Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page i Human Relationships Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page ii Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page iii Human Relationships 4th Edition Steve Duck Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page iv © Steve Duck 2007 First published 2007 Apart from any fair dealing for the purposes of research or private study, or criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, this publication may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form, or by any means, only with the prior permission in writing of the publishers, or in the case of reprographic reproduction, in accordance with the terms of licences issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside those terms should be sent to the publishers. SAGE Publications Ltd 1 Oliver’s Yard 55 City Road London EC1Y 1SP SAGE Publications Inc. 2455 Teller Road Thousand Oaks, California 91320 SAGE Publications India Pvt Ltd B 1/I 1 Mohan Cooperative Industrial Area Mathura Road, New Delhi 110 044 India SAGE Publications Asia-Pacific Pte Ltd 33 Pekin Street #02-01 Far East Square Singapore 048763 British Library Cataloguing in Publication data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library ISBN 978-1-4129-2998-1 ISBN 978-1-4129-2999-8 (pbk) Library of Congress Control Number: 2006929060 Typeset by C&M Digitals (P) Ltd, Chennai, India Printed in Great Britain by The Alden Press, Witney Printed on paper from sustainable resources Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page v Contents Preface ix Acknowledgements xiii Publisher’s Acknowledgements xiv 1 Meaning and Relationships in a Biological and Cultural Context 1 Contexts for analysing relationships 2 Biology: the animal background 3 Culture: the large overlay 4 Daily practices and everyday experience 5 Uncertainty and practicality 6 Quality and appropriateness in relationships 9 Communication as a context for ‘quality’ 10 Communicative contexts for doing relationships 12 Silent language: nonverbal communication 13 Are there social rules about space? 14 Nonverbal systems of meaning 20 [Un]Skillful use of nonverbal cues 23 Speaking up for yourself: using words 25 It ain’t what you say: The role of language and paralanguage 25 More about content 29 Using language to relate to other people 31 Putting verbal and nonverbal together 36 Summary 37 Self questions 38 Further reading 38 Practical matters 39 2 Attachment and Emotion 40 Effects of childhood on later relationships I: attachment 42 Effects of childhood on later relationships II: experiences and observations 46 Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page vi vi Human Relationships Life at home and school 47 Interpreting emotions 49 Labelling and expressing feelings 52 Positive emotion: love 56 Are there different types of love? 58 Developing love? 60 The behaviour of lovers 62 Some problematic emotions: jealousy and shyness 64 Jealousy 64 Shyness 67 Summary 69 Self questions 70 Further reading 71 Practical matters 71 3 Daily Life: The Everyday Conduct and Management of Relationships 72 Starting relationships: biological and cultural contexts of attraction 75 Information and acquaintance: how we reveal things about ourselves 77 Getting to know you: shared meaning 79 Uncertainty reduction 80 Self-disclosure 82 The nature of relationships: everyday management in a practical physical world 85 How strategic are we in making acquaintances? 85 Self-disclosure as a strategic relational activity 88 Establishing, developing and maintaining relationships 90 Do partners always agree about their relationship? 93 Does it matter what ‘outsiders’ think? 93 Break up and resurrection of relationships 96 When things go wrong 96 Putting it right 100 Summary 103 Self questions 104 Further reading 104 Practical matters 104 4 Relationships within other Relationships: Social Networks and Families 106 Organizing an exclusive relationship within other relationships 108 The social context for organizing relationships 109 Who makes a relationship work? 111 Getting the relationship organized for outsiders 114 Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page vii Contents vii Recognizing two people as ‘a couple’ 115 Social norms and expectations 117 Organizing the couple’s new connections 119 Adding children to the relationship 121 Families and networks 122 Systemic interdependence 125 Happy families? 128 Parents and peers as influences on kids 130 The disorganizing effects of family breakup and reconstitution 132 Children and divorce or reconfiguration 135 Summary 138 Self questions 139 Further reading 140 Practical matters 140 5 Influencing Strangers, Acquaintances and Friends 141 Relating is persuasive and vice versa 144 Persuading strangers, acquaintances and friends 144 Everyday persuasion 146 Influencing strangers 147 Strangers on the train 148 Being noticed 150 The apathetic context 152 The dog owner’s dilemma 154 Dissonance 155 Problems with these ideas 155 Logos: Messages and persuasion 156 Reflections 158 Social and relational face: Was it something I said? 159 Everyday talk as persuasive 161 Persuasion and concerns about the relational context 163 The relational network as a morally persuasive context 165 Relationships as hidden persuaders 168 Summary 171 Self questions 171 Further reading 172 Practical matters 172 6 Technology and the Boundaries of Relationships: it’s all Geek to me 173 Crossing relational spaces 175 The Internet as problematic relating 178 Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page viii viii Human Relationships Some relational downsides of the technology 185 The Internet as a relational acquisition and development tool 190 Oh give me a phone where the charges don’t roam … mobile phones and perpetual availability 192 The mobile self and its mobile relationships 195 Smudging the time boundary 196 Summary 200 Self questions 201 Further reading 202 Practical matters 203 7 The Management of Relationship Difficulty 204 Four degrees of … separation 205 Hamlet’s fardels: the daily binds of relating 209 Whips and scorns: unpredictable events and unwelcome minor stresses/rough patches 213 Oppressors’ wrongs 1: some more unusual problems with relationships 218 Oppressors’ wrongs 2: the darker side of relationships 222 The greyer side of regular relating difficulty 224 Are there difficult people? 224 Triangulation 227 Summary 233 Self questions 234 Further reading 234 Practical matters 235 8 Some Applications of Relationship Research 236 Relationships are knowledge 239 Relationships are knowledge movers and shakers 241 Applying relational knowledge 243 Speaking to convictions: relationships in legal settings 244 Relationships in the workplace/marketplace 250 Engagement 251 Relationships and health 253 Summary 259 Further reading 260 References 261 Author Index 289 Subject Index 293 Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page ix Preface In the 20 years since Human Relationships was first published, there has indeed been the huge increase in the number of courses on relationships in such disci- plines as communication studies, family studies, sociology, and personality and developmental psychology that I had hoped for. A consequence is that there have been not only substantial advances in theory, scope and methods, but also diver- sity in the ways in which the subject matter is taught. All of these make the origi- nal 1986 version of this book gratifyingly dated and also impel revision of the Third Edition that was published in 1998. For example, there has been substantial attention to attachment theory, sociobiology, evolutionary theory, and culture but there is also corresponding attention to the practical and qualitative effects of con- duct of everyday life in the routine behaviours of relationships — how people carry them out. The blending of these elements, characterized by the connection of predisposing qualities to the actual performances of daily life, is one of the main changes that characterize this Fourth Edition. The attention to relationship performance gives the book a broad appeal to those disciplines concerned with interactions, while the inclusion of evolutionary and attachment perspectives will attract readers whose main interest is in factors that predetermine certain behaviours (such as biological predispositions, acquired personality proclivities, styles of interaction acquired in early experience and more distant influences such as cultural norms). Of course all of these things have importance in the study of relationships, and this book will not be imperialist in claiming that there is only one interesting way to look at relationships. It does, however, argue against those who say that there is only one such way. This edi- tion thus blends the established UK emphasis on discourse with the more tradi- tional US focus on experimental perspectives, stressing the ways in which the predisposing aspects of psychology, such as personality, evolutionary and socio- biological components of psychological dispositions are given their real and enacted form in the interactions of everyday life among networks of real people. Another necessary increase in attention is given both to the dark side of rela- tionships — the things that are clearly bad about relationships such as jealousy and stalking — and to the smaller everyday management of difficulties in relating, the perpetually recurrent crises in all relating that require us to balance rewards and the inevitable costs that stem from the essentially dualist and dialogical nature of relationships in practical life. This type of management is an Duck-3494-Prelims.qxd 1/16/2007 10:39 AM Page x x Human Relationships inescapable challenge of relationship conduct since they are always changing and so we must constantly adjust as part of the natural process of the maintenance and evolution of relationships (and, indeed, of our own changing life circumstances, as we progress through the life cycle). The routine management of the difficulties of relationships now takes up an entirely new chapter in this edition (Chapter 7 ‘The Management of Relationship Difficulty’).