Premarital Cohabitation
I.) Fundamental Issues and Historical Applications A. Toward a Greater Understanding of the Cohabitation Effect: Premarital Cohabitation and Marital Communication. 1. Issue number 6. What is the most appropriate level of analysis for psychology? Position A: Molecular. Despite significant theories giving a relationship to premarital cohabitation and the likelihood of divorce, we have yet to definitively answer the underlying question of why the relationship exists. This study focuses not on the theories themselves, but on a function of marital life. Marital communication is a large part of marital development. If the breakdown of communication is significantly lower for couples that premaritally cohabitated this could correlate a retarded level in marital development. 2. The authors in this study hold a perspective of structuralism. By singling out the marital issue of communication we can attempt to develop a relationship between communication and marital dysfunction as a whole. By looking at the component parts of a dysfunctional marriage we can conclude that low levels of communication will result in a higher level of marital dysfunction. By establishing this correlation we can then compare and develop conclusions between the levels of communication success in couples who engaged in premarital cohabitation as opposed to couples who did not. B. Come Live With me. 1. Issue number 8. What is the best psychological conception of organisms? Position B: Reactivity. It is popularly stated that premarital cohabitation weakens the “fundamental social institution” of marriage, however cohabitation is inconsistent and most studies use misleading data from an earlier genre where premarital cohabitation was outside of society’s normal expectation. By associating beliefs together and generalizing social norms premarital cohabitation has been linked with divorce when in fact divorce may have been inevitable regardless of prior
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