Theories and Research in Personal Relationships

In this chapter I focus on the nature of theories in the social sciences, some philosophy of science behind the validation of theories (e.g., falsifiability, approaches to deciding the value of evidence for/against a theory), and some issues to consider with respect to the research process and theory development and evaluation. I discuss the value of deconstructing theories to assess their core and auxiliary assumptions and determine aspects of a theory that have yet to be examined. I also discuss modern approaches to assess the evidentiary value of this body of research. I suggest that in our interdisciplinary field, researchers should consider generating hypotheses, as well as research explorations, through carefully evaluating and questioning the assumptions of the theories typically applied in the study of personal relationships. This discussion includes the use of modern approaches such as computational models. The overarching theme of the chapter is that as a field we need to evaluate and develop our theories using some recommendations put forward for decades combined with recently developed techniques in order to advance our theories beyond vague verbal statements that are interesting yet not precise to theories that allow for more consistent deductions of specific hypotheses.