Compatible and Incompatible Relationships

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-xvi

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2. Introduction

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 9-9

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   2. Introduction

      • William Ickes

      Pages 1-7

3. Comparative and Developmental Perspectives

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 89-89

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   2. Predictability and Control in Relationships: A Perspective from Animal Behavior

      • D. W. Rajecki

      Pages 11-31

   3. Compatibility in Parent-Infant Relationships: Origins and Processes

      • Michael E. Lamb, Kathleen E. Gilbride

      Pages 33-60

   4. Compatibility and Incompatibility in Children’s Peer and Sibling Relationships

      • Wyndol Furman

      Pages 61-87

4. Behavioral Interdependence: Social Exchange

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 141-141

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   2. Equity and Intimate Relations: Recent Research

      • Elaine Hatfield, Jane Traupmann, Susan Sprecher, Mary Utne, Julia Hay

      Pages 91-117

   3. Implications of Relationship Type for Understanding Compatibility

      • Margaret S. Clark

      Pages 119-140

5. Emotional Interdependence

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 185-185

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   2. Compatibility, Interdependence, and Emotion

      • Ellen Berscheid

      Pages 143-161

   3. Incompatibility, Loneliness, and “Limerence”

      • Phillip Shaver, Cindy Hazan

      Pages 163-184

6. Personality and Cognitive Interdependence

   1. Front Matter

      Pages 307-307

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   2. Sex-Role Influences on Compatibility in Relationships

      • William Ickes

      Pages 187-208

   3. The Role of the Self in the Initiation and Course of Social Interaction

      • Harry T. Reis

      Pages 209-231

   4. Marital Compatibility and Mutual Identity Confirmation

      • Roger M. Knudson

      Pages 233-251

   5. Cognitive Interdependence in Close Relationships

      • Daniel M. Wegner, Toni Giuliano, Paula T. Hertel

      Pages 253-276

   6. Interpersonal Perception in Relationships

      • Alan L. Sillars

      Pages 277-305

7. Perspectives on Marital Interaction

   1. Compatibility in Marriage and Other Close Relationships

      • George Levinger, Marylyn Rands

      Pages 309-331

Several years ago, two of my colleagues and I had the opportunity to interview Fritz Heider-perhaps the most influential theorist in the field of social psychology (Harvey, Ickes, & Kidd, 1976). During our interview, Heider affirmed a belief that had guided his career since the 1920s, the belief that the study of human relationships is the most important task in which social scientists can engage. Although many social scientists would profess to share this belief, it is nonetheless true that the study of human relationships has been one of the most neglected tasks in the history of the social sciences-including psychology. What Heider found in the 1920s-that most psychologists acknowledged the importance of studying human relationships but at the same time tended to focus their own research on more "tractable" topics such as memory and cognition-is still very much evident in the 1980s. Even within the more specific domain of social psychology, a majority of researchers still choose to address those hybrid topics ("social cognition," "social categorization and stereotyping," "person memory," etc. ) that relate most directly to traditional areas of psychological research. Still other researchers, while choosing to study such important interpersonal phenomena as altruism, aggression, conflict, and interpersonal attraction, tend to focus so exclusively on these isolated and abstracted phenomena that they fail to provide a more inclusive view of the relationships in which these phenomena occur.

• Aggression
• Fritz Heider
• Stereotyp
• cognition
• conflict
• psychology
• social psychology

• Department of Psychology, University of Texas—Arlington, Arlington, USA

  William Ickes

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