Review - The Science of Intimate Relationships
by Garth Feltcher, Jeffry A. Simpson, Lorne Campbell, and Nickola C. Overall
Wiley-Blackwell, 2013
Review by Shaun Miller
Jul 29th 2014 (Volume 18, Issue 31)
To see the review online, please click here:
http://metapsychology.mentalhelp.net/poc/view_doc.php?type=book&id=7215&cn=396
Investigating love from a scientific approach has slowly gained prominence today. Most of
the work is done through rigorous academic journals, or through pop psychology. Fletcher
et. al.’s textbook, The Science of Intimate Relationships, manages to look at the current
literature and interweaves many disciplines to give a coherent picture of intimate
relationships. These disciplines include social psychology, developmental psychology,
evolutionary psychology, anthropology, neuroscience, and sexual behavior. Without getting
bogged down with the jargon or advanced science, the book still takes an evidence-based
approach in order to understand intimate relationships.
For the purposes of this review, I will not go into the details of each theory presented
in the book. I will briefly mention the main themes, theses, or topics. The book is
composed of six parts. Part one is the introduction in which the authors start with the
disciplines to give the reader a foundation, mainly social and evolutionary psychology. Part
two investigates intimate relationships at the mind and body perspective. The authors look
at how certain emotional scripts help explain predictive behavior for the partners and why
partners act and feel the way they do. If, for example, Mary is having a bad day and she’s
been in an intimate relationship with George, then George will know how to react to Mary’s
emotion and behavior because they have both formed an emotional script together.
In terms of the body, the authors go through a vast amount of scholarship and
explain how science has explained bodily changes and outcomes through evolution and
psychology such as purpose of hormones levels in both sexes, evolutionary advantages to
penis length and thickness, evolutionary advantages to orgasms, and sperm
competition. They keep up with the latest science about these topics and the debates
behind them. Yet, the authors present their own view (e.g., they argue that sperm
competition did not play a huge role in hominid evolution). They also present the latest
studies by suppressing oxytocin (known as the “cuddle hormone”) in monogamous prairie
voles to see if they would remain monogamous (the moles didn’t), and injecting oxytocin
into promiscuous prairie voles to see if they would produce partner bonding (the moles
did). Other studies indicate that introducing oxytocin to humans has made people feel
warmer towards people and less conflictual behavior.
There is also evidence that marriage negatively correlates with suicide. Widowed
men are 66 times more likely to commit suicide than married men, and widowed women are
nines times more likely to commit suicide than married women. Striking numbers indeed!
Parts Three, Four, and Five investigate the meaty part of all relationships: the
beginning, duration, and end of intimate relationships respectively. Starting with Part
Three--the beginning of intimate relationships--the authors sketch out John Bowlby’s
Attachment Theory. In essence, Attachment Theory is an evolutionary theory of human
social behavior and interaction. How one is attached in infancy can explain how one
interacts with others as an adult. The authors explain: “The take-home message is that we
are born to bond, but in different ways depending in part on our early social experience”
(124).
Many students may initially approach physical attraction as subjective. However, the
authors give scientific accounts of universal standards that both men and women find
attractive such as symmetry, waist-to-hip ratio on women, muscular athletic shape on men,
and how these qualities relate to health which helps reproductive success. Other examples
include mating strategies and how the menstrual cycle depends upon when the women is
most fertile. Moreover, women are more attracted to more masculine features when she is
most fertile, and women are deemed more attractive to men when she is most fertile
through external features (such as a higher voice).
The authors contend that women would evolve to have a long-term mating strategy
whereas men would evolve to have a short-term mating strategy. In short, men value
physical appeal more than women and are more likely to accept opportunities for casual
sex. But what is the evolutionary advantage of love? “The standard evolutionary
explanation for the origin of (romantic) love is that it evolved as a commitment device to
keep parents of children together long enough to help infants survive to reproductive age”
(158). Romantic love may not be perfect in that there are cases of infidelity and
divorce. But romantic love does give our species the motivational push to invest in future
offspring. Love starts in a passionate frenzy: obsessive thoughts about the partner, intense
longing for the partner, and lots of sexual activity. After the relationship has become less
frenetic, the relationship is characterized by commitment and deep companionship. To keep
and maintain a relationship, one must trust the other partner and engage in novel and
exciting things.
Part Four deals with maintaining relationships which is mainly done with
communication. It is no surprise when the authors concur with people’s intuitions that good
communication helps with relationship. Yet, the authors mention a puzzling study where
“negative communication predicts relative increases in relationship satisfaction across time”
(222). To explain this, the authors mention that communication comes in two types: active
and passive, and that active communication--though, at first harsh, like medicine, both
negative and positive--can eventually yield positive results. Indeed, passive
communication, even in a positive way, is associated with decreasing relationship
satisfaction over time. Passive communication may resolve the tension in the short-term,
but may not address the problem in the long run. This strategy is not to say that one must
continually be harshly honest in order to get the best relationship satisfaction. Depending
on the context (e.g., when the partner is stressed, whether the irritation is mild or severe,
whether there is already good relational support), honesty and practical management need
to be balanced in a delicate way. Not too little support, but interestingly, not too much
support either. Why not too much support? Possible explanations are that it lowers selfesteem, or it increases feelings of dependence to one’s partner which could increase
perceptions of inequality. The best type of support, the authors conclude, is where the
support is invisible where the support is there, but not in an obvious sense. Moreover,
studies suggest that women are better at giving this invisible support. To conclude the
overall study of communication, “good communication requires the ability of both partners
to ascertain, and be responsive to, the changing needs and demands specific to particular
partners and interactions” (233).
When it comes to sex drives, men have stronger sex drive and are more likely to
separate sex and love than women do. This idea seems to follow the cultural
conventions. In romantic violence, “men and women initiate about the same number of
violent acts in intimate relationships. However, men use more serious forms of physical
violence than women and are considerably more likely than women to inflict injuries”
(270). Relationship violence can be explained through evolutionary psychology and feminist
theory by a general distal causes, and the social psychology can explain the situational,
proximal causes.
Part Five deals with the ending of relationships. With relationship dissolution,
relationships and the dissolution are universal. The common claim is that divorce happens
50% of the time (at least in America) and that this is a recent phenomenon. However,
divorce is a worldwide feature of relationships and the practice has been around since the
Middle Ages in substantial numbers. Divorce, then, seems to have been relatively tolerated
throughout time. The authors’ research explain that commitment is the trump card for
relationship satisfaction. They also offer some factors of how to recover from a relationship
dissolution along with possible principled relationship therapies. Overall, those who are
oriented toward long-term mating are more likely to have the commitment and cognitive
and behavioral strategies to maintain their relationships.
Part Six is the authors’ conclusion by wrapping up what the science of love has given
us and where it may lead.
This book is perfect for those who want to know more about the science of
relationships without getting bogged down by the technical jargon. However, there seems
to be a glaring lacuna concerning homosexuality and the emergence of different type of
relationships such as polyamory. To get a wider field of what love is and to increase their
data points, it would be advantageous if the authors would include relationships that are not
part of the majority. The science of homosexuality and polyamory is starting to gain some
prominence. It would be fruitful if the authors would look at the latest research and
incorporate this into their next edition.
Despite these holes, this textbook is a great introduction to the science of intimate
relationships by sketching the updated ideas and theories surrounding the field, and
occasionally throw in some objections or critiques of the mainstream theories, not to cause
confusion, but to show that the mainstream theories are not the end of the story. This
textbook would work well for a college class.
© 2014 Shaun Miller
Shaun Miller is a Ph. D. student in philosophy at Marquette University. He has a BA
in philosophy from Utah State University and an MA in philosophy from Texas A&M
University.