Discuss research into the effects of culture on romantic relationships

Myers et al conducted research regarding voluntary and non-voluntary relationships. He studied individuals in India living in arranged marriages and found no differences in marital satisfaction when compared to individuals in non-arranged marriages in the US.

One strength of this theory is that it holds good ecological validity. Since it may have been difficult to actually measure the marital satisfaction of an individual the study may have struggled to prove what it was set out to prove. However the study was able to identify satisfaction within a range of individuals and the results could be generalised to the question of voluntary and non-voluntary relationship when assessing culture.

A weakness of this study however is that it is reductionist. It does not explain how and why those in arranged marriages are seen to be more satisfied and cannot be applied to further questions in psychological research since there is no substance to the findings. Also, other research contradicts the findings for example Xiaohe and Whyte found that women in China who had married for love felt better about their marriages than women who experienced arranged marriages. This seriously questions the reliability if Myers’ research since more studies agree with the findings of Xiaohe and Whyte than not, revealing a lack of generalisability of the study.

Ting-Toomey comducted research with regards to norms and rules in