Critical Reading
The week’s assigned readings dealt with the multifaceted experiences of single people. DePaulo and Morris 2015 address the influence of social claims about single people on scientific ideologies. Essentially, their research adopts different ideologies that all support the argument that single people are often misjudged in many societies. They often fall prey to the stereotype that married people are happier than them. The research seeks to disapprove of these claims. Girme et al., 2016 also suggest that happiness should not be attributed to an individual’s relationship status. On the contrary, psychological happiness should be evaluated in terms of a person’s well-being and personal goals. Their research used two study techniques, daily life satisfaction and well-being across time, to analyze the effects of relationships on individuals. They concluded that individuals intending to avoid people are less satisfied in romantic relationships than those with high approach goals.
Kislev 2020 also discusses how people’s sociability relates to their desire for relationships. Using a detailed cross-sectional analysis on divorced singles and those who had never been married, his study revealed that single people are more sociable and easily relate with friends, especially when they don’t have desires for romantic relationships. Longitudinal studies were also used to describe the significance of friendships over romance in single people’s lives. Pepping, MacDonald, and Davis, 2018 propose that singlehood should be accorded more importance and greater attention from scientific researchers. Arguably, their research aimed to categorize single people into groups to show their significance in the sociological studies. From their conclusions, singlehood can be attributed to personal choice, deactivation of an individual’s attachment system, or the said system’s hyperactivation.
References
DePaulo, B., & Morris, W. (2005). TARGET ARTICLE: Singles in Society and in Science. Psychological Inquiry, 16(2), 57-83. https://doi.org/10.1207/s15327965pli162&3_01
Girme, Y., Overall, N., Faingataa, S., & Sibley, C. (2015). Happily Single. Social Psychological and Personality Science, 7(2), 122-130. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550615599828
Kislev, E. (2020). How do relationship desire and sociability relate to each other among singles? Longitudinal analysis of the Pairfam survey. Journal of Social And Personal Relationships, 37(8-9), 2634-2650. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407520933000
Pepping, C., MacDonald, G., & Davis, P. (2018). Toward a Psychology of Singlehood: An Attachment-Theory Perspective on Long-Term Singlehood. Current Directions In Psychological Science, 27(5), 324-331. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721417752106