, and furthermore, openly-identified lesbian/gay/bisexual individuals often have histories of both same-sex and other-sex relationships. Hence it is important not to presume that identity labels and relationship experiences (past, present, or future) correspond. This is particularly true across different cultural environments. Presently in the United States, there are large and visible lesbian-gay-bisexual communities in many large urban centers, where individuals pursuing same-sex relationships can receive social
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support and validation. Yet this is not uniformly true crossculturally. Hence, researchers interested in pursuing international investigations of same-sex romantic relationships must take particular care not to presume that participants in such relationships will openly claim lesbian-gay bisexual identities. My own longitudinal research on sexual identity, for example, has found surprisingly high variability in sexual identification and patterns of sexual relationships in young women over time. In 1995 I began interviewing 89 lesbian, bisexual, “questioning,” and “unlabeled” women about their attractions, identities, and behaviors, and have reinterviewed these women every two years since then, with a retention rate of approximately 90 % (Diamond, 1998; 2000b; 2003; 2005; 2008; in press). Since the beginning of the study, two thirds of the participants have changed their identity labels, and the majority have histories of romantic or sexual relationships that flatly contradict their current identity labels (i.e., lesbian-identified women getting involved with men, heterosexually-identified women getting involved with women). Hence, an important challenge for research in this area is to adopt broad strategies of sample recuitment and data collection that capture the full range of individuals’ same-sex and other-sex experiences—and their psychosocial implications—regardless of how individuals personally conceptualize and label their sexuality. In growing acknowledgment of these complexities, researchers increasingly use the term sexual minorities to refer to all men and women with same-sex attractions and/ or relationships, either currently or in the past. This term acknowledges the fact that regardless of one’s identity label, same-sex attractions and relationships—in both the U.S. and around the globe—place individuals firmly outside conventional societal norms. This emphasis on minority status is relevant and important because although tolerance and acceptance of same-sex sexuality have been gradually increasing (Loftus, 2001), considerable prejudice and sometimes outright condemnation of same-sex sexuality continues to exist. This creates a range of unique social and psychological challenges for same-sex couples, such as the threat of physical violence (i.e., Brenner, 1995), disapproval or denial of one’s relationship from either partner’s family-of-origin (Caron & Ulin, 1997; LaSala, 2000; Oswald, 2002; Patterson, 2000), and also low-level stressors such as difficulty making hotel room reservations (Jones, 1996), receiving poor service and rude treatment during routine shopping (Walters & Curran, 1996), or uncertainty about bringing one’s partner to family functions (Caron & Ulin, 1997; Oswald, 2002). Of course, such factors are likely to vary dramatically as a function of different cultures’ attitudes toward samesex sexuality. Given that the bulk of research on same-sex couples is conducted in the United States, it is important to keep in mind that, among Western nations, Americans are particularly conservative in this regard. Widmer, Treas, and Newcomb’s (1998) analysis of 24 industrialized countries participating in the International Social Survey Program found that 70% of Americans believe that homosexual sex is “always wrong,” compared with 39% of Canadians, 58% of British, 45% of Spaniards, and 42% of West Germans. The most conservative attitudes were found in Northern Ireland (80% reporting “always wrong”), Hungary (83%)
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and the Philippines (84%), whereas the most accepting att itudes were found in the Netherlands (19%). Such variation must be taken into account when drawing inferences about the relevance of social stigma for same-sex couples across diverse cultural contexts. It also bears noting that no research has systematically tested whether same-sex couples living in more tolerant communities, cultures, or nations have substantially different relationship dynamics or outcomes than those living in more stigmatizing environments. This is an important area for future research.
The Role of Gender Gender differences in interpersonal attitudes, cognitions, and behaviors, and their implications for couple functioning, have long been topics of vigorous research and debate, and studies of same-sex couples have provided unique opportunities to examine how broadly gender-related effects operate. One of the most common research questions is whether sexual-minority individuals are “genderinverted” in their interpersonal functioning, such that gay men resemble heterosexual women and lesbians resemble heterosexual men. Research findings suggest that when it comes to relationship behavior, this is not the case; rather, studies commonly find that combining two men or two women in a couple relationship actually tends to magnify gender-specific patterns. For example, consistent with the notion that women are socialized to develop greater interest in interpersonal intimacy and to be more “relationally-focused,” studies have detected a tendency for lesbian couples to report greater intimacy with their partners, assessed by selfreported factors such as shared time together and the degree to which partners maintained a “couple” identity (Diamond, 1998), as well as heightened levels of cohesion, adaptability, and satisfaction (Zacks, Green, & Marrow, 1988). Yet interestingly lesbian couples have not been found to show greater relationship stability than either gay male or heterosexual couples. Rather, studies (such as Kurdek, 1998) suggest that having barriers to dissolving a relationship is more important for keeping it together than having a “double-dose” of female-typed relationship skills and maintenance strategies. Another topic of interest with regard to gender magnification in same-sex couples concerns power and equality in domains ranging from decision-making to influence strategies, household labor, and problem solving. Although stereotypes have historically presumed that same-sex couples implicitly designate one partner to take the classically “female” role and one partner to take the “male” role in these domains, research does not bear out this view. Rather, gay and lesbian couples place a high value on equity in their relationships, and lesbians in particular report particular success in achieving equitable arrangements (Peplau & Cochran, 1980, September). Strategies for achieving equity follow a number of different patterns. With respect to household responsibilities, research indicates that same-sex couples develop largely idiosyncratic arrangements, allowing their respective interests and desires to shape daily practice (Huston & Schwartz, 2002). Accordingly, it is not uncommon for same-sex partners to mix and match female-typed and male-typed tasks and roles (i.e., Amy handles auto maintenance and most of the
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cooking, while Deb takes care of social arrangements and financial planning). This is not to suggest, of course, that same-sex couples are uniformly successful in avoiding power differentials. For example, research has found that among both gay male and lesbian couples, income discrepancies tend to be associated with power differentials (Caldwell & Peplau, 1984; Harry, 1984; Harry & DeVall, 1978; Reilly & Lynch, 1990), more so for for gay men than for women (Blumstein & Schwartz, 1983). Some of the most interesting directions for future research concern gender-related patterns of conflict resolution. Given the increasing evidence that (1) gender-related conflict dynamics have clear-cut implications for both mental and physical health, and that (2) these health effects are themselves differentiated by gender, one intriguing new direction for future research involves moving beyond the global self-report measures that have characterized previous research on this topic and collecting coordinated physiological and observational data on conflict resolution in same-sex couples. This is a direction my own laboratory is currently pursuing. Specifically, following a methodology that has long been used with married heterosexual couples, we are bringing same-sex couples into our psychophysiological laboratory and videotaping them as they discuss a common topic of disagreement. Meanwhile, we are measuring each partner’s cardiovascular and endocrinological reactivity to the conflict discussion. Previous research has suggested that the classic “female demand, male withdrawal” pattern is particularly aversive to both men and women (but especially women) and is associated with detrimental patterns of high and sustained physiological reactivity. But will same-sex couples show the same pattern? Is a “double dose” of withdrawal as bad for female-female couples as for male-female couples, or is withdrawal less aversive for women when it comes from another woman? By directly comparing male-male, femalefemale, and male-female couples’ conflict patterns and their physiological reactivity, we hope to introduce a new level of specificity into the traditional investigations of gender-related dynamics in same-sex couples, and to explore their important implications for physical health.
Special Issues for Adolescents It took some time for researchers studying sexual-minority youths to devote significant attention to their romantic relationships. Up until 10–15 years ago the vast majority of extant research on sexual-minority youths focused on their sexual practices, identity development, stigmatization/ victimization, and suicidality. Although these are important issues deserving of attention, researchers generally overlooked the more mundane features of adolescent life, such as routine relationship formation, maintenance, and dissolution. This neglect hampered our understanding of the normative socio-emotional developmental trajectories of sexual-minority youths. Of the multiple transitions that take place during the adolescent and young adult years, those involving interpersonal relationships are among the most salient and important. Adolescents undergo notable increases in their desires and capacities for emotional intimacy with peers, and these changes can profoundly reshape their close relationships and the sense of self they
2008 NEWSLETTER
derive from these relationships. These transformations might be particularly meaningful for sexual-minority youths, given that same-sex sexuality is a fundamentally interpersonal as well as intrapsychic phenomenon. Because of their stigmatized minority status, sexualminority youths sometimes have to settle for partners and relationships they consider less than ideal. Others adapt to these hurdles by seeking out a diverse variety of sexual and affectionate same-sex bonds, many of which violate traditional conventional definitions of friendship and romance (Diamond, 2000a). It has been difficult to systematically chart and interpret such diverse relationship patterns because research on adolescent relationships has traditionally relied on vague, theoretically impoverished distinctions between different types of intimate relationships (Diamond, Savin-Williams, & Dubé, 1999). Rough lines are drawn between platonic and romantic relationships, and between casual and serious romances, but rarely do researchers probe the full range of affectional and sexual ties that adolescents from diverse backgrounds might consider. For example, one pattern of same-sex romantic intimacy that has been observed primarily among young women is passionate friendships (Diamond, 2000a). These bonds typically contain the affective and behavioral features of romantic relationships—such as emotional passion, possessiveness, exclusivity, and frequent physical affection—without explicit sexual desire or activity (although in some cases, the bonds may eventually become physically intimate). Thus, passionate friendships may provide sexual-minority youths with all of the benefits o f a same-sex romantic relationship (most notably, social support and emotional intimacy) while avoiding many of the risks and complications. Notably, a similar degree of fluidity and ambiguity between friendships and romantic relationships is also observed among adult sexual-minority women (Nardi & Sherrod, 1994; Rose, Zand, & Cimi, 1993; Weinstock, 1997). Thus, many sexual-minority youths’ most extensive experience with same-sex intimacy will occur in relationships that look nothing like typical dating or romantic relationships. These diverse relationship types might be conceptualized as different solutions to the problems all youths—but especially sexual minority youths—face in balancing their needs and desires for sexual and affectional intimacy with the risks posed by different types of intimate relationships, as well as the constraints they face in finding the partners and relationships they want. It is important to note, however, that these constraints take a discernible toll on sexual-minority youths’ psychological well-being. In one recent study comparing the relationship experiences and expectations of heterosexual and sexual-minority youths, my research team used quantitative surveys and qualitative interviews to investigate the mental health implications of sexual-minority and heterosexual youths’ experiences and expectations regarding friendships and romantic relationships (Diamond & Lucas, 2004). Consistent with prior research, we found that sexual-minority youths had higher levels of anxiety, loneliness, depression, and physical symptomology than their heterosexual counterparts. Yet importantly, these effects did not appear to be attributable to sexual-minority youths’ overall perceptions of stress and stigmatization, as is
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commonly assumed. Rather, they were mediated by differences between heterosexual and sexual-minority youths’ romantic relationship expectations. Specifically, sexualminority youths reported significantly greater fears that they would never be able to find “the kind of romantic relationship I want” in the future, even though they had social networks of comparable size and rates of romantic involvement that were similar to their heterosexual counterparts (this particular sample of sexual-minority youths were fairly “out” and active in the local lesbian-gay bisexual community, which increased their opportunities for same-sex romance). Mediational analyses demonstrated that these relationship fears were responsible for these youths’ disproportionately low well-being. Such findings provide a stark demonstration of the importance of intimate relationship experiences for adolescent mental health.
Considerations for Future Research In considering the history and future of psychological research on sexual-minority relationships, the underlying cultural assumptions and unavoidable political dimensions that shape the asking and answering of questions about same-sex relationships warrant continual scrutiny. In an influential critique of early research on lesbian and gay individuals, Kitzinger (1987) pointed out that the longstanding emphasis on documenting the lack of significant mental health differences between gay/lesbian and heterosexual individuals might have appeared to represent the triumph of scientific objectivity over social prejudice, but in fact functioned to reinforce the social disenfranchisement of sexual-minority individuals by implicitly predicating their social acceptability on patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior that were judged “normal” and “healthy” by mainstream society. Her analysis demonstrates the importance of continually monitoring our own explicit and implicit theories of sexuality and relationships in order to appropriately represent how these phenomena develop, unfold, and interact within the life courses of diverse sexual-minority individuals. These aims, of course, introduce notable challenges for researchers. As noted above, perhaps chief among these is the issue of sampling appropriately diverse populations of sexual minorities. In my own work, I have continually struggled to reach out to “hidden pockets” within the sexual-minority population, striving to include as broad a range of men and women as possible. Given the stigmatization faced by sexual minorities, this continues to be an uphill battle. One hopeful advance is the rise of the internet, which provides a means for reaching individuals who remain highly secretive about their same-sex sexuality, and who might never attend a Pride parade, read an advertisement in a lesbian-gay-bisexual publication, or see a flyer posted at a lesbian-gay-bisexual community center. Researchers have yet to comprehensively assess how internet samples resemble and differ from samples collected in conventional ways, and clearly such analyses are critically important if we are to make appropriate generalizations from the findings of future research. Another important obstacle, particularly for developmentally-oriented research on same-sex relationships among adolescents, is the prevailing conservativism of
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contemporary American culture regarding adolescent sexuality. Even in just the past 10 years, researchers have noted a rising tide of opposition to studies seeking to ask adolescents direct questions about their sexual and romantic feelings and experiences, despite the fact that the lack of a thoroughgoing understanding of youths’ experiences will clearly hamper our efforts to provide them with appropriate psychological and informational resources to make healthy decisions about their relationships. This increasing conservativism is particularly pernicious when it comes to same-sex sexuality. Researchers such as myself have had to become active advocates for the intellectual and social value of our research, arming ourselves with the wealth of evidence showing that adolescents are, in fact, well-served by the collection and dissemination of more and better data about the diversity of their intimate experiences and their developmental implications. Despite these challenges, I remain optimistic. The scope of research on same-sex relationships over the lifespan has broadened and diversified to a degree that I could scarcely have imagined when I first began studying this topic, and no doubt these changes will continue to produce a deeper understanding of intimate relationships in the context of same-sex sexuality and a deeper understanding of same-sex sexuality in the context of intimate relationships.
References Blumstein, P., & Schwartz, P. (1983). American couples: Money, work, sex. New York: Morrow. Brenner, C. (1995). Eight bullets: One woman’s story of surviving anti-gay violence. Ithaca, NY: Firebrand Books. Caldwell, M.A., & Peplau, L.A. (1984). The balance of power in lesbian relationships. Sex Roles, 10, 587–599. Caron, S.L., & Ulin, M. (1997). Closeting and the quality of lesbian relationships. Families in Society, 78, 413–419. Diamond, L.M. (1998). Development of sexual orientation among adolescent and young adult women. Developmental Psychology, 34, 1085–1095. Diamond, L. M. (2000a). Passionate friendships among adolescent sexual-minority women. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 10, 191–209. Diamond, L.M. (2000b). Sexual identity, attractions, and behavior among young sexual-minority women over a two-year period. Developmental Psychology, 36, 241–250. Diamond, L.M. (2003). Was it a phase? Young women’s relinquishment of lesbian/bisexual identities over a 5year period. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 84, 352–364. Diamond, L.M. (2005). A new view of lesbian subtypes: Stable vs. fluid identity trajectories over an 8-year period. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 29, 119–128. Diamond, L.M. (2008). Sexual fluidity: Understanding women’s love and desire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. Diamond, L.M. (in press). Female bisexuality from adolescence to adulthood: Results from a 10 year longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology. Diamond, L.M., & Lucas, S. (2004). Sexual-minority and heterosexual youths’ peer and family relationships: Experiences, expectations, and implications for well being. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 14, 313–340. Diamond, L.M., Savin-Williams, R.C., & Dubé, E.M. (1999).
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Sex, dating, passionate friendships, and romance: Intimate peer relations among lesbian, gay, and bisexual adolescents. In W. Furman & B. B. Brown (Eds.), Development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 175–210): Cambridge University Press. Harry, J. (1984). Gay couples. New York: Praeger. Harry, J., & DeVall, W.B. (1978). The social organization of gay males. New York: Praeger. Huston, M., & Schwartz, P. (2002). Gendered dynamics in the romantic relationships of lesbians and gay men. In A. E. Hunter (Ed.), Readings in the psychology of gender: Exploring our differences and commonalities (pp. 167–178). Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Jones, D.A. (1996). Discrimination against same-sex couples in hotel reservation policies. Journal of Homosexuality, 31, 153–159. Kitzinger, C. (1987). The social construction of lesbianism . London: Sage. Kurdek, L.A. (1998). Relationship outcomes and their predictors: Longitudinal evidence from heterosexual married, gay cohabiting, and lesbian cohabiting couples. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 60, 553–568. LaSala, M.C. (2000). Gay male couples: The importance of coming out and being out to parents. Journal of Homosexuality, 39, 47–71. Loftus, J. (2001). America’s liberalization in attitudes toward homosexuality. American Sociological Review, 66, 762–782. Nardi, P.M., & Sherrod, D. (1994). Friendship in the lives of gay men and lesbians. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 11, 185–199. Oswald, R.F. (2002). Inclusion and belonging in the family rituals of gay and lesbian people. Journal of Family Psychology, 16, 428–436. Patterson, C. J. (2000). Family relationships of lesbians and gay men. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 62, 1052–1069. Peplau, L.A., & Cochran, S.D. (1980, September). Sex differences in values concerning love relationships . Paper presented at the American Psychological Association, Montreal, Canada. Reilly, M.E., & Lynch, J.M. (1990). Power-sharing in lesbian partnerships. Journal of Homosexuality, 19, 1–30. Rose, S., Zand, D., & Cimi, M.A. (1993). Lesbian courtship scripts. In E.D. Rothblum & K.A. Brehony (Eds.), Boston marriages (pp. 70–85). Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press. Walters, A.S., & Curran, M.C. (1996). “Excuse me, sir? May I help you and your boyfriend?”: Salespersons’ differential treatment of homosexual and straight customers. Journal of Homosexuality, 31, 135–152. Weinstock, J.S. (1997). Lesbian friendships: Simply an alternative or is this a revolution? In J.S. Weinstock (Chair), Lesbian friendships and social change. Symposium conducted at the annual meetings of the Association for Women in Psychology, Pittsburgh, PA. Widmer, E.D., Treas, J., & Newcomb, R. (1998). Attitudes toward nonmarital sex in 24 countries. Journal of Sex Research, 35, 349–358. Zacks, E., Green, R.-J., & Marrow, J. (1988). Comparing lesbian and heterosexual couples on the Circumplex Model: An initial investigation. Family Process, 27, 471–484.
2008 NEWSLETTER
Coping Strategies of Marital Relationships in Bamenda Cameroon Gladys Ngoran Human Development Resource Centre Bamenda Cameroon E-mail:
[email protected] or
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Meaning of Marriage in Africa Sub-Saharan Africans hold marriage in high esteem as a fundamental union that gives rise to a family which is the basic unit of society and the springboard of life. With this in mind, families endeavour to inculcate the expectation of marriage in their children at an early age. As the children grow up, they know that they will marry in future. Anything a child does is appreciated in relation to marriage. In grassland Cameroon, as in most parts of sub-Saharan Africa, it is common to hear parents say; “That was well done son/daughter. Your wife/husband will always be happy if you can keep it up.” “Are you sure your husband will eat this type of poorly prepared food? Always take time to cook well.” “No woman will like a coward for a husband. Be a man.” Preparing children for marriage is one of a constellation of cultural values which are jealously guarded. These values as Nsamenang (1992) explains are established in the personal preferences and inner regulations of individuals. These values are passes down through the generations thus using the family as a medium of continuity of the lineage and preservation of values. When children come of age or become mature, parents expect them to be settled in marriage. Marriage is seen as a legitimate way to procreate and have socially integrated children (Nsamenang, 2000). These children are considered as insurance for parents in t heir old age. The children will cater for the elders and give them the necessary comfort in their later lives. Marriages are also a contract between the families of the two spouses thus creating a relationship that Filani (1984) describes as extensive, with social network ramifications. Choosing a marriage partner takes on varied forms, with parents playing a vital role. In some communities within Africa, parents indicate the wish to have a wife or husband for their children from a particular family background (Mbiti, 1969). Serious investigation is thus made into the family background of the chosen partner and into his/her way of life before accepting that person for their child. One key factor in African marriages is that marriage between close relations is not allowed; in most of grassland Cameroon it is believed that if close relatives marry they could die as punishment for violating this traditional rule. Parents in particular and society in general therefore strive to prevent marriages between close relatives, especially because the living dead (ancestors) do not feel happy about such relationships given that incest is taboo.
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Investigating Problems and Coping Strategies in Cameroon Couples Based on this complex and cherished traditional background of African marriage, we designed the current study to investigate coping strategies in marital relationships. The specific objectives were to identify sources of marital difficulties and to determine what sustains marriage or keeps spouses together despite these problems. Above all, this research work was meant to provide an insight into marital life as background information for instituting marital and family counselling. We conducted our study in Bamenda, a town in the North West Province (in an urban setting) in the English speaking part of Cameroon. This town has a population of 329600 inhabitants (MINPAT, 2000) coming from diverse ethnic origins of Cameroon. The research was carried out using a questionnaire survey of 31 items adapted from those of Filani (1984), Bakare (1970) and Kersten (1990), enriched by additional relevant literature. It comprised a demographic section and three sub scales, which were designed to measure personal data, communication and attitude to marital life, marital cooperation and disaffection and finally, marital adjustments. The construct, face and content validity of this instrument were ascertained with the assistance of an expert psychologist. Data was collected from a literate sample of 160 volunteers (34.4% male and 65.6% female) drawn from Christian groups and social groups in the town of Bamenda. The age range of this sample was 61 years with the youngest spouse being 21years and the oldest 82 years old. Their mean age was 41 years while their mean duration in the same marital relationship was 21 years. Of the 160 respondents, 86.2% of them are still in their marital relationship, 6.8% are widows and 5.4% are separated, while 1.6% are divorced. The data underscored the existence of marital problems among couples. The most frequently reported problems revolved first on disagreement over the use of finances (58.8%). Infidelity (involvement in extra marital sexual relationship) was second with a percentage rating of 34.34% followed closely by the intrusion of in-laws rated at 32.2%. Despite these marital problems, couples persisted in the union to uphold the traditional precepts that see marriage as a lifelong contract. Tradition therefore rejects divorce. Respondents also acknowledged that they seldom discussed family issues and would hardly listen to each other’s point of view, except when it concerned children. They perceived children as a binding force in marriage and the main reason for persistence in marital unions and the continuation of interaction between separated or divorced partners. Given the incidence of problems of finance, infidelity, intrusion of in-laws and poor communication reported in this study, we can conclude that happiness was limited amongst respondents. Partners’ disagreement over finances revealed a spirit of greed and selfishness amongst them. This could lead to the disintegration of the home. These problems were probably exacerbated by traditional Cameroonian belief that the man is the head of the family and has control over everything within his family, including the wife’s money. Infidelity may have arisen in part because most partners are not true to
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themselves when it concerns their sexual life. Sex is considered a taboo topic for discussion in most of our communities (Nsamenang, 2004) yet there are problems among spouses that make their sex lives unenjoyable thereby leading to extramarital relationships. If partners could feel free towards each other and express their feelings frankly, a solution could be sought. In this way, infidelity could be checked thus letting out ill feeling and distress that comes with it. Tradition holds that marriage is polygamous, but under the influence of Christianity many people commit to monogamous marriage and then indulge in secret extramarital relationships. Society sometimes looks at men in monogamous relationships as being weak, so some men indulge in extra marital relationships to prove their manhood and wealth. When people who live together for life become a nuisance to one another, their marriage becomes permeated by ill feeling and frustration. In Cameroon, as in the rest of sub-Saharan Africa, in-laws can help a young couple to establish a loving marriage or break it down by initiating conflicts based on jealousy, greed, or other negative traits.. As tradition demands, parents-in-law should accept their children-inlaw as members of their family. This will enable the family union to remain amicable and keep the extended family strong. Our results also revealed that communicat ion was poor, primarily because spouses did not listen to each other. Communication without listening could be viewed as a waste of time and expression of the mind. The above explanation implies that there is good and bad communication as Wright (1981) says it. Good communication brings joy and bad communication reduces happiness. When communication is poor, cooperation within the family will be lacking. Cooperation shows a spirit of joint effort with common goals to be achieved. If we could go by the adage “united we stand, divided we fall” and the marriage principle of one plus one being one, then we can see that cooperation is a great component of marriage and family life. When marital partners are ignorant or neglect the importance of functioning as one, they will likely not have time for in-depth family discussion.
African Marriage—A Contract Between Spousal Families Respondents in this study cope with marital life and the above discussed problems because of their respect for and
Figure 1.
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Spousal Union
attachment to traditional norms and the pro-natalist value of marriage as a lifelong union. During marriage solemnisation over a calabash of palm wine in the Northwest Province of Cameroon, the young couple are made to understand that marriage is permanent before they share a cup of palm wine. This sharing thus opens the way for all other family members present to drink the wine, after emphasising on the permanent nature of the relationship being created by that rite. Upholding these traditional precepts is imperative because it is a deep-seated indigenous norm upon which the stability of the society and the pride and dignity of its members depend. By respecting these traditional beliefs and upholding the sanctity of marriage, one’s personality and self-esteem are affirmed. Maintaining a marital relationship is seen as a developmental marker of maturity, which is indeed fulfilled with the birth and proper care of one’s children. Those who fail to fulfill their duties after marriage, or do not marry, bring shame and disgrace to themselves and their families. Society looks down on them and many people do not allow their children to marry into such families because of fears of contamination. When the marriage of children is threatened by problems of any kind, parents get in forcibly to bring peace because when those marriages are shaken it is an indication that their role in child upbringing and transmission of traditional cultural values was not efficiently done, indicating a failure on their part. Persistence in marriage in spite of problems signifies people’s ability to endure pain and hardship in order to uphold the sanctity of marriage, which is seen as the only acceptable cultural institution for child bearing and child rearing. By showing an enduring spirit, people further reveal that they are attached to the principle of moderation and functioning within one’s circumstances.
The High Value of Children Children are seen as the major reason for the institution of marriage. Thus, partners bear all the troubles and difficulties of marriage for the sake of the children born into that relationship. It is believed that children brought up in the absence of one parent as a consequence of divorce will be maladjusted in one way or another. Children are the fruits of marriage, and when they cannot be brought up jointly because of marital problems, the affected parents become a
Figure 2.
The value of children
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Figure 3.
Marriage contract
disgrace to society. If people fail in child upbringing, society sees them as failures. Children are insurance for parents in old age because they will give aged parents the necessary assistance in later life: abandoning parents in old age would violate a fundamental duty. Parents who fail to give their children the best of education that can enable them earn a living will have nobody to take proper care of them with love and concern. Children who marry and have a family become a source of great pride to their parents; infertility and childlessness are a loathsome prospect. The children are said to be a source of continuation of the family lineage and insurance against permanent death, (Nsamenang, 2004). You are alive even after death because your whole image and behaviour are reflected in the children you gave birth to. Since children in this sense will become one’s history, everybody protects them and will consequently face any odds to have the children grow within a marital union. There are, however, single parents who do manage to bring up their children with utmost care so that they grow to live by the expectations of society and equally get to enjoy marital life. Parts of these findings tie in with those of Soetan (1982) which revealed that in-laws have an effect on the marital life of men and women, and those of Filani (1984) which recommended training skills to foster marital adjustments. Over and above all, the findings are consistent with the image of the African family being in a crisis of change (Weisner, Kilbride, & Bradely, 1997)
Conclusion
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the questionnaire copies but did not return them, the reason being that they cannot discuss their marital issues with a non Moslem. It must be noted that this group of people give their children in marriage as early as 12 years (girls in particular). Finally, only the literate were used for this study in a region that has illiterates. The use of an interview might have provided some details that the questionnaire could not provide, but because we needed to maintain confidentiality this could not be applied. Nevertheless, our study revealed a picture of co uples in Cameroon persisting despite marital problems because of respect for age-old traditions. Though the study did not explore the effects of marital problems (and related frustration and stress) on respondents’ psycho-emotional well being, an association between the two is very likely (Johnson & Booth, 1990). The nature of the marital problems identified suggests the need for premarital and marital counselling. This would enable couples to identify their areas of weakness in relation to each other, and in the relationship as a whole. Consequently, adjustments could be made that may help to create an amicable relationship, even in times of socio-cultural changes that have led some Cameroonian couples into divorce and its challenges within a community that rejects it.
References Bakare, C.G.M. (1970). Marital Adjustment Scale. Behavioural Science Research Unit Ibadan Nigeria. Filani, T.O. (1984). An Experimental Study of Communication Training and Cognitive Restructuring on Marital Adjustment of some Couples. Ibadan Nigeria. Johnson, D.R., & Booth, A. (1990). Rural Economic Decline and Marital Qualit. A panel study of farm marriage. Family Relations Journal of Applied Family and Studies, 39(2). Kersten, K.K. (1990). Family Interventions. Family Relations Journal of Applied Family Studies, 39(3). Mbiti, J.S. (1969). African Philosophy. Chaucer Press. MINPAT (2000). Cameroon Census Report by the Ministry of Plan and Regional Development. Nsamenang, A.B. (1992). Human Development in Cultural Context. A Third World Perspective. Nsamenang, A.B. (2000). Family and Marital Life Counselling. Lecture Notes: B.U.S.T Bamenda Cameroon. Nsamenang, A.B. (2004). Family and Marital Life Counselling. Lecture Notes: B.U.S.T Bamenda Cameroon. Soetan A. (1982). The Effects Of In—Laws on The Marital Adjustment of Couples in Nigeria. University Ibadon Nigeria. Weisner, Bradley, & Kilbride (1997). African Families And The Crisis Of Social Change. London. Wright, H.N. (1981). The Family that Listens. Victor Books.
Our study is subjected to some limitations. Firstly, some of the social groups used for this research work meet in a common venue once a month, and others on a weekly basis. This slowed down the data collection process. It was timeconsuming and financially demanding to get to these groups several times to get the questionnaire copies from the respondents. Secondly, only Christians were used for this study because Moslems, who constitute part of the population of Cameroon and this research area, received
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COMMENTARY: Adolescent and Young Adult
Romantic Relationships—The Need for a Broader Conceptual Perspective Shmuel Shulman Department of Psychology, Bar Ilan University Ramat Gan, Israel E-mail:
[email protected] In the last decade or so the study of adolescent romantic relationships has evolved dramatically, shedding light on the centrality and importance of romance in the lives of adolescents (Collins, 2003). The main body of research on adolescent romantic relationships has been conceptualized within a developmental framework and draws from the study of peer relationships, which has affected the nature of sampling and research methodology. The four papers in this issue which focus on different aspects of romantic relationships and may seem unrelated to each other point, in my opinion, to the broader universal features and principles of romantic relationships and their function for the individual and society. In their paper, Connolly and McIsaac describe how their interest in the study of romantic relationships grew out of a research agenda focused on adolescents’ peer relationships (Furman, Brown, & Feiring, 1999). Within this understanding, earlier experiences with friends are carried over into, enacted and operate the emergent romantic relationships. For example, the capacity to balance the needs of self and other is associated with intimacy in romantic relationships (Friedlander, Connolly, Pepler, & Craig, in press). In a similar vein, a history of having been bullied by one’s peer group may create later problematic conditions for young people’s romantic relationships (Williams, Connolly, & Cribbie, in press). However, despite the similarities to friendships, romantic relationships represent a highly distinctive, novel feature of adolescent social experience (Giordano, Manning, & Longmore, 2006). For example, in contrast to close friendships that are more settled, romantic relationships are characterized by heightened emotionality: love, attraction, sexual desires, and jealousy (Larson, Clore, & Wood, 1999). Though romantic relationships are the main relational context o f sexual behavior (Furman & Shaffer-Hand, 2006), the fields of sexuality and romantic relationships among adolescents have been described as separate domains (Furman, 2002; Florsheim, 2003). The separation between romantic relationships and sexual behavior does not allow for a full understanding of the content and meaning of romantic relationships; understanding romantic relationships in a more integrative mode may lead to some new insights. In her seminal work, Fisher (Fisher, 1998, 2006; Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Li, & Brown, 2002) differentiated between three types of love experiences: lust, romantic attraction and romantic attachment. Lust is characterized by the craving for sexual gratification; attraction is characterized by elation, heightened energy, and craving for union with a beloved; and attachment is charac terized by maintenance of proximity, affiliation, and a sense of security and mutual commitment. Fisher’s work, conceptualized within an evolutionary framework (Fisher, 1998, 2006; Fisher et al., 2002) suggests that humans are programmed to build and maintain mating relationships for survival and procreation. Contingent upon the bio-
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logical network for reproduction, adolescents and young adults, just like more mature adults, are susceptible to the search for a partner, the capacity to be emotionally swept away by romantic love and the desire to invest oneself in maintaining a relationship (Fisher, 2006, p. 9). Attraction has evolved to enable individuals to select preferable potential mating partners and to motivate them to focus their courtship attention on these individuals, thereby conserving courtship time and energy (Fisher, 1998; Fisher et al., 2002). Attraction is characterized by elation, heightened energy, mood swings, focused attention, obsessive thinking about a partner and craving for emotional union with him or her (Aron, Fisher, Mashek, Strong, Li, & Brown, 2005; Fisher et al., 2002). Individuals reporting feelings of attraction experience a host of labile psycho-physiological responses such as exhilaration and euphoria. They often think about the beloved obsessively, to the extent of “intrusive thinking,” including exclusively focused attention on the beloved and his/her well-being (Fisher, 1998). Attachment or companionate love (Fisher, 2006) is charac terized by maintenance of proximity, affiliative gestures, and expressions of calm and contentedness when in contact with the long-term mating partner. Similarly, within the framework of marital relationships and social psychology, adult as well as adolescent romantic relationships have been conceptualized in terms of affiliation, intimacy, attachment, and commitment (Furman, Brown, & Feiring, 1999; Shaver & Hazan, 1988). Intimacy leads to a deeper and more committed form of relationship (Connolly & Goldberg, 1999). In turn, the presence of commitment leads to a long-term relationship, enhancing the bonding between partners, enabling them to express deeper levels of caring for each other (Brown, 1999) and forming the basis for the optimal development of offspring (Fisher, 2006). Adopting an ethological perspective suggests that romantic relationships among adolescents are more than simply a different form of peer relationship. While on the one hand, becoming attracted romantically, sexually involved, and learning to stay in a steady relationship are markers of adolescent development (Brown, 1999; Carver, Joyner, & Udry, 2003; Shulman & Scharf, 2000), these milestones are also central for an adaptive transition to adulthood aimed at procreation and the well-being of the next generation. Understanding romantic relationships as expressions of an ethologically driven process can explain their intensive dynamics and the importance culture attributes to them. A reading of the four papers shows that they did not emerge solely from a developmental perspective on adolescent romantic relationships, but also incorporate, in my opinion, ethological understandings despite the fact that this is not discussed explicitly. As they outline, Connolly and McIsaac’s study grew out from a peer relationships agenda and their paper discusses components such as group dating and the balancing of connectedness and autonomy in romantic relationships. Connolly and McIsaac also examine romantic break-ups and tie them to psychosocial adolescent issues of intimacy and autonomy. However, despite its association with age related tasks, relationship termination is a major issue in the study of romantic relationships, and yet it is less examined in connection to adolescent friendships. Negotiating the needs of self and other is an important adolescent task in relations with parents, friends, and romantic partners (Shulman & Knafo, 1997). Difficulties in this task may lead to relationship difficulty or relationship termination. Saini’s
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paper describes another form of relational difficulty—romantic aggression—and shows the extent to which aggression and victimization between romantic partners affects individual mental health. Adolescent and young adult college students who reported being victimized by their romantic partner were more likely to report higher levels of anxiety and depression. From an ethological perspective these two papers focus on conditions differentiating between adaptive and less adaptive romantic relationships. During adolescence, individuals are supposed to learn to cope with the inevitable strains of keeping a romantic relationship intact (Connolly and McIsaac) and managing conflicts and aggression (Saini). From an ethological perspective, acquiring the capability to become involved in a stable and adaptive romantic relationship is crucial for procreation and the well-being of the next generation as it is related to individual functioning within a relationship (Saini—low depression and anxiety) and to withstanding difficulties that may lead to a break-up of the relationship (Connolly and McIsaac). The importance of establishing a long-lasting marital bond for the sake of reproduction and the well-being of the next generation is further embodied in Ngoran’s study on marital relationships in Bamenda Cameroon. It was interesting to learn how cultural transmission of rules, norms and values teaches and leads the younger generation starting from early childhood to adopt the role of husband/wife and of parent. Moreover, parents are supposed to bear marital and personal difficulties for the sake of the children born into the marital bond. Diamond’s paper, though originating in the United States, does not examine typically researched adolescent romantic relationships. Yet through the examination of young women who are highly variable in their sexual identification, Diamond offers new insights that are relevant for the understanding of romance across different populations. Diamond describes patterns of bonds that contain the affective and behavioral features of romantic relationships at large, such as emotional passion, exclusivity, physical affection, and sexual behavior. Her original contribution is the description of passionate friendships (Diamond, 2000) that resemble the behavior and emotional intensity of romantic relationships but lack explicit sexual activity or desire. Given the existing prejudices against sexual minority persons and personal struggles with sexual identity, it can be understood why the intimate relationships of some of these young women do not include explicit sexual activity or desire. Returning to Fisher’s ethological model (Fisher, 1998, 2006; Fisher, Aron, Mashek, Strong, Li, & Brown, 2002) can be helpful in better understanding the meaning of passionate friendships. According to Fisher, love experiences consist of lust, romantic attraction and romantic attachment. Refraining from explicit sexual activity does not necessarily exclude the additional forms of love experiences: attraction and attachment. The existence of the romantic attraction component is what differentiates between common friendships and passionate friendships (which are closer to and resemble full romantic relationships). Interestingly, as outlined above, the major body of research on adolescent romantic relationships was mainly generated within a developmental and peer relationship perspective. However, though the majority of adolescents’ sexual behaviors occur in the context of their romantic relationships (Giordano, Manning, & Longmore, 2006), the fields of adolescent romantic relationships and sexual behavior have not been integrated (Furman, 2002) and authors in one field rarely reference the body of knowledge in the other field. The research on relation-
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ships treats relationships almost as if they were platonic. In contrast, the study of sexual behavior has been conducted within a health-risk framework and from a deficit model and rarely considers the relational context in which the sexual behavior is occurring (Welsh, Rostosky, & Kawaguchi, 2000). Integration of the developmental and sexual perspectives on relationships is conducive to a comprehensive understanding of adolescent romantic relationships and their development. Integration of the two fields can be helpful for differentiating between adolescents whose sexual behaviors are expressions of normal, healthy exploration and those whose expressions of sexuality are symptomatic of psychological turmoil (Diamond & Savin-Williams, 2003; Florsheim, 2003; Lefkowitz & Gillen, 2006). A normative perspective examines the meaning of sexual behaviors, diversity of sexual behaviors (e.g., the importance of kissing; Welsh, Haugen, Widman, Darling, & Grello, 2005), the contexts in which they occur, and the individual characteristics of adolescents that can change the meaning of the sexual behaviors (Welsh et al., 2000). In two separate studies in the United States and in Israel, Welsh and her colleagues (Grello, Welsh, Dickson, & Harper, 2003; Grello, Welsh, & Harper, 2006), and we, ourselves, (Shulman, Weisman, & Schleyer, 2008) examined the interplay between romantic development and sexual behavior and its association with depression or problem behavior. By distinguishing between the varied relational contexts of the sexual behavior, our findings revealed that sexual behavior within a steady romantic relationship, representing mastering the capability to become involved in stable relationships, was not associated with increased depressive symptoms. However, sexual behavior within transient romantic encounters, representing a possible a lag in romantic development, was associated with increased depressive symptoms. While Giordano and Furman (Giordano, et al.,, 2006; Furman & Shaffer-Hand, 2006) called attention to the fact that adolescent romantic relationships and sexual behavior are not integrated, little attention has been paid to the role of attrac tion in romantic relationships. Though studies within a social psychology perspective have dealt with and examined romantic attraction (see for example Hatfield & Sprecher, 1986; Sternberg, 1998), this attraction has, however, been conceptualized as one form of a romantic experience but has not been seen as one of the three basic types of romantic relationships. In a forthcoming paper, we (Shulman, Mayes, Cohen, Swain, & Leckman, in press) examined the interplay between the intensity of romantic attraction among couples at the early stage of a relationship and their ability to cope with and resolve disagreements. Findings suggested that higher levels of romantic attraction are related to partners’ inclination to downplay their disagreements and to negotiate their differences less successfully. A second assessment of these couples after a period of six weeks showed that where levels of romantic attraction among romantic partners stayed stable, the partners showed an increasing ability to recognize and face their disagreements and that a tendency to negotiate disagreements more effectively started to emerge. Conceptually, these findings suggest that two processes operate within a bond between romantic partners. The first process refers to the attraction or preoccupation between partners as outlined by Fisher and the second refers to the quality of conflict negotiation that evolves over time, representing the movement toward a stable and balanced relationship. Whereas at the initial stage of a romantic bond the attraction process overshadows partners’ behavior as theorized
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by Fisher (Fisher, 1998, 2006; Fisher et al., 2002), over time attachment between couples tends to become more prominent and is expressed through their increased competence in negotiating differences that is crucial for relationship stability. I approached the reading of the four papers from within the common romantic relationships approach that is embedded within a developmental and peer relationship framework. However, after reading them and realizing the unique contribution of each paper, I realized that a broader framework is required to put the four papers in context. Rereading them within Fisher’s ethological perspective points to the behavioral and emotional intensity of romantic relationships which are part of a powerful network for reproduction (Fisher, 2006, p. 9) and for this reason it is evidenced across cultures, adolescence and young adulthood, and finds unique expression in sexual minority populations. References
Aron, A., Fisher, H., Mashek, D. J., Strong, G., Li, H., & Brown, L.L. (2005). Reward, motivation, and emotion systems associated with early-stage intense romantic love. Journal of Neurophysiology , 94, 327–337. Brown, B.B. (1999). “You’re going out with who?” Peer group influences on adolescent romantic relationships. In: W. Furman, B. B. Brown & C. Feiring (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 291–329). New York: Cambridge University Press. Carver, K., Joyner, K., & Udry, J.R. (2003). National estimates of adolescent romantic relationships. In P. Florsheim (Ed.), Adolescent romantic relations and sexual behavior: Theory, research, and practical implications (pp.23–56). Mahawah, NJ: Erlbaum. Collins, W.A. (2003). More than myth: The developmental significance of romantic relationships during adolescence. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 13, 1–24. Connolly, J., & Goldberg, A. (1999). Romantic relationships in adolescence: the role of friends and peers in their emergence and development. In W. Furman, B. B. Brown, & C. Feiring (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 266–290). New York: Cambridge University Press. Diamond, L.M. (2000). Passionate friendships among adolescent sexual-minority women. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 10, 191–209. Diamond, L.M., & Savin-Williams, R.C. (2003). The intimate relationships of sexual minority youths. In G. Adams & M. Berzonsky (Eds.), Blackwell handbook of adolescence (pp. 393–412). Malden, MA: Blackwell. Fisher, H.E. (1998). Lust, attraction, and attachment in mammalian reproduction. Human Nature, 9, 23–52. Fisher, H.E., Aron, A., Mashek, D., Li, H., & Brown, L.L. (2002). Defining the brain systems of lust, romantic attraction, and attachment. Archives of Sexual Behavior , 31, 413–9. Fisher, H.E. (2006). Broken hearts: The nature and risks of romantic rejection. In A.C. Crouter & A. Booth (Eds.), Romance and sex in adolescence and emerging adulthood: Risks and opportunities (pp. 3–28). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Florsheim, P. (2003). Adolescent romantic and sexual behavior: What we know and where we go from here. In P. Florsheim (Ed.) Adolescent romantic relations and sexual behavior: Theory, research, and practical implications (pp. 371–385). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
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Friedlander, L., Connolly, J., Pepler, D., & Craig, W. (in press). Biological, Familial and peer influences on dating in early adolescence. Archives of Sexual Behavior . Furman,W., Brown, B.B., & Feiring, C. (Eds.) (1999). The development of romantic relationships in adolescence . New York: Cambridge University Press. Furman, W. (2002) The emerging field of adolescent romantic relationships. Current Directions in Psychological Science , 11, 177–180. Furman, W., & Shaffer-Hand, L. (2006). The slippery nature of romantic relationships: Issues in definition and differentia tion. In A. Crouter & A. Booth (Eds), Romance and sex in adolescence and emerging adulthood: Risks and opportunities (pp. 171–178). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Giordano, P.C., Manning, W.D., & Longmore, M.A. (2006). Adolescent romantic relationships: An emerging portrait of their nature and developmental significance. In A.C. Crouter & A. Booth (Eds.), Romance and sex in adolescence and emerging adulthood (pp. 127–150). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum. Grello, C.M., Welsh, D.P., Dickson, J.W., & Harper, M.S. (2003). Dating and sexual relationship trajectories and adolescent functioning. Adolescent & Family Health, 3, 103–112. Grello, C.M., Welsh, D.P., & Harper, M.S. (2006). No strings attached: The nature of casual sex in late adolescents. The Journal of Sex Research, 43, 255–268. Hatfield, E., & Sprecher, S. (1986). Measuring passionate love in intimate relationships. Journal of Adolescence, 9, 383–410. Larson, R.W., Clore, G.L., & Wood, G.A. (1999). The emotions of romantic relationships: Do they wreak havoc on adolescents? In C. Feiring, W. Furman, & B.B. Brown (Eds.) The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 19–49). NY, US: Cambridge University Press. Lefkowitz, E.S., & Gillen, M.M. (2006). “Sex is just a normal part of life”: Sexuality in emerging adulthood. In J.J. Arnett & J.L. Tanner (Eds.), Emerging adults in America: Coming of age in the 21st century (pp. 235–256). Washington, DC: APA. Shaver, P.R., & Hazan, C. (1988). A biased overview of the study of love. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, 5, 473–501. Shulman, S., & Knafo, D. (1997). Balancing closeness and individuality in adolescent close relationship. International Journal of Behavioral Development , 21, 687–702. Shulman, S., Mayes, L.C., Cohen, T., Swain, J.E., & Leckman, J.F. (in press). Romantic attraction and conflict negotiation among late adolescent and early adult romantic couples. Journal of Adolescence. Shulman, S., & Scharf, M. (2000). Adolescent romantic behaviors and perceptions: Age-related differences and links with family and peer relationships. Journal of Research on Adolescence, 10, 99–118. Shulman, S., Waisman, O., & Schleyer, M. (2008). Sexual behavior and depression: The role of adolescent casual and stable relationships. In S. Shulman (Chair), Adolescent sexual behavior and depression. Symposium accepted for presen tation at the biennial meeting of the Society for Research on Adolescence, Chicago, IL. Sternberg, R.J. (1998). Cupid’s arrow, the course of love through time. New York: Cambridge University Press. Welsh, D.P., Rostosky, S.S., & Kawaguchi, M.C. (2000). A norma tive perspective of adolescent girls’ developing sexuality. In C.B. Travis & J.S. White (Eds.), Sexuality, society, and feminism: Psychological perspectives on women (pp. 111–140). Washington, DC: APA.
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Welsh, D.P., Haugen, P.T., Widman, L., Darling, N., & Grello, C.M. (2005). Kissing is good: A developmental investigation of sexuality in adolescent romantic couples. Sexuality Research and Social Policy , 2, 32–41. Williams, T., Connolly, J., & Cribbie, R. (in press). Light and heavy heterosexual activities of young Canadian adolescents: Normative patterns and differential predictors. Journal of Research on Adolescence.
Why is a Cross-Cultural Perspective on Romantic Experiences in Adolescence Clearly Needed? COMMENTARY:
Inge Seiffge-Krenke Department of Psychology, University of Mainz Mainz, Germany E-mail:
[email protected] The scientific study of romantic relations during adolescence has only recently begun to grow in developmental psychology. It is not an easy study, as relationships with romantic partners during the early stages of adolescence are mostly casual, less intense, and short-lived. Even at later stages, romantic experiences may assume a variety of forms, ranging from those which parallel “close friendships” to those typical for “casual dating” or “exclusive dating” relationships. Sometimes the adolescents themselves are not sure whether they are involved in a crossgender friendship or a romantic relationship (Leaper & Anderson, 1997). In recent years, models of romantic development have been proposed (Brown, 1999; Connolly & Goldberg, 1999), according to which relationships progress from a more casual initial stage towards a more committed affection phase. In addition, studies have supported the idea that adolescent romance develops in terms of phases that follow a specific sequence with a different focus on self, and on the impact of both peers and the romantic partner (Seiffge-Krenke, 2003). Further research has analyzed the beginnings and endings of romance, nicely summarized by Jennifer Connolly and Caroline McIsaac in this newsletter, and informed us that unmet needs that lead to a break-up may be very similar to the needs that motivate young people to start a relationship. Studies placing romantic relationships of adolescents in the context of other significant relationships at this age, such as relationships with parents, peers, siblings and close same-sex friends, are on the increase. However, as Lisa Diamond showed in this newsletter, it took some time until researchers turned their attention to romantic development in sexual minority youth; her contribution underscores the variety of different types and functions of romantic relationships in this population. That romantic experiences are linked with different indices of adaptation is a substantial finding in several studies. Increases in depression, and in externalizing behaviors were found among youth who dated regularly. It is noteworthy that, in recent studies, the frequency and impact of aggression in romance and couple relationship has come into focus. Two contributions in this newsletter address this topic. In research based in India, Sunil Saini shows that relationship aggression is linked to a more negative perception of the relationships and, that males and females experience equally high levels of relationship
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aggression, highlighting the idea that aggression is reciprocal. Gladys Ngoran’s contribution fur ther elaborates on the “darker side” of partnerships. It became apparent in her research in Cameroon that the lack of communication is common for couples, and that separation is perceived as personal shame and a problem for the larger community. Her contribution, like that of Connolly and McIsaac from Canada, shows that it is necessary to include the cultural background in order to advance our understanding of romantic relations. Clearly, we need more studies on adolescent couples from different ethnic backgrounds. But why is it urgently necessary to adopt a cultural perspective? In Western societies, adolescents make up a decreasing proportion of the overall population, whereas an increasing proportion of such youth are characterized by diversity in ethnic background and greater poverty. In general, culture teaches adolescents about romance, based on accepted traditions, mores and practices. Culture and tradition determine the meaning and significance of romantic experiences, and as a result determine how adolescents behave in romantic exchanges (Brown et al., 2002). These cultural differences can be traced into marriage, as the contribution of Ngoran in this newsletter shows. There are significant variations in dating and marriage r ituals across different ethnic groups (Kagitcibasi, 1996). There is also quite high variation in the values and goals of a romance. For example, the Western and North American worldview places great value on individual expression, freedom and choice. In European countries, the idealization of romance has a long tradition since medieval times. For the Eastern worldview, what is best for the social group to which one belongs is more important than individual choice and freedom. For the African worldview, spirituality is important, and the focus is on connectedness to the extended family, as the contribution of Ngoran underscores. There are different cultural scripts stipulating the extent to which positive or negative emotions (such as aggression) are openly expressed. Furthermore, the impact of close friends and peers on the choice of romantic partner among teens is more pronounced in Western and North American cultures, while acceptance and expectations from parents are more important in other cultures. And there is of course a high variation in religiosity, parenting practices, and styles of intimacy in diverse nations which impacts romantic relationships. Conceptions of romance, behavior and scripts in romantic encounters are all influenced by the cultural background of the adolescents. Because the developmental context of many adolescents in Western industrialized countries is now characterized by increasing ethnic diversity, romantic partners not infrequently come from different cultural backgrounds. Migrant adolescents may attempt to assimilate into the new culture by having a romance; the romantic liaison may serve as a way of being acculturated into the others partner’s group. On the one hand, cross-ethnic relationships offer a rich oppor tunity for broadening relationship experiences. On the other hand, tensions and conflicts may arise between developing an ethnic identity and trying to fit into the broader majority culture. Indeed, conflicts are an integral part of any relationship, and it is important to balance both negative, i.e. conflict-related, and positive relationship qualities in romantic partnerships. Not much research to date has dealt with specific stressors in romantic experiences. Longitudinal research on conflict management (Nieder & Seiffge-Krenke, 2001) revealed a significant decrease in romantic stress over time; concurrently, the
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quality of romantic relationships changed towards greater intimacy and affection. Adolescents from different cultures, for example individualistic and collectivistic cultures, may experience quite different types of stressors when attempting to gain emotional autonomy from parents. In addition, the ramifications a romantic relationship has on close friendships may differ across cultures. Further, issues of commitment and closeness in the romantic partnership, as compared to individuation, may be of different concern for adolescents stemming from different countries. Finally, the sexual aspect of romantic relations may cause stress, depending on cultural norms and prescriptions. In a 20-nation study (N=15347, age 12 to 18 years), typical stressors adolescents experienced in romantic relationships depending on their cultural background were assessed (SeiffgeKrenke, 2006). Adolescents filled in questionnaires assessing recent romantic stressors. According to Brown et al. (2002), the adolescents from the 17 nations were grouped together according to regions, including Middle Europe (for example Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, England), Southern Europe (for example Greece, Italy, France, Spain) Northern Europe (for example Finland, Norway) Eastern Europe (for example, Poland, Russia, Estonia, Lithuania) Asia and the far East (for example, Pakistan, Hong Kong; Korea ) and South America (for example, Peru, Mexico). The findings showed that romantic stress was highest among adolescents from Middle Europe, followed by Southern Europe, and that adolescents from the Far East, South America and Eastern Europe named considerably fewer romantic stressors. Feelings of jealousy and the impact of romance on close friendships were of great concern for adolescents from Middle and Southern Europe. Adolescents from South America and the Far East were mainly stressed by feeling unsure about the romantic partners’ feelings and by the fear of hurting their respective partner. Age differences emerged, too, illustrating that the early phases of romantic encounters were perceived as more stressful then later stages. Noteworthy, too, were gender differences, with females worrying more about the impact of the romance on their close friendships with other girls, while males were more concerned about not having a partner. Interestingly, differences depending on the marital status of the parents were also found. Adolescents from two-parent families were much more concerned about the romantic relationship than adolescents from single parent families. Considering the effect size of the findings, the impact of the culture or region was by far the most important, followed by the impact of the family status of the adolescent. Age and gender effects were of minor importance. Taken together, the study shows that it is important to consider diversity in romantic relationships, depending on the cultural background of the adolescents. Gray and Steinberg (1999) have suggested that the stress perceived in romantic relationships is only par tly related to the romantic affair as such and that its origin lies in the diverse func tions romantic relationships serve for adolescents. They proposed that the development of romantic interests is inherently linked to the task of separation and individuation from the family. The emergence of romantic activity can be seen as part of a more general process in the development of emotional autonomy first taking place in the family context and later on, as the quality of romances changes from casual to more committed, in the peer context. Apparently, as the abovementioned findings illustrate, adolescents from different cultures
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showed a different focus on the self, the impact of peers, and concern for the partner. However, a lot of research is still necessary to clarify the culture-dependent conceptions of romance, the different behavioral scripts and the cultural framework of romantic experience. Also, the developmental sequence following diverse phases which has been established for Western industrialized cultures, needs to be validated in different cross-cultural settings. It is not clear whether the typical Western sequence from more casual, short-term encounters to exclusive, long-term and bonded relationships is characteristic for adolescents living in other cultures. Thus, romantic stress may not only differ, depending on the phases of romantic development, but is influenced by the cultural context. Linking adolescent romantic experiences to the context of their rapidly changing social world may clarify the outstanding functions of romance in adolescence as well as the specific strains a romantic relationship places on those same adolescents. References
Brown, B.B. (1999). You’re going out with who? Peer group influences on adolescent romantic relationships. In W. Furman, B.B. Brown, & C. Feiring, (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 291–329). New York: Cambridge University Press. Brown, B.B., Larson, & Saraswathi, T.S. (2002). The world’s youth. The adolescence in eight regions of the globe . Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Connolly, J.A., & Goldberg, A. (1999). Romantic relationships in adolescence: The role of friends and peers in their emergence. In W. Furman, B.B. Brown, & C. Feiring, (Eds.), The development of romantic relationships in adolescence (pp. 266–290). New York: Cambridge University Press. Kag˘ ıtc‚ıbas‚ı, C. (1996). Family and human development across cultures. Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum. Leaper, C., & Anderson, K.J. (1997). Gender development and heterosexual romantic relationships during adolescence. In S. Shulman & W.A. Collins (Eds.), Romantic relationships in adolescence: Developmental perspectives (pp. 85–104). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Nieder, T., & Seiffge-Krenke, I. (2001). Coping with stress in different phases of romantic development. Journal of Adolescence, 24, 297–311. Seiffge-Krenke, I. (2003). Testing theories of romantic development from adolescence to young adulthood: Evidence of a developmental sequence. International Journal of Behavioral Development , 27, 519–531. Seiffge-Krenke, I. (2006). Nach Pisa. Stress in der Schule und mit den Eltern. Bewältigungskompetenz deutscher Jugendlicher im internationalen Vergleich. Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht.
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Reports from the Lab Studying the Formation of Romantic Relationships: A Case for Prospective Online Studies Ines Schindler* Department of Psychology, University of Utah Salt Lake City, USA E-mail:
[email protected] A lot of research has focused on the initiation, development, and dynamics of romantic relationships (cf. Cate & Lloyd, 1992; Gottman, 1994; Surra, Gray, Cottle, & Boettcher, 2004). However, one gap in this literature has remained: We know little about what happens between the first date and the establishment of a committed relationship (or failure to do so); and what we do know is mostly based on retrospective accounts. In the following, I will report on our experiences in the longitudinal Partner and Study Selection (PASS) Study (conducted by Ines Schindler, Cynthia A. Berg, and Christopher P. Fagundes at the University of Utah, and funded through a research fellowship and research grant of the German Research Foundation (DFG) awarded to Ines Schindler, as part of which we ventured into this largely uncharted territory of early relationship formation. With this project we had to face three major issues that complicate the study of how people select romantic partners and that may be responsible for the described dearth of longitudinal research in this area: (1) It is impossible to know when an individual will start dating a potential partner; (2) It is imperative to gather data on a fledgling relationship right after the first few dates, that is, when the dating partners have not yet decided on the fate of their relationship; (3) Incomplete data as a result of missed assessments or participant dropout are unavoidable. Our way of dealing with these three issues was to conduct a prospective longitudinal study on partner selection where we mainly employed online assessments. I will now share some insights that we gained during the PASS Study as well as suggestions for future research.
The PASS Study: Design, Procedure, and Research Questions Our central aim in conducting the PASS Study was to investigate the process of selecting a romantic partner and/or college major longitudinally in a sample of undergraduate students (University of Utah and Salt Lake Community College). We recruited 150 heterosexual participants (53% women) who were not in a committed relationship (n =125) and/or undecided on their major (n = 55) and followed up on their decision-making process for the next 5–12 months (depending on when they were recruited). Participants completed five-day diaries, weekly *Ines Schindler is now at the Center for Applied Developmental Science, Friedrich Schiller University of Jena, Germany.
assessments (partner choice only), and monthly assessments online, which asked about their perceptions of the decision to be made (e.g., importance, irreversibility), decision criteria (e.g., matching interests with partner, others’ opinion), and ways of making a decision (e.g., relying on intuition, rational thought). Whereas the aspect of the study focused on choice of major started once participants had been recruited, we had to wait for our participants to start dating before we could begin with the partner choice part. As soon as participants indicated that they had gone on a first or second date and intended to date this partner again, we had them complete a five-day partner diary, followed by weekly partner assessments for the next eight weeks or until they either stopped dating this partner or had entered into a committed relationship (i.e., dating seriously and exclusively). If no decision on whether to commit to this partner or not had been reached within eight weeks (which only happened in four cases), we followed up on the dating relationship with monthly assessments. Once participants had started a committed relationship, we followed up on this relationship with monthly assessments (asking about continuation of the relationship, relationship satisfaction, and perceptions of the partner) until t he end of the study. The final PASS Study assessments were conducted in October 2007 and we are currently in the process of analyzing the longitudinal data. Right now, our analyses focus on two research questions. First, we investigate how dispositional attachment to romantic partners influences the partner choice process and how normative attachment functions (cf. Hazan & Zeifman, 1994) develop in a new relationship between the first few dates and up to two years into the relationship. We found that people who reported a disposition toward avoidant partner attachment at the intake assessment were less likely to commit to a romantic partner during the study (after controlling for age, gender, time of study participation, desire to form a committed relationship, number of previous relationships, and selfrated physical attractiveness; Murdock, Schindler, Fagundes, & Diamond, 2008). With regard to normative attachment functions, our preliminary findings clearly indicated that partner attachment starts developing even before a relationship is considered as committed. A second research question focuses on the decisionmaking process during partner choice. I have conducted initial analyses of how the perceived attractiveness (ratings of importance of decision criteria ϫ ratings of dating partner on criteria) of chosen and nonchosen partners changes before the decision to either commit to this partner or stop dating is reached. These analyses show that the experimentally well-established bolstering of preferred alternatives and denigration of rejected alternatives (for a review see Brownstein, 2003) also occurs during partner choice in real life: People who form a committed relationship increase the perceived attractiveness of their dating partner prior to commitment and people who stop dating report decreasing attractiveness of their partner. Future
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analyses will focus on interindividual differences in the amount of change in perceived attractiveness, how they can be predicted, and how they relate to satisfaction with one’s decision.
A Watched Pot Never Boils? How Many Participants Does It Take to Study Relationship Formation? A challenge that arises with the described prospective approach to studying partner choice is that participants will not necessarily date or start a committed relationship within 5–12 months of recruitment. Therefore, it would be helpful to have some information on the percentage of a given population who will form a romantic relationship within a defined time frame. Unfortunately, when we started the PASS Study, we had no such information available. Our strategy therefore was to recruit undergraduates between 18–27 years who indicated that they were looking for a romantic partner. We assumed that undergraduates of this age group (who also were about 50% Mormon as is representative of the Salt Lake City area) would be highly motivated to date and, as part of the undergraduate experience, would have plenty of opportunities to meet new people of the opposite sex. In spite of these favorable conditions, we found that the majority of our participants were unsuccessful in forming a committed relationship during the study—and what complicates things even more, those who entered into a committed relationship did not necessarily stay in that relationship. The changes in relationship status that we observed in the PASS Study between August 2006 and August 2007 are illustrated in Figure 1. As can be seen in panel A, out of those 61 women and 64 men who indicated that they were looking for a romantic partner at the intake assessment, 30% dropped out of the study or did not provide any information on their dating life. Although we saw a fair amount of dating activity among those who remained in the study, 34% did not date at all or at least never made it past a first date (or series of first dates) and 10% dated casually but never entered into a committed relationship. Finally, 26% committed to partner at some point in the study. It should A: Out of those 125 participants who were initially not committed to a partner . . .
be noted, however, that we studied up to four different dating partners per participant and that out of those 33 participants who committed to a romantic partner eight only did so after they had dated other partners casually. It was also interesting that 12% of the committed relationships in the PASS Study did not survive for more than six months (Figure 1, panel B). In sum, based on our experience we would suggest that researchers interested in the prospective study of romantic relationship development during young adulthood consider that only about a quarter of a given sample may actually form a longer-term committed relationship during the period of observation. In addition to recruiting large samples, researchers may want to consider other ways of increasing the chances of observing the formation of relationships. Speed-dating was recently discovered as a valuable method for studying romantic attraction (Finkel, Eastwick, & Matthews, 2007) and should also be a useful tool in studying relationship development prospectively. In our future research, we plan to include a subsample of participants in a speed-dating study and follow them up longitudinally for a year to increase the chances of observing partner selection processes. This will further increase the likelihood of having both dating partners in the sample. While we would have been interested in the perspective of both dating partners, we decided that trying to recruit their dating partners through our PASS Study participants would have created too much of an interference in these fledgling relationships.
It’s Now or Never! Online Assessments as a Way to Ease Data Collection A second challenge that we faced was to ensure that participants contact us when they start dating and are able to complete partner assessments in close succession to going out on a date. We dealt with this problem by using online data collection methods. We e-mailed our participants once a month and asked them to fill out college major assessments. As part of these e-mails, we included a monthly reminder for participants to please contact us as soon as they start dating a potential partner. On the day following B: Out of those 58 participants who already were in a committed relationship or had started one . . . 2% unknown 12% broke up within 6 months
26% committed to a partner
30% unknown
10% dated casually 34% did not date/ get past 1st date
15% broke up after over 6 months 71% were still committed to their partner at the final assessment
Figure 1. Changes in relationship status observed during the PASS Study: Formation (panel A) and termination (panel B) of relationships.
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the date, participants were instructed to go t o our webpage and log on with an individual user-id and password to complete a partner diary on five consecutive days. The diary was followed by weekly online assessments. In addition to allowing participants easy access to the questionnaires at their preferred time (some actually did fill out assessments at 2 am), the online questionnaires enabled us to realize an individualized schedule for every participant, include person-specific information (such as the name of their dating partners), and include a branching structure in the assessments so that only questions applicable for this participant were asked. For instance, our study included four different partner assessments (diary, weekly and monthly dating assessments, assessment for committed relationships) and an online database that contained the information about which assessment is to be displayed for each participant at his or her next login. The partner questionnaires always started by asking whether the participant is still dating a specific partner. In case the participant indicated the he or she is not dating any longer, the assessment asked about who terminated the relationship and reasons for its termination instead of how much the participant would like to commit to this partner. We found the online assessments to be a great asset to our study as they were a fast and convenient method for participants to provide responses and also saved a lot of time for data entry and correcting inevitable errors in data entries. By employing user-ids and passwords, we also made sure that only our participants had access to questionnaires. However, the downside to employing online assessments with this level of sophistication is that their development requires programming skills that researchers in psychology usually do not have. We greatly benefited from having a computer professional available in the psychology department of the University of Utah who devoted countless hours to programming our online assessments. Researchers who do not know how to program in HTML or use java script (or do not have the time to do so) would be well advised to recruit the help of someone with these programming skills before attempting to conduct a study like the PASS Study. While there are solutions for conducting online research for people without programming skills (cf. Reynolds, Woods, & Baker, 2007 for different ways of conducting online research), we doubt that it would have been possible to create a questionnaire and database structure like the one we used with these applications. Overall, we highly recommend online assessments for researchers interested in relationship development, especially when conducting research with an undergraduate population who usually have access to a co mputer at home and/or at school. While this makes completing assessments more convenient, however, it is still possible to “miss the action” when waiting for participants to contact the research team. Even though we sent monthly e-mail reminders, we still had a few participants who failed to notify us of a dating partner before the relationship was committed. In our future research, we plan to include monthly online assessments asking about all dates of the past month (even if they did not progress past a first date) to further reduce the likelihood of participants not reporting on dating relationships.
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You Can’t Have It All: Dealing with Incomplete Data Even if data collection is conducted online and puts minimal demands on participants, it is impossible to avoid some missed assessments or sample attrition—especially if measurements are conducted once a month or even more often throughout a year. Most participants in our study had missed assessments even if they did not drop out of the study altogether. People got busy with coursework, were temporarily out of town, or had trouble with a broken computer. As a result of missed assessments, the different timing of participants dating, and different durations of study participation, the number of partner assessments available for each participant varies widely (from none to several diaries, weekly assessments, and monthly assessments for different partners). This would have created a problem when analyzing these data before full information maximum likelihood estimation was implemented in statistical software (e.g., Mplus, HLM) to analyze incomplete data without either imputing or dropping missing observations. Currently it is easy to analyze longitudinal data with different numbers of observations per participant and model the exact timing and spacing of repeated observations (for more details see Collins & Sayer, 2001; McArdle & Nesselroade, 2003; Singer & Willett, 2003). In the PASS Study, we organize our data so as to represent time before and after making a decision. We model weekly change until the decision to either commit to this partner or stop dating is reached. For committed relationships, we model monthly change across months since the beginning of the relationship. Thus, owing to current data analysis options, there is no need to shy away from designs that will most likely lead to incomplete data and irregular intervals..
References Brownstein, A.L. (2003). Biased predecision processing. Psychological Bulletin, 129, 545–568. Cate, R.M., & Lloyd, S.A. (1992). Courtship. Newbury Park, CA: Sage. Collins, L.M., & Sayer, A.G. (Eds.) (2001). New methods for the analysis of change. Washington, DC: American Psychological Association. Finkel, E.J., Eastwick, P.W., & Matthews, J. (2007). Speeddating as an invaluable tool for studying romantic attraction: A methodological primer. Personal Relationships, 14, 149–166. Gottman, J.M. (1994). What predicts divorce? The relationship between marital processes and marital outcomes . Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Hazan, C., & Zeifman, D. (1994). Sex and the psychological tether. In K. Bartholomew & D. Perlman (Eds.), Advances in personal relationships: Vol. 5 Attachment processes in adulthood (pp. 151–177). London: Kingsley. McArdle, J.J., & Nesselroade, J.R. (2003). Growth curve analysis in contemporary psychological research. In J.A. Schinka & W.F. Velicer (Eds.), Handbook of psychology: Vol. 2: Research methods in psychology (pp. 447–480). Hoboken, NJ: Wiley. Murdock, K.W., Schindler, I., Fagundes, C.P., & Diamond, L.M. (2008). Maybe it is me? How attachment style and depressive symptoms predict failed relationship initiation
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and commitment. Poster presented at the 9th Annual Meeting of the Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Albuquerque, February 7–9, 2008. Reynolds, R.A., Woods, R., & Baker, J.D. (Eds.) (2007). Handbook of research on electronic surveys and measurements. Hershey, PA: Idea Group Reference/IGI Global. Singer, J.D., & Willett, J.B. (2003). Applied longitudinal data analysis: Modeling change and event occurrence. New York: Oxford University Press. Surra, C.A., Gray, C.R., Cottle, N., & Boettcher, T.M.J. (2004). Research on mate selection and premarital relationships: What do we really know? In A.L. Vangelisti (Ed.), Handbook of family communication (pp. 53–82). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Studying the Daily Life of Couples by Using Mobile Diaries Kaisa Malinen and Anna Rönkä Family Research Centre, University of Jyväskylä, Finland E-mail: kaisa.malinen@jyu.fi and
[email protected].fi The Palette study, located in the Family Research Centre at the University of Jyväskylä, is a research project concentrating on the everyday life of families with young children. As an important aspect of family life, the spousal relationship is studied in the Palette project using methods suitable for a daily approach. One aim of the project is to develop diary methods that capture daily family dynamics. Technology has developed enormously during recent years, offering researchers several new possibilities for data collection. In this article we will demonstrate how we have used mobile phones as a diary data collection tool in studying daily family life among Finnish couples.
Daily life of couples Daily life is one of the new areas of interest in marital and family research (e.g., Laurenceau & Bolger, 2005). A daily life approach was put together and named as the Emotion Transmission Paradigm in Family Research at the end of the last millennium by Larson and Almeida (1999). In marital studies, rather than asking “What are the determinants of spousal satisfaction?” or “Who will be divorced?” this new research paradigm sets the following types of research questions: “What kinds of emotions are triggered in daily situations between spouses?”, “What are the ‘good, bad and ugly’ moments for spouses in their everyday life?” and “Why are there better and worse days and weeks in the marital relationship?”. Emotions occupy an important role in research on daily spousal relationships because they are considered barometers of daily wellbeing and because of their central role in families today. Other issues that are commonly studied by taking a daily approach include the quantity and the quality of spousal interaction, daily and weekly rhythms, and daily stressors and coping behaviors. In families with young children, parents divide their time and energy between many life spheres: children, work, homework, friends, relatives, hobbies—and the spousal relationship.
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Therefore, studies on daily life have focused on time use, reconciliation in the spousal relationship and working life, and emotional transmission between different life spheres. The spousal relationship is a central moderator in this life palette as it can either facilitate or hinder the quality of daily life. A large part of the existing knowledge of the spousal relationship has been gained through observations and questionnaires, and time frames of seconds and minutes or of months and even years have been utilized. As stated by Larson and Almeida (1999), the study of daily life links these research traditions together by filling in the missing time frame of hours and days. Observational studies may capture the micro aspects of spousal interaction, but the question of the generalizability of these results to the natural contexts of couples’ daily lives remains open. On the other hand, longitudinal studies (or questionnaire studies in general) may answer questions about the effects of work stress on spousal satisfaction, but leave open the question of mechanisms through which these life spheres interact with each other. Against this background, in the Palette study diaries were chosen as a tool to examine the spousal relationship from the viewpoint of everyday life. In contrast to observations and questionnaires, diaries permit the examination of day-to-day events and experiences in their natural context and enable the effects of retrospection to be minimized.
Diary method In diary studies, the participants make frequent reports on the events and experiences of their daily lives. The idea is to study the phenomenon in question for a limited time intensively, meaning, for example, several times a day over the course of a week. The main benefit is to obtain memoryunbiased, situation-specific information on daily emotions, interactions and use of time. This kind of approach offers researchers better possibilities to study causal relations and rapid changes. The diary method is well suited to marital research as it enables both members of a relationship to be studied at the same time, thus allowing their different voices to be heard. The wide variety of diary methods available differ in a number of methodological aspects, such as frequency of measurement points (ESM, daily diary approach); type of design (interval-, signal- and event-based); form of diary questions (e.g., structured, open-ended, daily check-list) and use of reporting tools (e.g., paper-and-pencil, electronic). Recently, the diary approach has been intensively developed (see reviews by Bolger, Davis, & Rafaeli, 2003; Christensen, Barrett, Bliss-Moreau, Lebo, & Kaschub, 2003; Scollon, Kim-Pieto, & Diener, 2003). One of the main areas of development concerns the tools used in diary reporting. The traditional paper-and-pencil method has been replaced or at least complemented by a range of new electronic tools and innovations such as pagers, telephones and palmtops (for more on the ongoing debate regarding “paper or plastic” see Green, Rafaeli, Bolger, Shrout, & Reis, 2006).
2008 NEWSLETTER
How did we do it? The mobile diary design in the Palette study In the Family Research Centre we have developed a diary method for the study of daily family dynamics in which traditional paper-and-pencil and a new technology, i.e. mobile phones, are used side by side. We have used and tested this format in two family studies: the Pilot study in 2003 and the Palette study in 2006. The purpose of Palette study, funded by the Academy of Finland, was to shed light on everyday family life in working families with young children. Intensive diary data covering a one-week time span was collected at the end of the year 2006. In addition, a larger number of parents (n = 204 mothers and 161 fathers in 208 families) filled in questionnaires concerning, for example, work, parenting styles and stress, the marital relationship, child well-being and temperament and day-care. The diary design involved altogether 107 families, each family consisting of parents (or stepparents) and one target child. The children were all drawn from municipal day care centres. Diary data were collected by using three types of diary: a mobile diary, a paper-and-pencil diary and a child diary. In the case of the paper-and-pencil diary, parents answered in the traditional manner the diary questions every evening, which were given in a separate booklet containing a daily check-list, questions about use of time, and four open-ended questions concerning both good and challenging situations within the family. The mobile diary study involved 42 families and included both parents (or stepparents) from the family. The design of our mobile diary was a combination of the interval- and event-based design—the reporting occurred at specific time periods in accordance with the participants’ working schedule (more about the mobile diary method in Rönkä, Malinen, Lämsä, Kinnunen, & Tolvanen, 2007). In order to be able to study work-family interaction (e.g., spillover and crossover) in a relatively small sample we included in our mobile study only the families in which both parents worked in regular day shifts. The one-week diary phase began on Monday morning and ended on the following Sunday evening. The mobile diary consisted of ten questions concerning mood and interactions to be answered three times a day in the form of short text messages (SMSs) using a mobile phone. As both parents from 42 families kept mobile diaries for seven days the mobile diary data comprise a total of over 1600 SMSs (missing answers excluded). The reporting times and instructions together with the structured diary questions were given in a diary booklet. The booklet was designed to be compact in size so that it could be easily carried by the participants. The participants sent their answers, a list of 10 numbers, by SMSs. On workdays the reporting time was in the morning before going to work, in the afternoon and in the evening before going to bed. As we were using a technically based data collection tool and the answers were sent directly to the database, we were able to react immediately to the responses. The participants were told that the program would not take delivery of answers that were not sent within the agreed times. Moreover, there was no possibility to change the answers afterwards. The diary program involved several activities that gave feedback about the transmission of
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answers and helped the participants to remember to answer at the fixed times. They got a reminder SMSs every morning and a feedback message after a successful transmission or in the case of a mistake (for example, too many or too few numbers). The costs of using the mobile diary as a data collection tool consisted of the fee paid to the information technology firm and the costs of sending text messages (approximately 21 SMSs per person; max. 10 cents per SMS). As the participants were carrying their own mobile phones we did not have to invest in any equipment. Moreover, owing to the fact that the data went directly to the database, there were no coding costs, and c oding errors were minimized.
What can a mobile diary study reveal about spousal relationships? Given that the participants answered the mobile diary three times a day for one week and that both spouses rated the aspects of their relationship, there are several alternative routes by which to analyze the data. In this article we will demonstrate some of the questions that can be answered on the basis of diary data, focusing in particular on intimacy in the spousal relationship. The question, “Please rate how much (mental and physical) intimacy you felt regarding your spousal relationship during this morning/evening?” was asked in the mobile diary every morning and evening during the week.
How do women and men evaluate intimacy in their relationship? Do spouses share the same feelings? Women and men rated intimacy in their spousal relationship at the same level. The average of all ratings was just above the middle of the scale from 1 to 7. Feelings of intimacy were highly reciprocal between the spouses, as the high between-spouses correlations showed. In Larson’s and Richards’s (1994) words, the realities of spouses were shared in this aspect.
Does the time of day or the day of the week make a difference? Feelings of intimacy were higher during the weekend than on weekdays. In contrast, intimacy did not vary according to the time of day. The quality of spousal relationships seemed to rise on the weekend, a time when couples usually spend more time together and have more free time.
Is there any between-individuals variation? Do individuals always feel the same way? Considerable mean level differences were found between individuals. For some participants the spousal relationship seemed to offer more feelings of intimacy than it did for others. On the other hand, feelings of intimacy seemed to be highly susceptible to changing circumstances, as there was considerable fluctuation in the momentary intimacy scores around each individual’s mean level. That is to say, intimacy in the spousal relationship is not a stable characteristic of the relationship; instead, feelings of intimacy
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International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development
Women
Men
7= Very much
Mon
Figure 1.
Tues
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Thu
Fri
Sat
Sun
Mon
Tues
Wed
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Morning
Evening
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Spousal intimacy during the week
within a relationship are in constant flux. Our preliminary results show that feelings of intimacy as evaluated in a mobile diary every morning and evening were related, for example, to the evaluations of daily satisfaction in the spousal relationship and success in work-family reconciliation given during the same evening in the paper-andpencil diary. In addition to spousal relationships, we are currently analyzing the daily transmission of mood between work and family using the mobile. We have found, for example, that among daily work experiences and moods (e.g., happiness, efficacy, anger) stress is felt at home in a consistent way among both women and men. Even though parents were generally relatively happy and relaxed during the week, tiredness was common, especially in the evening time.
Mobile diary—A low threshold tool for participants and researchers On the basis of our experiences, the diary method is well suited to gathering information about the spousal relationship, which is characterized by constant variation in emotions and tensions in response to the flow of daily life. As our results show, the feelings of spouses towards each other vary widely and thus one challenge of the research is to find the important factors behind this daily fluctuation and a basis for more permanent evaluations of the relationship. As both spouses keep diaries at the same time, the dynamic nature of the spousal relationships can be captured in a way which is unreachable with many other methods. The differences in partners’ reports should not be seen as a sign of unreliability; on the contrary, these distinctions mirror the multiple voices in families and in spousal relationships in particular. A further advantage of the diary method is that the role of memory bias in reporting can be minimized since reporting occurs close to actual events and experiences.
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1= Not at all
We find many extra benefits to be gained from using a mobile diary to study the spousal relationship. Sending answers about intimate feelings as SMSs increases the perception of privacy and anonymity, as it minimizes the possibility that others will see them. The mobile diary is a low threshold tool for both participants and researchers because of its familiarity and inexpensiveness. In comparison to PDAs—which are commonly used as an electronic diary tool—the mobile phone is easy to handle and no technical assistance is usually needed. Like other electronic tools, the mobile diary meets the criterion of preventing backfilling. Moreover, researchers are able to check whether the participants have given their answers during the time range set (for more on backfilling see Piaseccki, Hufford, Solhan, & Trull, 2007). Reminders can be given either beforehand or afterwards (if the participant has not given his/her answer in time). During the diary week we had only few minor technical problems, which did not impinge on the research in a remarkable way. We think that the main reason for the absence of technical problems is the familiarity of the mobile phone to the participants. Moreover, because our diary program was rarely incompatible with the participants’ mobile phones, few families had to be excluded from our sample. According to our experiences, the main limitation of the mobile diary method is the fact that owing to the SMS format the space for answers is limited. Therefore, the questions used have to be carefully designed. If more detailed information is needed—as is usually the case—the mobile diary should be complemented with other methods, such as the paper-and-pencil diary and the questionnaire.
References Bolger, N., Davis, A., & Rafaeli, E. (2003). Diary methods: Capturing life as it is lived. Annual Review of Psychology, 54, 579–616.
2008 NEWSLETTER
Christensen, T.C., Barrett, L.F., Bliss-Moreau, E., Lebo, K., & Kaschub, C. (2003). A Practical guide to experiencesampling procedures. Journal of Happiness Studies, 4, 53–78. Green, A.S., Rafaeli, E., Bolger, N., Shrout, P.E., & Reis, H.T. (2006). Paper or plastic? Data equivalence in paper and electronic diaries. Psychological Methods, 11, 87–105. Larson, R.W., & Almeida, D.M. (1999). Emotional transmission in the daily lives of families: A new paradigm for studying family process. Journal of Marriage and the Family, 61, 5–20. Larson, R., & Richards, M.H. (1994). Divergent realities. The emotional lives of mothers, fathers, and adolescents . BasicBooks. A Division of HaperCollinsPublishers. Laurenceau, J., & Bolger, N. (2005). Using diary methods to study marital and family processes. Journal of Family Psychology, 19, 86–97. Piaseccki, T., Hufford, M.R., Solhan, M., & Trull, T. (2007). Assessing clients in their natural environments with electronic diaries: Rationale, benefits, limitations, and barriers. Psychological Assessment, 19, 25–43. Rönkä, A., Malinen, K., Lämsä, T., Kinnunen, U., & Tolvanen, A. (2007). Capturing daily family dynamics via text messages: A development of a mobile diary. Manuscript submitted for publication. Scollon, C.N., Kim-Prieto, C., & Diener, E. (2003). Experience sampling: Promises and pitfalls, strengths and weaknesses. Journal of Happiness Studies, 4, 5–34.
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The Family Research Centre The Family Research Centre is a multidisciplinary research centre which promotes and coordinates basic and applied family research and researcher training nationally and internationally. Currently the FRC is occupied in organizing the 4 th international congress of the European Society on Family Relations (ESFR), which will take place 24–27 September 2008 in Jyväskylä, Finland. More information about the scientific program of the congress, submission of abstracts and registration are available at: http://www.jyu.fi/ esfr2008
Editorial Editor Karina Weichold Correspondence address: ISSBD Newsletter Department of Developmental Psychology CADS—Center for Applied Developmental Science University of Jena Am Steiger 3/Haus 1 D-07743 Jena, Germany Email:
[email protected]
Editor Bonnie L. Barber ISSBD Newsletter School of Psychology Murdoch University Perth, Western Australia 6150 Australia Email:
[email protected]
Copy Editing: Lucy Hahn Murdoch University
Typesetting: Allset Journals & Books Scarborough, UK
Production: SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP
Printing: Page Brothers Ltd Norwich, UK
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International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development
Notes from The P resident 2008—another terrific biennial ISSBD meeting coming up in Wuerzburg, Germany! Program Chair Wolfgang Schneider and his colleagues have done an outstanding job of recruiting distinguished invited speakers and symposia. The submitted program promises to be equally interesting and important. The results of the ISSBD election will be announced at the Business Meeting, along with other significant plans. View the meeting plans on the conference website: http://www.issbd2008.de/. The winning 2010 conference bidders will unveil their plans for the 2010 meeting at the end of the 2008 meeting. Robert Serpell and his team from Africa submitted a programmatically and logistically rigorous proposal for the 2010 meeting in Lusaka, Zambia that impressed the 2010 selection committee. This will be a new continent for an ISSBD meeting, providing new opportunities for ISSBD learning and collaborations. Do not miss this one! International organizations like ISSBD have become more important than ever. With globalization and many emergent trends as background, understanding of human development worldwide is essential for everything from commerce and trade to war and human suffering to knowing how best to support positive development for individuals, their families, and communities. We have a significant opportunity in ISSBD to surface—through our meetings and our publications—the most outstanding and important research to inform these applications as well as to advance developmental science. For example, for their 2007 Development Report, the World
Bank focused on youth (This report may be accessed at http://go.worldbank.org/N17EU24T31.). The annual World Bank development report highlights the most significant issue for attention in the global development community. This is an impressive report, whose approach to programs was based on understanding of transitions in development. While any of us might have changed an aspect or two of the report, I was amazed and pleased by the focus on human development and the overall soundness of the analysis and recommendations. Although it is challenging to try to influence policy outcomes, the impact can be enormous. From the scientific perspective, an example of an important emergent trend is the cumulative body of findings coming from brain research, and specifically the more recent hybrids like social neuroscience (the topic of one of our 2008 ISSBD preconference workshops.) Increasingly findings are identifying the wholeness of human functioning, supporting the hypotheses and previous research of some ISSBD members. Social and environmental factors influence genes and the brain, and the brain is the grand integrator of effects on human development. We live in exciting times. We humans are still seriously flawed in how we capitalize—or not—on our opportunities. We can only hope that we will improve our capacity to learn from science and from our history. I look forward to our exchanges in Wuerzburg! Anne C. Petersen, President
MAJOR CONFERENCES AND WORKSHOPS OF INTEREST
2008 July 3–6
2009 April 2–4
2nd International
Congress on Interpersonal Acceptance and Rejection Location: Rethymno, Island of Crete, Greece Website: www.isipar08.org
Society for Research on Child Development Biennial Meeting (SRCD) Location: Denver, Colorado, USA Website: www.srcd.org
2008 July 13–17
2009 July 7–10
20th
11th European Congress of Psychology (ECP) Location: Oslo, Norway Website: www.ecp2009.no
Biennial Meeting of the International Society for the Study of Behavioural Development (ISSBD) Location: Wuerzburg, Germany Website: www.issbd2008.de
2008 July 20–25 XXIX International Congress of Psychology (ICP) Location: Berlin, Germany Website: www.icp2008.de
2008 July 27–31 XIX International Congress of the International Association for Cross-Cultural Psychology (IACCP) Location: Bremen, Germany Website: www.iaccp.org
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2009 August 18–22 European Conference on Developmental Psychology Location: Vilnius, Lithuania Website: www.esdp2009.com
