The following general suggestions may be useful as you craft your replies
Topic: Discussion Question from Dear Ann
Details: At least two of your responses should be a minimum of 150 words each.
The following general suggestions may be useful as you craft your replies:
• Ask clarifying or thought provoking questions.
• Provide personal or professional examples that further illustrate relevant social psychological concepts identified in your classmate’s post.
• Supply additional information that might influence your classmate’s interpretation. For example, recommend resources that further support their position or identify possible alternative explanations.
• Relate the content in your classmate’s post to that of your own or another classmate’s initial contribution to this discussion.
*****Use the guideline above to answer the questions below******
Discussion Questions from Dear Ann Post
I really appreciated your consideration of the various factors that contribute to or predict divorce. Although dispositional attributions may be to blame, you did a great job looking at this from a social psychological standpoint, identifying contextual factors. In our culture, we are often quick to attribute problems in a relationship to the couple and their individual idiosyncrasies. But, what if we’re committing the fundamental attribution error, placing blame on internal factors while ignoring external contributions to the failure of a marriage, such as the conditions you describe leading up to the marriage? Allow me to share two points from a paper on this topic (Karney & Bradbury, 2005, p. 171):
1. Some environments are less supportive/more challenging.
2. If external demands on the marriage are high, even well-equipped couples may find themselves unable to effectively cope.
(The paper describes this in the context of low-income populations, but the other thing that comes to mind for me would be couples living lifestyles that pose many threats or temptations (celebrities, for example) or couples who have experienced extreme situations, such as the loss of a child or major medical hurdles.).
If these things are true, how might this impact our interventions? Instead of focusing on “fixing” faulty personality characteristics or behavioral patterns, might we extend our consideration to the environment as well? The authors of the above cited study suggest that would be a key consideration, noting that providing skills training is useless if couples have no opportunity to practice the skills due to forces in the environment beyond their control… they compare this to “offering piano lessons to people with no access to a piano” (Karney & Bradbury, 2005, p. 174). Do you or others in the class have ideas that might go beyond traditional approaches of therapy/counseling in order to mitigate the contextual threats to the relationship, either before the union takes place, while things are good, or when everything is falling apart?
Looking forward to the conversation!
Dr. A
References
Karney, B. R., & Bradbury, T. N. (2005). Contextual influences on marriage: Implications for policy and intervention. Current Directions in Psychological Science, 14(4), 171-174.
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APA
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