Ideas on topics:
Do emotions drive our lives or rational thinking?
What sets the social rankings in friendships and significant others?
Why are we so scared to let people see the real us that we allow ourselves to be taken over by the persona we put forth?
Why do people have expectations? When do you stop expecting things from people?
When is enough enough?
why are people hypocrites?
Is friendship worth the emotional drama we feel for the little time we actually feel good to be in the company of others?
Yuxi:
Yu xi I think you have a very interesting question. Though you might want to get more specific or choose different words, like bonding for instance, you mean close bonding? or just bonding in general with friends we make from a day to day basis. I wonder if you would actually after researching this come to the conclusion it is for the individuals own gain or if it is something more intimate.
Revised question:
Are there proven strategies for increasing positive feelings and reducing negative drama in friendships?
Research:
Morton J. Mendelson and Aaron C. Kay. Positive Feelings in Friendship: Does Imbalance in the Relationship Matter? Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, Feb 2003; 20: 101 - 116. http://spr.sagepub.com/cgi/citemap?id=spspr;20/1/101
This website only gives a brief abstract to what the main article is talking about. Unfortunately the only way to look at the whole article is to purchase it so this all I will be going on. The abstract was somewhat confusing going into technical terms about an experiment they did with friendships. The results were varied and a result they came up with was that happiness and positive feelings were higher in friendships were the functions of the friendship were fulfilled.
Kate,
ReplyDeleteI really liked this question "Is friendship worth the emotional drama we feel for the little time we actually feel good to be in the company of others?", but i wonder, how exactly can you research this topic? it seems more opininated and less research filled. Maybe you can create a survery in a research based style that can help you generate answers for this question? it seems rather tricky otherwise.
otherwise i think your topics and questions are well thought out and i like them.
-Rachel
Kate,
ReplyDeleteI think your questions are pretty interesting; I especially like this question of yours: “Why are we so scared to let people see the real us that we allow ourselves to be taken over by the persona we put forth?” It’s a good question to get information on since we see it happen in our lives everyday. How will you be gathering all the evidence needed on this topic? I feel like if you were to ask strangers on the street this question, they would start to state their opinions. How will you get some facts to figure out an answer to this problem? I think you should create a survey for students to fill out and maybe do a few interviews with close friends. You can also try to find some articles on such a topic. I think you are headed in the right direction, hope you get all the supporting evidence you need.
-Amber