Research Project
2245890
DESCRIPTION (Adapted from Applicant's Abstract): The applicant proposes to investigate how and when people implement each of the four basic relational models that they use to generate social relationships. He has shown that people everywhere use the same models to construct, understand, and evaluate most social relations. However, people implement these elementary models diversely: individuals probably use the models differently; the models operate differently in different social domains; and there are extensive differences in the forms in which the models manifest themselves across cultures. He will explore these differences in implementation. He will test his theory specifying which features of social relations are invariant and which features are culturally variable implementations; identify the major factors that systematically affect how and when people implement the models; and show how people acquire cultural implementation rules. Important components of the research program focus on the psychological sources of the cultural rituals with which people create, sustain, and transform implementations of the relational models; on basic taboos prohibiting actions antithetical to the models; and on people's invocation of the models in attributing misfortunes to violations of such taboos. Most of the research will focus on how people think about their own relationships in the real world, and what they actually do in real social interactions. The research will consist of a combination of theoretical work, quasi-experimental studies, cross-cultural comparisons, and ethnographic field research in two cultures. Theoretical work--building on evolutionary biology, functional sociology, and measurement theory-- will focus on analyzing why there are so few relational structures with so many functions. Quasi-experimental studies will include subjects' ratings of the features of their own relationships, including investigation of links between personality disorders and aberrant implementations of the models. Cross-cultural surveys will identify world patterns in the contexts and manner in which cultures implement the models, make attributions about misfortune, define social taboos, and organize social rituals. Ethnographic research will investigate all of these topics through participant observation and interviewing in the native language among the Moose of Burkina Faso and the Seltamin of New Guinea. The relational models theory connects psychological and cultural perspectives and integrates a broad range of theory and research on what had been regarded as unconnected phenomena. The investigator proposes theoretical developments and varied empirical tests of the theory that will show how people implement these models in everyday social life.
