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Building and Maintaining Relationships: Lesson 11

1. Culture influences behavior through norms and gender roles that are passed down between generations. Gender differences include independence vs. connectedness, social dominance, aggression, and sexuality. 2. Conformity occurs through normative influence, where people desire acceptance, and informational influence, where people desire to be right. Experiments show people will conform their judgments to a group, even when the group is wrong. 3. The family is the primary influence on adolescents and takes different forms like nuclear, single-parent, and extended families. Family life cycles progress through stages of independence, marriage, parenting, and retirement.

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Building and Maintaining Relationships: Lesson 11

Uploaded by

Jherlene Anne Javier Alcanse

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Building and Maintaining Relationships

Lesson 11

Social Relationships Among Adolescents

Genes, Culture, and Gender

Culture is the enduring behavior, ideas and traditions shared by a large group of people that is passed from one
generation to the next. Nature predisposes us to learn the culture we are born into. Diverse language and customs shows
that much of our behavior is developed by our environment, not hardwired genetically.

Norms are standards for accepted and proper behavior within any culture.

Gender is the biological or socially influenced characteristics by which people define male and female. Consider these
differences:

1. Independence vs. Connectedness - Women were found to give more priority to close, intimate relationships than men.
This explains why both men and women report that friendship with women is more intimate, understanding, and nurturing.

2. Social dominance - In every known culture, men are found to be more dominant, driven, and aggressive. In terms of
leadership, men more often prioritize winning, getting ahead, and dominating others, whereas women excel in
transformational leadership that build team spirit.

3. Aggression - Studies show that men admit to more physical aggression than women, but the gender difference varies
depending on the context.

4. Sexuality - Men, whether gay or straight, are more likely to initiate sexual activity compared to women. They are also
more quickly aroused, desire sex more, use more pornography, and prefer more sexual variety.

Conformity and Obedience

Conformity is a change in behavior or belief as a result of group pressure that is either real or imagined. There are
three varieties:

1. Compliance - Outward conforming to an implied or explicit request while privately disagreeing.

2. Obedience - Acting to follow a direct order or command.
3. Acceptance - Sincere, inward conformity to an implied or explicit request.

There are three classic sets of experiments that illustrate conformity.

1. Muzafer Sherif - He wanted to isolate and study how norms are formed. He used the autokinetic phenomenon to study
how other people’s judgments influenced their own.
2. Solomon Asch - His experiment studied group pressure by having participants determine which of three lines matches the
length of a standard line.Then he had them to listen to other people’s judgments.
3. Stanley Milgram - He tested what would happen when authority clashes with conscience, and the extent to which people
will obey authority.

There are two reasons why people conform:

1. Normative Influence - This results from our desire for acceptance or to be liked.
2. Informational Influence - Stems from our desire to be right, and results from other people providing evidence about a
given reality.
There are four elements of effective persuasion:

1. Communicator - A credible communicator is someone perceived as both expert and trusthworthy.

2. The message - Associating a message with positive feelings often enhances persuasion by relying on peripheral cues.
3. The channel - The way the message is delivered. Studies have shown that personal influence works best.
4. The audience - Age makes a difference. Attitudes change as people grow older or attitudes may not change at all
because older people tend to hold onto the attitude they adopted when they were young.

Group Influence

1. Social facilitation - is the strengthening of dominant responses in the presence of others.

2. Social loafing - the tendency to exert less effort when you know there are other people who are also working toward the
same goal.
3. Deindividuation - the phenomenon of abandoning normal restraints or forgetting their individual identities as a response
to group or crowd norms.

Leadeship is the process by which certain people motivate and guide their group. Some people excel in task leadership
or a directive style for organizing work and focusing on goals.

Lesson 12

The Family and The Adolescent

Family Types, Structures and Composition

In a typical Filipino family, the father is the head of the home, the provider and the protector. The mother who assumes
the nurturing role, takes charge of the domestic needs of the family including emotional care and value formation of the
children

There are different types of family structures but the more common ones include the nuclear family, the single parent
family, the grandparent family, and the extended family.

A nuclear family or the traditional family, typically consists of two married parents and their biological or adopted
children all kiving in the same residence and sharing the values, duties, and responsibilities of the family.

A single parent family may consist of either the mother or the father as the head of the home and their dependent
children. Sometimes, grandparents come into the picture and the family evolves into what is called extended family or
grandparent family.

An extended family can also be called a complex family, joint family, or multigenerational family. This type of family
includes other relatives other than just the parents and their children.

A reconstituted family or blended family is formed out of another relationship, otherwise known as a step-family.

Families may also be categorized according to family size. In the Philippines, small families usually have only two
children and large families range from 4 to 7 children.

The Family Life Cycle and Family Systems Theory

The family life cycle refers to changes in the emotional and intellectual life of a person as one passes through from
childhood to the retirement years. If one misses one stage, it is still possible to catch up in other stages.

Acquiring independence requires a family member to have the ability to fend for his/her needs. It is assumed that he
has completed formal education or at least vocational training to be able to secure a job. The second stage of the family
cycle is marriage where one is expected to separate from his family of origin to build his own. This stage is followed by
parenting where one starts building his or her family and start raising children. Once the children become adults, parents
make every effort to prepare them to face the challenges of the world. The last stage is retirement where parents rest from
the daily grind of work and enjoys the remaining years with grandchildren.

One needs to have a mastery of each stage so as to move smoothly from one stage to the next. Any difficulty or
inability to overcome the challenges of each stage might pose problems in relationship and future transitions.

Family Influences

The family is the very first social unit that a child is exposed to. From birth to adulthood, it is the family who provides
care and nurturance. Thus, its influence on one’s attitudes, values and beliefs are great.

The family takes a significant role in the lives of the growing children. The home environment can either influence the
child in positive or negative ways.

Challenges and Issues Among Adolescents

It has been the traditional view that adolescents go through ‘storms and stress’. They are often viewed as rebellious
and difficult to manage. Adolescent undergo major changes, from the physical and physiological aspects to the emotional
and social areas of their lives.