Theories and why I love them!

I have always been a firm believer that knowledge is power. This is especially true in the case of social theories. Let me explain: we all do things without conscious deliberation- especially the way we react to something emotional. This is why (in my opinion) understanding theories like the exchange theory, symbolic interaction theory, family systems theory, etc.  is so important. To further illustrate I'll give an example of me and learning about the exchange theory. When I do my dishes I sometimes will wash my roommates dishes if they are in the sink. Well, there are times when they don't thank me for it and this bothers me because "after all I'm puting in just for the sake of being nice they can at least give the curtousy of a thank you," but  after learning about the exchange theory I really had to question my motives. Was I really washing the dishes just for the sake of being nice, or did I want something from it? I decided I wanted  to do their dishes just for the sake of being nice so I change my attitude. The point I'm trying (hopefully siccessfully) to make is that learning about theories can change behaviors, but even more powerfully they can change motives and attitudes as well.

Man and Wife... not so different after all

I loved where in the reading they talked about different types of relationships. Those couples whose marriages were stable and who reported having extremely high marriage satisfaction were given a questionaire on the top reasons they thought their marriage was successful. I was really surprised by the results. They found that the top seven reasons given by the wife were identical to the top seven reasons given by the husband, and then from eight to twelve the reasons were similar but in a slightly different order. It was a surprise to me that men and women would rate characteristics of their marriage so similarly.

First Post!

Alright so I don't really know how to use this all they way but here's my first post. I've already learned a lot about the learning model. I'm a junior but until our discussion today I've never really understood why we used to learning model.