Sam Dresser at Psyche:
I was intrigued to read about a proposed ‘unified framework’ for capturing how people see relationships. Researchers asked people from 19 world regions to rate the features of various types of relationships, ranging from siblings to leader and follower to fans of opposing sports teams. They found that relationships could be described in terms of five main dimensions:
- Formality: roughly, how formal and public a relationship is vs informal and private;
- Activeness: how close and involved vs distant;
- Valence: how friendly vs hostile;
- Exchange: how much it involves trading concrete resources like money vs intangible things like affection; and
- Equality: how equal each person’s power is in the relationship.
While the researchers say this model is ‘far from conclusive’, it does give scientists – and the rest of us – a new lens for considering our relationships and what they mean to us.
More here.
Enjoying the content on 3QD? Help keep us going by donating now.