SCIENCE OF RELATIONSHIPS / 1 The Science of Relationships: Answers to Your Question about Dating, Marriage, & Family Edited by: Gary W. Lewandowski, Jr., Timothy J. Loving, Benjamin Le, & Marci E. J. Gleason Contributing Authors: Jennifer J. Harman, Jody L. Davis, Lorne Campbell, Robin S. Edelstein, Nancy E. Frye, Lisa A. Neff, M. Minda Oriña, Debra Mashek, & Eshkol Rafaeli Copyright © 2013 Dr. L Industries, LLC All rights reserved. No part of the contents of this book may be reproduced without the written permission of the publisher. Kendall-Hunt Publishing Company previously published an earlier version of this book. www.ScienceOfRelationships.com SCIENCE OF RELATIONSHIPS / 2 Preface You might be wondering "why do we need another book on relationships?" Well, if the book in question is like all of the existing books out there, in that it offers the opinion of a single author...the answer is we don't need another book on relationships – at least like that. What we do need is a book on relationships that takes a new approach. Thankfully, the book you are about to read represents a new way of writing about relationships. Up to this point, if you wanted to learn about relationships the most common way to do so was to read a traditional self-help or advice book, read an advice page on the Internet, or pick up a magazine from the check-out line at the store. Other options, though largely underutilized, would be to take a college course on relationships or read the hundreds of scientific articles that relationship scholars publish annually in academic journals. These approaches each have their pros and cons. This book offers a new option, representing a hybrid that capitalizes on the positive features of both popular and academic sources. This new approach presents the leading research on romantic relationships in a way that is informative, engaging, and fun. The contributors of this book, all of whom are experts in the scientific study of interpersonal relationships, collectively felt that the relationship books currently lining bookshelves were too heavy on opinion and too light on quality fact-based information. So, on a snowy, June night in Breckenridge, Colorado, as over a dozen of us crammed into a hot tub, the idea for this book was born. Now you might be wondering if that was too many people. For a six person hot tub, perhaps. But for a book on relationships that seeks to provide expert information, the more the merrier. In fact, the scope of relationships is so broad that it is nearly impossible for any one person to be an expert on the entire field. Having so many experts insures that someone with a deep knowledge of that area delivers the information. All of the contributors to this book hold a Ph.D. in the study of relationships. Our specialties cover the spectrum of relationship experiences including: dating, attraction, passion, making love last, and breaking up, to name a few. Collectively, we have been studying relationships for 200 years! Not only are we relationship scientists, but a majority of us are also college professors who routinely teach classes on relationships. As a group we have also dated, divorced, been engaged, been dumped, cheated, been cheated on, fallen in love, gotten into fights, made-up, hooked-up, had kids, and avoided having kids, although not necessarily in that order. So we don't just study relationships, we have lived them as well! Our combined personal experiences and doctoral training make this type of book, where research findings are applied to everyday contexts, possible. We all have relationships, so aren't we all experts? Not exactly. Just because people prepare their own dinner every night, it doesn't make them all Jamie Oliver, Rachel Ray, or Wolfgang Puck. When it comes to relationships, an expert is someone who has extensive knowledge of the scientific research. But why is research important? A fundamental human motivation involves trying to understand the world. Often we seek understanding by gathering information SCIENCE OF RELATIONSHIPS / 3 about our lives through comparisons to others. In the context of relationships it is not uncommon to ask friends what their relationships are like as a way of better understanding your own. Other times you might go to the bookstore to pick up a book about relationships or simply go Googling for the answers. While these sources will provide information about your relationships, they are limited in a very important way. They represent the opinions of only a few people (e.g., your friend and the author of the book). If you had a chance to ask hundreds or thousands of people about their relationships, how their partners treat them, if they ever experience feelings of doubt, etc., would you? In essence, this is what we do as researchers. We pose questions and have hundreds of people provide responses so that we can more accurately capture what relationships are generally like. This way we are sure to get a better feel for what most people's experiences are like, rather than the potentially idiosyncratic or biased viewpoints of a few individuals who happen to write relationship books. Similarly, if you want to know what most people watch on TV you would look at the Nielsen ratings, not what your next door neighbor watches. Some people might think no one knows their relationships better than they do, so it doesn't matter what other people have to say. Unfortunately, we are often inaccurate in our perceptions and evaluations of ourselves. People who want to believe their relationships are perfect will seek out information that confirms these beliefs, and when confronted with evidence that their relationships aren't perfect they tend to find fault with the evidence. Because of these biases, it is important to use scientific information that arrives at objective conclusions that are untainted by personal beliefs. This way you can focus on how things really are, and less on how you hope things are. One of the complaints people often have about science, and scientific writing, is that it is often not very definitive and instead provides lots of "it depends" types of answers. While it is true that no conclusion is 100% certain, general conclusions can still be made. Throughout the book we have tried to provide you with the "take home points" that have emerged from research, while also discussing the many details and caveats that characterize complex social relationships. Thus, in some cases, our characterization of an original study may be somewhat of a departure from the original author's intended conclusion. Much like you can drive a car or use your iPad without fully understanding how it works, we believe that you can benefit from the scientific study of relationships without knowing all of the details. However, we do hope that a byproduct of your interest in this book will be an enhanced curiosity into the methods scientists use to uncover this information. Still skeptical about the need for experts and science in living your own individual life? Consider the case of the weather. On a daily basis we often benefit from being informed about what the conditions outside will be like. Is it going to rain? Will it be cold? To find out this information, we don't call our friend to see what they think. Instead, we rely on the weather forecast that is based on the collection of large amounts of data, which is then interpreted by experts. If scientific data are good enough to dictate your wardrobe, shouldn't they be good enough to help with other areas of your life? We think so. SCIENCE OF RELATIONSHIPS / 4 We have gathered a collection of the most commonly asked questions about relationships and families to help provide you with the information that will be most useful to your relationship. Each question is followed by an answer based in science, presented in a way that is easy to understand and apply to your relationships. We have organized the book, and partitioned the questions around the most common themes relationship scientists tend to focus their attention (e.g., attraction, love, commitment, etc.). Each theme serves as its own Section, with three or more questions covered as part of each section. Within each question, we have cited the relevant scientific literature using numbers in [brackets]. In addition, at the end of each question we have highlighted the important Take Home Points, provided the References for the research cited, and suggested additional resources for readers to Dig Deeper into the topic. As a whole, the book contains up-to-date scientific findings on attraction, finding a partner, dating, flirting, whether or not love lasts forever, why people break-up, getting over a break-up, whether or not some people are more ready for relationships than others, what makes us become close to another, the experience of love, the role of sex in relationships, knowing if you have a good partner/relationship, why people stay in a bad relationship, the role of counseling, how relationships change over time, cheating, jealousy, conflict, improving communication, good and bad fighting, cohabitation, having kids, and parenting. You might think that's a lot of information. In reality, this is only the tip of the iceberg. SCIENCE OF RELATIONSHIPS / 5 Section 1: Attraction & Relationship Initiation Take a second to look up from your book and quickly glance at the person nearest to you (take a peek at a picture if you're reading alone). In the blink of an eye you have registered that person's physical attractiveness. Are they closer to a perfect 10 or a perfect zero? Every enduring romance has to start somewhere, and that place is often a spark of physical attraction.