The Cambridge Handbook of Personal Relationships

Cambridge Handbooks in Psychology

by Anita L. Vangelisti (Editor), Daniel Perlman (Editor), Susan Sprecher (Editor)

With the field of personal relationships having grown dramatically in the past quarter century, this volume serves as a benchmark of the current state of scholarship, synthesizing the extant theoretical and empirical literature, tracing its historical roots, and making recommendations for future directions. The authors are international experts from a variety of disciplines including several subfields of psychology, communication, family studies and sociology who have made major contributions to the understanding of relationships.

Genres: Psychology, Relationships, Nonfiction

928 pages, Paperback

First published March 1, 2006

Reviews

[Ivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

Superb. Why? Well - while you are reading it you have to remind yourself that it isn't a recollection of random common sense facts, as it might initially appear, but a book grounded in a comprehensive review of hundreds of large-scale research projects, often involving multicultural and cross-cultural approaches. It is very satisfying that social and relational psychology has grown a solid statistic base, that some of the ailments have been greatly demystified, and more importantly that responsible parenting and an active and engaging world view, as well as free will and happiness have a scientific underpinning to it, returning the reigns of life and personal responsibility back to the subject; much like the genome research did it for the obesity problem.

[Mackenzie B · Rating 5 out of 5]

I only read about 80 percent of this book (skipping some sections that centered mostly on research methodology and methods of psychological research), as I was mostly looking for information to help improve my relationships with other people. I found what I was looking for! I feel like a lot of the information found in this book could be used to improve any relationship I have in my life, whether it be familial, friendship, romantic, or otherwise. My only complaint is the vast amount of innate bias this book shows toward amatonormatovity. A lot of the book centers around marriage, which, although a common institution, is asserted as something that almost all people adopt at some point in their life as a rite of passage, even though a non-negligible number of people never marry. That being said, the book is very informative and useful, and the only reason I disliked the book at all was because it doesn't cater as much to non-traditional lifestyles as I would have liked it to and there's a lot less information about friendship or familial relationships outside of a traditional husband-wife duality, even though these relationships are also important.

[Usfromdk · Rating 2 out of 5]

"Most HLM [Hierarchical Linear Modeling] programs also allow for heterogeneous compound symmetry, which results in estimation of separate random effects across a distinguishing variable."

"A distinctive feature of transactionalism is its emphasis on holism, with an underlying philosophy of science that highlights Aristotle’s “formal cause” over the more traditional focus on “efficient cause” (i.e., cause– effect) relationships. That is, the goal of a transactional approach is to elucidate the patterned and changing nature of holistic events involving people, psychological and temporal processes, physical features, and cultural–historical forces."

Both quotes above are quotes from this book. Before I started reading it, I'd worried there'd be no content of the former kind, and a lot of content of the second kind. There are 41 chapters in this book, so there's a huge amount of variation in terms of quality. In the end I ended up at two stars, though I think it's probably closer to three stars than one. This is, however, an 'average rating'. Two of the chapters in the book were frankly written in a way that made me want to beat up the authors. A few other chapters were on the other hand really nice. Most chapters were sort of okay, but nothing more than that.

It's sort of painful to have to give a book like this two stars. It contains some really important and useful observations and insights, and if everybody had read a book like this many personal relationships might be very different. You want to know some of the stuff included in this book's coverage, you really do. But although there's some really nice stuff in there, there's also a lot of stuff that's really not all that great. The overall level of coverage I did not find to be impressive, but I should emhasize that in some ways this book is much better than the rating I've given it might imply.