Three Suggestions for Increased Emphasis in the Study of Personal Relationships

Abstract

We briefly consider three areas in which we think our field could usefully place more emphasis. First, we argue that when relationship researchers ignore deep, passionate relational experiences, it is at substantial cost to their understanding of relationship life. Second, we suggest that progress in our field requires theory that integrates movitational, cognitive and emotional elements. Finally, we noted that in the various disciplines in which relationships are studied, individual phenomena are seen as the source of relational phenomena. However, we considered the possibility that sometimes the situation is reversed (e.g. in psychology, relational cognition may be the basis of `pure' cognition).