Section I: Interactional or Dyadic Focus

Lecture plan


I. Social exchange models
   Commentary:

These have been generally called "behavioral models." They emphasize
constructs that implicate situational control of behavior, focusing on what
spouses do rather than on their personalities. The consequences of actions
are believed to account for more variance in satisfaction than personality
variables. They tend to be like business arrangements applied to "love."
People are often uncomfortable with this notion, that "love" is negotiated,
that people seek personal gain at low personal cost, etc. This approach
runs headlong into the voluntary choice, illusion of choice ideas that are
so prevalent. (Just read some of the postings to the Marriage list!) The
role of situational control of behavior is very important in these models.
These models do not spend a lot of time worrying about the past history of
people. The Halford et al. article tries to show the changes from the early
behavioral models (BMT) and the newer versions, as described in his article. 

II. Performance Based Model (OMSP)

The Oregon Marital Studies Program (OMSP) model is divided into three
major categories:


There are four areas of Accomplishment: Every marriage must deal with these accomplishments or marital "goals."
They are there like air: how well people adapt to these is important.

Content areas:

Stages of Family Life Cycle:

Focus on where couple is in stage of family life (newly married, children,
etc.)

Commentary:
These facets are put together in a 3 dimensional model (a cube), which
has accomplishments as the front face (columns), content areas as the rows
on the front face, and stages of family life cycle as the back or side
facet. This results in a cube made up of 4 X 3 X N (where N = number of
stages of life cycle). For a given stage, there are 12 boxes which describe
the intersections of accomplishments and contents. In class I will further
divide the areas in a set of 12. (4 X 12 = 48 cells.)
This model defines assessment and outcome of marriages. We ask how well
a couple is doing in each "cell." This is a fairly straightforward
behavioral model, but listen closely for how it includes the "soft side" of
marriage.

Pleasure Sine-Wave:

This is an important conceptual aide that derives from the OMSP model.
Marital satisfaction and dissatisfaction are not just bi-polar, but rather
they are separate dimensions. The absence of satisfaction is not
dissatisfaction! Be sure to copy the drawing of the pleasure sinewave.

III. Social Learning Conceptions


 

                                                            
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