Human Relationships

by Steve Duck

The Fourth Edition of this highly successful textbook provides a unique and comprehensive introduction to the study and understanding of human relationships. This thoroughly revised edition combines the most recent research from social, personality, and developmental psychology, communication studies, family studies, and sociology with greater interdisciplinarity coverage and emphasis on processes of everyday life. Fresh insights from family studies, developmental psychology, occupational, and organizational psychology also combine to bring new perspectives to this thorough survey of the field.



Thoroughly updated, with new chapters on Relating Difficulty, "small media" technology and relationships, and practical applications, the new edition is responsive to the student demand for insight into their own lives.



Key


Try this a section in each chapter indicating how the students can apply concepts personally
Look for this in the media where students are guided toward concepts as presented by TV and other media
Listen to your own conversations which points students to understand topics in terms of their own everyday interactions
Keep a journal where students are directed to keep a journal for class discussion reporting on topic-relevant experiences in their daily life
Self questions which confront students with a number of questions that invite them to reflect on their own performance of relationships relative to each chapter topic
Practical matters directing students to practical application in the broader social world beyond their academic or personal experiences Chapter summaries, already present in the Third Edition, offer improved guided study review
Brand new chapter openers providing focus points for note taking when reading the chapter

Human Relationships, Fourth Edition retains a distinctive authorial voice while offering a fully up-to-date and authoritative review of the field and is an invaluable book for all students and professionals who want to understand interpersonal relationships from a wide perspective.

Genres: Psychology, Reference

312 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 1986

About the author

Steve Duck (Steven W. Duck) a British social psychologist turned communication scholar, is the Daniel & Amy Starch Distinguished Research Professor and Chair, Department of Rhetoric, at the University of Iowa.

He has made contributions to the scientific field of social and personal relationships.

He attended Bristol Grammar School and Pembroke College, Oxford before gaining a Ph.D. from Sheffield University in 1971. He studied social and personal relationships and published several books and articles on the subject. He taught at the University of Glasgow in Scotland and the University of Lancaster in England, being one of four founding members of the Department of Psychology there in 1973. In 1986 he moved to the University of Iowa as the Daniel and Amy Starch Distinguished Research Professor, the first fully endowed professorship in the College of Liberal Arts (later the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences – CLAS). He served as Chair Department Executive Officer for the Department of Communication Studies, University of Iowa 1994–1998 and subsequently as Chair of the Department of Rhetoric, University of Iowa (2010–present).

Duck conducted research into social relationships at Lancaster University. He founded the International Conference on Personal Relationships, the first four of which he organized with Robin Gilmour from Lancaster University, but situating the conference in Madison, Wisconsin in 1982 and 1984. These international conferences have since occurred every two years. Between these first two conferences he founded an interdisciplinary Journal of Social and Personal Relationships and was its first Editor for the fifteen volumes from 1984-1998. He also founded the International Network on Personal Relationships, and, then at the University of Iowa, founded and ran several conferences there both for general scholarly groups and also specifically for graduate students.

He served as President of INPR (International Network on Personal Relationships) which was subsequently merged into IARR (International Association for Relationship Research).

He has published several books and monographs on the general themes of relationships, becoming most closely associated with models of Interpersonal communication relationship dissolution and in particular with Duck's topographical model of relationship dissolution and a more formalized stages of dissolution model. This latter was later modified by Rollie & Duck (2006).

He has presented over 200 conference papers, written over 100 articles and chapters and written or edited 60 books, the most recent being Duck & McMahan (2017) Communication in Everyday Life: The Basic Course Edition With Public Speaking, and Duck & McMahan (2017) Communication in Everyday Life: A Survey of Communication, Third Edition, . In 1982 he became the founding Editor of the Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, and held the position of Editor in Chief until 1998.

Reviews

[Chow · Rating 5 out of 5]

Speaks mostly about the research stuffs, on the "why". If you're finding for advice, unless you can derive the "how" from the "why", don't bother. However, if you're just wondering how relationships actually works, what are their permutations, etc., recommended this book. Unlike modern textbooks which are utterly boring, filled with math equations which makes the reader feel ashamed of his dumbness, this book is engaging to read.

[Mela Noura · Rating 3 out of 5]

Human relationships are often presented as private matters of affection and personality, but their foundations are deeply social. Expectations about friendship, intimacy, authority, and reciprocity are learned within particular communities and influence what people consider acceptable behaviour. This perspective makes the subject more interesting than a simple guide to getting along with others. Relationships can reproduce social conventions just as easily as they can challenge them. Still, explaining interaction through general principles risks overlooking the contradictions of real life, where loyalty may conflict with independence and mutual understanding may remain elusive. The ideas are useful, but their application requires more nuance.