HW 55 - Independent Research Question/Topic

Part 1:

Research Question: What is the primary factor that people concern between interpersonal relationships of becoming friends?

Part 2:

Richard,

Your research question is “What are our needs that we attempt to satisfy through varies relationships?” First of all, I think you should make it more specific, and just choose one type of relationships as the four categories that we did in class on the paper (family, friends, frequent interactions, mediated relations) . So in that way, you can narrow down your topic and just focus on researching one type of relationship. If I were to revise your question, I might change it to “what are our expectations on others that we attempt to satisfy ourselves through relationship with friends (or friendship)?” I think by this way, you can look at criteria of being a friend, and what we often attempt to expect on others to offer to satisfy ourselves.

Hope this helps,
Bao Lin

Hi Aja,

Your research question is “What Distinguishes Friends From Family (And Vice Versa)At what point does a Friend become family? What is that tipping point?” I think your topic is interesting, but if I were to revise the question to make it more specific, I would change it to “How do the boundaries between friends and family intersect through interpersonal relationships?” So by this way, you can research expectations that people have on their family and friends, and see what criteria do both of these relationship shares. By comparing these two relationships, you can distinguish the difference and start to see how each relationship collides with each other.

Hope this helps,
Bao Lin

Part 3:

Revised Question: What is the primary factor do people concern about between interpersonal relationships of becoming acquaintances?

This article is basically about how to meet the right people, so they can influence you in your life and you will sharpen your own identity. This writer demonstrates it as “if you want to be a winner, then meet winners. If you want to be successful, then meet successful people.” He is suggesting that in order to meet the right person or as for future plan to be your close friends, you need to meet someone that you can relate to. Such as having similar interests, similar identities as a whole despite the influence are good or bad. As long as you can relate to this person, you can learn from each other and strengthen who you really are as an individual. Connects this to the topic that I am researching, I agreed with this article’s point of view. In meeting new people or strangers, it is always easier to meet someone who has similar interests as you to build up conversations to know more about each other. As talking about relationships especially acquaintance, I believe most of us do evaluate others’ similarities to themselves such as the way others dress to start the relationship as a way to connect.

Latumahina, Donald. “Grow Yourself by Meeting People and Reading Books”. Life Optimizer. 10 February, 2007. Web. 12 May, 2010. <http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2007/02/10/grow-yourself-by-meeting-people-and-reading-books/>

This is a website that provides the excerpts from the book “How to Win Friends and Influence People” by Dale Carnegie and complied by Richard Anthony. It basically summarizes the importance key facts from the book in a list of telling the reader how to get others to like you in a way to win friends. As from the author, he suggests that if you “genuinely interested in other people” and conform others’ will as a whole, others will like you. But the importance of doing the tasks that he listed is that you have to do it sincerely with appreciation, not flatter. By talking about topics that others like, agreeing with others or not arguing over or criticize, and make others feel they are importance, it will make you a great deal of meeting new people. Throughout this excerpt from Carnegie, it suggests that the primary factor that people concern is how much other “respects” them as a person. Using the word “respect” although the author didn’t really use it throughout his book, I mean the basic understanding of each other as common sense of how to treat others. The key is to make others feel that you do care about them and you are interest in what they are interested at. This source is quiet useful in understanding the connections between each other in relationships, and what others care and how you should act in meeting others if you do want to meet new friends.

Anthony, Richard. “How to Win Friends and Influence People – Excerpts from Dale Carnegie’s Inspiring Book”. Web. 12 May, 2010. < http://ecclesia.org/truth/friends.html>

This is a statistic done by E. Ho and M.Kochen on acquaintanceship and interpersonal trust, and it is basically focused on China and Hong Kong on how people perceived can affect the number of acquaintance that they have in life. They also looked at many other different variables and factors such as competition level, networking, and development of the relationships. However, focusing on my topic, I am only looking at the results of what people concern when they are meeting strangers in making a relationship with acquaintance. This report shows that what most people are concern is whether others are meeting them for advantage or is just to help or just to meet new friends. Such as in big cities or industrialized places, like Hong Kong, people perceived most of the people as selfish instead of trustworthy, which will affect the amount of acquaintance that they have. This concludes that the importance of trust between people is an important start to form connections through interpersonal relationships. This statistic report is helpful for my topic because it reveals that the primary factor that most people who live in the city are concern about is trust. Because cities are always view as competitive surroundings, it shows others’ perceptions on others could affect the amount of acquaintance that they meet. The report also suggests the significance of the topic, that if people tend to trust others more, they can build up their networks and develop the relationships to friendships or other further relationships. So perception of other is the key variable of affecting how much acquaintance you meet.

Ho, Edric and Kochen, Manfred. “Perceived Acquaintanceship and Interpersonal Trust: The case of Hong Kong and China”. University of Michigan. 1987. Web. 12 May, 2010. < http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/26687/1/0000234.pdf>

This is a research done by students from Columbia University on “Segregation in Social Networks based on Acquaintanceship and Trust”. Although it did not fully focused on my topic on the primary factor that people concerned in building relationships with acquaintance, it does connects to the previous statistic research looking at American’s perceptions. But this research instead of focusing on trust, it also talks about race, religious, political views, and other variables that could affect people’s process of building networks with others. One of the powerful statements that I found in this long research paper was “About a quarter of Americans trust fewer than 10 individuals, and these American typically have relatively few acquaintances as well”. This did not only support the previous source about trust, it also supports that perceptions is an important concept in building relationships with each other. One’s perceptions on others based on their race, religious, political views…etc., all these things that a person can judge based on others could affect their number of acquaintance. It shows that the primary factor that people are concern is other’s act or performance as a person. If you provide a comfortable characteristics towards others will help you to earn trust from others, which will make it easier to form acquaintanceships through interpersonal relationships. Although this long research did not quiet help, it does discuss the importance of human perceptions on others could affect the amount of acquaintance that you have.

Diprete A., Thomas. Gelman, Andrew. McCornick, Tyler. Teitler, Julien. Zheng, Tian. “Segregation in Social Networks based on Acquaintanceship and Trust”. Columbia University. 12 January, 2010. Web. 12 May, 2010. < http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/research/published/phily01122010.pdf>