This research examined spouses' understanding of their partners and the relation of understanding to the amount of communication in marriage. The results showed that spouses overestimated agreement with their partners; therefore, understanding scores were low after response similarity (i.e. agreement) was factored out. Reported communication had a complex relation to understanding. Communication had a slight positive association with wives' understanding of husbands' instrumental perceptions and a negative association with wives' understanding of companionate perceptions. Communication was not associated with husbands' understanding scores. The results partly supported previous research in which communication had a stronger relation to understanding of instrumental perceptions than to understanding of abstract, relational (i.e. companionate) perceptions.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.