Pop Culture vs. Scholarly - Research Paper Example

Two articles from these magazines entitled The New Dating Rules and Dating Tips from Charles Darwin put a modern, almost scientific outlook on the dating game and communication between individuals in this situation. The dating game is a difficult one that almost everyone will have to play at some point in their lives, so these articles should be giving accurate information to give people the best chance at success and happiness. The overarching theme of the two pop culture articles is that there are some rules that need to be followed to be successful in the dating game, and these are based on scientific study about ‘what men want’.

It’s important that, if women feel this information is necessary to get by in life, then the information being given is as accurate as possible. The purpose of this paper is to explore the similarities and differences between these two pop culture articles and scholarly research on the dating game to ascertain whether the information is accurate, and what the consequences might be for readers of these magazines. The first article from Marie Claire is entitled The New Dating Rules. The article is based around a book by Julie Klausner entitled I Don’t Care About Your Band, aimed at giving women reasons to feel good about themselves in the dating game and what they should be expecting from their experiences.

Klausner suggests that there is much more to the dating game than the reasons for failure that we’ve all heard before, like calling too much or too little (Klausner, 2010). One of the major rules that Klausner illustrates is that if you are trying to be someone that will impress your love interest, then that person is not right for you. If an individual has to pretend to like a certain film genre in the hopes of impressing someone, then they are projecting a false image of themselves to the other person.

This person could fall in love with a false representation of you, something which happens to a certain degree in all types of relationships (Floyd, 2008). This is obviously a negative point, but Klausner focuses more on the fact that if you have to pretend to like something, then you obviously don’t have enough in common to bond over. This may seem like good advice, and it is indeed backed up by the literature. A study by Gonzanga et al (2007) studied two groups of couples, one set in the dating stage and one set having been married for around a year.

The results found that similarity in personalities was an important indicator for emotional similarity, which was in turn important in ensuring compatibility between the two individuals. The findings also suggested that when the general personality traits of the two people in a couple were highly congruent, the two individuals were happier in general and their relationships endured for longer periods of time. Evidently, the point that Klausner makes that dating should not involve pretending to be someone that you do not identify with is backed up by the scientific findings.

Another one of the dating rules that Klausner suggests is important is that there is generally a good reason for feeling bad in a relationship. Gonzanga et al (2007) found that emotional states are a key predictor of relationship, and therefore it is important to pay attention to these emotions, however transient they may appear. The second article from Elle magazine is entitled Dating Tips from Charles Darwin. The article is light-hearted, but does give some information about how to