The Influence of culture on romantic relationships
Individual and Group-Based Relationships (AO1)
- Western cultures place great importance on the rights and freedom of the individual, with individual happiness and pleasure seen as fundamentally important. Individual interests are more highly regarded than group goals and interests. This is consistant with the formation relationships and are based on freedom of choice.
Love and Arranged Marriages (AO2)
Group-Based Relationships
- In non-western cultures the group tends to be the primary unit of concern. Members of these cultures are encouraged to be interdependant and collectivism leads to relationships that may have more to do with the concerns of family or group. (Moghaddam et al 1993)
Duck 1999
- Stated that the choice to marry is voluntary, but once the couple have been married for a few years, it isn't as voluntary as it once was because if you want to get out of it, there are many social and legal implications.
Umadevi et al 1992
- Created a study about preferences for arranged or love marriages in female Indian students from professional and non-professional backgrounds. Both groups of women were happy with the idea of arragnged marriages when they involved the consent of the two yound people involved. They were also comfortable with the idea of love marriages if the parents approved of the choice. This shows the importance placed on the families approval of the marriage partners in modern India.
Gupta and Singh 1982
- Studied 100 professional, degree-educated couples living in Jaipur, India, 50 of them who had each type of marriage. They were asked to use liking and love scales after 1, 5 and 10 years of marriage to indicate how much they liked/loved their partner. Found that love marriages both love and liking were high at the start but decreased. In other relationship type it wasn't as good at the start, but then started to grow over the longer period of time.
Xioahe and Whyte 1990
- Found contradicting evidence, in People's Republic, China - women were a lot more satisfied in love marriages.
Individualistic and Collectivist Cultures (AO1)
Individualistic Cultures
- See's the welfare and achievement of the individual as more important than that of that group, are found in countries such as America and Britain. The culture contains traits such as partners are freely chosen, relationships can end if not happy and the relationship is an alliance between two partners only.
Dowry Giving (AO1/2)
Collectivist Cultures
- Considers the welfare of the group as more important than the welfare of the individual, this is found in countries such as Japan and India. Contains traits such as partners are chosen by others (families), relationships are permanent and are an alliance between two families or two social groups.
Voluntary and Non-Voluntary Relationships (AO1)
What is a Dowry?
- A sum of money and/or gifts given by the bride's family to the groom at the start of the marriage.
Voluntary Relationships
- Western cultures live in predominantly urban settings, with reletively easy geographical and social mobility. On a daily basis we voluntarily interact with a large number of people, many of which are first acquaintances. Therefore meaning western cultures have a higher degree of choice and larger 'pool' of potential partners.
Non-Voluntary Relationships
- Non-western cultures have less urban settings and fewer geographical and social mobility, therefore people have less choice in whom they interact with on a daily basis. Interactions ith strangers are rare, and relationships are frequently tied to other factors such as family or economic resources.
Srinivasan and Lee 2004
- Found that the practise of dowry giving was becoming more rather than less widespread despite the modernisation taking place in social attitudes in India. In addition the size of the dowry was increasing. Of the 4,603 women studied, almost 2/3 dissaproved of the dowry giving system.
IDA/AO3 Points
Pinker
- Claims romantic love is a ‘human universal’ that evolved to promote survival and reproduction among humans.
- Jankowiak & Fisher-support this claim with their finding that romantic love existed in 90% of the 166 non-Western cultures they studied.
Social changes such as the internet mentioned may be having a great effect on people, allowing individuals to be exposed to other ways of life, leading to cross cultural “contamination”.
Research carried out 20 years ago may already be out of date. Even within our own western culture, attitudes towards sex, sexuality and relationships have altered drastically within the last few decades.
A lot of cross cultural research has focused on the differences between individualistic and collectivist cultures. However it has been argued that such a distinction is artificial, and that some cultures can have elements of both. In so called individualistic cultures for example, there can still be social pressure which influences choice of marriage partner.