Television is popular, in part, because it both reflects and exaggerates real life. Seeing the concepts of interpersonal relationships as they exist on television is a useful first step to seeing the concepts in operation in our own relationships.

Watch a television sitcom or drama that focuses on one of the five major kinds of relationships discussed in this chapter (friendship, love, family, workplace, and online-only relationships), and respond to the following questions:

1. How are the relationships defined? What specific verbal or nonverbal behaviors cue you into the kind of relationship existing between or among the characters?

2. What types of attraction exist between or among the characters?

3. How would you describe the relationship in terms of social exchange and equity theories?

4. Can you identify any example of relationship dialectics operating here?

5. What rules do the relationship partners follow? What rules do they violate?

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