Every Relationship 16 marker essay with example answers for AQA ALevel Psychology
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‘Outline and evaluate evolutionary explanations for partner preferences’ (16 marks)
The Evolutionary approach was rooted from Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution which
differs from his theory of natural selection as it emphasise the idea that certain
characteristics are passed on not for survival advantages but for sexual advantages. A
process of sexual selection takes place in which characteristics that are more likely to get a
mate will be passed on to offspring as it is seen as competitive against the other species.
There are two types of sexual selection; intrasexual and intersexual. Intrasexual selection
can be defined as the competition of individuals within a certain group of organisms for
example, within a group of males and characteristics such as size and strength can
outcompete the other male species. On the other hand, intersexual selection is the idea that
certain characteristics are generally desired by a group of the same species eg women
desire a man with good financial prospects which means that those of the opposite sex
compete to get this characteristic and those who do have it, tend to have more
descendants. Women also tend to look for a man who is willing to put in their resources for
her and her kids and physically protect them as a reproductive advantage however, men do
not give their resources away unwillingly and do look for something in return, for example,
they emphasise the importance of physical attractiveness in women to indicate signs of
fertility to provide a reproductive value. Buss studies the sex-differences in preferences in a
long term partner with 10000 participant in 37 different cultures using a rating of 18
characteristics such as physical attractiveness on a 4 point scale 0(not important) to
3(important). He found that women preferred a man with a good financial prospect
whereas men heavily emphasised on looks and youth to correlate with high fertility. All
these factors help to explain how through evolution, sexual selection has taken place for
mating advantages in a relationship.
One advantage of the evolutionary explanation for partner preferences is that studies into it
such as Buss’ had a large sample size covering a wide range of cultures. Because of this, it
means that they are able to consider many other external factors such as cultural
differences in relationship practices, age etc therefore, this reduces the questioning of
additional factors being put into place with the results thus not making the study
ethnocentric or an unrepresentative sample.
However, one disadvantage of evolutionary explanation for partner preferences is that our
ideal mate preferences may not match the actual outcome in our preferences. For example,
someone may state that they prefer a man with larger muscles, a certain height etc,
however, when it comes to their partner they date, they may not match the description.
Therefore, this suggests that there may be other factors in play with choosing a partner for
example, personality, which could input in the relationship, thus reducing the internal
validity of the theory.
Another disadvantage of evolutionary explanation for partner preferences is that it doesn’t
consider cultural traditions in partners that have been established as norms within their
society. For example, Kasser and Sharma carried out a meta-analysis with 37 different
cultures in looking at partner preferences and found that women in cultures where their
status lacks educational and economical purposes had a higher dependence on finding a
husband who did. Therefore, this means that there are different norms within societies that
,need to be considered such as their upbringing thus impacting their desired characteristics
and making it ethnocentric.
Furthermore, a disadvantage of the evolutionary explanation for partner preferences is that
there is a dynamic in the preferences especially for females. For example, Penton-Voak
suggested that at the period of ovulation, women tend to find more masculine features
more attractive as a sign of high testosterone and therefore more likely to conceive whereas
outside this time period, they prefer men with more feminine features showing a paternal
aspect of kindness in them. Therefore, this emphasises the idea that preferences may
fluctuate with the menstrual cycle thus making desired features inconsistent.
Finally, another disadvantage of evolutionary explanation for partner preferences is that the
some preferences aren’t universal. For example, Busser believed that the results produced
in Buss’ study providing the theory that women preferred men with high economic status
may be due to the fact that the participants were undergrad students who had the mindset
of a high status job and wanted the same in their partner. Therefore, this shows that the
sample was unrepresentative of the whole population as some women don’t look for
economic status thus making it hard to generalise these results.
, ‘Outline and evaluate self-disclosure as a factor of affecting attraction’ (16 marks)
Self-disclosure can be defined as the extent to which a person reveals personal and intimate
information about themselves to someone else. There is an emphasis on the importance of
self-disclosure in affecting attraction in a relationship(Collins and Miller) and that there are
norms in disclosing information stated by Berg and Archer, for example reciprocal disclosure
is expected in a relationship for it to be maintained meaning that if one person discloses,
the other is expected to disclose the same amount back to build that trust between them.
Self-disclosure can be explained by the social penetration theory which states that with
disclosing information, one can penetrate their partner’s public self to private self as
communication changes within the relationship. This can be described by the ‘onion
metaphor’ which talks about how first the person gives a depth of information about certain
aspects of themselves and then ‘breadth’ which is talking about topics which are considered
‘off-limits’ such as sexual desires. As a relationship develops and self-disclosure increases,
the more breadth and depth of information is shared which builds and strengthens that
rapport. To study the importance of self-disclosure, Sprecher carried out a study on 156
undergrad students and splitting them into groups of either reciprocal or non-reciprocal
conversations for 3 minutes and saw the impact of reciprocity on; liking, closeness,
similarities and enjoyment. He found that those in the reciprocal conversation had scored
higher in all 4 variables which emphasise the important of equal balances in disclosing
information to increase attraction. Sprecher even carried out a further experiment where he
studied 50 couples and found that there was a positive correlation between the amount of
disclosure and how long a relationship was going to last, those with high amounts tend to
last more than 4 years. These all show therefore, the importance of self-disclosure in
affecting and explaining attraction in a relationship.
One advantage of self-disclosure to explain how attraction is affected is that there is
supporting research for it. For example, Collins and Miller carried out a meta-analysis on
many different couples and found that there was a string correlation between high levels of
disclosure and high levels of attraction ratings. Therefore, this emphasises the importance of
levels of disclosure in maintaining a high attraction within a relationship thus increasing the
external reliability of the theory.
However, one disadvantage of self-disclosure to explain how attraction is affected is that the
results in the described research only show a relationship between self-disclosure and
attraction. For example, whilst there’s undoubtedly a link between the two variables, we
don’t know whether high attraction is caused by high levels of disclosure therefore
emphasising that correlational results do not mean causation and there may be interactions
of other variables thus reducing the validity of the concept.
Another disadvantage of self-disclosure to explain how attraction is affected is that it
doesn’t take into consideration cultural differences in the levels of disclosure. For example,
Nakanishi found that Japanese women tend to disclose much less than women whereas the
opposite is shown in western cultures such as US. Therefore this shows that there are
external factors such as cultural norms which can impact the results and making it
ethnocentric thus reducing the ability to generalise the theory to all cultures.
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