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Summary IB Psychology Paper 2 sample answers for Interpersonal relationships
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Contains sample answers for all questions for Interpersonal Relationships questions under Human Relationships.
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Human RelationshipsFormation of personal relationships:
Discuss the formation of personal relationships.
Discuss one or more factors that may affect the formation of personal
relationships.
Evaluate one explanation for the formation of personal relationships.
Evaluate one or more studies related to personal relationships.
Discuss the biological or cognitive approach to understanding personal
relationships.
Discuss the sociocultural approach to understanding personal
relationships.
Contrast the biological and cognitive approaches to understanding
personal relationships.
Role of Communication:
Discuss the role of communication in personal relationships.
Explanations for why relationships change or end:
Evaluate one or more explanations for why relationships change or end.
Research methods and ethical considerations:
Evaluate/ Discuss the use of one research method used to study personal
relationships.
Discuss one or more ethical considerations related to research on personal
relationships.
,Biological approach to interpersonal relationships:
The biological approach to relationships argues that there are two factors that
influence human attraction: the role of neurotransmitters and the role of
evolutionary arguments.
According to Fisher, romantic love should be seen as a motivation system.
Dopamine is a neurotransmitter responsible for motivation and making a person
feel good. Every time a person thinks about their romantic partner, dopamine is
released. This results in the feeling of happiness, which is stored as a memory,
and creates an obsessive attentiveness towards the object of happiness.
Fisher et al. (2005):
Participants were women and men who were intensely in love for an average of
7.4 months. They completed the Passionate Love Scale Likert scale
questionnaire measuring the traits commonly associated with romantic love.
Participants were asked to look at a photograph of their beloved (positive
stimulus) for 30 seconds while undergoing a fMRI scan. Then they completed a
distraction task involving counting backwards for 40 seconds before viewing a
neutral photograph (neutral stimulus) for 30 seconds while being scanned. From
the activity observed in the brain’s reward system, the researchers found that
there was increased activity in the areas of the brain known to be important
activators of dopamine pathways when the participants looked at pictures of their
lovers. The more passionate the love was according to the self-reporting, the
more active the brain’s reward circuitry was. This high activation of the dopamine
system during the early stages of romantic love results in strong goal-directed
behaviors, emotions, and cognitions, showing that dopamine activity and the
brain’s reward system play a role in the formation of romantic love.
The theory that specific brain systems have evolved to motivate individuals to
mate could potentially explain why attraction is normally linked to increased
energy, focused attention, obsessive following, sleeplessness, and loss of
appetite. Also, dopamine is behind the intense motivation to win a specific mating
partner in the early stages of human romantic love, making humans very much
like other animals.
Gender bias was avoided in the study and ethical considerations were employed.
The results of the study may be useful for evaluating the existence of romantic
feelings for another person (useful in couples therapy to determine attraction).
However, it cannot be guaranteed that the participants thought about their
significant other and neutral acquaintance for the entire duration of the
experience (other thoughts may have provoked activity in the brain). Participants
, were also culturally biased as they were all Americans from the same university.
The participants were in a relationship under a year (puppy love, not companion
love which is less like a drug), meaning that the study cannot explain the role of
neurotransmitters in long-term relationships. Lastly, the definition of intensity and
passion of love varies to each individual.
Another feature of attraction is the intense craving for the partner. Lovers cannot
control their thoughts and spend a lot of time consumed by thinking about their
partner. This obsession by the loved one could be related to decreased levels of
the neurotransmitter serotonin.
Marazitti et al. (1999):
To test whether the obsessional nature of early-stage love might share the same
physiological basis as obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). There were 60
participants, 20 people who had fallen in love in the previous six months, 20
people who suffered from untreated OCD, and 20 normal, healthy individuals
who were not in love (controls). Researchers measured serotonin levels from the
blood samples from the lovers. The findings showed that the serotonin levels of
new lovers were equivalent to the serotonin levels found in people with OCD.
The study shows that romantic love and OCD are physiologically similar as they
both trigger low serotonin levels, and hence serotonin could act as the biological
mechanism explaining the act of “falling in love”. The similarities between
obsession and love in the early stages of love may mean that love might be an
obsession.
The use of control groups allowed for the establishment of a correlation between
OCD obsession and early-stage love. However, researchers analyzed serotonin
levels in blood and not serotonin activity in the brain, hence it is not possible to
understand the exact role of serotonin in romantic love.
Evolutionary explanations of relationships argue that the purpose of attraction is
to procreate and emphasized the theory of natural selection which proposes that
we are attracted to the traits that would have greatest advantage for potential
offspring. People choose somebody with the best gene pool to be passed down
generations, for example, the gene MHC (Major Histocompatibility Complex),
which plays a role in the immune system. The more diverse the MHC gene’s are,
the stronger the immune system of the offspring.
Wedekind et al. (1995):
The aim of the experiment was to study whether the genetic make-up of MHC
genes and body odor in males had an impact on female preferences for them.
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