Discuss Research into the Nature of Relationships in Different Cultures (8 & 16 marks)

Different cultures have different ideas on relationships and how they are viewed and acted out. For example love and romance are seen to be very important in the western cultures and marriages are based on this, however in non-western cultures, such as china, love and romance are less important. To Western cultures ‘falling in love’ is seen to be a vital part of growing up and Erikson (1968) believed that the establishment of an intimate relationship is an essential part of young adulthood which if unsuccessful can lead to social isolation.

A study which supported the fact that different cultures have their own ideas on relationships was carried out by Moore and Leung (2001) who compared 212 students, born and studying in Australia, with 106 students born in China but studying in Australia. They found that 61% of the Australian students were in relationships compared to only 38% of Chinese students. They also found that Australian males were more casual about relationships than Australian females whereas both Chinese males and females shoed similar levels of romance. This shows that there is a difference in the nature of relationships in different cultures as the Australian students and the Chinese students showed different results and different ideas on relationships. 

This study however is lacking in population validity and can therefore not be generalised to everybody in other cultures. This is because it was carried out on a sample of all similar aged people of only two different cultures who were all living in Australia which is not a representative sample of the whole population causing the study to have low external validity.

A supporting study into the idea that love is a basis for marriage was carried out by Levine et al (1995) who looked for evidence of this in 11 countries. When participants where asked if they would marry someone they did not know 86% of Americans said they would refuse compared to only 34% in Thailand and 24% in India. This suggests that western cultures are a lot more focused on the idea of love as a basis for marriage than other cultures who appear to be a lot more prepared to marry someone they do not love, again suggesting different ideas on relationships between cultures.

As Levine’s study was carried out across many cultures it has more cultural validity than the one conducted by Moore and Leung however we all tend to assume that what is done in our own culture is normal and therefore you can get cultural bias from the researcher.

The idea that the nature of relationships differs between cultures due to the differences in ideas about love can be seen to be to narrow as it leaves out other important ideas about relationships in different cultures such as wanting protection and resources from a mate rather than love. This is a weakness as it means that only a very small section of the factors that do effect relationships are looked at meaning from this research we can never get a good well rounded idea of why relationships differ in different cultures. For this to happen, other factors would have to be looked into and combined with this research.

One idea that is ignored in the differences in relationships between cultures due to love is voluntary and involuntary relationships. In western cultures we get choice of who we want to marry however in some cultures arranged marriages are the norm. This seems to work well for them due to low divorce rates and the fact that most people report that they have eventually fallen in love with their arranged partner. This was looked into by Gupta and Singh (982) in a supporting longitudinal study of 100 couples living in India, 50 form arranged marriages and 50 form love marriages. They were asked how much they ‘liked’ and ‘loved’ their partners after 1, 5 and 10 years of marriage. They found that in love marriages both liking and loving were very high to start off with however decreased over time. In arranged marriages however they were found to ‘like’ and ‘love’ each other more after 10 years than those form love marriages. This supports the differences in relationships in different cultures as it shows that different types of marriages work in different cultures.

Gupta and Singh’s study can however be criticised as, even though a longitudinal study can be useful for collecting results over a long period of time, it cannot show causation and therefore effects the internal reliability of the study.