The main purpose of the present study was to examine the possible factors that affect the adjustment to breakup of romantic relationships. Initiator status, certainty about the reasons of breakup, current relationship status, and perceived social support were examined in regard to adjustment to breakup. The sample of the study consisted of 397 participants (192 (48.4%) female, 205 (51.6%) male). At the beginning, the invited sample consisted of 561 (276 female, 285 male) participants / 164 of the participants who had not broken off their romantic relationship within the past two years were excluded. Data collection instruments of the study were demographic information form, Multidimensional Scale of Perceived Social Support, and Fisher&rsquo / s Divorce Adjustment Scale. One-way ANOVA and post-hoc test were conducted to determine the differences among initiator groups in terms of adjustment to breakup.Results showed that there were significant differences between the initiator and non-initiator groups and also between non-initiator and mutual decider groups. There wasn&rsquo / t significant difference between the initiator and the mutual decider groups. The results of t-tests showed that there was a significant difference between the groups who were certain about the reasons of breakup and those who were not in regard to adjustment to breakup. There was also significant difference between the groups who had another romantic relationship after the breakup and those who did not have regarding the adjustment to breakup. Besides these, bivariate correlation analysis indicated a significant relationship between perceived social support and adjustment to breakup.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 374-389). Also available on the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Missouri-Columbia, 2002. / Typescript. Vita. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 374-389). Also available on the Internet.

Shanghai is often regarded as China’s best embodiment of cosmopolitanism, transcending the local through the purchase of global goods that, in turn, allows its citizens to be part of a post-socialist world. This aspiring outlook of Shanghai is often the result of larger institutional changes, such as the move to a market economy and China’s entry into WTO. Crucial to the understanding of how this state-mediated cosmopolitan culture came to have an impact on the lives of individuals, the key patterns in romantic experiences of young Shanghainese women are discussed in elaborate detail in this thesis. In particular, this study focuses on two specific forces, namely the state and the market, that have greatly shaped the romantic context of cosmopolitan Shanghai. As such, this thesis seeks to answer three key questions: 1) Is it possible that the Chinese state has (re)structured contemporary Shanghainese women’s romantic experiences and, if so, in what ways? 2) Do current findings on the role of the consumer market in shaping romantic practices also apply within the context under study? 3) In what ways have Shanghainese women played out their love lives in the current context? Building a theoretical framework from state-role theory which emphasizes the role of the Chinese state in initiating life-altering social transformations and theory that relates romantic love to the consumer culture and the social organization of advanced capitalism, this thesis asserts that the romantic experiences of young Shanghainese women both mirror and extend the fundamental arguments framing both theories, thus offering new levels of complexity for examining the relationship between romantic love and culture. Through an open-ended interview process following grounded theory principles, 44 respondents (age 25-39) are asked questions regarding their romantic experiences to provide key details from the context under study. The findings of this study suggest that the state and the state-mediated consumer culture has produced contradictions in the romantic experiences of young Shanghainese women. While as cosmopolitan individuals young women are supposed to be desirous and constraint-free in pursuit of their romantic ideals, persistent class and gender hierarchies, and rising economic and emotional uncertainties, nevertheless, undercut their freedom and many of the incentives to realize these ideals. Such freedom is further undercut by mounting pressure from their parents who are primarily dependent on their only daughters, as a result of the family-planning policy and other shifting state policies in the past, for long-term financial and emotional care amidst rising costs and barely functional social welfare programs. Caught in a tension between self desires and traditional role obligations, young women become rational actors in their romantic experiences as they negotiate or even transform the conventionalities by lurching between different understandings of love and varying moralities of self and family to justify their motives and behaviors. As such, their romantic experiences embody the market ethos of consumer capitalism—rational, selfinterested, strategic, and profit-maximizing––complexly entangled in a material and moral environment built by the socialist state. / published_or_final_version / Sociology / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

This study provides evidence that individuals who share similar experiences that are grounded in the actual features of the courtship are likely to remain married over 13 years later. Using logistic regression and path analyses to examine 168 married partners, results support previous research suggesting that “enduring dynamics” best predicts the developmental pathway for couples who remain married, whereas “disillusionment” prefigures marital instability. Specifically, findings revealed that marriages are more likely to be stable when premarital partners (a) feel similar depths of love for one another, (b) move toward marriage at comparable rates over the course of the courtship, and when feelings of (c) love and (d) ambivalence reflect how frequently they experience conflict and downturns in their estimations of the likelihood of marriage. Gender differences and exceptions to this pattern are discussed. / text

Sexual selection is usually invoked to explain the evolution of elaborate epigamic characters in animals. However, the mechanism by which female choice operates is poorly understood, and it is not clear whether female choice is purely aesthetic or related to male genotypic quality. It has been suggested that Moller's fluctuating asymmetry (FA) hypothesis may resolve the 'arbitrary trait'-'good gene' debate. However, tests of this controversial hypothesis have yielded equivocal results. I examined the allometric patterns of FA in the redcollared widow in order to test the FA hypothesis. In addition, I documented intrapopulation variation in trait size to determine whether females could distinguish between males on the basis of ornament size and/or symmetry. Male tail length was found to be more variable in size than other traits, suggesting that sufficient variation exists in ornament size for females to distinguish between males on this basis. In addition, the prediction of the FA hypothesis that ornaments would display higher degrees of asymmetry than non-ornamental traits was supported. However, no significant linear or second-order polynomial relationship was found between trait size and asymmetry for tail, wing and tarsus length. Furthermore, neither tail length or symmetry was correlated with indices of body condition. Although this might suggest that the FA hypothesis is invalid, I argue that the assumptions of the hypothesis are too simplistic for it to hold true for all species without taking the basic biology of the species into account. / Thesis (M.Sc.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1997.

I studied the mating behaviour of Richardson’s ground squirrels (Urocitellus richardsonii) in 2007 and 2008, near Picture Butte, AB, Canada with the goals of evaluating multiple paternities within litters, sperm competition, and female mate choice. Eleven microsatellites and use of behavioural data to eliminate males who could not be putative sires based on their spatial and temporal remoteness from estrous females enabled exclusive assignment of paternity to 82.8% of 598 offspring with known maternity. The frequency of multiple paternities (26.4%, n=87 litters) in my population was lower than that reported for Richardson’s ground squirrels in a Manitoba population (80.0%, n=15 litters). Sperm competition was absent except in litters weaned by those females that mated again within 5 minutes of the first copulation, in which case sperm displacement was evident. Female choice was observed through avoidance of copulation, termination of copulation, and hide-then-run behaviour. / x, 98 leaves ;|c29 cm. --

Four experiments are presented that explore social interactivity in a visually communicating species: the pigeon, Columba livia. A closed-loop teleprompter system was used to isolate, control and manipulate social contingency in a natural courtship interaction. Experiment 1 tested different ways to measure pigeon behaviour and developed an automatic method for measuring the pigeon’s circle walking display using motion energy analysis. In Experiment, 2 the subject’s courtship behaviour towards the video image of an opposite sex partner streamed live (Live), was compared with their behaviour towards a pre-recorded video image of the same partner (Playback). The only difference between the Live and Playback condition was the presence or absence of social contingency. The results showed that pigeons behaved interactively: their behaviour was determined, in part, by the social contingencies between visual signals. To investigate what types of social contingencies are behaviourally relevant, the effects of the partner’s facing direction and the timing of social contingencies on behaviour were investigated in Experiment 3 and 4, respectively. To manipulate partner facing direction, the camera was rotated so that the partner appears to be courting 90° away from the subject. To manipulate social timing, three time delays, 1, 3 and 9s, were implemented within the closed-circuit communication. In Experiment 4, the context-specificity of interactive behaviour was also investigated by testing behavioural sensitivity to social contingency and timing in both opposite sex and same sex social interactions. The results showed that the partner’s facing direction did not significantly influence behaviour, whereas the timing of social contingencies had a significant impact on behaviour: in courtship only. These findings suggest that temporal relations between display bouts in courtship are behaviourally relevant. A post hoc analysis was then used to evaluate the behavioural relevance of two social contingencies in particular: partner responsiveness and simultaneous display. The results showed that females may be sensitive to the male responsiveness in courtship. Also, simultaneous display appeared to create a perceptual interaction which acted to potentiate the courtship dynamic. These studies provide a basis for further developing the pigeon and its courtship behaviour as a model for visual communication. / Thesis (Ph.D, Neuroscience Studies) -- Queen's University, 2011-04-25 14:37:19.888

In the zebra finch (Taeniopygia guttata), song and its social context play an important role in female mate selection. The song of the zebra finch is unique in that it can only be produced by males, which makes the species ideal for analyzing the components of male song that influence female song preference and mate selection. There are three consistent features of zebra finch song that affect female mate preference: 1) the amount of time a male sings, 2) the size and complexity of his song repertoire, and 3) the structural conformation to species or population norms (reviewed in Nowicki et al. 2002). During courtship, male zebra finches often express ‘static-visual’ and ‘dynamic-visual’ elements in sync with song (Morris 1954), which would suggest that such behaviors also play a role in influencing female mate preference. However, with courtship comes the competition between males for the attention of potential mates. These agonistic interactions between males act settle disputes over access to mates, and as such, are also likely to influence female mate selection. As follows, we predict that, at the initial onset of courtship, there would be a higher prevalence of male-to-female courting interactions and singing behavior in comparison to male-to-male agonistic tendencies if female mate selection is fundamentally determined by song preference. However if female mate selection is more complicated than simple song preference, we would expect to initially observe a higher number of agonistic interactions between males as they compete for dominance. This hypothesis was tested by recording and analyzing the behavioral interactions between male and female zebra finches in the context of song complexity. We found that different males scored higher for song complexity than those for expression of courtship behaviors, which indicates that different elements of male courtship display likely influence female mate preference. Our data comparing male-to-male interactions and male-to-female interactions within the first 30 minutes after introduction was statistically insignificant, suggesting that female mate selection is more complicated than simple song preference. This preliminary research can be used as a basis for future studies using quantitative movement tracking analysis, which would further strengthen these initial observations. By increasing our understanding of the influence the male song has on female mate selection, we can better expound upon the nature and function of the favored traits that male songbirds possess and the benefits that females and their progeny might gain from choosing a male with these particular attributes.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Oregon State University, 2010. / Printout. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 124-140). Also available on the World Wide Web.