Relationships and attraction are two pretty complex topics. In trying to think of ways to explore these areas a little further, I decided to conduct a little social psychology research and get some information from a local population to answer two main questions: how do people in our local environment view relationships, and what makes them view them the way that they do? I was curious about whether our local environment here in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, specifically Houghton, even more specifically the MTU community, is unique in how relationships are viewed and experienced, or if we fit the mold discussed in our textbook and other literature. To get my answers, I created a simple 14-question survey and sent it out to a variety of family, friends, coworkers, and classmates, all in the local area. I received a total of 23 responses, none of which are in our social psychology class. After looking at the data I collected, I was able to make some links and connections to possible reasons why I received some of the responses I did.
A little background info to get started. My first 4 basic-info questions at the beginning of my survey included collecting ages, genders, whether or not people were in a relationship, and if so how long they have been in a relationship. As seen in the pictured results charts, the majority of people responding were under the age of 30 (6 were 20 or younger and 8 were between the ages of 21 and 30), female (16 of the 23 responses), and in a relationship of some sort (19 out of 23).
As human beings, we don't like being alone. In asking if people were in a relationship or not, I also had to have a baseline question directed at those not in a relationship: how content are single people with being single? 17.4% of participants were not in any kind of romantic relationship. The fact that most people surveyed are in some sort of relationship justifies the notion that we as human beings do not usually enjoy being alone. The theory behind this idea is more commonly referred to as the need for affiliation (Kassin, Fein, and Markus, 2016). We are wired to desire being accepted by and affiliated with other people. This is also seen as a very important piece of the popular psychology staple, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; the need to belong and be connected with other human beings is considered the larger/more important of our two psychological needs (click the link to view Maslow's pyramid-shaped model and read a little more on its other parts). With this in mind, the answer to my question for single people surprised me. 2 people reported being 100% okay with being alone, 2 people reported feeling neutral about being alone, and only 1 person reported wishing they were in some sort of relationship. The raw conclusion from this response would be that people in Houghton, MI don't desire companionship as strongly as the subjects of related psychological studies.. However, with a larger overall sample size and larger percentage of participants not in a relationship, these percentages would likely be a little different; more data/research is needed in this category to know for sure.
We don't like to travel far in looking for a significant other. My next area of interest was looking at relationships and perceptions through the lens of geographical location. Houghton, MI is a pretty remote location, and I was curious just how comfortable people are with finding a significant other in this area. The results were not too surprising: 18 people that reported being in a relationship met their significant while living in the same town or area, with only 2 meeting their SO's while living nowhere near each other. People not currently in a relationship were split evenly between preferring to meet someone local and not minding it either way (they were open to meeting someone local or far away), however, nobody reported preferring to meet someone who lived far away. An interesting thing to note is that people also either met their SO or would prefer to meet a SO face to face or through a mutual friend as opposed to online. This was pretty surprising to me, as the majority of participants were under the age of 30 (probably pretty tech-savvy).While this may seem like common sense.. yep, you guessed it, there's a theory behind that. The proximity effect is what could potentially explain the results I received from these questions: people are more likely to form relationships with people nearby than with people they don't see very often due to distance. Along the same vein is the mere exposure effect, which describes the idea that the more frequently we interact with or see a person, the more likely we are to form a relationship with that person (Kassin, 2016). To get a better idea of these two possible reasons for my results, check out this brief article (featuring a classic video snippet) on everyone's favorite nerd - Steve Urkel - and how he used these two psychological principles to win over the girl of his dreams.
To wrap it all up... While these weren't my only findings, these were two of the more significant observations I was able to make with my data. In looking at the human desire for belonging and relationships with others, locals appear to be slightly outside the box. When looking at geographic location, however, we fit the mold pretty well. As with any study, there is always room for improvement. I have included the link to my survey here so you can see what other questions I asked, and I would love to discuss some of the other results I found in the comments! Please feel free to let me know your thoughts - do you think a survey was an accurate way to obtain this information? What kinds of variables do you think played a role in the answers I received? Was there something you think I could have done differently?
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post!
Click here to see the questionnaire I sent out.
References
Kassin, S., Fein, S., and Markus H. (2016). Social psychology. 10th ed. P.354-360.
As human beings, we don't like being alone. In asking if people were in a relationship or not, I also had to have a baseline question directed at those not in a relationship: how content are single people with being single? 17.4% of participants were not in any kind of romantic relationship. The fact that most people surveyed are in some sort of relationship justifies the notion that we as human beings do not usually enjoy being alone. The theory behind this idea is more commonly referred to as the need for affiliation (Kassin, Fein, and Markus, 2016). We are wired to desire being accepted by and affiliated with other people. This is also seen as a very important piece of the popular psychology staple, Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs; the need to belong and be connected with other human beings is considered the larger/more important of our two psychological needs (click the link to view Maslow's pyramid-shaped model and read a little more on its other parts). With this in mind, the answer to my question for single people surprised me. 2 people reported being 100% okay with being alone, 2 people reported feeling neutral about being alone, and only 1 person reported wishing they were in some sort of relationship. The raw conclusion from this response would be that people in Houghton, MI don't desire companionship as strongly as the subjects of related psychological studies.. However, with a larger overall sample size and larger percentage of participants not in a relationship, these percentages would likely be a little different; more data/research is needed in this category to know for sure.
To wrap it all up... While these weren't my only findings, these were two of the more significant observations I was able to make with my data. In looking at the human desire for belonging and relationships with others, locals appear to be slightly outside the box. When looking at geographic location, however, we fit the mold pretty well. As with any study, there is always room for improvement. I have included the link to my survey here so you can see what other questions I asked, and I would love to discuss some of the other results I found in the comments! Please feel free to let me know your thoughts - do you think a survey was an accurate way to obtain this information? What kinds of variables do you think played a role in the answers I received? Was there something you think I could have done differently?
Thank you for taking the time to read my blog post!
Click here to see the questionnaire I sent out.
References
Kassin, S., Fein, S., and Markus H. (2016). Social psychology. 10th ed. P.354-360.
I found this study interesting, however, I feel that the numbers may have been skewed from the small sample size. Perhaps you could have sent the link out to academic advisors to be forwarded to student bodies, instead of just family and friends. I feel that this could open up the sample size, and remove a few biases from the population.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback, Sam! I agree, I definitely would have a larger sample size if I was to do this again. It was sent out to around 35-40 people, but I only got 23 responses. Reaching out to academic advisors is a really great suggestion.
DeleteI think that it is fantastic that you decided to conduct your own study. I can't imagine that there is a lot of data for dating in the keweenaw. I would be very interested to know how the population of Michigan Tech differs from the surrounding area with these results. I would guess that the population of Tech and the population of Houghton/Hancock probably differ in some of their views on dating and relationships.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Brenna! I agree, the population of Tech is probably different in their views on dating and relationships. If I was to do this again, I would probably try to get a more even split between students and non-students in the area to get a better idea of the specific differences.
DeleteI think it would be very interesting to look at the differences between Michigan Tech students and the local community. Abby, you mentioned that it surprised you that most people preferred to meet someone in real life (or introduced by a friend) rather than online (with most of your sample being under the age of 30). I know for me personally being introduced to someone by a friend seems like a safer option than meeting online in the sense that I'm being introduced by someone who knows me and wouldn't set me up with someone I would hate. But a lot of people do use online dating apps/sites. It would be interesting to find out if this is because of how easy online dating can seem or if dating has become less personal, or something else. Then it would be interesting to compare students to the local community.
DeleteRose, I agree with you on this. And I also feel that people using online dating apps have come to an understanding that they will not meet the right person for them in their immediate living area. College can be a great example of a "in person dating application" where people from different backgrounds and places come together for the common purpose of educations and network themselves. Many times for undergraduates, this results in some relationships. It is another tool for networking past your immediate area to find a person that meets your standards.
DeleteExpanding on your point, college is a big transition time and people may not know where they will end up after graduation. I can see this influencing how people prefer to meet others and deciding whether or not they want a long-term relationship.
DeleteRose I also agree that I would feel safer dating a person that was introduced to me by a friend. I think that having approval of family and friends would influence my decision on who I would date. I have heard too many stories of people meeting with people online and it turning into a stalking or rape story.
DeleteThis was a great article Abby! It was really cool to see you conduct research of your own and start asking questions about relationships in our local area. I thought it was great to see that you had a diverse set of participants, as just going off of the MTU body alone would lead to way more male participants and a pretty young age range. But the information you provided was a nice refresher and covered a much larger demographic for this area.
ReplyDeleteThank you Allison! In class and in the book, we get a lot of general information, or stats from other areas/cities. I was interested to see how our little area in the Keweenaw compares! Would you have done anything differently, or asked different questions?
DeleteI would also try to get a larger pool of subjects, and more community members to try to get more diverse results.
DeleteThe fact that you went out of your way to make a survey to write about is truly commendable, Abby! While I found the results interesting overall, I'm curious to see what kind of overlap there was between demographics and responses. For example, how many females vs. males indicated that they were content with their current relationship status? If that's information you still have access to, I'd really like to see those results! Obviously the smaller sample size may have affected your results, but ultimately this is intriguing to look at. I figured the Houghton area had somewhat separate relationship views compared to the rest of the U.S., but I guess we weren't that far from the norm after all.
ReplyDeleteThanks for your comments, Adam! I went back and looked at the numbers, and there were 4 people out of the 23 who responded that were not in a relationship. The way I had it set up, I directed the "how content are you with your relationship" question at the single people. Of these four people, 2 were males and 2 were females. I'm really glad you brought this up, because the results were interesting! Both males reported being totally content with being on their own, while one female reported wishing they were in a relationship, and the other female reporting they didn't care one way or the other. Do you have any suggestions as to why this might be?
DeleteThanks for the statistics! I appreciate that you went back to look at them!
DeleteIt's hard to say why this is, considering there isn't a whole lot of data to go off. If I had to guess though, I'd say it could be linked to the personal ad assignment we had earlier this semester. When looking for romantic relationships, the class data showed that men tended to seek sex more frequently, while women sought after commitment more frequently. If these traits are also linked to what they seek for in more general relationships, that could explain your results; while you don't need to have a significant other for sex, commitment is much more heavily tied to romantic relationships. While that might not be the ideal explanation for these trends, it could very well be in the ballpark. Do you think that's somewhat reasonable, or do you have your own theory? I'd love to hear your insight on the situation.
This was a really smart way to get to know the chapter. Not only are you providing us with the information you found but your explaining how it relates back to the chapter. I'd be curious to see what the results would look like 10 years from now especially with the same town meeting question and how you'd prefer to meet your significant other. I'm thinking because of the steady increase in online communication/dating this might change the results you have collected. What do you think about this and what would that mean for the proximity effect?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback, Hali! I agree and think that there a change in the responses in 10 years is very likely. I'm not 100% certain, though, because even a large number of participants were college-aged and reported preferring to meet a significant other in person or through a mutual friend as opposed to online. I think the proximity effect will definitely still be accurate, but there may be a slight increase in the number of people who prefer meeting people online or people who have met there SO online. I hadn't really considered any future extrapolation of this data, great point!
DeleteI think you doing this study brings up a lot of these kind of questions regarding the past and future which I find super interesting. So, thank you for answering my questions it's always good to hear what others opinions are on it.
DeleteThats really cool that you conducted your own study for this project! I really enjoyed reading about the information you were able to find. I found it interesting how we in Houghton fit the bill for geographic location, but not so much for desire of relationship. As you already pointed out, a larger sample size would be ideal, but this was good for a general baseline. One question I had while reading was what were the percentage of MTU students vs non students that filled out your survey? I feel like age gaps could play a big role in these types of questions. Excellent post though Abby!
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback, Jake! Unfortunately I didn't get the percentage of MTU students, I just have ages. 14 of the responses I got were under the age of 30, but I did not collect the email addresses of the people who responded (which is an option with the Google form), so I can't see how many of those 14 were MTU students. I can probably assume most of them were students, but I can't say for sure. That would have been a good question to ask though, as people under 30 aren't necessarily students. I chose to ask about the general ages to see the age gaps, and as you pointed out, that was definitely something to consider when looking at the data I got. Great point!
DeleteFirst off, bravo on taking the initiative to conduct your own study. That is a very unique touch to your article. It would be interesting to see how Houghton lines up with a bigger city in Michigan with a larger population such as Ann Arbor or maybe even looking into university students here at MTU vs UofM. Do you think students here at MTU where the male to female ratio is so much different than a school like UofM would give you different results?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Ben! I think that would be an interesting comparison. I think MTU would have different results if compared to a school like UofM when looking at the male to female ratio. As we saw in class a little bit, there were differing perspectives on relationships between male and female, so I definitely think that would be apparent in a sample with a more even split of males and females. Thanks for the response!
DeleteGood work on the study. I'd actually have expected quite the opposite to be the case, at least, I'd expect a skew of results due to Tech's male/female ratios; women might be more likely to have a local SO, whereas men would be more likely to have a long-distance SO.
ReplyDeleteDid your data show any correlation like that? I know the sample size was fairly small considering (well, at least compared to the more corporately-run n=1000 size surveys), but thought I'd ask. Also, you mentioned that you came to some other conclusions--can you elaborate on those a bit?
I enjoyed your post! Having a survey was a really interesting idea.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Kirstin! I'm glad you enjoyed it! Were any of my findings surprising to you at all?
DeleteI think you conducted a neat experiment to gain some insight on relationships, and it think it provided some valuable information. It was a very original idea to conduct your own research and then base your article off of that. Baring the sample size, I think the survey was asked some very interesting questions. I was wondering, are there are any other questions that you may have thought about asking but decided to exclude? If so, why?
ReplyDeleteThanks for your feedback, Declan! Before formulating my questions, I read through the chapter and considered the topics we discussed in class and tried to come up with questions that lined up with the main points. My main goal was to put the theories and concepts from the book and class to the test, and see if Houghton really fit the mold that the book talks about in the other various studies done. Were there any questions that came to mind when you read my post that you thought could have been valuable additions to my results?
DeleteThis was really cool that you went out of your way to conduct your own study that pertained to your article! When I saw the results to locals desiring a relationship, I wasn't too surprised with Houghton being out of the box with the results. In my opinion, I look at this community being very community based and having everyone be close to each other. With this being said, I think the sense of community kind of takes away from someone wanting a relationship. Being in a relationship means to have someone there you can turn to and lean on whenever, but if you have a close community with tight relationships, you might not need that relationship since you have your community instead. Do you think this could be a factor behind the data you collected?
ReplyDeleteThanks, Alexie! I would definitely agree with you, Houghton is a very close-knit area, which could definitely be playing a role here. The Father's Day Flood is a great example of why we're such a close-knit community; the people here generally act as one big community in how close everyone is, which is really unique I think. Most (but not all) of my responses came from MTU students, and I think being a part of that big communal bond could play a role in my responses, but only to a certain extent. People that have been here longer may feel more like you describe, not really needing that one-on-one relationship because they feel so connected with the community. Students that are new to campus or students that haven't spent a lot of time in the area may not feel this way though. Great question, and definitely something to consider!
DeleteI totally agree. The Father's Day Flood is a really good example to show how close this community is. I also agree that students who have not been here that long may not have the same feeling as locals do. It would be interesting to see your survey be given to individuals who are from a larger area who maybe aren't part of a close-knit community, just to see how their results would compare to the individuals here who responded to your survey.
DeleteI agree with the explanation of proximity having an effect on relationships. I find people go through their lives and eventually find people who are living in close proximity to ourselves. These people who are residing in close proximity are more likely to have more conversations and deepen the relationship. For the hockey team, we all live in the same rooms on campus our freshman year. This is done on purpose to help strengthen the relationships between our team.
ReplyDeleteI found the study you conducted to be interesting, though I agree with others who posted that the sample size was too small. Especially when looking at the data for a particular age group or gender, there were too few people to make any strong conclusions in my opinion.
ReplyDeleteIn general I found the results to be about what I would have expected them to be. As someone who is single and perfectly content that way, I can understand why people might have answered in that way. There are a lot of costs involved in relationships and there's also the potential for a lot of drama/betrayal/pain. And some people are simply not very socially comfortable, though it's hard to say if any of those types were involved in your study.
I don't want to sound like a broken record and talk about sample size for your data. I will say though, for as small as it was, it was impressive how consistent with other studies your results were!
ReplyDeleteThere are so many ways that relationships have changed in the last 20 years. I feel like it is hard to fit todays society into these models that were created a very long time ago. I feel like finding a sample for your study that would match the model perfectly would be near impossible. That being said, I am very impressed at the effort you put forth for this blog post. I think this was a very smart way to get information yourself and try to prove the model yourself.
ReplyDeleteI found your study to be very interesting as I myself have been in a long term relationship and am engaged to a person that is from the area in which I grew up. I am impressed with the way you designed the study and wished there could have been more participants as I am curious to see if there would've been any larger correlations. I enjoyed your well written post.
ReplyDeleteI really like the study you did; I find it really fascinating! Do you think there is a reason (other than such a small sample size) as to why houghton is so different than what was expected? Are people from houghton and other smaller cities, or the country verses the city different when it comes to the outcomes? When looking at your different pie charts I was wondering if you saw any correlation between how old the person was and how they met their SO? Sometimes it is stereotyped that older people are not as tech savvy so did most people over a certain age or generation meet their SO more likely in person rather than on some type of media platform?
ReplyDeleteI think it was smart to use data obtained around here, gives a more personal view to gain attention. When things are closer to home, I at least, tend to pay more attention to them and want to learn more about them. I think that the questions that you used were pretty good, maybe your pool of people was a bit too similar. I would try to go for a larger pool of people and try to get a few more people from the local community to try to see if they have different ideas about the data.
ReplyDelete