No abstract

The stimulus-value-role theory of marital choice holds that individuals tend to choose marital partners of comparable physical attractiveness to themselves. Physical attractiveness was measured by self-perception, perception of the partner, and appearance judged from photos. Actual couples were hypothesized to be significantly less discrepant on these variables than a control group contrived by randomly pairing the scores of men and women. The two samples consisted of 99 and 98 college couples, respectively, who were going together or were engaged. Results support the hypothesis for self-percepts and photo attractiveness but not for perception of the partner. The results support stimulus-value-role theory and the concept of marital choice as an exchangemarket phenomenon.

B. I. Murstein's stimulus-value-role theory was extended to account for the relationship of person perception scores to marital adjustment. The hypotheses predicted that similarity, self-acceptance, accuracy of predicting other's responses, and role compatibility would be correlated with marital adjustment. Other predictions were the following: When the perceptual target was the man, the correlation with marital adjustment would be higher than when it was a woman; women would show a higher self-acceptance-marital-adjustment correlation than men; and intraperceptions would be more highly correlated with marital adjustment than interperceptions. The Ss were 60 young married middle-class couples who took a 20 adjective bipolar checklist under eight different "sets" (self, ideal self, spouse, ideal spouse, and predictions of these four sets for the partner). Results generally supported the hypotheses.

The subjects were 22 middle-aged, middle-class couples for whom three measures of physical attractiveness were obtained: photos, self-evaluations, and evaluations by spouse. In addition, each subject took the Locke-Wallace Marriage Adjustment Scale. It was hypothesized that (a) members of couples would be matched for physical attractiveness, (b) equity of physical attractiveness would be correlated with marriage adjustment, (c) perception of the partner as more attractive than the self would be correlated with marriage adjustment, and (d) attractiveness, in general, would be correlated with marriage adjustment. The first hypothesis was clearly supported, the second rejected, and the third was supported for husbands' marriage adjustment only, but it was suspected of being artifactual. The fourth hypothesis was confirmed for subjective measures of attractiveness in relation to husbands' but not wives' marital adjustment.

A random sample of New London County, CT, residents received a questionnaire about nine mental health professions or professionals (MHPs): clergyperson, marriage and family counselor, nonpsychiatric physician, psychiatrist, psychiatric nurse, psychologist, psychotherapist, social worker, and telephone crisis counselor. Respondents defined each MHP and reported their satisfaction with treatment, which MHP they would recommend, their referral source(s), licensure requirements, and fees. A mixed-design analysis of variance was computed, with comfortableness as the dependent variable; age, sex, saw an MHP, and education, the between-subjects variables; and the nine MHPs, the within-subjects variable. A significant MHP effect showed that physicians were perceived as slightly more comfortable than were psychologists (nonsignificant), who, nevertheless, were perceived as exceeding all other trained MHPs in the comfortableness experienced by their clients.