Work for Mr Lawrence - Friday 2nd December. Maintenance and Breakdown of Relationships

For the maintenance of relationships there are four different theories, but they are all similar to the simple idea of reward / need (they are based on the behavioural model, and use the idea of a 'balance sheet' of rewards and costs to explain why some relationships are maintained while others aren't), and are given the general term 'economic theories'. Here's a presentation on them.

Complete this sheet, which summarises the key ideas you need for outlining and evaluating the four theories.

Each of these 'maintenance' theories can be used to give a different reason why a relationship ends. Have a go at answering the following question for each of the four:

"According to the .......... theory, a relationship will come to an end if ....."

Duck has a four-stage theory addressing the questions 'how do relationships end?' (rather than 'why?'). You need to be able to give a fairly detailed outline of this and evaluate it. Have a go at the questions on this sheet, and bring all this to next Thursday's lesson.

Work for Mr Lawrence - Thursday 1st December

I am not in today due to illness. Here is an essay question on the evolutionary approach to relationships we looked at last week:

a) Outline and evaluate research into human reproductive behaviour. (5 + 6 marks)
b) How successfully do evolutionary theories explain the observed differences in male and female behaviour? (4 + 10 marks).

For next Thursday 8th December.

The next section we will move on to deals with a different set of questions: why do relationships form between some pairs of people but not between others? What factors lead to two people moving beyond casual 'dating' to become an established couple? Why do some relationships break up while others are maintained?

This is how your textbook's chapter on Relationships starts - you don't need to know the first bit on studies of attraction. You do need to know two theories of the formation of relationships - use the Filter Model and Reward / Need theory. Here's a presentation on them - hopefully I'll see you tomorrow to go over this, but make some basic notes on the two theories today.