Functions of Relationships
Functions of Relationships
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In U.S. prisons today, more than twenty-five thousand inmates are serving their time in solitary confinement—removed from the general prison population, isolated in small cells with little human contact (Sullivan, 2006). Prison officials consider this necessary to maintain order, but some activists worry about the harshness of the measure. They hold that human beings form and maintain relationships in order to satisfy basic human needs—for companionship, for stimulation, for achieving goals—and it is cruel to deny those needs (Ramirez, Sunnafrank, & Goei, 2010).
Companionship. Humans feel a natural need for companionship and inclusion—to involve others in their lives and to be involved in the lives of others. Thus loneliness can be a major motivation behind some people’s desire for a relationship. In fact, psychological problems such as anxiety, stress, depression, alcoholism, drug abuse, and poor health have all been tied to loneliness (Canary & Spitzberg, 1993; Segrin & Passalacqua, 2010). Depriving prisoners of companionship may be an effective form of punishment, but it may also be damaging to them on a psychological level, dashing any hopes for eventual rehabilitation.
Stimulation. People have a need for intellectual, emotional, and physical stimulation (Krcmar & Greene, 1999; Rubin, Perse, & Powell, 1985). Nobody enjoys being bored! So we seek out diversions like television or music. But interaction with another person occurs on a personal, unique level and frequently provides multiple types of stimulation at once. In fact, the emotional communication we receive when our partners are involved with us contributes to our relational satisfaction (Guerrero, Farinelli, & McEwan, 2009).
Consider some of the communication relationships you have with various people over the course of a day. You might chat with your roommates or your family in the morning about nerves over an upcoming exam. You see your professor at office hours to share an interesting story related to your class. You check up on your old high school buddies on Facebook. And then you meet up with your significant other, who greets you with a warm hug after a long day.
These innate needs for stimulation are why many people feel that solitary confinement is unethical and immoral.
Achieving Goals. Some people enter into relationships to achieve particular goals. Sometimes the goal is simply satisfying the needs we have discussed earlier: to alleviate loneliness or to provide stimulation. Other goals are more practical: if you have dreamed all your life about working in finance, you might seek relationships with influential people in that field through networking via your college alumni group or through an internship.
Ethics and You
When you enter into a relationship primarily as a means of achieving a goal, how aware should the other person be of your reasons? Would you feel comfortable if the other person thought the relationship had more of a companionship or stimulation function, even if you considered it more practical and goal related?
Often your initial motivation for developing a relationship is to see how a particular individual can help you. This is the argument that is made to justify solitary confinement. When particularly dangerous prisoners are kept in isolation, they are unable to form relationships that might help them accomplish dangerous goals (such as gang membership or terrorist networking) (Sullivan, 2006).