Exam 2: Tools of Relationship Science

A researcher is interested in interpersonal attraction and the factors that affect it. She designs a study in which she looks at the effect of similarity and social warmth on interpersonal attraction. Participants in her study meet a target person who either is or is not similar to the participant (the similarity variable) and who is either friendly or is aloof (the social warmth variable). After interacting with the target person under these conditions, participants are then asked to rate how attractive they think the target person is. What is the null hypothesis in this study?

12.In your study on how relationship satisfaction predicts changes in weight, you find that couples who are happy weigh less than couples who are unhappy. Why would you conduct statistical analyses rather than simply describing your data?

What is the null hypothesis?

Spouses who are experiencing a lot of stress in their lives also tend to experience more symptoms of depression. This is an example of a:

For Sally's study, one member of a set of married couples carried voice-activated digital recorders for two weeks and both spouses made relationship satisfaction ratings at the end of each day. The recordings contained a lot of meaningless information, but they also contained daily conversations that the spouses had with each other. Sally analyzed the conversations and examined whether the positive and negative behaviors on each day predicted the relationship satisfaction ratings on subsequent days. What kind of research is this?

Which of the following is NOT a crucial element of a true experiment?

Patrice randomly assigns thirty couples to a problem-solving skills training group and another thirty couples to a group where they have group discussions about their relationship problems, but no specific training is provided. She assesses positive and negative problem-solving behavior before and after the groups, and she finds that after the groups, couples in the skills training group have higher positive and lower negative behavior scores than couples in the discussion group. What can Patrice conclude from this?

4.Imagine that you wanted to learn more about how couples communicate about hurt feelings, whether and how they forgive each other for interpersonal transgressions, and how these behaviors relate to relationship quality. How would you design your study? Comment on what measurement strategy and what type of design you would use and why.

14.Distinguish participant confidentiality from participant anonymity, and explain how each can be maintained in the research process.

A researcher is surveying men about partner behaviors that are potentially annoying. When presented with a list of possibly annoying behaviors and asked to rate their tolerance of these behaviors that have occurred in the current relationship, respondents indicate a high level of tolerance for all behaviors, even the most annoying ones. What phenomenon might these responses illustrate?

Kahni has developed a measure of conflict and she is using participants' frequency of conflict to predict their relationship satisfaction. She is assessing relationship satisfaction with the Marital Adjustment Test, which is a self-report measure of satisfaction that taps in to how spouses resolve disagreements, how much spouses confide in each other, and how much spouses agree about various topics. Which of the following is NOT a potential problem with using the Marital Adjustment Test in Kahni's study?

Ravneet is doing a study on social support in romantic relationships and depression. He recruited a sample of undergraduates to complete his questionnaires, but would like to generalize his findings to anyone in a romantic relationship. What is one problem with his study?

Ravneet is doing a study on social support in newlyweds and depression. He would like to collect data from a representative sample. This means Ravneet should:

8.Why would a researcher choose to conduct a longitudinal study rather than an experiment to understand relationship processes?

Danica put spouses in separate rooms, asked them to complete relationship satisfaction ratings, and then videotaped all participants giving a brief speech, which she said their partners would later watch. After the speech, participants were provided with written false feedback presumably provided by their partners, and then they rated their relationship satisfaction again. Danica then assessed how evaluations of relationship satisfaction changed when participants received three different types of false feedback. In one condition, the feedback was positive and reassuring, in the second it was negative and critical, and in the third it was mixed. In this experiment, the independent variable is ________ and the dependent variable is ________.

A researcher is interested in interpersonal attraction and the factors that affect it. She designs a study in which she looks at the effect of similarity and social warmth on interpersonal attraction. Participants in her study meet a target person who either is or is not similar to the participant (the similarity variable) and who is either friendly or aloof (the social warmth variable). After interacting with the target person under these conditions, participants are then asked to rate how attractive they think the target person is. In this study, the dependent variable is:

In the 1970s, a number of studies suggested that over the course of a long marriage, spouses' relationship satisfaction generally followed a U-shaped curve: first declining, then remaining stable, and then increasing (presumably after children left home). In the 1990s, new research proved this idea wrong. Generally, marital satisfaction declines throughout the course of marriage. What was the difference between the earlier and the later research?

2.Describe some of the pros and cons of using physiological measurement in relationship research.

Andy decides to use a measure of how many times per week research participants talk to their partners as a measure of relationship closeness. According to the chapter on research methods, ÒclosenessÓ is ________.

Informed consent involves: