Session 3: Student Love
Chair: Jessica Mjöberg


Attachment Styles and Loving Attitudes among Turkish University Students
Asli Bugay &Esin Tezer
Department of Educational Sciences Division of Psychological Counseling and Guidance, Middle East Technical University (METU), Ankara, Turkey

In the literature, the effects of attachment styles on various aspects of individuals’ later intimate relationships have been the concern of several studies. The aim of the present study was to investigate the predictive role of five love attitudes (Eros, Ludus, Storage, Pragma, Mania,  Agape, and  Eros) in self and other dimensions of attachment styles of male and female university students. Turkish versions of The Relationship Questionnaire (RQ) and Love Attitudes Scale (LAS) were administered to 467 (252 female, 215 male) undergraduate university students at Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey. The mean age of the participants was 21.5 (SD = 1.58). Reliability and validity studies carried out for the present study yielded similar results of both the original and Turkish versions of the scales.  Two separate stepwise regression analyses were conducted for self and other dimensions of attachment styles. The results showed Mania was the only significant predictor of self dimension of attachment style. Gender, Eros and Agape appeared as significant predictors of other dimension of attachment style, indicating that Eros and Agape were the predictors of males’ other attachment styles. The findings of the study were discussed in the light of cultural context.        

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Boys’ and Girls’ Stories of the Perfect Love: Gender and the Construction of Romantic Relationships in the Greek Classroom
Vassiliki Deliyianni-Kouimtzi & Vassiliki Lentza
Department of Psychology & Department of Philosophy and Pedagogy, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece

Romantic relationships during adolescence have a unique intensity and a number of researchers have given considerable attention to adolescent romance. In this frame, it is widely considered that girls position themselves as passive and dependent within dominant cultural discourses of heterosexuality and romance. Few researchers however have examined the discursive practices of adolescents and their construction of romantic relationships. The present study has as an aim (a) to examine the ‘repertoires’ used by boys and girls during adolescence in order to produce stories of romantic contest and (b) to examine the consequences of these repertoires in the reproduction of the biases and distinctions based on gender, in the context of romantic relationships. 29 boys and 33 girls, pupils of three high schools of Thessaloniki, GREECE, were asked to write a story of the ‘perfect’ love. Analyzing romantic behavior via scripts permits the consideration of both agency and social constrains. Written texts have been analyzed with the method of discourse analysis. Five main repertoires of romantic relationships were identified. Analysis showed that adolescents construct masculinity as controlling and connect, at the some time, femininity with dependency and passivity. The construction of masculinity and femininity is binary and it is evident that both boys and girls draw their discourses from the existing cultural construction of romance and love.

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Reactions to Dissatisfactions: The Role of Locus of Control and Critical Thinking
Okan Cem Çırakoğlu &Esin Tezer
Department of Political Science and International Relations, Başkent University, Ankara, Turkey and Department of Educational Sciences, Middle East Technical University, Ankara, Turkey

In the present study, the role of locus of control and critical thinking in handling dissatisfactions in the romantic relationships of university students was examined. Five hundred and eighty university students (373 females, 207 males) from different faculties of five universities located in Ankara-Turkey voluntarily participated in the study. Convenient sampling procedure was used in all phases of the study. A pilot study was conducted to adapt My Responses to Relationship Problems Scale (MRRPS; Kilpatrick, Bissonnette and  Rusbult, 2002) into Turkish. Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) and Multidimensional Scaling (MDS) were utilized to assess factorial and dimensional structure of MRRPS. Results revealed MRRPS to be psychometrically satisfactory. In the main study, four separate, moderated regression analyses were conducted to assess the predictive role of locus of control, critical thinking, and their interaction on exit, voice, loyalty and neglect responses. Results revealed that locus of control significantly predicted exit, voice and neglect responses. Participants with external locus of control had significantly higher exit and neglect scores whereas participants with internal locus of control had significantly higher voice scores. In addition, critical thinking significantly predicted exit and voice scores. Participants with lower levels of critical thinking disposition had higher exit scores whereas participants with higher levels of critical thinking had significantly higher voice scores. Findings of the present study were discussed in the framework of locus of control, critical thinking and close relationships.

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